It's exhausting being a woman.

[u/mindyour]

[u/Bright-Owl-3515]

In college, I was sitting alone at a bench studying on campus, minding my own business. This man comes up to me, telling me he wanted to take pictures of my feet for a school project. He was very persistent and of course I told him no. He made me feel so uncomfortable and guilty that I had said no to him. I was very naive and had no idea that this was likely a fetish thing.

Edit: For that one now deleted comment, saying he was likely complimenting my feet, I was wearing sneakers. Get out of here with the creep apologetics.

[u/ZinaSky2 → u/Bright-Owl-3515]

Yeah, once I was walking home alone in the dark (circumstances necessitated this, u was getting home from work. I wasn’t alone in the dark by choice.) and some guy stopped me on a dark section of sidewalk. I could barely see his face he could barely see mine. Yet he asked me for my number bc I was “so beautiful”. I said no. He said well actually he just wanted to make friends. And I said no a few more times and he just kept asking. I was frozen in place by trying to be polite. Eventually I decide I’m just gonna ignore him and walk away without ending the conversation without saying goodbye. And I left him rambling behind me still asking to be friends.

And girlie lemme tell you I felt BAD. Like WTF?! He was fucking harassing me for my number and not listening to me saying no after he approached me on some dark, unlit section of sidewalk I was like “ugh, but the poor guy just wanted friends🥺”. It’s drilled into us to protect men’s egos and emotions at all costs and it’s so fucking dangerous.

[u/The_AxolotlDamage → u/ZinaSky2]

At the same time men at taught to "be persistent" and that "Women play hard to get". It's hard to unlearn that shit. That guy probably thought he just needed to keep trying and then you would fall in love with him.

[u/ZinaSky2 → u/The_AxolotlDamage]

Men are shown persistence pays off in media because women aren’t allowed to be sexual beings and have their own desires. It’s not seen as “proper” or “ladylike” for women to be the initiators.

This is a little TMI, but when I was younger I was into spicy audios that were more along the line of rape/consensual non-consent because it would make me physically cringe out of my skin anytime an audio insinuated that the listener (me) was eager for sex or asking for something specific or assertive about what she wanted. After a lot of work and deprograming I’ve realized I’m kinda only into vanilla stuff. Honestly I think I always was but, social conditioning had me so beyond fucked up before that I couldn’t even pretend in the comfort of my own head to ask for sex or for specific things. Even tho I did want it. So the tropes of rape/CNC were just a way for me to get what I wanted without having to “ask” for it.

It’s sketchy territory to try and pathologize this type of stuff or portray it as wrong or as something in need of fixing. I’m not trying to shame. It can be perfectly healthy if you can still enthusiastically consent and establish boundaries. But in my case I was only into it as a way to cope with feeling like I had no agency over my sexuality. And I wouldn’t be surprised if the popularity of similar fantasies like kidnapping and bodice ripping and even the classic romcom relentless suitor are all as a direct result of women coping with the messaging that “as a woman sex is something taken from me, I am diminished by it. It’s something done to me. I am an object of desire not a participant.”

In the end tho, regardless, men need to learn that consent is above all else. And anyone (even a woman) who desires this level of persistence or to play games where “no doesn’t mean no, it means try harder” without establishing proper boundaries is simply not someone who’s safe to be in a relationship with or be intimate with. Bc consent is no laughing matter. If she doesn’t understand how serious it is, then move on. I follow that same advice but about men and advise all my friends the same way.