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Perhaps it’s the fact that we just had a heated discussion on street harassment on the site or maybe I’m just going through a “do better” phase when it comes to the opposite sex. Whatever the underlying cause of my frustration, I have to express the fact that I absolutely cannot stand when I hear a man tell another man in my presence: “You don’t even know what to do with that.” Or worse, “all of that.”
As I stated earlier, my antennae may be extra sensitive right now for the reasons noted, but there’s also something to be said for hearing this comment multiple days in a week– on top of nearly 10 or so years of my life — that has me feeling some type of way. Early last week I was up in the gym just working on my fitness (in my Fergie voice) when one of the trainers started making small talk. As we walked and talked, another trainer who’s always fake-flirty-friendly stopped him and pulled one of those playful, “what are you doing talking to her” moves to which the original trainer replied, “man you don’t even know what to do with all of that. Hell, I don’t even know what to do with that.” And then “that,” a.k.a. I, proceeded to walk off and let them have a fake battle of the egos while I continued my session with my actual trainer.
Fast forward to two nights later when I was coming out of the corner store and found myself greeted (which is far too nice of a word) by a man-child and his side-kick friend staring me up and down as if they wanted to say something flirtatiously ignorant. Instead, rather than actually strike up a conversation like normal human beings, they let me walk off after side-kick told man-child, “man you wouldn’t even know what to do with that” as if “that” wasn’t still within audible reach. Yes, of course, at 21-something-years-old he was right. But can we talk about this use of the word “that” in reference to a person?
I really try not to ride the objectification train too hard because I feel like the overarching issue of gender politics tends to get muddied in nit-picky waters, but as of late I find myself cringing at being referred to as a “that” the same way I do when I hear a man dehumanize a woman by repeatedly calling her a “female.” In my bigger days, I always felt like my aversion to this comment had more to do with feeling like “all of that” was a very personal reference to all of my full-figured body and I didn’t enjoy being called out like that. But now I understand that this talking-about-somebody-like-they’re-not-there-situation is supposed to be received as some off-center, third-party compliment. Like when a dude tells his friend he doesn’t know what to do with that, I’m supposed to look over my shoulder in a challengingly coy way and say “but you can try” and sashay off with my booty swinging from left to right to the beat of congas the way it did with Laura Winslow in that one episode of “Family Matters” back in the day. No thanks.
While I wouldn’t go so far as to call this street harassment by another name (though I want to), I’m really fed up with the liberties men continuously take when it comes to talking about women – let alone women they claim want to have some sort of non-confrontational, possibly even romantic/sexual interaction with — behind our backs and right in front of our faces. And I can’t help but think of this Ask a Black Man quote, “When are we going to start being men for our women instead of being men for other men” when I think about the fact that all of this posturing really has nothing to do with the woman; it’s about two men trying to see whose d*ck is bigger than whose at the expense of said woman. I’ll pass.
