Do You Got Balls?

Heterosexual men need to read this, again and again. As men, we tend to be so oblivious about all of what many women go through almost daily. A big shock to me was that video of a woman walking for 10 hours in NYC and being catcalled dozens of times. As men, we vaguely know that women can be occasionally harassed, but it is easy to forget about it, and in any case, most of us don't have any idea how bad it gets. I go through everyday in my life walking around, almost never being afraid of a stranger following me (unless it's a scary, empty neighborhood at night), or looking at me insistingly; never cautious or uncomfortable about someone talking to me in a supermarket or approaching me on the street; never feeling objectified, never having to worry whether I may have dressed "inappropriately" and "provocatively"; I don't ever worry about who's sitting next to me on the subway; I don't have to worry about people touching me in crowded trains, looking at my ass, at my boobs, at me generally with predatory eyes; nobody's honking at me, calling me sweetie or offering me to make me famous against a few pictures in underwear; I don't ever, ever think about the possibility of being raped (unless I go to jail, I guess); I don't worry that, when in a relationship, I might be beaten up or even killed. I live a safe life, and for the most part, the stress in my life comes from work or my own personal demons and insecurities, like any other human being.

Then I hear a man here or there complain because once every blue moon, he was approached by a gay man who hit on him. How shocked, how angry, how disgusted he gets! What kind of world do we live in where people can walk up to him and behave with him...the way he behaves ordinarily with women? Because, probably, what he really thinks is that he's treated like a woman--and that is degrading. Paradoxically that same man also thinks that fucking such an inferior being makes him a true male, as opposed to his gay counterparts, naturally.

So I am so lucky. Yet I don't want to call myself privileged because it would mean by definition that I have "special rights". What I have is what everyone should have. And most women in this world don't have it, and I keep forgetting about it.

I know so many men who, in private conversations, talk about women like Trump did in that stupid bus. About how they're gonna grab them by the pussies and many other poetic things alike. Or simply crack jokes about rape or sexual domination generally speaking. I know most of them do it out of ignorance and that is why we need to hear again and again of such painful yet awfully banal experiences. And to hell with those who after that still think sexism isn't a thing.

I am lucky again here because I grew up surrounded by people who didn't talk that way--or, I'd like to believe, think that way--about women.

Yet, I know that I have made women feel uncomfortable and probably still do occasionally, because of an insisting look at a woman I find attractive; because of an awkward and brainless sentence or joke I may have said to a female friend; because of a (justly or not) perceived attitude or position; or because I can get pushy and tenacious... So for those times I have been another source of discomfort--may have that stemmed from my cultural sheltered ignorance and insensitivity or not--for all those times I have been another one of those oppressors, I wish to sincerely apologize.

And if I can make two requests. First, may the closest of my female friends always remind me candidly and bluntly every time I cross the line and I become an oppressor or a sexist.

And second, let's stop saying of an assumedly brave person they have balls and of a coward they're pussies. That'll be a good start, yeah?