a pet peeve

Shortly after I moved to Chicago, I was on my way to the gym one Saturday morning when a man who was walking toward me held out his hand in one of those, "excuse me, Miss?" gestures. It wasn't at all rude and he didn't encroach upon my personal space, which is why I took off my headphones. He proceeded to tell me how good he thought I looked (apparently, the 'just rolled out of bed' look really does do it for some people) and asked for my phone number. I politely told him I couldn't do that; partly because I wasn't about to prove right any of the 'naive small town girl in the big city' stereotypes but mainly because it caught me entirely off guard. That shit just doesn't happen to me.

The first couple times his number showed up on my cell phone, I ignored it. Eventually, I picked it up, we chatted for a bit, and he asked me out. Strike that, he asked me what kind of wine I liked and if I wanted to come over to his place. Um, yeah...a world of no. We eventually agreed to meet at T's Restaurant & Bar for lunch that weekend. We ate, we chatted and we had a perfectly fine time. He was really quite attractive and perfectly polite and very obviously made a genuine attempt to get to know me during lunch. But for several reasons, at that point in time, I just wasn't having it so we went our separate ways after our meeting, with me having no intention of seeing him again. Obviously, he didn't feel the same way because he called again. And again. And again. Not in an obnoxious, every-half-an-hour way...he called maybe every few days or so. Eventually, I talked to a male friend about it because Clueless Me had absolutely no idea how to simply tell someone I wasn't interested in him and I remember him telling me, "unless you explicitly tell a guy you're not interested, chances are he's going to hang on to the hope that you are interested until you either are interested or you tell him otherwise."

So, I went with the latter. I answered his call one day and at first, told him I just wasn't ready for any kind of relationship, to which he responded with asking me when I thought that might change. No idea, pal. So, I told him I simply wasn't interested and that if that should ever change, I'll give him a call. And that was that.

I told you that story in order to give a little background as to why this one pisses me off as it does.

Woman Beaten After Rejecting Man's Advances

My biggest pet peeve is people with a sense of entitlement. People who believe they simply deserve whatever it is they want because they want it. I don't know how this woman told the man she wasn't interested but it doesn't matter. Because she said 'no' in whatever form in which she said it, he beat the piss out of her. He was under the assinine assumption that because he's a man, he's entitled to the woman of his choice. I've come to realize over the years why it is I feel so strongly about doing something, no matter how big or how small, to combat sexual assault. And toward the very top of that list is because I feel so strongly about people with an entitlement complex.

You can read all the books, articles, blogs, new stories there are out there involving violence against women (and for that matter, violence, in general) but it really boils down to this one, oh-so-simple fact.