I Owe You Nothing

via The Beautiful Struggler - Me, Myself and Eye

It's summertime (to some extent) and the living is hard. Women such as myself are pounding the pavement in the city in breezy work dresses for the day and various states of underdress for the night (or vice versa, whatever). And as arms, shoulders and thighs emerge from the oppressive fabric bindings of cold weather, men are loosing their minds.

Not that it's so easy to be young, female and on two legs in the wintertime. Men who speak ill garbage to women in the streets rarely take a vacation. However, the presence of puffy coats and snow boots tend to give some layer of protection from the out and out shameful objectification that emerges in the summer. Sorta like lambskin condoms, if you will. Not that I have ever used one, because I don't plan on getting pregnant while wearing a condom. MESSAGE. Anyway, men are making my daily life more miserable than usual and I am pretty pissed about it.

Forget Ikea, THIS is my Vietnam

I can deal with men driving me insane by being non-committal or elusive or simply not knowing how to function in a relationship or being bad lovers or being great lovers who are so great they just gotta share it with every Tom, Dick and Sally or who I am just not in to or who are just not in to me. I can deal with those men because I have signed up for dealing with them. I can take them or leave them or work with them. But when it comes to the men in the street, I didn't ask for their conversation or company.

Nothing a woman wears is an open pass for harassment. And while I certainly get the worst treatment when my hemlines are at the "questionable" point, even when I have on my work gear, I gotta deal with some man demanding that I smile or TELLING me to stop and talk to him. The best part is when I reject one of this miscreants (usually in a polite way, depending on how he came at me) and I have to hear some commentary about "Fuck that bitch, she ain't that cute" or "She ain't got no ass anyway!" when I walk away. If I wasn't cute, why did you call me "gorgeous"? And how dare you comment about my body when I never invited you to appraise it in the first place?

If you haven't guessed, most of the men who are causing me this frustration are low-class street urchins. They are hugging the block when I leave for work in the AM and when I stumble in from the club in the earlier AM. Nothing about how I dress or carry myself on an average day would imply that I would cavort with these sort of men. But we know that street niggas aren't best known for their ability to be perceptive and reasonable. I don't have a problem with "Hey miss lady, how are you?" or "You look nice". But when someone is visibly sizing up every inch of your body? That's not okay. When someone gets angry that you don't want to talk to them? That's insane. When someone demands that you pay them some attention? That's ridiculous.

I've asked some of these men before, "When you wake up in the morning, is it your express goal to ruin as many Black women's days as possible?" Of course "express goal" and even "wake up in the morning" are foreign terms to these useless niggas, so I haven't really gotten anywhere with that beyond solidifying their belief that I'm just a stuck-up bitch. And one with a flat ass at that. I just fear that my demise will come after I have barked on some dude and informed him "Bitch, even with a small butt I am too fucking good for you ANYWAY! Too good looking, too smart, too motherfucking everything and I wouldn't matter if I had five titties and six toes, I would still be light years out of your motherfucking league!" And then, boom boom pow.

Part of the reason I get so miffed when people try and tell me that Hip-Hop has no measurable impact on grown-ups is because of behavior like this. I know that men whistled at pretty ladies and made rude comments about big brown thighs for decades before anyone ever rocked a mic, but I also know that Rap music has helped to completely brainwash our Black men and women about concepts of masculinity and male behavior. You sit around all day listening to 'bitch' this, 'ho' that, 'I just wanna fuck you', 'come here trick' and tell me it won't have some impact on how you view the world. BULLSHIT! And everyone who has tried to convince me otherwise has had some obvious signs of brainwashing in their very own behavior!

God forbid I have some ice cream. And you know I live for a McDonald's cone in the summer. 99 cent and only 150 calories*. So I'm bopping down the block with a cone and what do you know? One of your cousins is salivating like I'm deep throating a dildo. Or some knucklehead has to ask "Can I have some?" Depending on how bad my temperament is (it's a delicate equation of how many men have disturbed me that day times what time of the month it is divided by what else is going on in my life), I will either tell him "I rather stick the whole thing up my nose" or "Go to hell" or I'll just through the whole thing down and say "Thanks for ruining my fucking day." or I'll say "I'd rather die" or whatever I can come up with to try my damnedest to make them feel as uncomfortable as they have made me.

Before you apologists start chastising me for berating the Black man instead of trying to help him, please believe I have. I have told men "Hey, I don't deserve that", "That isn't the way you approach a lady", "I didn't ask to be spoken to that way" and even "You are old enough to be my father, if not my grandfather. If you want the respect you deserve as an elder, you have to carry yourself with some dignity." Think it works? The worst thing you can do, it seems, is dare to take ownership of your own body in the face of some lost souls who don't even own their own minds.

So it's summer and the cursing, spitting, dismissive eye roll, reproachful glare, snide remark arsenal is ready and already in use for those who dare challenge my ability to walk the streets without being made to feel like a piece of meat at best and a target at worst. And yet, I still feel powerless. The only think I really can do is to talk to younger Black boys (and girls) and help them to understand how this behavior makes women feel in hopes that the mini-Toldjas running around will not have to suffer as I have when they get older.

*Awaiting the onslaught in the comments section*
Sister Toldja

*Make sure they don't overfill the cone. A serving is only 3.5 ounces, but they will sometimes give you much more!

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