I Don’t Hang Around For Unpleasant Words

I’ve said a few times, I don’t experience street harassment because I limit my walking in public.  On the rare occasions I do, it’s not in places where street harassment thrives.  Further, I don’t even experience harassment online because I choose to interact with people who don’t play those games.  So imagine my surprise when…

*wavy lines*

My friend suggested I become a member of an online community. I forgot about it until the following day, I got a message from the group administrator.  I was in.

After an initial hour of back and forth messages from men who should know better than to say certain things to women (one asked for my dimensions), I decided to take some time to observe them.  I noticed there were women in the group but those women didn’t say anything until I’d been hit with several message from men who should know better.  I can’t stress that enough.  These men should know better.

Then 300Sandwiches.com happened.  They (men and women) had lots to say about that. The men seemed to have something less than complimentary to say in most of their comments about vagina’d humans.

I noticed, in all of the posting they did (so much so that I turned off the notifications because cellphone battery juice is too valuable to be wasted with foolishness), there was very little in the way of positive messages or even general support.  At the same time I was congratulating a friend on his upcoming Ted Talk, these people were knee-deep in foolishness.  And if I call it foolishness, it must be foolery with nary redeeming quality.

Somehow, in all of that, I missed that someone had posted this:

Finally, did you all welcome that ‘NASTY PLAY ON MY REAL NAME’ HERE broad in here properly? I didn’t see any impromptu trains being run; lines being crossed – redrawn – and crossed again; a running assessment of her credit and/or credentials. Hell, I just ran a quick backgrounder and it looks like she’s from Detroit . . . is she one of Kwame’s jump-offs? is she the reason why the city is broke? was she tossing Joe Dumars’ salad during the 2003 NBA draft and that’s why the Pistons picked Darko? Somebody pass me the dossier.

That was my cue to exit stage left.  First, who writes that?  Second, who thinks that cute–especially with a stranger?  Third, it appears their behavior is acceptable to all the other women because they didn’t think twice about writing some of the stuff they wrote.

If you asked any of these men or women, they would think I was over-reacting.  But the shyt is rude.  I take special care to surround myself with civilized, thoughtful, sophisticated funny people online and in real life.  How 30+ year old people think it’s a good idea to write that kind of stuff (using their real names), to a woman they don’t even know?