I think he has a point. Grossed out or scared is one thing, “three showers and still not clean” is a-fucking-nother. If this kind of thing happens all the time, as we are told through this thread, isn’t there a little immunity to the shock?
Don’t think she works there alone, at least not always. The story was that the manager told her to just chuck the sandals the first time the guy came in.
You’d think so. Really, I mean that. You’d think you’d eventually start to get used to it. . .and sometimes you do. There will be times where I think I’ve gotten fed up with this nonsense and am Miss Tough Woman Rawr Forget Those Scumbag Assholes!!!
But then one will sneak up on you. Maybe it’s a guy following you to your car. Maybe it’s the guy in Target who strokes your thigh as you walk by to get paper towels. Maybe it’s the random guy at the grocery store calling you fat ugly lesbian bitch because you politely refused his phone number. There’s no rhyme or reason to it, but that incident will leave you crying in your car when the last 10 didn’t. I can’t explain why for everybody, but for me it’s because you feel totally freaking helpless. It’s hard to accept that there’s nothing I can ever do to make this shit stop. To know that when it comes down to it, that 6’2’’ 250 lb man could basically do whatever he wanted to me if he were so inclined and that out there someone would blame me. The fact that this has been happening on a regular basis since I was 12 years old- hell, it’s the one constant in my life, regardless of what I do or change in my life.
So that’s why, even though I’ve learned to deal with this idiots much better than when I was a child, I still get shaken up from time to time. Feeling powerless is terrifying and if you haven’t been in that situation with the regularity that a lot of women do, you couldn’t ever possibly understand. I get it, that’s a cop out statement, but there’s no better way to explain it.
Well, believe it or not - men sometimes feel scared and powerless. Men are actually more likely to be physically attacked, also.
Broomstick is an older woman than you Dio, and I just would have thought she had a slightly thicker hide than to be sick for days, feeling dirty after 3 showers, etc.
So…you didn’t read her post at all then. Or if you did, you didn’t listen to a single thing she said.
Ok!
Care to elucidate?
Yeah, it probably is your mistake. She said
That can be defended as a valid observation, one that she wanted to make about the thread as a whole. The fact that she put it after a quote of a somewhat vapid post you made doesn’t necessarily make it an accusation that you specifically targeted even sven; she could easily have meant it simply as an example of a post that betrays only a superficial familiarity with the content of the thread.
You asked if that Boomstick should be used to creepy attentions from men by now.
Diosa shared some of her painful personal experiences with you, to try and make you understand that sometimes you get used to it. Sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you think you are used to it and then something happens that make you realize it’s still upsetting, because:
If you really gave a fuck about getting an answer to your question instead of bagging on the OP, there it is, and it couldn’t be any clearer. The fact that you completely dismissed it and responded “well. she’s old” shows that you weren’t even worthy of the good faith effort Diosa expended by giving you an honest answer.
kaylasdad99, that’s about right, thanks.
I’m so timid and scared of being perceived as an asshole perv that I usually fumble and drop the change a female cashier hands me because I don’t want her to think I am seeking to even brush her hand.
meh. “Sometime you get used to it, sometimes you don’t” is kinda meaningless. Nobody should need a dozen showers to get clean again because some nutbar went off on them - doesn’t even lay a hand on them. I just think that while this would have been creepy at the time it shouldn’t be that hard to get over. But you’re pulling the “You don’t understand, you’re not a woman” card. If something like this is going to make you sick for days, start carrying a tazer or something. Then you’ll be super brave and safe, like us men.
Right, except for the fact that not only have I never made a comment toward even sven, but I’ve also read every post in this thread and made a post much earlier in the thread that commented on several prior posts - meaning that of the 2 items (superficial familiarity and just looking to pick on a favored target), neither could be true.
You are, of course, correct in that she may have made that statement with absolutely no intention of having it refer to me in any way, even though she quoted me prior to making it - but one typically assumes that if you quote someone, and then make a statement about the way in which people post, that that statement refers to (or at least relates to) the person quoted. But only she really knows what she meant to imply, and I acknowledge that.
I’ve been following this discussion from the sidelines with interest. I find it telling that the general reactions of the men and women have been so different. It reminds me of a quote from Gavin de Becker’s The Gift of Fear (highly recommended read):
Well, nobody should be a douchebag on the Internet either, but sometimes things don’t go the way they should.
My my, such a cutting observation. I do believe I need a shower.
It’s kind of funny. Note that I don’t go that far; in most scenarios I interact with women in a fashion indistinguishable (to me) from how I interact with men. But if I’m just gazing forwardwhile waiting for the bus, say, and a woman approaches on the sidewalk, I can feel myself start to squirm as I try to avoid looking like I’m staring at her. Apparently my subconscious doesn’t worry about looking as if I’m staring at men.
Or if I’m stuck alone with a woman I don’t know very well, I start to wonder — maybe irrationally — if she thinks I’m going to hurt her. Uncomfortable. I suppose it helps that I avoid interacting with anyone I don’t know, whatever the gender, so I’ve avoided causing apparent fearfulness …
Well, that’s enough slice ‘o life from a moderately feminist male. Back to your regularly scheduled Un-Empathetic Rapist Enablers vs. Shrill Alarmist Harpies: Clash of the Strawmen.
It was pretty good, wasn’t it? I’m feeling smug. I’m glad we shared this moment together.
Homg.
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If you read every post in this thread, then it boggles me how you could be so completely unfamiliar with the context of the conversation as to misrepresent sven’s post the way you did. Her post made complete sense in response to the previous discussion and was not a strawman. If it makes you happy, I will rescind my earlier remark and simply assume that you are not capable of following along with posts on a message board and correctly interpreting their meaning.
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I never said you had ever spoken to even sven before. Never said that. Stop harping on it. Never said it. Quite a few people have bugs up their butt about sven and are incapable of reading anything she says without the filter of their ancient irritations with her. See here. If you are not one of those people, I withdraw my implication that you were, and please see above about not capable, etc.
Men are more likely to be mugged/beat up or killed - if you count sexual assault no, they’re not more likely to be physically attacked. To some degree it’s apples and oranges here.
As I noted upthread - the men in real life that I shared this with who had also, themselves, been attacked while at work just trying to do their job believed me without question. And two of them offered me weapons.
No one is disputing that men can feel “scared and powerless”. However, women feel that way more often than men.
Even us dried-up old hags with rhino-hide skin have our weak moments. I didn’t feel sick “for days”, though yes, I felt physically ick for about 36 hours after this bozo showed up again. Upon reflection, I think that was due to a similarity to how a much more serious incident in the past started before ramping up to an actual attempted rape.
Fortunately, my “weekend” runs Monday-Wednesday right now so I’ve had a couple days to get the hell over it before going back to work tomorrow.
As for the showering - hey, everyone handles stress differently, right? It’s probably a healthier approach than, say, getting stinking, puking drunk over it, right?
I didn’t mean you were a dried up hag - just that Diosa is only a couple years out of college, while you’ve been around the block, so to speak. The reason that the 3 shower thing stood out for me is that’s sort of the “movie” response to an actual rape, so it seemed a little out of proportion. You definitely should have got drunk instead. 
Just don’t use change, problem solved 