Home

from whence ye came

  Message

whats up?

  me

who is mineapple?

  art

self-explanatory

  commissions open!

want me to draw something for you?

  Art Blog

just the arty bits

 

ontopofgravity:

I am so so utterly fed up of how oblivious men seem to be (and if they’re not oblivious it’s conscious selfishness which is even worse) when it comes to their taking of women’s time. i’m talking strange women, women who have no connection with these men except to be unfortunate enough to be a captive audience.

This morning i made a nine hour journey from one country to another, beginning with a 6am tram ride to the train station. I was the only person at the tram stop apart from a middle-aged man, no one anywhere else around (to be expected that early on a sunday). He asked me when the tram was coming, i politely told him, and then went back to checking train times on my phone. He proceeded to ask me where i was going, where was i coming from, what was i doing in the city, did i have family here, how long had i been staying, where was i born, what was i studying. i kept my answers short, not wanting to refuse to engage with him (as there was no one else around and i didn’t want to aggravate him) but not in any way trying to encourage him. He then sat down next to me and started telling me his life story until the tram arrived.

Later, i’m on the plane and this one guy is standing next to the queue and trying to banter with the air stewardesses while they’re boarding people. The same man ends up sat in the row behind me, next to a woman maybe 5-10 years older than me. same thing happened to her: this man talked at her for the entire two hour plane journey, ignoring her short, blunt responses and obvious lack of interest. he talked at her about his children, his opinion about schools these days, about national service, about politics. He made full use of his captive audience- she had quite literally nowhere to go, and women are taught to be polite. we cannot bring ourselves to say “I’m not interested in talking to you, please leave me alone.” In some situations, it could be dangerous to say that. 

A few months ago I was on a train to Coventry, a long journey for which I’d brought a book to read, so I could use the time to study. I took the window, and a man sat in the aisle seat next to me. He talked at me for the entire journey. I was polite, I nodded, I responded where expected, and every time the subject was clearly over, I opened my book up and began to read again. Literally every time, for the whole journey, no sooner had I started to read than this man would begin a new topic of conversation. At one point he’d clearly run out of topics and asked me about the book, and I quite bluntly told him it was something I needed to read for my studies, and turned back to the page. He launched into his opinions about philosophy. The cycle continued.

Another time, I was on the train from King’s Cross to Cambridge and a man sat next to me and struck up conversation with me quite at random- he would stop and turn back to his newspaper when he felt like it, and I would start reading my book, but then he would start talking to me again when he got bored of his paper. The entire interaction was on his terms, for his benefit; he didn’t care that I was reading, he only cared that he didn’t want to read, but wanted to talk to the strange woman sitting next to him.

I am so tired of men assuming they are entitled to women’s time as a form of entertainment when they want, of men seeing women as receptacles for male opinions, of men taking advantage of social situations that women can’t easily leave. It doesn’t seem to matter if you don’t engage in the conversation, if your body language says you’re not comfortable, if you’ve got a book or headphones or some other prop that clearly shows you’re doing something else and don’t want to interact with them. I am so tired of social conventions that teach women to feel ashamed if they don’t politely accept these intrusions.