In the US, it starts around the time they’re teenagers. On a dare, they holler at the young gal driving alone in her car or hit on her at a gas station… ‘that your truck?’ ‘yes, I guess so,’ ‘guess that makes you a Ford girl.’ ‘guess so.’ ‘Good, cause I like Ford girls.’
Maybe it’s around this age that every boy starts to figure out his voice. How much of a rise can they get out of girls? Will they just smile and keep on driving? Will they be polite and tell them nicely to go screw themselves? Will they ignore their taunts and suggestions? Or do boys ever think that a girl likes this kind of attention? Do they honestly believe that this is the way to hook a girl into running off to bed with them? Or do they just do it for machismo, to prove to their friends that their teeny weenies will one day grow up to sprout hairs?
It seems even more prevalent for me abroad. Especially in places where foreigners don’t tend to visit or that are not abound with white ladies. I wish I could just yell at them “I’m 45 years old,” or just conveniently find my umbrella knocking them off their high horses.
Women in these parts of the world are told to be meek, not to look men in the eyes. Many women never meet their husbands in this part of the world until their wedding night. “Love” marriages (versus arranged marriages) are seen as scandalous. Women that have had boyfriends before their marriages are tainted. They are not as good as a woman who has never had a boyfriend.
Granted, this puts a good distance between the sexes. But at what cost? A woman becomes no more than the caste of her family, her education, and her dowry. How can you shop for a wife by her resume? Men are allowed to be lusty and encouraged to conquer as many girls during their vibrant years until marriage comes and then they still have the lust for multiple women.
This places some quite interesting happenings for a woman abroad. Many hola’s, bonjour’s, hello’s, are interspersed with ‘how do you feel about love at first look?’ ‘hello, I love you, won’t you tell me your name?’ and ‘pretty woman, walking down the street.’ The ones that make me smile are still not enough to make me turn to the man and say, ‘yes, love at first look is the only thing I believe in,’ or ‘why thank you kind sir for serenading me as I meander down the road. Let’s run off to bed before our religions and languages get in between us!’
The mindset that men and women are not equally respected is hard enough for me to stomach. So when a group of young guys sees me walk by and tries out their newly acquired English curse words [I want f*** you, you f*** I want], or when a guy persistently follows me after I’ve turned 10 times in different directions to get him to leave me alone all I want to do is scream at them and say, ‘Do I look like I want to mess with your crap?!?! Be respectful of women little boy or you will never find a woman who will truly love you without disgust of you in her heart!”
Today was an I-hate-this-place day.
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