"Jenny"

This morning I got to work and ran straight to the loos to change out of the Tights That Like To Roll Down To Mid-Thigh (which keep managing to avoid purges, probably because they don’t have any holes in). When I came out of the cubicle, one of my co-workers was standing at the sink. She did what she always does – looked up briefly, registered that it was me, narrowed her eyes slightly, then pretended she hadn’t seen me at all and stalked out. She’s been doing this for years now, ever since this happened:

Three years ago

[I am walking from the photocopier back to my desk. I vaguely hear someone say ‘Jenny’ and assume they must be on the phone. As I sit down, co-worker approaches]
Co-worker: Jenny! I was calling you!
Me: Huh?
Co-worker: I was calling! Jenny!
Me: Oh, God, I’m sorry. I don’t answer to Jenny, I didn’t realise you were talking to me. What can I do for you?
Co-worker: [eyes narrow, voice turns to ice] Oh.

She asked me her question, I sent her the thing she was looking for, and we’ve had no interaction since. Beyond the very brief glares, she ignores me absolutely. In the early days I tried smiling at her, which she would respond to with a slightly longer glare, a small toss of the head and an offended sweep straight past me. I can find no other explanation for this other than that she was mortally insulted by my refusing to answer to ‘Jenny’.

I am not a Jenny. I’m just not. I’m no more a Jenny than I am a Susanne or a Patricia. Some Jennifers are Jenny and that’s great, but I’m not one of them. It sounds like a completely different name to me; like someone is trying to get my attention by yelling, “Hey! Desdemona!” It just isn’t my name. But because it’s a commonly accepted nickname, people use it. They know other Jennifers who go by Jenny, they personally prefer Jenny as a name, they thought they heard someone else call me that once, so they assume it's fine to call me that. It is NOT fine to call me that.

I started seriously objecting to Jenny when I was thirteen years old. It suddenly sounded weird and wrong and a bit like the addresser was mocking me. I didn’t take it up with the teachers, but all my friends were instructed, in the strongest possible terms, not to call me that anymore. Mostly it worked, eventually. Some of the schoolfriends I've stayed in touch with still do it occasionally.

Friend: You’re going to have to let us off calling you Jenny! We’ve known you too long, we can’t change now!
Me: We’ve known each other since we were eleven. I was alright with Jenny for two years and have been objecting to it for the seventeen years since. I think you’ve probably had enough time to get used to it.
Friend: Alright, alright. Jeez.

This is the worst thing. Worse than when the director of my dance school pulled me up on stage without warning and announced to several hundred people that I was the shyest person he’d ever taught (Why would anyone think this was a good idea? WHY would you do that, Scott? WHY?), and I didn’t realise he was calling me up for about three minutes because he was calling for “Jenny” and I had to spend the next three months retraining everyone not to call me that. Anyway. Worse than that. The worst thing is when people get annoyed or offended at being asked not to call me by a nickname I hate, or mock me for overreacting.

Acquaintance at party: Hi, Jenny!
Me: [having already drunk an entire bottle of wine] Argh, please don’t call me that. It’s Jen.
Acquaintance: Awww, but why? Jenny is lovely!
Me: Sure, but I don’t feel like it’s my name and I don’t like being called that.
Acquaintance: Awwwww.
Me: Please just call me Jen.
Acquaintance: [edging away from me and looking annoyed] OK.

Of course, the more this happens, the more it gets on my nerves. The more people imply I shouldn’t get upset about what they choose to call me, the more likely I am to go on a five-minute rant when I correct them. The more people I upset by correcting them on my name, the more likely I am to write long rambling blog posts about how My Name Is Not Jenny and Never Will Be, Stop Calling Me That and start plotting ways to surreptitiously circulate said angry blog post to the widest possible audience.

There is a special place in my heart for people who apologise and correct themselves when I ask them not to call me Jenny, people who correct others who call me Jenny, and people who say “I don’t know why anyone would call you that, you’re clearly not a Jenny.”

Boyfriend Back In Pre-Boyfriend Days: The funniest thing was, you didn’t even realise he was calling you for ages because he called you Jenny!
Me: I really, really hate being called Jenny.
Pre-Boyfriend Boyfriend: I was wondering for a minute whether to start calling you Jenny as a really annoying joke.
Me: I warn you, I have absolutely no sense of humour about this whatsoever.
Boyfriend Who Wasn’t My Boyfriend Yet: I can see that. I already decided it was a stupid idea. I don't think I even could call you Jenny, that just isn't who you are. You're Jen.
Me: [phew, and also yay]

A special place in Hell for people who correct me on my own name, and the most special place for this particular guy:

Nice Co-Worker: [introducing new employee round the office] And this is Jennifer.
New Guy: [to my co-worker] Jenny. [to me] Hi, Jenny.
Me: Jennifer. Hi.
New Guy: Nice to meet you, Jenny.

Message to that guy: I judged your entire worth as a human being based on this fifteen-second introduction, and I was right to do it.

blogs

I started blogging publicly again for three reasons. Firstly, I like writing. I'm much better at writing than I am at talking, and probably better at writing than thinking, to be honest. Secondly, I wanted to get rid of the fear of people reading what I write. It's a nothingy little personal blog, and it's never going to have much of a readership, but it's here and people can read it (and occasionally they do, and even more occasionally someone says something nice about it, and then my world gets a little bit brighter). Thirdly, I like these blogs. I like silly personal blogs that don't really have an audience to cater to and post about whatever the author wants to post about. I've read hundreds of things which say that nobody cares, nobody's interested in your dull day or your personal feelings, write about bigger things your audience can relate to. Well, I care. I'm interested in your dull day and your personal feelings, provided you can type legibly. I'm interested in the thing you do that I also do, the thing you do that I wouldn't do for a roomful of puppies, diamonds and ice cream, the thing that really pisses you off for no real reason. I'm interested in the happy things, the sad things, the weird things, the mundane things. Fuck trying to be relevant to the wider community, tell me about the time you went food shopping and you found a really weird-looking potato.

I read other people's personal blogs. If you're a Facebook friend of mine who likes to link to their blog posts, I've read yours. Certainly the posts you've linked, and probably back a bit further too. They're not all on my regular reading list, but the ones with an interesting voice - which is certainly more than half of them, to my mind - I go back to time and time again. You write about your fun-filled adventurous life? I read it. You write about your struggles with mental health and/or bereavement? I read it, and probably cry. You write about parenting a child I've never met? I read it. I know all about babywearing and extended breastfeeding and reusable nappies and different rates of child development and what horrendous things giving birth can do to a body, and I find it fascinating despite having all the maternal instinct of a fairy cake.

I also read the blogs of dance teachers I know, or know of. My dancer friends (and occasionally the teachers themselves, if I'm friends with them) will post links, and I read them all, because I love dance and I love other people's perspectives on dance. I often wonder if I should stop doing this, because I hate them all. OK, I don't hate them all. Quite a few of them are written by very professional people running a very professional blog on their very professional website, which don't colour my opinion on the authors as dance teachers at all. This is probably the best way to approach it unless you're an exceptional writer who has exactly the right instincts for this sort of thing. But I like personal stuff. I want to read opinions! ...riiiiight up until I read them, and then I hate them all.

Dance teachers are just people; people who look very pretty when they move and are good at teaching other people how to look pretty when they move. There's no reason to expect them to be able to present themselves well through the medium of the written word, or to want to take a critical eye to the state of their local scene and their own approaches. But I can't shake my unfair expectations. I want to read a dance teacher's personal opinion and feel like I would be encouraged, safe, and free in their scene. I want to read posts that express potentially controversial views while still being mindful of their authority and position. I want to read perspectives I haven't heard before, phrased eloquently and tactfully. I want to read staunch advocacy for scene safety and consent culture that includes concrete actions they've taken to embed this in scenes where they have responsibility. I'd also quite like them to be funny, because I like funny. Most of all I want to read what they write and be inspired to learn from them and dance with them.

It's a lot to ask. Too much. I'll never find a dance teacher who runs this kind of blog, and that's OK. In fact, it's probably for the best, since the combination of dancing and writing would probably be too much for me and I'd start following them to every festival they taught at like some kind of horrendous fangirl. But all the dance-teacher blogs I've read that express personal opinions, I hate. I hate them to the extent that I will actively avoid being taught by these people, and in some cases, actively avoid dancing with them. I don't want to learn from someone who will proclaim that nobody gets to call themselves a dancer unless they're Pina Bausch. I don't want my scene leader to be a drama llama. I don't want teachers who are so determined to be contrary, or so determined to oppose someone else's opinions on everything, that they write post after post of rude shit about perfectly well-accepted styles or choices that affect them in no way whatsoever. And I really, really don't want teachers who openly dismiss sexual assault, place the 'traditional' on a pedestal, and urge the cutting of slack for men while expressing disgust at women who complain (yes, I am going to link that post every time I write about dance, because it's either that or have a paraphrase of the exact same sentiment in every single post).

It makes me sad, because now there are several amazing dancers I'll never feel comfortable dancing with. There are teachers whose lessons would just depress and discourage me after reading their thoughts on their students. There are scenes I wouldn't feel safe dancing in anymore. What's worse, these isolated opinions make me more wary of other teachers, whose thoughts I haven't read and whose views I haven't heard. Why would they be any different just because they don't write about it? I become convinced that it's easier to just not dance with teachers, because they'll be judging my technique and that's no fun, and maybe I should just dance with people who I know for a fact enjoy a dork-dance interlude.

Part of me thinks I should just avoid reading this stuff anymore. Stop reading and just start dancing. After all, they're all just people, and a lot of people have fucking terrible opinions on things. If I don't know someone's a judgemental arsehole, I can just dance with them and walk away none the wiser, right? I have more dance and less bad feeling in my life, everyone wins.

Except, if my dance teacher believes "men are the leads, women are the follows, that's the traditional way; I know people can do the other role, but let's not be pedantic about this" I want to know that. If I'm giving money to someone who is paying lip service to an inclusivity they don't really subscribe to, I want to know that. If I'm dancing in a place where the scene leaders protect creeps (and gropers, and people who have punched multiple people in the face) from repercussions, I definitely want to know that. I want to support safe, inclusive environments run by safe, inclusive teachers, and if that's not where I am, I need to have the knowledge to protect myself.

On a less dramatic level, I want to know about the people teaching me. The way this scene is set up - its size, its dance style, the devotion of its members - you have to like and respect your teachers. You have to buy into their philosophy, you have to trust what they're telling you, you have to understand where they're coming from, and you have to want to share a whisky with them afterwards. Otherwise, what's the point?

So I'm going to keep reading. Sometimes it will make me cross, but I want to know. And maybe if I read widely enough, I'll come across dancers - maybe not teachers, but dancers - who write about dance in a way that inspires me. And if not? I'll read whatever they want to write about. Hair, depression, ferrets, anything. I'm listening.

on boundaries

I went dancing on Sunday. A lot of the regulars were out of the country, but it was a good crowd, I met several lovely new people, and was delighted to dance with almost everyone there. I say almost; there was one guy I prefer not to dance with (two if you count Mr Spine Trumpet, which now that we've built up a long and beautiful tradition of not dancing together, I do not). There's something about the way he behaves when we dance that makes me uncomfortable. It's not overtly creepy - he's not gropey and when he does say something it's far to the ambiguous side of being inappropriate, but I don't like it, and I see shades of the same thing when I happen to make eye contact with him off the dance floor. Usually dancing with one specific person isn't hard to avoid, but it was a quiet night, and when I turned to the bar to take a sip of my drink, out of the corner of my eye I could see him standing in front of me, slightly too close, and silent. Waiting for me to turn around and suddenly be staring him in the chest. I would be slightly startled, look up towards his face, where he would be smirking, and still silent. He wouldn't ask me to dance; he would assume that the dance contract was affirmed as soon as we made eye contact.

I hate this. People whose faces I recognise but whose names I don't know asking me to dance by suddenly looming over me in silence? Nope. Nope nope nope. So what did I do? Completely ignored the fact that he was there, turned back towards the bar and poured myself a glass of water. He melted away again. Was this the best way to handle things? Probably not. But it was the best I could do in the moment.

The reason I started overthinking this minor interaction? I was reading this post at Captain Awkward, about a creepy guy using creepy pick-up artist techniques, and thinking "Wow, that's creepy, using horrible strategies like that to get around someone's boundaries". Several people in the comments (I actually recommend both the post and all the comments, because that site is made of unicorns) said, "Well done for getting away now. It would have been so much worse if you'd actually ended up dating him." It would, wouldn't it? Imagine dating a guy who...

HOLY SHIT I TOTALLY DID

I'd forgotten. My memories of the guy when he was my friend were all good ones. More than once, when we were still dating and afterwards, I thought to myself, "It was so great being friends with him. It's a shame he changed so much after we started dating." But reading that letter, reading about a guy commenting on her body language and how guarded she was, reading the comments about PUA techniques, I suddenly remembered that he did that all the time when we were friends.

"You're standing there with your arms folded. That's a very defensive gesture. What makes you so defensive?"
"You're turning your body away from me. Why is that? Makes it seem like you're nervous. What have you got to be nervous about?"
"How come you're looking away? Are you scared? Look at me."

People analysing me has always made me massively uncomfortable, and when folding my arms EVEN MORE didn't help, I tried standing differently to get him to shut up. Which he did not. "Hey, you've got your arms down today, you're more open. That's good."

Then I remembered an exchange that happened shortly before we started going out.

Him: Those guys over there were asking if you and I were a couple.
Me: ...OK.
Him: I told them you'd probably scratch their eyes out if they said that in front of you.
Me: ...uh...
Him: I mean, no offense, you're very attractive and all, but... [pulls face] no.
Me: ...OK.

I remembered going home and writing in my DeadJournal (yes, DeadJournal. Teen Goth Jen had a DeadJournal, the existence of which I'd also completely forgotten up to this point) about what he'd said, and how I'd had a slight feeling of "oh, charming" but mostly a massive sense of relief because he'd said he wasn't attracted to me and I wasn't attracted to him either and it was great that everything was clear now and I didn't have to worry about the weird vibes anymore. Then we started dating shortly afterwards because he was smart and funny and that was what was important, right?

DUDE, YOU WERE FUCKING NEGGING ME.

(I asked him about that exchange a few times when we were dating. He would either flat-out deny it happened or embark on a long melodramatic display of What An Awful Person I Must Be To Say Things You Interpreted In Such A Way.)

I tell these two largely unrelated stories because remembering the second one made me feel (after I'd got over the minor urge to go and find him and yell WHAT THE SHIT WAS UP WITH THE FUCKING NEGGING OF THE SEVENTEEN YEAR OLD GIRL, DUDE) a hell of a lot better about the first one. That second story just wouldn't happen now. I wouldn't stay friends with a guy who gave me updates on my own body language every time he saw me and offered his various opinions and approval on the way my shoulders were facing. I would sit far, far away from that guy, and he would call me a stuck-up bitch to his friends, and everybody would be much better off. It wasn't until I started dancing that I realised I was even allowed to have boundaries, much less that I could enforce them, and though my methods aren't perfect yet, the knowledge that I have the power to get away from situations and people that make me uncomfortable does a lot for my peace of mind.

I deleted multiple versions of a paragraph justifying why I ignored Mr Loom-and-Smirk, because that's not the point of this story and I've written about such things previously (please see here for my feelings on creepy dance guys and women's socialisation to be silent, and here for my feelings on being told to "cut him some slack"). I don't want to set myself a benchmark of behaving perfectly in every situation because that's not fair; in an ideal situation I would have behaved differently, but then so would he. We all have imperfect ways of handling things and that has to be OK. Having this idea of The Perfect Human What I Am Going To Become in my head is immensely damaging and I'm trying my best to get rid of it. Dismantle unreasonable perfectionism, build comfortable boundaries - this is my plan for the next eight hundred years (or however bloody long it takes to do these things).

I have grown as a human this week. Or rather, the space around me has grown, making me a slightly more comfortable human. I think that's probably better.

advice

I used to make my living giving advice over the phone. My knowledge of the law was, and is, pretty solid. During my years on the phone, I dealt with the lot of the same quite specific problems on a regular basis. Below is an example of a conversation I had more than once with various callers, who were usually owners or HR managers of a company.

Caller: So in the office/on site/at the staff party, Person X punched Person Y in the face.
Me: What have you done so far?
Caller: We've suspended Person X. We're not sure what to do now.
Me: [explains disciplinary procedures]
Caller: Can we sack him?
Me: Generally speaking, it's considered to be within the range of reasonable responses to treat assaulting a colleague as gross misconduct.

This even happened once:

Caller: But some of our clients really like Person X, and I don't think they'd be too happy if we sacked him.
Me: You aren't obliged to sack him. But it may be worth bearing in mind that you have a duty of care to all your employees, and it's possible that being obliged to continue to work with someone who punched him in the face may lead Person Y to consider submitting a grievance or even potentially claiming constructive dismissal.

(Yes, I talked like this. I still do if you ask me this kind of question.)

I believe that sacking Person X when he punches Person Y in the face is a very reasonable thing to do, and this belief does not change one bit if that person is Jeremy Clarkson. You don't get to punch someone in the face at work and continue working there, unless you're trying to stop them committing an act of mass destruction or you work as a boxer or something. Being good at your job or popular with a lot of customers (whatever your opinion on Clarkson, he is clearly both those things) isn't and shouldn't be enough to give you leave to punch people in the face.

This has been your employment law update for March. Thank you.

annoying things about my office falling down

- My office is falling down, and I don't consider falling down to be the ideal state for an office I have to work in.

- My office fell down last year as well, but they hastily patched it up and decided it would probably be fine for a couple of hundred people to keep working in it.

- It was discovered that the office was falling down (still falling down, or a whole new falling down, I'm not sure) because they did a refit to allow one of the bigwigs to have a bigger office, a sofa, and a 40-inch TV.

- That refit was over a year in the planning, and everybody decided not to check if the office was falling down, or if any building work would make the office fall down more, until they started drilling into things.

- Immediate evacuation of the falling-down office has been advised, but apparently it's not falling down badly enough for us to not have to work here until they find somewhere else to put us.

- Most of us will probably be moving to the offices of our sponsor department, who have been imposing ever-increasing space restrictions on us but have 50 spare desks just lying around waiting, presumably, for an emergency like this.

- The closest tube to the sponsor office is a scary busy one, and I have a history of losing consciousness (falling down, if you will) on scary busy tubes.

- The powers that be have informed non-London parts of the organisation that the reason for this immediate and unplanned evacuation is that the office (which, may I remind you, is falling down) is "quite expensive".

- It has been suggested to us by mid-level higher-ups that we not make a fuss about the office falling down, because the higher-level higher-ups don't like it when people make a fuss about silly things like offices falling down.

- All the doors to offices and kitchens have been locked and taped up with stripy hazard tape.

- I do not appear to be in possession of any stripy hazard tape.

- We are obligated to fix, but may choose not to return to, the office that's falling down, which annoys me because of a) uncertainty and b) unnecessary effort.

- The idea of buildings falling down in general unnerves me, because inside is where it's safe and I don't like the thought of inside suddenly not being there anymore.

- I am sitting twenty-two floors up, and if the office falls down our fate will be somewhat worse than "exposure to traffic noise and March weather".

- Sitting twenty-two floors up and being told the office is falling down fills me with the need to write unnecessarily dramatic sentences about "fate".

- Thinking about my office falling down while I'm in it is making me eat anxiety chocolate I don't want.

- Seriously, why am I sitting in an office that's been declared "about to fall down"?

- This just happened:

Me: Why are we sitting in an office that's about to fall down?
Manager: Well, I suppose it's not really falling down.
Me: So why are we evacuating?
Manager: Because the building's falling down.

...and I feel at once too smart and not smart enough for this level of logic.

on chivalry

Throughout my online dating history, I have talked to, been on dates with, and had full-blown relationships with various men I met that way. Some of them were great and even though they're no longer in my life, I appreciate that I got to meet them. A lot of them, though, fell into very definite archetypes. The guy who was just a nice guy. The insufferable intellectual. The awkward semi-hermit. The pick-up-artist-in-training. The guy who had a long list of problems that would definitely all be solved if I would just sleep with him please. The guy who had a long list of all his excellent qualities that would definitely solve all my problems if I would just sleep with him please.

Occasionally I would encounter Chivalrous Dude. Chivalrous Dude would be polite to a fault, deliver all manner of compliments all on the right side of appropriate and listen very, very attentively (often without actually hearing anything that was being said). Chivalrous Dude was definitely happy to see that I was a feminist, and he was very committed to treating women right, and wasn't that great? Chivalrous Dude had many Thoughts and Feelings that he was keen to share, and eventually some Traditional Gender Roles that he thought we could perhaps partake of together. My interactions with the Chivalrous Dudes rarely ended well, and I soon learned to steer well clear of them if at all possible.

It's often in response to these guys that I am urged to "cut him some slack". I think I've made my feelings on this phrase quite clear, but let me just say: I get it. I get why people like this chivalry thing, and I get where these guys are coming from. They (mostly) have the absolute best of intentions. They've seen some truly unpleasant behaviour exhibited by men towards women and are appalled by it; they want to be better than that. They are going to be Nice to Women, because they are Nice Men trying to do Nice Things. I understand that.

I also understand that we can't apply a blanket rule of "treat everyone exactly the same" because that just isn't how the world works. We haven't fully corrected the power disparities between genders/races/orientations/whatever else that have existed as long as society has, and we may never do. Treating people with absolute rules-lawyer equality when that isn't what the rest of the world is doing doesn't make things better, particularly not if you are refusing to acknowledge that the behaviour of the rest of the world puts certain people at a disadvantage. So we can't just say "complete equality of treatment, end of discussion." Things are a little too sticky and complicated for that.

However, in terms of basic social interaction, I really do not want to be operating under a Code of How Men Should Treat Women as opposed to a Code of How to Treat Other People. It's weird. If someone holds a door open for me, I will assume they're doing so because I am a person and it is not pleasant to slam a door in the face of a person. If a man in a mixed group holds the door open for women only, I will side-eye him a little bit. If a group of men standing near the door form two groups (or for maximum weird, lines) either side of it, wave me through the door that one of them is holding open and watch me walk through it, I will feel seriously uncomfortable because this is a weird thing to do (if you do this thing? Stop doing this thing, it is a creepy thing).

And in terms of someone I'm dating? I don't want to be treated like Woman as Concept, I want to be treated like me. In my younger and stupider days I dated a couple of men who told me that "the man walks on the outside of the pavement to protect the woman" and "the man walks the woman home to make sure she's safe". What exactly he was going to protect me from by standing on that side of the road, and what dangers he was going to avert that never occurred when I walked home by myself every single other day, was never made clear. If you're going to walk me home, do it because you want to talk to me some more, not because of some unstated Lady Boogeyman.

Mostly the stated position of Chivalrous Dude is less "women are weak and cannot do things for themselves" and more "women are special and magical creatures who must be treated in a special way". Many of the ones I've personally come across have told me that women are amazing, women are worth more than men, women deserve special treatment, men are rubbish and must prove themselves worthy. This is as icky as "women are lesser" and ultimately leads to the same place - these men treat the women around them as if they're not quite human, and as if they're all basically the same.

My major, major bugbear with Chivalrous Dude is this one: there is no way to live up to his expectation of Womanhood. He has a pedestal with Woman on it, casts whoever he's being chivalrous at as Woman, and proceeds to act out his strange code of behaviour until she accidentally reveals herself to be human (by having a past, or a flaw, or on occasion by being a horrible person acting out of outright malice). At this, Chivalrous Dude feels betrayed, upset, maybe angry. Sometimes this is directed at the woman he cast as Woman, feeling that she has let down Womanhood with her unexpected behaviour. Sometimes he doesn't make this distinction between woman and Woman, and her behaviour reflects upon Woman as a whole. If the behaviour is transgressive enough, it breaks his pedestal entirely (you know that guy who got dumped or cheated on or couldn't get that girl to go out with him by hanging around looking hopeful and then spent the next eight years complaining that all women were bitches and whores? He was probably Chivalrous Dude Type 2 once).

You cannot do chivalry, in the modern sense of the word, without bringing in some gender essentialist assumptions to a greater or lesser degree, and frankly I'd rather not. I don't like the behaviours that are coded chivalrous, and I don't like the way I'm expected to perform in response (be quiet, be polite, be gracious, don't make a fuss, don't contradict). Some people do like it, and this is why talking to each other is a thing that people should do more. Then the men that like to behave this way can do so to women who like this behaviour, and I don't have to get called a "lovely lady" ever again.

slack

Today I am going to complain about the phrase "cut him some slack" in order to a) get a grievance out of my head so it doesn't trample all over another post I'm trying to write, and b) stop myself getting involved in an online argument I would surely regret getting involved in. You're welcome.

(Note: "he" in the following list refers to whatever guy I was dealing with at the time rather than this whole post being about one very weird man. Just for clarity's sake.)

Times when I have been asked to "cut a guy some slack" because he is a guy and doesn't know any better/that's just the way they are/was trying to be nice and that's what counts:

When he shouted at me to "smile" from across the street

When he made a nasty joke that upset me

When he ignored everything I was saying only to readily accept the exact same points when made in the exact same way by a man

When he DANCED HIS CROTCH INTO ME FOR FIVE STRAIGHT MINUTES ARGHHH

When he objected to me talking to a male colleague whilst at work

When he, as the head of the company I worked for, congratulated me on my weight loss and warned me not to get fat again

When he phoned for advice and asked to be put through to a man

When he told me it was completely reasonable to refuse to hire any woman of childbearing age

When he ran up to me on the street, smacked me on the ass hard enough to bruise, then ran away again

When he sent me sixty text messages in two days

When he complained that women as a gender had really gone downhill in the last twenty years

When he locked me in the car and screamed at me for an hour

When he explained to me that I didn't actually want the things I thought I wanted and in fact wanted these other things instead

When he tried to carry my shopping for me, which consisted of one birthday card in an A5 size carrier bag, and got very upset when I told him I could probably handle the weight myself

When he told me that women were all whores but that I was special

When he tried to follow me home

When he continued to call me by a nickname I hate after I specifically and repeatedly asked him not to

When he laughed for twenty minutes about how indecisive women are whilst trying to sell me a mobile phone

When he made creepy-ass remarks in my ear every time he danced with me

When he tried to teach me to do something I had a qualification in

When he refused to let me make the three-minute walk from the pub to my house by myself EVER IN FOUR YEARS

I have many more, but I'm going to end it there for everyone's sake.

I am nearly thirty years old, and I have had enough of being told that I should assume the best of intentions on the part of any man who annoys me or makes me uncomfortable. I've had enough of being told that I've misinterpreted a thing that happened to me by people who weren't even fucking there, or that I may not have misinterpreted it but that my feelings about it are still wrong. I've had enough of people prioritising the intentions of a man they often don't know at all above the judgement of a woman they do know. It's insulting, and it's especially insulting to have this framed as the position of reason and logic.

Also, look at that list. "Cut him some slack" has become completely fucking meaningless. People say it to me when I'm mildly annoyed in the exact same way as they say it when I'm genuinely scared or hurt. They say "cut him some slack" when I'm griping about a mild sexist stereotype and they say "cut him some slack" when I've sustained actual physical injury from the man in question. So now the phrase means nothing, and it annoys me that much more when applied to the gripe because I remember it being applied to the bruises.

So I say to you, no. I will not cut that man some slack. I made a judgement call. I had this experience and I decided that this man did a shitty thing, or that I don't want to date this man, or that I'm taking my business to a different company. I get to be annoyed or uncomfortable if that's how I'm feeling, and you don't get to tell me my feelings are wrong. I am allowed to not like any given man for whatever frivolous reason (and in turn, people are free to not like me if that's what my frivolous reason inspires in them). I am a grown-ass woman and I am pig sick of having my opinions and boundaries and judgement ignored or disrespected just in case I hurt some poor man's feelings slightly. That man might mean well, in some cases. I fully accept that. But his meaning well does not compel me to accept or enjoy his behaviour, to date him or dance with him or otherwise spend time with him, to knowingly put myself in a situation I know I'm going to hate. Why should I? He wouldn't. It's more important for me to trust myself than to be nice to you, and no, I'm not sorry about it. I'm going to stop twisting myself into knots trying to work out how to not offend anyone and cut myself some slack for a goddamn change.

silence

The other night I went dancing. The scene is still small and I'm pretty much always there, so I generally recognise most people I see when I enter a venue. People I know well, people I know by face but not by name, people I love to dance with, people who are in massive demand that I have to fight to dance with. Then there are the people I will not dance with again under any circumstances.

This dance shitlist is small and not based on dance quality. I can easily dance with someone who's not very good. To get on the shitlist you either have to dance in a way that's physically painful to your partner, or be seriously creepy. For example, my shitlist contains the following names:

Ass Groper: guy spent most of the dance just shifting awkwardly from foot to foot, then suddenly reached out and started rubbing my ass.

Spine Trumpet: whose idea of leading is to hold me uncomfortably tightly and poke me in the back and/or hands, leaving me in some pain and also once with a bruise on my wrist.

Crotch Lead: WORST DANCE EVER OH MY GOD I WILL NEVER GET OVER IT.

This time I saw the most recent addition to my Do Not Dance list: the Skirtlifter. When I danced with him a couple of months ago, he held my hand quite low against my leg, and then using my hand as a sort of cover he physically lifted up my skirt and started stroking my thigh. I went Eek and tensed up my hand to force him away, he said, "Mmmm, just as good as I remember," and I fought back the urge to throw up on his shoulder. There will be no more dances with this guy.

I told people about him. There is a creepy guy, he did a creepy thing, would recommend you avoid. And said people, after going, "Ew," would say, "Did you say anything?" or "I hope you smacked him."

Well, no, I didn't. I froze up and tried to work out how I could get out of this with the least amount of fuss.

We are socialised to believe that nothing is a problem until someone draws attention to it, and therefore that the act of stating the problem out loud is what creates it. So when people complain about something that's made them uncomfortable, they're making a scene, creating drama, forcing everyone else to be aware of something unpleasant when they were quite happy in their ignorance, thanks. So we are tacitly encouraged to keep quiet, try and make the problem go away as politely and diplomatically as possible, without letting anyone know the problem was ever there, including and perhaps especially the perpetrator (because they can't have meant it, they were probably trying to be nice, it was only a joke, it didn't actually hurt you, now, did it? Which leads to that lovely and familiar pattern where you're overreacting because it didn't hurt you, right up until you do get hurt, at which point you really ought to have done something about that, you know).

The idea that we aren't to upset Creepy Guy, that it's not nice to set boundaries with Creepy Guy or get him banned from places where he's been persistently creepy, is so ingrained at this point that it's very hard to fight against in the moment. I'm a lot stronger about boundaries than I used to be, but my instinctive reaction to being unexpectedly felt up was Oh God hand on thigh get it off very politely and then finish the dance and say thank you and walk away and never come back. Reprogramming myself not to do this is going to be pretty tough.

In the latter days of Crotch Lead's reign of doom and terror, I told several people that I'd had enough of hiding on the other side of the room and letting him take over my night. I told them that the next time he asked me to dance, I would say no, and also tell him why I was saying no. Most people, including the ones who'd said they'd just kick him in the nuts if he tried it or that he "wouldn't dare" dance with them like that, looked completely taken aback. "No thank you, the way you dance makes me really uncomfortable" shouldn't be such a radical statement, but there is something about a person (particularly a woman) openly and bluntly refusing to do something she's not comfortable with that feels almost transgressive. In the end I didn't say anything, mostly because he never did ask me again. But that, in turn, was mostly because I never really did stop hiding from him.

Dance-wise, I am absolutely secure in my limits. I don't question whether I should be enjoying something more than I am or whether I'm overreacting to a certain hand placement. I am completely comfortable with feeling uncomfortable, as it were, and I won't subject myself to it again just to be nice or to seem more likable. But actually saying something directly, even to someone who clearly knows he's doing something inappropriate, still feels like it's beyond me, and I don't quite know why that is. It would be better for the scene if we spoke out. And the worst that could happen is - what? That the person in question mocks me for overreacting and won't dance with me again? That he mocks me to other people? That his feelings are very badly hurt by me taking his innocent groping the wrong way and never comes back? None of these are catastrophic things, and having Creepy Guy and his creepy friends avoid me or socials in general as determinedly as I avoid them would improve my evenings tremendously. And yet still I keep quiet.

This shouldn't be a part of the scene. We should be able to deal with this when we see it, instead of defaulting to the strange and inefficient method of letting them dance with everyone in the scene until everybody is avoiding them and they stop coming back because all the women mysteriously vanish between songs (in effect, what happens is that the regulars all find out pretty quickly and Creepy Guy just spends months upsetting new dancers and putting them off the scene entirely). It should be normal and expected for dancers to set boundaries, and for those boundaries to be accepted by others. We shouldn't be managing Creepy Guy's potential hurt feelings first and foremost, driving other dancers away from the scene in the process, but that's what we do. It's easier to go with what we know, to not make a fuss, to underreact for as long as possible then feel bad when people start to get hurt.

I have no solution. But maybe seeing the problem is a start.

on expectation

So a friend linked this article on Facebook. When I first saw it, the headline (they’ve changed it now, interestingly) was “Women Wear Too Much Make-Up Because They Mistakenly Think Men Like It.” How does one quantify “too much make-up?” From what’s contained in the article, the only definition of “too much” that makes any sense is “more than men would ideally prefer”. I also really don’t think the study supports the conclusion.

In essence, the researchers told some women to put on make-up for a night out, then produced 21 progressively more made-up pictures and asked people to judge which picture was most attractive. What the women weren’t told, unless the article is leaving out something vitally important, is to apply make-up to achieve what they thought was maximum sexual attractiveness. To equate “night out” with “trying to be sexually appealing” is not a sound and reasonable leap of logic. The study assumes its own conclusion in its set-up, thereby defeating the entire point of conducting the study in the first place. That’s a BAD study. Stay behind after class and do it again properly.

(Also, they took the pictures of night make-up in daylight, and they still concluded that women look best in 60% of the full night make-up, not actually natural or any of that shit, and that article is written terribly. So there.)

I’ve worn make-up for a lot of different reasons. I’ve worn it because I wanted to be all grown up like my cousin. I’ve worn it because I was insecure about my dark circles. I’ve worn it because I was a GOTH and I needed EYELINER, DAMMIT. I’ve worn it because I thought I needed it to make myself acceptable to the world. I’ve worn it because it was part of a costume. I’ve worn it because I thought if I had lipstick on, nobody would realise it had taken me three days to persuade myself out of the house. I’ve worn it because I discovered I could draw flames on my eyelids with eyeshadow.

Now I wear it to practice skills I’ve learned, to get me into a certain frame of mind, as part of a look I’m going for, for the tranquillity of an established morning ritual, because I am having a day of awesome and can’t be brought down by anything, for the sheer joy of having orange lips sometimes, or because my teen Goth self still gets excited over the fact that I can actually apply eyeliner properly now. Sometimes I don’t wear it, because I don’t want to, or can’t be bothered. And through all of this, through Day of Awesome make-up to Please Ignore The Fact That I’m Falling Apart make-up, men have been saying to me “You don’t need to do that, you know. Men don’t really like it. I prefer you without it.”

Well, thank you, stranger dude/dude who is my friend/dude I’ve been going out with for three years. That’s nice of you. But it’s not for you, and it’s not about you. You may have opinions as to how you’d prefer me/women in general to look; that’s fine. But please don’t share them with me. It doesn’t help me.

My first boyfriend used to look at me and my shitty self-esteem and say mournfully that he wished I could base my opinions of myself on what he saw rather than what I saw. Every time he said this, I told him that basing my self-esteem on someone else’s opinions was exactly what gave me shitty self-esteem in the first place, and I was never going to be secure in myself if I was clinging on to someone else’s opinions the whole time. He would nod and say that he understood, but he never did. He thought good things about me, so I should too, and then everything would be better. And when his thoughts about me turned towards the less good, he wanted me to share in that journey too.

These days my self-esteem is my own. It’s been really fucking difficult, but now it’s mine. I’m not interested in what people think of my self-presentation, I’m not interested in “what men like” (as though that’s even a thing. Different men like different stuff, because that’s how humanity works), I’m not interested in being reassured that my grooming decisions are OK. I can appreciate that, from both the men who’ve expressed views on this and from this poorly-conceived piece of research, there is a positive intention to liberate women from an expectation they don’t have to conform to. But a) it’s patronising, and b) it doesn’t do that. It’s still saying, “You don’t have to do this thing because men don’t want it”. This is not empowering, it’s not helpful, and it really fucking bugs me.

As does badly-done research.

So there.