It’s been an exceptionally stifling August. According to NASA, 2016 could go down on record as the hottest year in recorded history. It might also follow that, as the heat rises, people — women, we must especially note — are wearing less than any other time in history.
Fine female specimens are strolling, running, basking and hoola-hooping under the sweltering sun, figures clenched tightly in bikinis, yoga pants, dresses and skirts. Whether they notice it or not, whether they like it or not, they are entangled by invisible webs of lustful eyeball trajectories of men. Many of us are repelled from advancing on them by social etiquette and sheer terror. But some virile, young bucks simply do not heed this message, and it’s causing the ire of many a woman to reach its boiling point.
Here we have Erin Bailey, a Boston-based fitness instructor, a prolific blogger and an extraordinary-looking young dame. She recently posted this article on her website: What Do We Deserve? Don’t be fooled. It is, in a few words, a vociferous manifesto targeted against every male who has ever wounded her feminine royal dignity with their sexual solicitations. Take a look. I can’t quite blame these fellows.
Why hello there, Erin. It’s nice to meet you.
Woops, excuse me. You probably don’t take too kindly to my little bit of flirtation shenanigans, do you? You’d probably hunt me down, slice off my testicles with a bowie knife and stuff them in my mouth like a roast pig (Andrea Dworkin would be honored.) Yes, I’ve personally heard women — probably the kind who would lap up your rhetorical filth like koolaid at a Jim Jones cult gathering — mutter death threats under their breath for receiving calls and compliments from males. There’s no debate over toxic femininity.
Miss Bailey, let’s have a little chat, shall we? I really hope you stumble upon this article one day. Perhaps even read it, if you’re not so caught up in your feminist zealotry to comprehend any deviating viewpoint as something other than an attack against every vagina-wielder on Earth. Because it’s evident that, in your noble declaration to purge what you deem to be sexual oppression, you’ve demonstrated insufferable narcissism and an inability — no, a blatant unwillingness — to understand some of the men you’re probably condemning. You are responsible for fear-mongering and paranoia among women, as well as demoralizing men to the level of “hormone puppets,” whether you are honest with yourself enough to even realize it — or not.
What do you deserve?
You deserve the truth, naked and bare.
You begin your post acknowledging that, yes, you are a rare and attractive female specimen, the elusive wetdream of many a lonely gas station cashier, and that you have gone to great lengths to cultivate your health and ravishing figure. You demonstrate this point lavishly with an entire gallery of alluring selfies taken at the park and gym. Yes, yes, Miss Bailey — Oh, we know you’re very pretty. You can stop tantalizing us now.
Alas, your hard-won physique has a dark side — it draws unwanted attention from Boston’s bottom feeders like bees to a hive. Or, if we’re going to be honest, like flies to roadkill.
A man stalks you in the park. Another man at a parking garage yells out to you with the savory of Fat Bastard with his hands on a chili dog. Yet another man sat on a bench and waited for you to come out of an ice cream shop. These sexual solicitations make you feel, in your own words, “like he wanted to do me,” or else “like a piece of steak.” They strike fear into your heart. They humiliate you. They torment you. They all but ruin your entire life. Very, very tragic indeed.
So you list a series of grievances. You demand that we leave you alone. You demand that we never act on our desire for you. You all but demand that men exist in a relationship of fealty to women — do not speak to a woman, unless she has spoken to you. It might do you well to consider what Karen Straughan, female men’s rights activists, said in that regard.
I am not female. I cannot speak on your behalf. But I’d like to hypothesize that, if a woman crossed paths with Brad Pitt at the gym, or a male specimen of equally outrageous sexual value, and that man whispered in her ear that she had the finest derierre he had ever seen, she might be more inclined to flattery than fury. Who knows? She might start wearing that extra-tight bra and pants to the gym, in the hopes that he might show up again.
It might not be the sexual advances of men that has incensed women such as yourself. It is their manner, of which is boorish and clumsily expressed. There’s nothing intrinsically humiliating about attracting men. It is that you are attracting the wrong type of men.
This bittersweet curse posed by your profound sexual magnetism follows you wherever you go. Even in — of all the damnedest places — the nightlife at the downtown bars.
Yoga-pants and sneakers are attire designed for one purpose — to be comfortable during locomotion. Advances are understandably a breach in social etiquette while they are worn. On the other hand, high heels and a dress are tailored for another purpose — not to be comfortable, as you know better than I do, but to enhance the glamour of your physique. Particularly under the “male gaze.”
Being the unfortunate recipient of a groping is one matter. That’s indefensible, though even that depends on the context of social escalation. But you lack nuance. Lingering eyeballs? An offer for a drink? Can men even speak to you without your permission? I’m sorry, Miss Bailey — no, I’m actually not sorry — but my sympathy for your cat-calling crusade cuts short at the swinging door of the saloon.
The bar and the gym are two entirely different social contexts. Some women, you may be shocked to learn, are so lascivious and sexually liberated (by who else but feminists? Damn them!) that they go to bars in order to bask in the gazes and gropes of men and perhaps even rendezvous with them for sex. How exactly many of them engage in this slavish behavior, no Pew Research Poll shall ever reveal, but it must be enough to make the energy expended and social ostracism looking for them worth it to men. Articles like this suggest that women are having gigatons of casual sex.
Sex is actually a large motivation for people to attend bars in the first place, so isn’t it a fairly reasonable mistake on the part of these males, to figure you might be looking for it? After all, we’re thinking, there must be at least one lusty barfly in that establishment that is craving the attention that you are repelling. To the man, your rejection costs him nothing. He will simply wander off with the dim hope of finding a willing partner.
Ironic you’d mention that, because you know it matters.
Truth is, men are overwhelmingly the victims of homicide and robbery, not women. Yet despite this fact, women have been socialized to be a victim class.
Might I also mention that, for the vast litany of sexual solicitations you have received, none of them have been followed by an assault or rape? It could also be reasoned that, as obnoxious and annoying as these gestures may be to you, a call-call on the street rarely leads to a rape. According to RAINN statistics, most rape is perpetrated by someone known to the victim. Your fear of being raped in a dark alley or a lonely forest road might largely come from fear-mongering perpetuated by the feminist-favoring media.
Erin — I’m demoting you to a first-name basis — has it occurred to you yet that you have published a viral blog post, linked and shared on numerous other websites, that does nothing but condemn the entire male gender for the philandering of a few, and you are subsequently an internet celebrity for it? Please open your eyes from the shadows of your victimhood mentality and take a good, hard look at reality. I have not silenced you. I have not threatened you. I am simply critiquing you.
What a naive contradiction, a degree of doublethink capable only by a fresh, young female gender studies student. One cannot be “sexy” in their own skin, because to be sexy is to be fashioning one’s appearance to appeal to the other sex. The standards of what is “sexy” is based on nothing but it’s intrinsic ability to attract your opposite sex. To be sexy is, essentially, to become bait.
Didn’t you say that you felt dirty and humiliated when you thought a man might “want to do” you? Doesn’t sexual attraction rub against your ego the wrong way? Or perhaps you’re just not being entirely honest with yourself about what it is that you want? What glaring hypocrisy.
Nobody’s stopping you.
If you were more concerned with being judged by your merits rather than your genitalia, you would be calling for the repeal of programs that provide women a free pass in order to fulfill a “gender quota.”
If sexual objectification is oppressive, then I suggest you also direct criticism at the pornography industry, where women are voluntarily participating in every conceivable act of sexual objectification. Are you also opposed to sex work? Underwear models? Or what about the feminist activists who actually lament about not receiving cat-calls from men? Surely there are also women, not exclusively men, who are contributing to your problem.
Ah, of course! You and all the women you believe you stand for are just little angels — innocent, perfect, and incapable of moral agency. You are the true chauvinist here, Erin. Not I.
What’s the point? You will probably continue to drive away men in this Crusade against Cat-Calling. So go ahead. Shame me as a predator, an rape apologist, a privileged misogynist. Cage my sexuality inside of a prison that only you, a pure, asexual woman, have the key to unlock. You have your internet soapbox. I will respect your right to make whatever commands and accusations you wish of men. So try to understand my end, and respect my right to speech – no matter how offended it makes you feel.
That, Erin Bailey, is what you deserve.
