A guy just came to my house while I was home alone to ask if I was single why are men like this
Okay y'know what Iβm gonna soapbox for a hot minute
When I was in high school, a man who Iβd thought was the parent of a school friend followed me out to the grocery store parking lot greenhouse where I worked. It was dark, and late, and it was me, alone, in a chain link enclosure with one exit and a register full of cash. He called me up to the fence and asked if I wanted to get dinner, or go dancing. I was scared and shaking and told him no several times, and he only left when I falsely said I had a boyfriend. I was very aware that if he were to come over the fence, or just wait at the exit until I eventually had to leave, I could do nothing about it.
When my hair was very short, a hairdresser sent me to the barberβs side of the store so they could get the back of my head with clippers. The barber followed me out to my car to ask me out afterwards. I was very aware that we were the only people in the parking lot when it happened, and that the lot itself was tucked behind the building with no clear visibility to the road.
Today, a man Iβve met once made it very clear he knows where I live, and used that knowledge to express a romantic interest. If he ever decides that heβs unhappy with how I responded, he knows where I live. He knows what my car looks like. It is impossibly easy for him to determine when Iβm home alone, and now I have to live with that knowledge.
Every woman I know has at least one story like this. My roommate had to be escorted to her car every night when she was a waitress, in case some man was waiting for her or a coworkerβs shift to end.
If the person you want to ask out cannot physically run away from you when you are asking, YOU CANNOT ASK THEM OUT. You cannot ask someone out if they are at work. You cannot ask someone out if youβve followed them to a remote/unoccupied/enclosed area. You cannot GO TO SOMEONEβS HOME UNINVITED to ask them out. You are not being romantic. You are not βtaking initiativeβ. You are terrifying the person you want to woo. If they say yes, it is not because they want to, it is because they are terrified of what might happen if they say no.
Iβm so tired of being terrified by men who think theyβre being romantic.
βEvery womanβ you say. Do you personally know every woman in the world? Donβt presume to speak for others, and donβt make this a gendered issue either.
Actually every woman in the world is in one big group chat and theyβre all telling you to fuck off
In response to @blackjackgabbiani, allow me to quote one of the best poems Iβve ever read.
This Vote Is Legally Binding
by @tkingfisher
In response to all those articles about talking to women with headphonesβ¦
Someone always says it, whenever it comes up: βI guess Iβm just not allowed to talk to anyone any more!β Well. Yes. It is my duty to inform you that we took a vote all us women and determined that you are not allowed to talk to anyone ever again. This vote is legally binding. Yes, of course, all women know each other, the way you always suspected. (Incidentally, so do Canadians. Iβm just throwing that out there.) We went into the womenβs room at the Applebeeβs at the corner of 54 and all the others streamed in through the doors into that endless liminal space, a chain of humans stretching backward heavy skulled Neanderthal women laughing with New York socialites, Lucille Ball hand in hand with the Taung child. We sat around in the couches in the womenβs room (I know youβve always been suspicious of those couches) and chatted with each other in the secret female language that you always knew existed. Somebody set up a consoleβ the Empress Wu is ruthless at Mario Kart and Cleopatra never learned to lose and a woman who ruled an empire that fell when the Sea People came and left no trace can use the blue shell like a surgical instrument. Eventually we took the vote. You had three defenders: your grandmother and your first-grade teacher and an Albanian nun who believes the best of everybody. Your mom abstained. It was duly recorded in the secret notebooks that have been kept under the couch in the Applebeeβs since the beginning of recorded time. And then we went back to playing Mario Kart and Hoelun took off her bra and we didnβt think about you again except that I had to carry this message. So anyway good luck with that itβs just as you always said it was. Hush now, no talking
hush.
Reblogging for that poem especially. Thpft yup.
Okay blackjackgabbiani canβt read for shit, op said every woman that she knows, not every woman on planet earth.Β But also this has happened to me to and I canβt stand it.Β
βIf the person you want to ask out cannot physically run away from you when you are asking, YOU CANNOT ASK THEM OUT.β are words to live by and I wish more people respected this. In my experience it be Strangers that do this; acquaintances that donβt know your favorite color or birthday or hobbies and never will after that nonsense.
