staying single forever and ever and ever

Here’s something that’s true for me and will probably not be for others.  And it’s something steeped in my experiences of sexism as it intersects with hetero, White, and thin privilege:

When a straight woman and a straight man are coworkers (or even classmates, friends, whatever), it is sexist and horrible for the man to initiate anything romantic/sexual, but it is fine for the woman to do so.

I can think of five times in the last three years that this has happened to me, that a straight male co-worker/friend/whatever has tried to get fresh or something, and every time it’s been… ugh yuck.  Bad.  Awkward.  No.  Shit.  Ugh.  Needlessly anxiety- and guilt-producing for me.  

Most obviously, it’s sexist because it’s a reinforcement of the woman-as-sex-object thing that’s straight up old school sexism.  See any Gender Studies 101 class for more information about this.  Women are just ogled more than men are.  It’s more (potentially and/or actually) damaging for men to ogle women, too – especially when that ogling gets all up in there with the combination of masculinity as virile (powerful, in control, instinctually violent, etc.) and femininity as submissive.  When men ogling women becomes normalized.  It’s “natural” for men to be obsessed with sex.  Boys will be boys.  Blah blah blah barf. 

(And I don’t mean that men aren’t ogled often.  I ogle men all the time.  I once initiated a game of Hot or Not amongst my coworkers in our shared office space.  Pictured below.) 

What’s more insidious for me than this obvious my-face-is-up-here type enactment of sexism is the way that women and girls, myself included, are so often socialized to internalize male supremacy to the point that we, I, feel compelled to do what I can to avoid “emasculating” men I care about.  (Again, holy heteronormativity, I know.)  My friend Amy noticed this tendency in me years ago and used to try various ridiculous activities to condition me to be better at saying “no” to men who were creeping on me: She’d repeatedly put her hand on my lower back, for example, and try to get me to swat her away at faster and faster rates.  It’s embarrassing to admit it, but I have so many times let men who are friends do that – put their hand on my lower back, hug too close for too long, or put their arm around me – while I’ve cringed inwardly.  But I didn’t say anything because of the particular way that I guess I’ve internalized sexism.

Further, beyond allowing these micro-unwanted advances from male friends, I have felt tremendously responsible for smoothing out the social awkwardness they cause.  In one instance, the male friend in question and I were working together in a very tenuous context that he was officially charged with facilitating.  Later in the night after the meeting during which he slipped me an unwanted romantic note, I agonized about how I was going to let him down firmly without messing with his ego in ways that would slow or stop the progress of our committee’s work.  But I didn’t fucking do anything wrong, so why the hell did I feel so responsible?

And the thing is, it’s not like I have any male friends who are pronounced misogynists.  Actually, I would be surprised if very many of my male friends didn’t identify as feminists.  I’ve never been afraid that one of my male friends would assault me, sexually or otherwise.  But I don’t think that the kinds of fake male feminism I have encountered amongst some of my male friends is unrelated to our larger rape culture.  Um: 1 in 3 women experience physical or sexual violence.

And I don't think that any unwanted advances from female me toward a male friend exists on that same continuum of violence.  Again, it's sexist for them to do it, but not for me to do it.  No such thing as reverse sexism. 

I really like what this woman says here about fake male feminism.  She recounts,

I would meet a man who led a feminism reading group and become involved with the women, pissing them off to vision-blurring rage.  I would meet a man who writes his thesis on Audre Lorde’s idea of a lesbian consciousness but was always the last to leave a party, eyes darting around for inebriated women, prospective bedmates.  I would meet countless self-proclaimed feminists whose mouths would ask, “Have you read Gender Troubles?” while their body language asks, “Is that the passcode to your pants?”  And I would pardon these men over and over again, because they behaved, at least initially, like my male feminist role models.

And I’m like, yeeeah. But including and beyond dudes using their feminist credentials to get laid, I’m pissed about men who use their feminist credentials to get ahead professionally.  I’ve seen that shit several times in academe.  Male grad students publishing articles that lean heavily on feminist theories and blabbing to male classmates about sexual exploits with female classmates. All dudes involved in said blabbing sesh keeping it hush-hush because “guy code.”  

Feminism for Facebook likes but not within intimate relationships.  Fuh-hu-huuuuuuuuuuuck that.

Heck. We’re never going to elect Hillary.