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.
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