Angry Attraction, or: What the Hell is Wrong with People? Part II

I'm back so soon. Blogging has been on the back burner of my mind, and the smell is finally getting to me.  Most of my life I have avoided having a voice. Some people call that being shy. I am shy, but I don't know if avoiding my own humanness and the space I take up, is part of that. But blogging is definitely a way to express myself in a way that is comfortable to me. Dare I even announce that I am considering doing a 30 day challenge to blog every day? I worry that once I announce it, I will run away and stop blogging for two years, or just abandon this blog and start another one where no one can find me. (I'm always doing that. I don't even remember all the random blogs I've started. But, like I said, I run when I know I'm being read. I run when I hear my own voice being echoed back to me through my audience. Making a difference terrifies me. Affecting people terrifies me. Hurting anyone terrifies me. I live in terror. I live in terror. But that's not what this blog is about.)

This blog is a continuation of the premise I started in the last blog, as promised. 

As I said, I was once married to Mr. Downright Abusive. We lived across the street from a family with a teenaged girl. This girl was long-legged and skinny and in the summer she wore short shorts. More than once I saw her practicing cheerleading with her friend in her front yard. 

One of these times, Mr. Abusive was home and when he saw the girls across the street, flew into a rage, pacing around the living room, . 

"I can't believe her mom lets her go outside dressed like that," he boomed. "She looks like a whore. If she were my daughter, I would tell her she looks like a whore. I should go out there and tell her to put some clothes on. 'Put some clothes on!'" He yelled from behind the safety of our living room window. He started pacing again, an oak tree of a man fueled with aggression. 

I leaned back in my chair. Our living room was very small and his smoking rage filled the space, burning me, choking me. 

"There are men driving by. What do you think they're thinking about when they see her? I can't believe her mom lets her dress like that. She's basically advertising that she wants to have sex. You only dress like that if you want men to look at you and think of sex. She's just asking to get raped."

His anger was heading down the roller coaster, so it was my turn to pipe in and maybe diffuse the situation. "As someone who was once a teenage girl," I said. "I never thought I was advertising that I wanted to have sex. I only thought I looked cute. And I wanted guys to think I looked cute. It never occurred to me that they would think anything else. I think I was twenty-five before I realized how dangerous my clothes could be."

"Do you think it's okay that she's out there dressed like that?"

"I think it's important for her to feel attractive for herself, and she's in her own front yard with a friend, so she's not in any danger. So yeah. I wouldn't dress like that out there, but she doesn't have the same values as me, so I can't expect her to make the same clothing choices as me." (Remember I was still very Mormon at the time.)

"So if you were her mom you would let her just walk around like that?" he demanded. 

"As her mother? I don't think there would be any stopping her. I wouldn't buy her those clothes, but if she's old enough to have a job she'll buy them herself, or borrow her friend's."

"I wouldn't let her out of the house. She shouldn't be in public where people can see her. I would call her a whore. A whore!" He directed this toward the window, where the, thankfully oblivious, girls continued practicing. 

"And she would hate you," I said. "It's a good thing you never had any daughters. That's not how you talk to them. And she would just sneak behind your back and wear the clothes anyway. She'd get dressed at a friend's house. You wouldn't stop anything. You'd only make things worse."

"I just can't watch this. It's like pornography." He shut the blinds, leaving the room dark. 

First off, I wanted to illustrate Mr. Abusive's rage towards someone minding their own business. 

My second point isn't about vilifying Mr. Downright Abusive and making this about his assholery. While, yes, he was/is an asshole, this isn't about that. Most of us have seen someone, maybe from a distance, who gave us a visceral reaction. The reason we found them extremely attractive doesn't matter, it only matters that it happened. Our intense attraction to them may spur us into action and we find out the attraction is mutual. There are plenty of stories about seeing someone from across the room and "I just knew they were the one and now we've been married for 89 years". But there are plenty of other, less pleasant, reactions: anger, criticism, sexual harassment, I could keep going but you get the idea. 

Some people might feel that "eyes meeting across the room" attraction and approach the person, only to discover the feeling is not mutual. Time to bow out, bro.

What I'm really saying is that feeling an extreme attraction towards someone does not mean anything. Your feelings don't justify any behavior toward them. Your feelings are not their problem. They don't deserve to be judged or criticized, or blamed, or attacked, or even approached. They are not asking for anything. They are simply out in public in the way they want to present themselves. Frankly, I am shocked and outraged by the level of resistance this perspective gets. 

These are very real comments I have read online:

"Women can be nice to men without men thinking they are flirting, unless the woman is off the charts attractive."

"She obviously wants attention, otherwise she wouldn't have dressed like that."

"Women's self-esteem is based on men paying attention to them."

"You're probably just butt-ugly. Stop making up stories about men pay attention to you."

"Men catcalling to women is very rare."

"This is harmless behavior and women need to stop acting like victims."

So. Much. Misogyny.

Yes, I'm still angry.