When sexual harassment becomes a norm

“Girl I like you” he says; “Sorry not interested” you reply. “But I love you” he insists; “Sorry man. I’m just not interested” you say. “But Baby I…” he tries to go on, but you block him off with “Dude I said NO!”

 

Does this sound familiar to any of you? If yes, then more power to you sista. If no, then I wish I was you because guys like this are some of the most annoying you will ever meet. Kindly pardon my tone. I was not in my ‘happy place’ when writing this and it shows.

Now don’t get me wrong, I sincerely respect the age-old tradition of playing hard to get, but when she looks ready to knock his lights outs and begins to cuss him out then he better back off. 

Now here’s the thing. A lot of the time, it seems like these guys are ‘joking’, I would know; it’s a new game played nearly every day at the office. 

However, when you know the person you’re ‘joking’ with AND he/she gets that kind of ‘thing’ then kudos to the both of you. But when a guy at a college approaches a woman he knows next to nothing about(Me), then dude, no; just NO!

I care less if the guy is ‘joking’. When I made my opinion more than clear (read: cussed him out), he told me that “I’m a young woman, and that I should be used to such attention from men”.

WHAT?

What society would make a woman become used to the idea of men harassing her? Especially when she has not acted or dressed in any way as to show that she would welcome such attention! If that’s the society we live in, then we’re obviously doing something wrong.

As if that was not enough, the next day, in the middle of lectures, he begins to call out ‘sweetie’ to try to get my attention. I’m pretty sure that my earlier reaction made it more than clear that I didn’t appreciate such attention. Is it really so difficult to respect that?

It’s bad enough dealing with vocal harassment, but what of the endless number of girls and women who have to deal with physical harassment (bum slaps, random touching, etc.) and are told that it’s just a ‘joke’ and it’s all in ‘good fun’. 

Case in point, last weekend a friend and I went out for a show and afterwards my friend went aside to say hi to a male friend of hers. They hugged and immediately his hands drifted to her ass. 

His grip was too strong for her to break free and she began to call out for me. In the end, I physically dragged him off her and from the look on his face, he was terrified. 

My friend then told me that this guy had always been ‘touchy’, but she did not make anything out of it until today. She further explained that she always felt like she would be overreacting if she spoke up or pushed him away because most people around her saw it as a 'normal' thing. 

But that’s just one incident, what of the others? Who is there to drag their aggressors away? And what’s to stop these men from taking their ‘jokes’ to the next level; a rather uncomfortable one?

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My name is Asante Prokop Vera. I am a poet and aspiring writer. I post my poetry on Deviantart, Deep Underground Poetry, Facebook and Blogspot. You can also hit me up on Tumblr and Twitter. My online name is Cosmosalone200