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Old 08-14-2005, 11:25 PM   #1 (permalink)
Gilda
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Location: Out on a wire.
Being felt up in public.

This started as a journal entry, but then I nearly put it in the Ladies Lounge, but I think here will work as well, as it isn't really just a woman's issue.

Last Thursday Sissy and I were at the mall engaging in one of our favorite activities: Trying on clothing we had no intention of buying. It's late summer, so it's a little crowded even on a Thursday afternoon, filled with teenagers and parents buying back to school clothes, and kids just hanging out in groups (don't they have houses or parks or empty parking lots behind the 7-11 where they can hang out?). Sissy keeps running into friends from school, and she takes off to hang out with them. Teenagers; don't want to be embarassed by their fuddy-duddy older sisters, I guess. Especially when the older sister is an instructor at their University and they want to gripe about instructors.

So I'm by myself, and I head into the little hobby store, where they have among the model rockets, cars, and trains, K'Nex sets and so forth, what I'm looking for, collectible miniatures and statuettes. I'm hoping there's some rare chance that they'll have a Phoenix Heroclix. I found one at the San Diego Comicon, but the guy there wanted $100.

There's essentially about a dozen nerdy looking guys, the clerks, also nerdy-looking guys, and a geeky looking girl, me. I was wearing my typical summer wear, mid-thigh denim skirt, full-length cranberry spaghetti-strapped cotton tank with built in bra, matching canvas tennis shoes. Nothing overtly sexy or provocative, just typical young woman summer clothes, and a lot less revealing than most of the girls were wearing that day.

They didn't have the Phoenix Heroclix, so I'm standing at the display case of maquettes (small bust style statuettes) trying to decide whether to get the new Hawkgirl they have there, when a guy sidles up beside me.

I'm used to sidlers from having been among them many times at the comic shop. Some of the guys are so awkward around girls that rather than just come up and talk to me, they'll sidle up. Kinda cruise up slowly nearby, pretending to look at whatever is on the rack I'm looking at, and get very close, occasionally rubbing up against me. I've learned that one good counter is if the guy doesn't leave soon, I can turn to him, look him in the eye, smile, and say, "Hi." This usually cases them to turn red and retreat to wherever they came from. I have no idea why. Other times I just walk away myself, but this has proven to be less effective than the "Hi" defense, as sometimes they follow me to my new location if I don't leave the store.

You know, as an aside, I've read online that some women don't read comic books because the only place they're readily available is in comic shops, and some women are a bit reluctant to go into such places. Someday I'll try to figure out why this is.

So I'm looking at the display of maquettes, and the sidler comes up beside me. It isn't Cat Piss Man, whom I have encountered a couple of times in his various incarnations, but it's enough to make me a little uncomfortable. I'm debating whether to just walk off, or scare the crap out of him by saying hello, but he takes it up another level and makes the decision for me. He put his hand on my breast. Oh, I have no doubt that he had some excuse formed that he would consider plausible deniability, but this was unmistakable. He reached out in front of me, as if reaching for something on display on the shelf just past me, and his hand landed on my breast, where it lingered for a bit.

I turned and left the shop, called Sissy and told her I was going home, asking if maybe she could get a ride with one of her friends. She must have heard something in my voice that told her I was upset, because she came to meet me and go home with me.

I ended up crying on Grace's shoulder that evening, and didn't have a real pleasant night.

I talked with Grace about it, and I'll talk to my therapist, but I can't help that it makes me feel small every time something like this happens. I've tried to figure out what it is that makes the guys target me like this. It's been a long time since I've encountered the hand on my breast, but I've gotten more than my share of being rubbed against and hands on my rear.

I've tried to identify what it is about me that guys see that makes them think it's ok to pull this stuff. I've talked with Grace and Sissy, and it doesn't happen to them, or at least very seldom with Sissy, and never with Grace. Grace says that if the same thing had happened to her, she would have very forcefully removed his hand--there's a way of maniplating the hand and wrist that's very painful pretty much gives you control over the other person just with a few pounds of pressure on that one part of the body, and she's very good at it. She says that's why the guys leave her alone.

But how do they know that she's going to humiliate them and I'm just going to walk away upset? I mean, sure, just looking at us you can see that she's a lot more formidable physically than I am, but still, an observer, a stranger like the guy who felt me up, who was over six feet and probably 230 or 240 plus, for a guy that size, there really isn't much difference between my 110 lbs. and Grace's 135 lbs. We're both still tiny compared to a guy like that. I know that he could basically have his way with me and snap me like a twig if that's what he wanted, while if he messed with Grace he'd likely end up in the emergency room, but there's no way for him to know that just by observing us.

And it isn't that I dress provocatively and invite it. I wear mostly relatively conservative casual dresses, or skirt and top sets. Grace typically shows more skin than I do, and is built like a Playboy centerfold. And I'm not trying to imply that women who do dress provocatively or show a lot of skin deserve such treatment. They don't.

So I can't help but come to one of two conclusions. First, I'm imagining things and overreacting. The rubbing and hands on my rear are just accidents that I read too much into. This doesn't make sense to me, as I've been in all of those situations where a guy rubbed up against me and a hand ended up on my rear or this time, my breast, and I've never ended up rubbing myself up against someone or accidetnly put my hand on a woman's (or man's for that matter) butt or breast. And the women don't rub up against me or "accidently" put a hand on my butt.

The other conclusion is that I'm doing something to invite this. This doesn't make sense either. There's no way a guy can know just by looking at me that I'm so skittish about that kind of contact that he can do so safely and all I'll do is walk away. There's no way to know just by looking at Grace that she'll have his wrist contorted at a very painful angle the moment his hand ends up in the wrong place.

So I'm wondering, are they targeting me, or do they target all women and just leave those with what Grace calls her "Don't fuck with me mojo" alone? Or maybe it is all incidental, and I'm imagining it because I'm oversensitive to such things.

Sissy gets the occasional hand on her rear, but shrugs it off as no big deal, all a part of being female in the US. If the guy is anywhere in the vicinity of cute, I'm half conviced that she enjoys it and is flattered.

Most of that probably makes little sense, but that's how it runs through my head as I'm trying to make sense of it all, trying to find some way of making it fit in my mind.

I'm doing ok, but I think I'm in an acute state of cognitive dissonance. I can't find a way to fit this information into my head, a way to have it make sense. Either I'm imagining it or the guys who do this sort of thing have some sort or magical radar that tells them which girls are going to react which way, and neither of those really fit with my experience. I can't assimilate the information, but I don't know how to accommodate it.

Gilda
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