Men Behaving Badly

Although our country has made a lot of progress in women's rights with females running for President and VP and presiding over Congress, I still wait for the day when women can walk down a street or go out with her friends without fear of being objectified.

On Friday I had to go get a park permit across town. As I wandered around aimlessly trying to find the DC Park and Rec Office, I passed be all these men who just sat on stoops ogling females who walked by. Although I never felt in physical danger because it was during the day and busy in the neighborhood with many police around, and although these things are easy to ignore in theory, dealing with catcalls was just something I did not want to deal with while lost on a sweltering hot day.

Just a day later, I went out with my roommate to Adam's Morgan, which is usually not my "scene" but we were out to celebrate a friend's birthday. It was disturbing to see men lined around the walls just staring at women half their age dance. They didn't even try to hide it, they just stared. While we were walking down the stairs, this guy grabbed this female's butt and then hid behind me. The woman thought my roommate and I grabbed her butt while the creep behind me just chuckled. Even if you're drunk, why would you do that?

It reminds me a lot of the serial assaults that happen around college campuses. When I was at UCLA, there was the "boob grabber," who would run up behind female students and grab their breasts, then ran away. They never caught him even though he did this a dozen times during the day. Maybe he transferred to American and changed his MO, because over the past year, there have been incidents of a man coming up behind women and grabbing their butts, and then running away.

I think this is why the "VPILF" comments bother me so much. The ogling and catcalling does not just come from construction workers. This kind of attitude towards women comes from men across the country (and world), from all races, and up and down the economic spectrum. Pardon me if I sound like a "feminazi," but how are women supposed to achieve equal opportunity in education, the workplace, or in the home when men still see women as sexual objects?