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.

Privileged

As a feminist and an agent for social change, I talk about privilege a lot. I refer to privilege as it oppresses minorities in any sense of the word. All kinds of privilege exist in the world. There's white privilege, male privilege, straight privilege, cis privilege, skinny privilege... and the list continues. In fact, I spend so much time thinking about privilege as it oppresses me, that I don't spend enough time thinking about privilege as it applies to me. I am so privileged.

I mean, sure, I'm a woman. But that's really about my only demeaning characteristic (sarcasm). I have four functioning limbs, a very operational brain, exactly zero terminal illnesses, a sufficient amount of money in my bank account, plenty of clothes in my closet, good food in my fridge, and way too much homework to do. I am employed at a paying job and I have a vehicle to drive myself home to see my family whenever I want. I make decisions pretty much at my own leisure and I answer only to myself. I am, by definition, privileged.

priv·i·lege

ˈpriv(ə)lij/

noun

1. 1.

    a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group of people.
2. 
   

As a young white woman who was born in America in the last decade of the twentieth century, my brain can't wrap itself around the concept of not going to school, of not wearing clothes just because I like them, of not making my own decisions, of not having an inherent right to be heard and respected as a person. And after almost twenty years of living with and benefiting from all of these modern comforts, I am used to it. That is privilege.

Furthermore, as an indirect beneficiary of the women who have come - years, decades - before me, don't I think I owe it to them to make something out of myself? To never use my privilege for evil, but only to promote the good of feminism? To ascertain a career position for myself to continue their positive influence in the world? Don't I think that Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Charlotte Perkins Gilman would relish in seeing me walk across the stage as I graduate from a university? Don't I think I make Gloria Steinem proud when I call out slut-shaming and double standards in casual conversation? Wouldn't Betty Friedan be happy to know that I don't ever let a man silence me with any form of the "get back in the kitchen" defense argument? Shouldn't I take an immense deal of pride in being afforded the privilege to take these actions that I brush off so nilly-willy as if I am entitled to them? (Well, because really, they should be rights...)

Women had to fight for a lot of things throughout history (and we still do). The women before me fought for my right to vote, my right to hold office, my right to own property, my right to run a business, my right to divorce an abusive husband, my right to come forward (and be believed) if I am raped (still fighting for that one), my right to love who I want, how I want, when I want, where I want. My foremothers fought a lot of battles for me to be where I am today and somehow, we* still complain about so much in our lives.

"I can't find anything to wear."  I have not one, but two, closets full of all kinds of clothing to dress me from summer to winter and back again. Perhaps most exciting for feminism, I own a lot of pants. I have slacks, jeans, sweatpants, yoga pants, basketball shorts, and even short shorts. And I can wear any of them, anytime, whenever I feel like it. That is a privilege June Cleaver certainly never appeared to possess. Don't get me wrong, I love a good skirt or a fun dress. (Because the only thing better than being allowed to wear pants is not wearing pants.) But the point is, I have the choice to decide when I want to wear a dress. Women have not always been so lucky. Additionally, I do not live in a patriarchal theocracy where religion and men dictate that I must cover all of my skin but my eyes. I do not have to sweat during the interminable Kansas summer under a hijab or a burqa. In fact, I can wear a bikini to a public swimming pool full of other girls in bikinis if I choose. (And become a victim of objectification, but that's another blog entirely.)

"I have too much homework to do, and I don't feel like studying."  I attend a university where students have to pay thousands of dollars to do the homework they are assigned. Women fought for me to be able to attend college. And yet, I have the audacity to complain about having homework? How dare I. My feminist foremothers would be disappointed in me. I am so grateful that I can safely go to school every day and learn about the world around me, finding ways to use my privilege to help others. I appreciate being able to choose from a long list of majors and electives, to customize my individual education to be exactly what I want it to be. I can learn other languages, classical literature, history, even math and science. Yet I complain about having to learn the very subjects women fought hardest for? Mary Wollstonecraft is frowning on me. She fought for me to have this right and here I am, flippantly procrastinating my homework.

"I don't want to go in to work today."  There are plenty of people - women and men alike - around the world, even in this country, who do not have jobs. Nor do they have jobs with as truly wonderful colleagues as I do. As for women in the workplace? Well, that is only a recent invention as far as history goes. A number of reasons have held women back from excelling in their careers, from having children to institutionalized patriarchy in the form of sexist supervisors who refuse to recognize female success. Not to mention the national statistic that I believe should be common knowledge: Women make 77 cents to every dollar their male counterparts make. (Don't get upset if she asks you to pay for dinner.) I have a wonderful, rewarding job. But if I wanted to find another job and quit the one I have now, I could. I could find another job to work during college to provide an income for myself to buy food to eat and clothes to wear. I can choose virtually any kind of job in Wichita, and I likely wouldn't be discriminated against on the sole basis of my being a woman. I should never complain about "having" to go to work, after so many women before me helped secure the existence of working women in the first place.

Oftentimes we* complain so much about what we view as the "bad parts" of life. When in reality, we* are quite privileged. Our foremothers so passionately fought for us, and many of them died before ever seeing much of the progress they helped achieve. So don't we* owe it to them (and most of all, to ourselves) to be living, breathing legacies of their values and sacrifices through all of our successes? We are privileged by the rights they gave us to choose. As privileged individuals, we should help make these privileges cease to exist as rights only for ourselves. We should use our privilege to help make these privileges become rights for the women in future generations, as our foremothers did for us. The next time you feel like complaining about your life, think about all that has been sacrificed in order for you to succeed. Then, go forth and succeed like they did for us.

{ *I use the word "we" to mean "white straight women in America" because that is the only perspective that I can truly narrate, having lived it myself. }