Should I have been? I didn’t get a creepy vibe from him at all. Even though he had called me a name that, time and again, I find demeaning and sexist when applied to strangers, I wasn’t all that mad at him. I spent the next several blocks analyzing the interaction. Y inner feminist is telling me I should have at least said, “Don’t call me sweetie,” and is disappointed in me for giving him a pass for being older. Or… had my instincts been wrong, and was he just looking for excuses to insert himself into the day of a stranger he found attractive? Was he honestly asking? Was it just an extension of normal American greeting practices, where people ask you questions that you’re not really supposed to answer? I said “Hello,” back, accompanied by a smile.Īnd that’s when I started to panic a bit. but this time, for whatever reason, I didn’t. I normally have problems with strangers calling me “sweetie,” “honey,” “darling,” etc. I didn’t have any reason to assume he might give me unwarranted, unwanted attention, but I’ve gotten so used to being hassled by men when it’s just me and them on a sidewalk that my body started to tense a bit as I approached. I kept walking up the block, and soon realized I was going to be passing the guy in the chair. I couldn’t help it - I smiled, and gave a slight chuckle. I know, right? It was super freaking cute. As they left, the baby waved over his (I’m assuming) dad’s shoulder back at the man in the chair. They finished up quickly, and the man with the baby moved on. I got the feeling the guy in the folding chair was a fixture of the neighborhood. When he reached the storefront, he stopped and chatted with the man in the chair for a moment or two. I came upon a little corner store, where a man was sitting in a folding chair out front.Īpproaching from the other side was a young guy with a baby clinging to his shoulder. One particular day in the recent past, there was some construction going on along my usual walking route back to the 24th Street Station, so I had to take a detour down a different street. Forty minutes of walking twice a week won’t kill me.
And besides, I’m a (fairly) young, able-bodied adult. It adds another 30 minutes to the trip, but even when I drive, I usually spend about that much time trying to find parking (if you haven’t experienced it yourself, finding street parking in most of SF is a fool’s errand). The office is juuuust far enough from a station that driving is more convenient, but parking in the neighborhood is a nightmare. To get there, I usually take BART, the San Francisco area’s subway network. One of them requires me to go into an office twice a week
HE CALLS ME SWEETIE SERIES
Because who among us is a perfect feminist? Let’s talk about all the blatantly sexist songs, actors with questionable pasts, and infuriating on-the-street interactions that so many of us have complicated emotions about.Īs a freelancer, I work a series of part time gigs.
Welcome to Worst Feminist Ever, a new, ongoing column where Jody Amable examines all the times she could have been a perfect feminist, but wasn’t.
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