Every weekday, at precisely 12:20pm, the kids from a nearby junior high school flood my restaurant like a plague. They aren't bad kids at heart. Not really. Their hour out of class for lunch is their first taste of unsupervised freedom and they don't know how to handle it yet. They yell and throw things and make a mess because no one is there to tell them not to. Sure, we have our own management hierarchy in the store, but what 12 year old is impressed by a polyester tie?
I must seem absolutely ridiculous to them. Which is fair. But little boy, when I am telling you off for grabbing a girl your age and holding her against her will, I am not scolding you as an authority figure. I am yelling at you as one pissed off person to another who has done something wrong. I don't care who you are, how old you are, who your parents are, or what colour your skin is. I am not going to stand idly by and watch a girl be physically harrassed.
"It was just a joke. We're just playing." he says to me. Oh? And what part of this is funny? No, dear child, this is no joke. What this little boy is doing is teaching this girl why it is right to be afraid. She is obviously unable to get free of him, but he is a friend, right? He wouldn't really hurt her, right? All of her friends are looking at them and laughing. Yeah, maybe it is scary, but maybe she's just being sensitive. She shouldn't cause a scene. She shouldn't speak up or tell him no. Everyone is just having a good time. She should just play along. Ha ha ha.
Maybe I'm reading too much into this. Maybe I'm projecting my own feelings on two completely innocent children. What what if I'm right, though? What if that little girl was afraid and needed someone to speak up for her because she felt like she couldn't?
Does that seem like a big deal to you? Two kids 'playing' in the lobby. Would you have said anything? Or would you have let kids be kids? This aggressive behavior toward women isn't something that boys are born with, it is something they learn from watching adults. (Hey, that's us!)
Men, sure, I can't hold it against you that you are the way you are. Girls are no better. In some ways we're worse, but that is a long-winded discussion for another day. You are who you are, and I don't expect you to change because a girl on the internet told you to. Just for a second, put yourself in that girl's father's shoes. Is that how you would want your daughter to be treated? Your sister? Your mother, bless that saint? And what if you are partially to blame for it happening? Monkey see, monkey do, and these little monkeys need a proper example set for them.
In my last post, I tried to call out my fellow ladies to stand up for themselves and each other, but men, this is for you. We can't do it alone. It is one thing for me to stand up to some school bully, and I can only hope it is a start in many steps that boy needs to take to understand gender equality, but I wasn't alone in that building. What about you, gentlemen? If you don't start standing up for what is right, us girls are going to have a much harder uphill battle. I'm not asking you to put yourself at risk, like jumping between a rapist and his victim or something. That's just damned crazy, don't get yourself killed. Just call the cops. But just think about it. Every time you laugh at a joke about women, you're laughing at your mother, your aunt, your sister, your niece. These are the situations where you gentlemen could save us a lot of grief. Show those jerks giving your gender a bad name what's what. Tell them it isn't funny. Or Hell, just don't laugh. Don't encourage them.
Set the example, be the gentleman. Help us to succeed.
I never considered the important women in my life when laughing at these jokes or watching these scenes play out. I've always been caught in the laughter of "the mob" to really think about it. Isn't strange that of all the social advances that have come about basic interaction between opposite sexes refuses to change? They may have matured slightly, but it's always the same issues that never change.
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