"We don't have to laugh along when we're made to feel violable or small." Photo: Getty Images
A few months ago, I was sitting in a beer garden gasbagging with a group of girlfriends when a man approached us and interrupted our conversation by thrusting his hand in front of us. As the unwritten rules of being a woman in public space dictate, it was expected that we stop what we were doing and turn all of our attention to him. Instead, one of us knocked his hand out of the way and continued our conversation as if he wasn't there. He left, perplexed, and we talked about how annoying such occurrences were. That single incident may not have ruined our night or derailed it in any significant way, but for a brief moment we shared its bite. The sour aftertaste of such a repetitively familiar event was not a surprise, but it was nauseating all the same.
Shortly after this, he returned to sit nearby. We'd just ordered food, and when it arrived he reached out to grab a plate and offer it to his mates. I snatched it back and told him to f--- off, at which point he and his friends started loudly (and predictably) whining about how we were stuck up bitches who needed to learn how to take a joke.
'Taking a joke' is apparently code for letting people do whatever they want without having to suffer the boring inconvenience of having the targets of that joke complain about it. 'Taking a joke' is what women are expected to do whenever a man treats their personal space or wishes as an irrelevant afterthought to his own desires. 'Taking a joke' is not complaining when men yell at you on the street, or tell you to show them your tits, or touch you inappropriately in a nightclub, or ask you if you spit or swallow, or demand that you reply to them when they talk to you, or laugh at their hilarious comedy about women being beaten or raped, or let their own selves expand and expand while you shrink continuously to allow them more room to breathe, speak, joke and just exist.
If you're a man, you may be reading this and wondering what the big deal is. Maybe his behaviour was a little aggressive, but wasn't he just being friendly? Can't a man even be friendly anymore? I mean, can't a man even just approach a group of women and be FRIENDLY without being painted as some kind of hideous threat? Really, isn't this just misandry and isn't that just as bad if not worse than misogyny?
Perhaps such a reaction does seem extreme to those who have the privilege of almost always being left alone. But if you're a woman, you're more than likely aware of exactly what I'm talking about. When women congregate together - particularly in raucous places like pubs, bars and nightclubs - it seems to be assumed that we're simply biding their time until a man appears to bring purpose and meaning to our lives. How many of us have sat with female friends, deep in conversation, only to be dragged from that intimacy by a man's voice asking if it's okay for him to sit down even as he's lowering himself into a seat? Worse, how many of us have then abandoned the confidences shared with our friends only seconds ago in order to direct our full attention to the interloper because we feel either obligated not to embarrass him or worried about the backlash that may come from refusing? One of the terrible lessons we learn as women is that sometimes it's easier to go along with things because you perceive it will either help the experience be over more quickly, or it will mitigate further damage.
This fear of retaliation is not unfounded. Girls and women learn to expect it from the time we hit puberty, and, in an attempt to avoid it, end up trying to be as agreeable as possible to the men we risk facing it from. It's expected that we play along; that we indulge the kind of male entitlement that treats women as reliable attention machines there to be activated by a man's voice or gesture. If we fail to act accordingly, we're treated as if we're the ones with the problem and not the men inserting themselves uninvited and unwanted into women's personal space. He was just trying to be friendly. Why do you hate men so much?
It's telling that this tolerance for behaviour and intrusion is never expected of other men. I can tell the difference between well intentioned camaraderie and entitlement, because it presents itself as gender neutral. If I were a man, I could expect to walk down the street without being told to smile. I could sit with other men in a pub and implicitly understand that, if a man were to join our conversation, I wouldn't be expected to morph into a sponge growing thick and heavy with his energy. If I were a man, other men wouldn't call me a fat bitch when I slapped their 'joking' hands away from my body.
I could write this piece for men, asking or even demanding of them that they stop behaving as if women owe them time, energy and attention. But requests like that are always ignored, while the women who present them are pathologised as crazy, unhinged and troubled. This mass gaslighting is precisely why so many women feel powerless to protest these kinds of microaggressions.
So instead I'm writing this for women. We don't have to laugh along when we're made to feel violable or small. We don't have to tolerate it. Our passivity is not the rent we must pay in order to be given access to public space. It's okay to tell the jester that you're not in the mood for his jokes. The backlash still may ruin your night - but at least you'll take him down with you.
