I'm Not Teasing You When I'm Talking To You About The Weather

I was talking to a guy online yesterday, and I suppose things were going well. I didn't really have any intentions of it going anywhere, so I figured there couldn't be any harm in chatting. That is, until I told him I had to go (I was at dinner in a restaurant with a friend IRL and I was being rude, plus I was hungry -- not that I owed any explanations) and he accused me of being a tease. (Upon checking my phone later, I found that he also became increasingly angry at me for "leading him on".)

My immediate reaction was one of shock and indignance: how on earth was I leading this guy on at all? He was practically a stranger to me and I had no obligation to so much as chat with him. I thought I could shake my annoyed outrage and just forget about it, but the mindset behind his actions kept nagging at me.

I think the thing that snags me up most about a man telling a woman she is being a "tease" is that it is rooted in the assumption that she was holding something he wanted over his head in the first place. That is the basic definition of teasing, isn't it? Hang on, I'll Google it.

Ah, here's what Google has to say on the matter:
"tease: to tempt (someone) sexually with no intention of satisfying the desire aroused"

So working from this definition, if I had actually "teased" this guy, whom I really didn't know, that would mean I had sexually tempted him with my chatting, and then, that I would have had no intention of satisfying the desire which I had aroused within him. You know whose problem I think that sounds like? His.

That sounds harsh, so let me explain. This guy messaged me, and sure, it was pretty clear he liked me. No foul there. But the content of the conversation is what really matters here. What floors me is that the innocence of our conversation could've been perceived as "sexually tempting" by anyone, at all. It was small talk. About the weather and college classes. Between two people who hardly knew each other. I could understand if I actually had been intentionally flirting with him or making some kind of witty remarks. But I wasn't. No winky faces. No innuendos. Just two strangers chatting. Did I think he was cute? Yeah, I did -- emphasis on the past tense. Not anymore.

What goes through a person's mind to make them think, "I asked this girl I just met how her day was, but then she cut me off to do something else and now I'm so upset that she stopped giving me attention, so she must be teasing me and I don't think that's cool!" (insert grunting noises and armpit-itching here)?

You know where I think this line of reasoning comes from? Patriarchy. Of course it does. Some dude on the Internet felt he was so righteously entitled to my time and attention that when I dared to tell him "g2g ttyl", he threw a hissy fit like a three-year-old in the candy aisle.

I've got news for all the pushy, privileged, presumptive men in the world (online or otherwise) who think that a woman telling you (however kindly) she has something more pressing to do than to talk to you RIGHTTHISVERYINSTANT is in any way an assault to your egotistical power trip, an infraction upon your imaginary "right" to talk to her, or an attempt to undermine your pea-brained masculinity: women don't owe you shit.

Not our time. Not our attention. Not our money. Not our hearts. And certainly not our bodies.

Furthermore, if a woman does entertain a conversation with you, about any topic, and for any amount of time, that does not automatically mean she's teasing you. Newsflash: women don't exist for you to try to woo and sack, every time one of them interacts with you. And, accusing a woman, who has expressed no sexual interest in you whatsoever, of being a "tease" is probably the fastest way to get her to end your conversation for good. Ya know, just to be on the safe side, because I wouldn't want you to think I'm "leading you on" when I'm talking to you about the weather.

I Think I Finally Know What I Want To Be When I Grow Up

I want to be a writer. I mean, obviously, I already am a writer. I am writing; so therefore, I am a writer. A writer is someone who writes.

What I mean is, I want to be a writer who writes things, and whose audience consists of more than my mother and a couple of other Facebook friends who also love me like my mother does. I want to be a writing badass. I want to publish my writing and get noticed. I want someone to pick up my work (or more realistically, open my pitch email) and think, "this girl gets it." I want to open my email inbox one fine morning and receive a message that says someone, somewhere wants to pay me to write my thoughts and feelings for them; that they could identify with it and that something I said or thought or felt helped them somehow.

I want an audience, because for so long, I have just been incessantly blabbing away to friends and family about things like feminism and Harry Potter and Taylor Swift and they nod their heads in agreement because they already know me. I want a captive and willing audience who chooses to click on my article because the title entices them, because the subject matter seems all too familiar to them in their everyday lives. I want my voice to be heard, even if it is only the way a hundred people imagine it in their heads through the Internet as they read my words on their tablets and iPhones during their busy days.

I want someone to understand that I need to get all this mumbo-jumbo out of my head and down through my fingertips, across my keyboard and into its destination in cyberspace where others will make sense of it all. I have to become a writer because I feel these ideas and opinions bouncing around inside of my heart and my brain and they're threatening to burst out of my seams if I do not unleash them right now. I have questions and answers and random late-night musings that simultaneously inspire and frighten me, and I just need to release them all before they consume me.

I want to be a writer when I grow up. It makes total sense. I have to. Words have always been my solace when I need to figure out my problems. Words have always been the most lethal weapon in my arsenal for fighting battles when I am angry, the most illustrative tool at my disposal for defending my passions. Words have always cropped up in my mind's eye, equally as fast as a Google search, when people ask me for synonyms. Words have never escaped me, even when the moment is just so good; because I always have some obscure vocabulary word, resting in the back of mind, waiting for the appropriate moment.

So I have to be a writer. There is nothing else in the world that comes so easily to me or makes this much sense. Writing is a clear talent of mine, and I have always been confident about it.

I've been aware of my love affair with words since kindergarten when Mrs. McIntosh made me  recite the alphabet backwards in front of the class, just because my mother told her I could. I have been flirting with words since I went to the County Spelling Bee in third grade, and when I made Alec Trent runner-up a few years later because I knew better than he did that "mayonnaise" had more than one n. The sweetness of words was clear to me when I started my first journal in middle school, where I could safely unload my puberty-ridden emotions. Words have seduced me since before I enrolled in my first French class as a freshman in high school; already eager to learn more words in a different language, five whole years before I'd travel to the country and speak the Language of Love I'd borrowed with natives. Yes, I have always had a magnetic attraction to words. So, why wouldn't I be a writer?

Words help me feel all kinds of emotion - every single one of them, in fact - but most of all, they bring me joy. I have always loved taking my time to choose the one that fits best, and beaming with pride as I piece together my finished sentence. It is so clear to me now, that I don't quite know why I ever thought I should pursue anything else. I want to be a writer.