The Opinionated Ogre is 100% reader-supported. Please support the work you love with a paid subscription and I will continue to inform/amuse/outrage you for years to come.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a piece about the difference between my life online and that of a woman’s. Especially as writers. I get a few trolls and the occasional death threat. For women, it’s a firehose of hate and never-ending threats of violence.
But it’s not just online. A reader1 directed me to an article by Mia Freedman in which she describes what life is like out in the real world for women:
We’re angry. And we are so very, very tired.
We’re tired of feeling scared and vulnerable. We’re tired of the mental load we must carry in public and in private as we try to walk a path through this never-ending epidemic of violence against women.
We’re tired of having to think about where we parked our car, how we’ll get home, whether it’s safe for us to walk in a public park or down a well-lit street.
This is specifically about the epidemic of murder women have to deal with on a daily basis. But it could just as easily be about the rape and non-lethal/non-sexual violence women face every second of every day.
To see how this kind of culture of violence is allowed to exist, one only needs to look at the comments:
There are literally hundreds of comments from assholes just like this. Men, you see, are the real victims. Why can’t women see that and just stop complaining all the time?!
What a load of shit.
Let me tell you the story about the time I spent two hours as a sex object and how my experience was wildly different than a woman’s in literally every conceivable way.
Once upon a time, I attended a manager’s conference for Gamestop down in Dallas, Texas. We got up in the morning and did conference stuff all day, but in the evenings we were left to our own devices.
I was friendly with all of the managers in my district and a few of the surrounding districts so we kind of clumped together during the day. One evening, though, a handful of LGBTQ managers wanted to head into Dallas’ “gay strip.” I’m sure it has a name but I’ll be damned if I know it.
My closest friend in Gamestop was Maria who was quite gay. A few years later, I would go on to be the sperm donor for her and her partner Jenny and we would produce Kyle. So we were really good friends. She thought it would be fun if I came along and, being curious to see that Texas had a gay anything,2 I said, “sure!”
I was about 30 and well past my clubbing days so even if this had not been a mile of clubs and restaurants catering to the LGBTQ community, I really would not have been all that into it. But I followed along anyway and took in the sights.
Now, I am, in gay parlance, a Bear. Meaning I am a tall, chubby, and hairy guy and this puts me on the radar for a lot of gay men. I was aware of this from college after having been aggressively pursued for months by a mutual friend of Debbie and mine, Glenn.3 I was not aware of how much interest I would generate in a predominantly gay environment.
I was groped more than once. I never saw by who. Since it was in different locations, I can only assume it was different men. That was…uncomfortable.
In a bar, I was alone while everyone went to use the bathroom and a drag queen a few seats down growled suggestively at me. That was new. Until that moment, I would have said that sort of thing only happened on TV.
Later, in a club, I got bored and went out on the dance floor and a very very large Black guy came up and started grinding on me. I was 6’2” and 250 lbs at the time so when I tell you I had to look up at this guy, you’ll get an idea of how big he was. It was impressive. Not a lot of people make me feel average-sized.
This last encounter was the most awkward. I had absolutely no idea what to do. First, I do not know how to sexy dance. I spent my college years in mosh pits. Second, even if I did know how to sexy dance, it would have been rude to lead the guy on being as I’m not particularly into men. He got the hint after a few minutes of me not reciprocating and moved on.
Now, here’s the point of this other than to amuse you with my time as a sex object in Dallas: At no point did I feel threatened. Not in the slightest.
Did I like being groped? Not really, but I didn’t take it as a threat to my personal safety. To me, it was a novel experience that would not be repeated ever again. I have the privilege of ignoring it. Women often have to remain silent whether they want to or not.4
The power dynamics are completely different when it’s two men. If I want to make a thing of it, I can. A woman runs the very real risk of violence if she makes a scene.
The drag queen growling at me was weird but so what? I was free to completely ignore her, safe in the knowledge that even if she took offense, nothing would happen. At most, she might yell at me.
Women, though? They are harassed every day for not smiling at men or paying attention to them when they catcall.
The guy grinding up against me on the dancefloor? He was certainly big enough to threaten me (seriously, I didn’t have to look up a little. I had to look up a lot). But all I could think about was how not to hurt his feelings. Not because I was worried he would be mad at me, but because I didn’t want to be rude.
This is not the experience of women, ever. They are always, at all times, cognizant that rejecting a man, no matter how politely, can lead to violence. I have told my girls on numerous occasions that men feel entitled to their time and they should never feel obligated to give it. This is part of the reason they have been in self-defense for the last two years.
So what to do about this? A good start would be for men like the jackasses commenting on Freedman’s article to shut the fuck up and listen instead of whining about how they’re the real victims.
Past that, I cannot say. That’s for people smarter than me. I will say that this is not a problem for just women or men who “understand because they have daughters or sisters.” I understood long before Anastasia was born and long before I had ever heard the phrase “male privilege.” It’s a problem for everyone and until we internalize that reality, nothing will get better.
I lost the thread I had this conversation on and, subsequently, cannot remember who this reader was. Sorry about that and thank you for sending me this article.
This was back in…2003? 2004? Well before I was paying attention to politics or knew anything at all about Texas other than it was home to a lot of rednecks and bigots.
A story for another time.
You would not believe how insane this gets in Japan. Women who complain about being groped on public transportation used to be treated like pariahs. Because how dare they make a scene?! It’s only in the last few years that things have begun to change.
I tend to use a gender neutral or male name on line. It is amazing what a difference it makes.
But for any men who are puzzled, just: take no for an answer. No means no, accept it. Don’t rape women, don’t assault women, don’t act like dicks. It can’t be that difficult can it?
“In fact, there have been 26,313 rape-related pregnancies in Texas in the 16 months since the state legislature banned abortion.”- from Mary Trump’s Substack. But we have to hear from the white male snowflake Republican how life is “more dangerous” for the neo Nazi crowd on not-Twitter etc.?!?! Donald Trump, is a rapist, Matt Gaetz is soon to join the sex offender list hopefully, DeSantis is still avoiding prosecution *how* but yes, dear white men. Women need to toughen up. These men commenting are why July 4 is not a celebration of the birth of a nation, but celebrating the genocide carried out by white men for centuries, the rape and torture of innocent women and children, then the slavery and Apartheid which still exist to today. These people mentioned in the article are the very core of many problems with this Apartheid Republic.