Donnie's Blog

I recently read a blog entry by an old classmate of mine. This was a guy that I remembered as being quite intelligent and rational. I was therefore quite surprised to see what seemed to be a narrow-minded, bigoted and sexist rant from him. I didn’t want to form an opinion until I had read the entire post, so I did. After reading the post, I was flabbergasted. Was this even the same guy?!

As if the post wasn’t bad enough, the comments were just ridiculous! I know my classmate well enough to know that he was probably just mistaken in his viewpoint. But most commentors, it was quite obvious, were just taking advantage of this opportunity to indulge in sexist drivel.

He was posting about ‘feminist bullshit’, and more specifically about a website called Blank Noise set up to combat eve teasing. According to my friend, eve teasing was not a real or common problem. It was just being blown out of proportion by the overzealous media, ‘elders’ and education system. He was apparently a victim of “fear of being teased”. The point he was trying to make was that women were being so over-protected that men were suffering massively as a result.

The ‘feminists’ were playing it up, apparently, to garner attention. I would like to state at this point that I don’t like feminists – or any other -ists. He has ‘never seen an instance of eve teasing in public’. Talking to women, he couldn’t come up with ‘one single first-person experience or be able to quantify it’. What utter bullshit! That’s A-grade horse manure right there!

Besides, what exactly was he trying to prove? That because he hasn’t seen this happening, it doesn’t happen? So I guess ’cause he’s never seen a rape, murder, dowry murder, sati burning, etc., that they’ve never happened in India? He must not have read the newspapers on the day that drunk revelers molested a girl in public near the Gateway of India (how fitting) – 70 men, in a crowd of 1500. Or when a 12 year old mentally handicapped girl was raped in a Mumbai local. India is not safe for women.

But more to the point, I don’t know how he’s never noticed any instances of eve-teasing in public – ’cause I’ve seen plenty. I don’t know if he’s ‘living in a very good society’, or if he’s just in denial. Or worse. I distinctly remember an incident in Kerala, where this and other classmates of mine were discussing a recent newspaper article. The article talked about a woman who an inebriated man ejaculated on in a public bus at night. What disgusted me was the retort that one of these guys made, and other nodded their head to – “She deserved it – what the fuck was she doing out at 8PM alone at night?”. Leaving aside the question of how utterly ridiculous that statement is, gentlemen, please – nobody deserves that. Eve teasing exists. It’s a real problem, it’s nasty.

Unwanted attention
I think I have some idea of where he was coming from. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, let me assume that was under the mistaken impression that him, and his masculinity were under attack. I remember reading about sexual harrassment, and being outraged at what I felt was extremely unfair and biased laws. These laws, I realized, could easily be misused to blame a guy of an offence he didn’t commit. Innocent actions could be misunderstood to be sexual advances. This can be devastating for a guy.

But then it hit me – these were in place to protect women, not punish men. Most women don’t want to slap a fake sexual harassment lawsuit on you. Most women don’t want to falsely accuse you of eve teasing or molestation. The edge-cases where this happens has the same distribution as false accusations of any other nature.

But what does it mean for the horny, red-blooded male and female? Must we now live in a society where we can’t flirt with a girl for fear of being ostracized? Must we now keep our distance and behave like asexual non-men? Do women want this?

Ha ha, snort, snort, that’s funny! Anybody who believes this just doesn’t get it! The only purpose of this is to prevent unwanted attention! If a woman says no, she means NO! Pursuing her, stalking her, molesting her is what the losers do.

I’ve always been a gentleman pervert. I flirt shamelessly with girls. I make crude, lewd jokes, touch them inappropriately, take liberties I shouldn’t. And they love it! They love the attention! Why? ’cause I respect their decision – if she says NO, then it’s over. I move on. But if it’s not, if she finds me attractive, then it’s game on!

Why this seeming hypocrisy? Well, it all goes back to evolutionary biology. I won’t waste time expounding on this, but in a nutshell, we’re all looking for excellent mating partners. If a women feels that a man might make a good mate, ’cause of his sexy genes, she’ll be attracted to him. Ditto for men. The problem arises when a female rejects a man. The man is trying to propagate his genes, so his goal is to have sex with the woman. This can’t happen if she rejects him, now can it? And this leads to all sorts of uncool stuff, like I’ve talked about above. Note that this doesn’t in any way excuse this behavior.

So where does this leave us? I don’t know about you, but it leaves me dejected. I look around, and I feel like there’s a war going on. A war between men and women. And I don’t understand it. There couldn’t be a more beautiful union than a man and woman*. Can’t we all just get along?

*Yeah, ok, that was a bit mushy – fucking move on already!