When is it going to end?

Posted on November 12, 2024 by borysSNORC

Walking down the stairs to breakfast this morning I had my first ever slightly ‘off’ interaction with a man in Japan. 🙁

Now, I’m well very travelled and I think because of my extremely pale appearance, in some countries I seem to have gotten way more than my fair share of unwanted male attention – in numerous countries over the years actually. It started back when I was in my 20s with men in Italy, Greece and Turkey who would skeeze onto me in various ways with varying levels of ‘ick’.

The Italians guys it was always a kind of playful pick up attempt: “You want to see my scoot?!”, with a wink and a gesture to a Vespa that no self respecting Aussie bloke would ever be seen riding! With Greek guys, they would more direct and unfortunately were also a bit handsy with their approaches – like coming over real close to me and touching my necklace then commenting on how pretty it was, or touching my blonde hair and then getting close enough to smell you, while making a comment about blue eyes… just ick! Turkish men were always (at least outwardly) a little more romantically inclined in their come-ons, “Hey lady! Hey lady! You have dropped something – it is my heart, should you pick it up?!”, which would make you smile but would also make you glad that you are travelling in a pack of friends. I got so much unsolicited attention on my first big European adventure that the other girls were frequently joking that I had ‘FUCK ME’ tattooed on my forehead… I mean, I was always dressed like the povo backpacker I was – usually in 3/4 pants and a t-shirt or a polo shirt. I never wore tank tops or yoga pants the way girls do these days, never wore clothes that showed off cleavage or leg and yet, was always copping it.

As I got older, I sadly got kinda used to it – resigned to it, even – in most places… the lecherous glances if you were stupid enough to walk somewhere alone in the kasbah in Marrakech. The awful sKeezy fucker rubbing up against me on a Tube on the London Underground – Jesus, if that happened now I would raise all hell, but before the #MeToo, this was just the day to day situation fucking shitty, but totally normal that was the background noise of my life. I remember one occasion when I had drunken football hooligan following me from carriage to carriage on the Tube until I sat down with a huge guy and asked him to ‘be my friend’ for a few minutes.

In Pakistan, it ramped up a notch. Unwanted attention felt seriously creepy and even dangerous as you know even simple interactions can have serious repercussions – like the tailor’s assistant who brushed his hand against my thigh (twice!) felt like a full on assault compared to the dude pushing his erection into my thigh on a Tube packed like sardines. In China, I had men pulling on my hair so hard that it would snap my head backwards, and it happened so frequently, I resorted to tying it up and hiding it under a baseball cap, even indoors… I also had two absolute arseholes do a ‘fake sneeze and then face plant into my boobs’ manoeuvre in China – grown men acting like immature little highschool shits. Which is no small part of why I have no desire to ever go back there!

I honestly thought this shit would lessen as I got older, but it only seems to totally go away when I’m walking around with a man beside me which is fucking sad and depressing all round, but I acknowledge that for now at least, it just is what it is… it’s obviously not typical of the behaviour I experience around all men, but these entitled, immature or clueless fuckers are everywhere. 🙁

Anyway here, this morning, we were coming down to breakfast and Mr K left something in the room and went back up for it and I continued on down the stairs and into the dim restaurant corridors by myself. and a kitchen staffmember stepped out of a doorway in front of me… I was wearing my yukata and hanten coat (which is to say dressed in extremely modest ankle length attire) and my hair was freshly washed so was hanging around my shoulders instead of up in its usual bun. He smiled widely and spoke to me in rapid Japanese. I crossed my hands and indicated to him that I spoke no Japanese and he said in broken English, “You. Very beautiful. Look good. Yukata nice.”, which would have been fine, but he was gesturing with his hands as he did so; he touched his head to his shoulders (indicating he meant my long blonde hair), and then from his shoulders to his hip in a curvy motion, familiar the world over to mean ‘Girl, I’ve noticed your tits and curvy hips under there!’ In a culture where every one is so polite, it was unexpected and completely changed the tone of his original smile which I had originally just taken for friendly, but now had a leery kinda feel.

I hit 50 years old a little while ago… I’m not young anymore. I’m not fit or slender in anyway and have often been noted to be in possession of a fairly solid and well established resting bitch face. So why won’t they leave me alone? This interaction feels like such a stupid little thing to leave such a big impression, but I’m over it. Why can’t I just go about my day on my own, and not feel inspected, judged, and imposed upon? Why do men feel free to tell you what they think like this? I don’t want to know, think or care about what they think, all it does is remind me I’m not safe.

When is it going to end?

America… are you okay?

Posted on May 1, 2020 by borysSNORC

In 1997 I made my first trip to the US. Upon going through Immigration, a largish and somewhat surly black female border control officer told me:

“You can not stay here on this visa. You have to go home, you know that right?”

Being a relatively young solo traveller, I didn’t yet know that border control is the one place you just smile and nod no matter what. Instead I responded with a rather jet-lagged and kinda lippy:

“Why the hell would I want to say here? I’m Australian.”

One very filthy look, and one super aggressively stamped passport, later – I was processed and allowed to enter the country.

In March this year, Trump touted there would be an estimated 60,000 US deaths from Covid-19 by August, however this number has been exceeded in APRIL already. The new projection Trump is embracing shows 74,000 deaths by August now… but the way things are going, they will hit that (and then some) before mid-May, not months from now in August. 😢

At this time, in the middle of this pandemic* I’ve never been so glad to be Australian and my heart is just breaking for our American friends.

* even with our stupid and hypocritical PM insisting that schools should reopen without sufficient evidence that there are no long term detrimental health impacts for children exposed to coronavirus.

Covfefe, The Best of

Posted on June 4, 2017 by borysSNORC

Unfortunately, most of the authorship of these memes has been lost in the frenzied retweeting that occurred following the covrfefe clusterfuck. Apologies.

Trump is only a symptom

Posted on October 20, 2016 by borysSNORC

About ten years ago, I was managing a seminar for one of the best trainers in the world. There’s an exercise called Secrets. The room is darkened and then everybody in the room, including most of the staff, has to put their hands over their eyes, or put their heads down on their desk.

Then the trainer goes through a list of questions.

“If you have ever … raise your hand.”

Because I was the course manager, I had to keep my eyes open to make sure the room stayed safe. So I was able to see how many hands went up for each question.

Most of the questions were gentle, even harmless, but all of the questions were designed to be cathartic. But a number of the questions cut right down to the bone.

There are things people carry around inside, a lot of hurt and guilt and shame and fear, but there’s no safe place to unload those feelings, so the exercise allows some relief. The participants get to keep their secrets safe, but they get to acknowledge that they are holding these things that keep gnawing at them — they get to own that part of their identity.

This particular time, however, when the trainer asked questions about abuse, about rape, about violence — nearly every woman in the room raised her hand.

Now this was not a unique group of women. These were adult women of all ages, from early twenties to late sixties. Some were students, others were working women. Some were married, others were single or divorced. Some were highly skilled professionals. Some were strong family women.

“Have you ever been raped?” “Have you ever been molested?” “Have you ever been the target of physical or emotional abuse?” “Have you ever been made to feel ashamed of your identity?” “Have you ever held yourself back…?”

And worse.

Observing this for the first time, I felt tears running down my cheeks because of the level of pain in the room. All those pale hands, silent in the dark. A testimony of unspoken hurt. I felt my chest tightening and my heart pounding — I felt myself getting angry, as angry as I felt when my son finally confessed to me how he had suffered at the hands of an abusive foster-parent. I wanted to find the perp and hurt back.

But no — all I could do was remain a silent witness. Stunned and horrified.

Later … much later, when the trainer and I went out to dinner, I had to ask. “Is this normal? All these women?” He said, “Sometimes it’s worse.”

Ever since that moment, I have had to look at women differently — with the knowledge that I am living among a population that is very much carrying a burden of oppression — not unlike the Jews in Nazi Germany, not unlike the slaves in the pre-civil war south. Not unlike so many populations here in this country and around the world.

White male privilege allows white males to exist in a bubble of ignorance and illusion. I have to generalize here, but I’m pretty sure that most men have no idea and even less understanding of just how steeply the landscape has been tilted — just how much (through our unconsciousness) we are deliberately punishing half the human race.

This week, what has been most appalling to me about Donald Trump’s despicable confession of being a sexual predator … is not the various defenses of those who are trapped in his sinking lifeboat with him. No — what’s appalling to me is how few men are able to understand that what Trump spoke about was the “normal” that women experience every day. What is appalling to me is how few men are enraged.

I have been simmering, smoldering, and finally boiling with anger the more I consider his words. I can’t get them out of my head. I can’t escape them. Despite my pacifist leanings, I still want to punch that vile bastard in the face with a jackhammer. Words are insufficient.

And if I’m feeling that way, I cannot imagine how the women who have heard those words are feeling. This isn’t a once-in-a-while occurrence. This is … just another Tuesday.

Sidebar: There’s a story about the filming of Django Unchained — that Leonardo DiCaprio was having trouble with all the racist language he had to speak. He wanted to apologize for it. But Samuel L. Jackson (allegedly) said, “Hey, Motherfucker. This is just another Tuesday for us.”

Well, I’m tired of Tuesday — and the rest of the week as well.

I grew up in a time when anti-semitism was freely expressed. I grew up in a time and lived in an environment where anti-gay sentiments were freely expressed. And eventually, that sensitized me to a lot of other prejudices — anti-black and anti-Muslim and anti-Native American, and so on.

But it wasn’t until that moment in that training room that I realized what a pernicious vile crime against women we have allowed in our culture.

Women alone will not be the solution here. It is up to men, good men, strong men, compassionate men, to draw a line in the sand and redefine what it means to be a man — and that can no longer include the reduction of women from their rightful place as leaders and partners in our society.

Trump is only a symptom. The real disease still festers in the rest of us.

trump-100-smug-republican-hate

(via David Gerrold on FB)

Every woman.

Posted on October 17, 2016 by borysSNORC

Thanks to the US presidential election, there has been a lot of discussion lately about sexual assault, attitudes towards women and how men conduct themselves when they are in the private company of other men. It’s really quite hard to ignore at the moment as the media is in the grips of what must be the very exemplar of a true media frenzy. For most women, the topic of sexual assault and sexual harassment hits us somewhere deep and personal that we’d rather not think about. It brings ugly memories to the surface and dredges up life experiences that we’d prefer to leave quietly filed away in The Past™. Many of us have these long suppressed and often ignored, but never forgotten, unpleasant memories of how we have subjected to the abysmally inequitable status quo that continues to exist in our society. To varying degrees, most women I know have had a lifetime of unsolicited sexual attention. All women live with the awareness of possible sexual harassment and assault every day – it is the background noise of our lives. It hurts us, it scars us, it sure as hell scares us, and it follows us around our entire lives. And more often than not, it starts really young. So goddamn young.

I was 5 or 6 years old and at primary school, when a man we called ‘Window Willy’, lived in a house adjacent to our playground. He gained this nickname from his habit of flashing his penis at us little girls during our lunch breaks. Despite repeatedly reporting it to teachers the message always came back to just stay away from that area of the playground.

I was about 8 years old when one day, I was up at the Carina Terminus shops waiting for my mother in the haberdasher. A man who was seated outside the shop had been staring at me through the window, and I thought nothing of it. While my mum was busy with her purchase, he shifted the leg of his c.1970s very short shorts, and displayed his penis and scrotum to me – a little girl. I told my mum and the lady in the shop… they just told me not to look at him.

I was an athletic, short, blonde, tanned and already busty 12 or 13 year old, when I came out of the surf at Stradbroke Island one holiday with my hair slicked back wet to my head, and a ‘friend’ of the family said I looked like Bo Derek. My Dad gave me a towel and told me to cover up.

I was 13 when I had recently joined the Army Cadets and a Cadet Under Officer came over to me while we were at attention on the parade ground and fiddled with the lanyard attached to my breast pocket, saying it wasn’t sitting right. Seemed innocent enough but then I caught the satisfied and smug look on his face as he walked away because he had touched up my boobs in front of everyone.

I was a little over 14 when I went to the movies in the city with a large group of (mostly male) friends one Anzac Day. The boy I was sitting with thought it was appropriate to pull out his dick and put my hand on it in the dark. I screamed, everyone laughed, I switched seats.

I was barely 15 when a 21 year old man, an officer of the same Cadet Unit decided to single me out. I was flattered at the attentions of this older guy, so it never occurred to me to object when he woke me up in my tent at 1am, and encouraged me to go for a walk with him. He took me to his panel van and convinced me to ‘come talk with me’. After a while he kissed me and that was okay, but when he started to grope under my shirt and and tried to pull down my pants, I had to fight tooth and nail to get out of there without pissing him off and causing more aggression… or god help me, violence.

I was nearly 16 when another CO – this time a 23 year old man – took me and two other 16 year old friends to the Gold Coast for a ‘night off’, while we were supposed to be on bivouac. He bought two bottles of vodka and got us all drunk. I vaguely remember doing cartwheels and round-offs over a campfire that night. I absolutely, 100%, clearly remember waking up in the early hours of the morning in his car with his hands inside in my pants and him saying, ‘Let’s finish what we started.’ Those words have simultaneously haunted and comforted me. If things needed ‘finishing’, then maybe my fuzzy drunken memory lapse wasn’t covering up something even worse…

I was 17 when I was waitressing at the local Leagues Club, helping out some friends with their catering business, when a drunk footballer stood up and waved his dick at me to the amusement of his friends. I ran and hid in the kitchen, shaking my head in disbelief and discouraging my black belt boyfriend from going out there and smashing his face in. One of the older women who was also waiting tables with me offered to take over that table. He didn’t flash at her.

I was maybe all of 19 when a colleague who I had been reasonably friendly with, cornered me in the copy room late one Friday at work. He pushed me up against a photocopier and pressed his erection into my thigh saying that he thought I was really sexy and he couldn’t help himself. Knowing that more than 80% of the office had left for the weekend already, I talked fast,telling him I had a boyfriend and asking him what his wife would think. I never scrambled so fast to get the fuck out of a place in my life.

When I was about 20 we used to hang out down at Fisherman’s Wharf for lazy afternoons of live music and cheap drinks. After one of these nights, we ended back at my boyfriend’s best mate’s place. My boyfriend passed out drunk in a spare room, leaving me in a strange house with a guy I had met only once before. This guy. This ‘best friend’, decided this was a good opportunity to pin me down on the carpet, stick his tongue down my throat and have sex with me. I was too drunk to say no. I was too drunk to say yes. I was too drunk to fend him off…

Thus began my life of never drinking to the point where I might lose control. Of my wits. Of the situation. Of myself.

I was 23 the FIRST time I felt the penis of a complete stranger digging into me when riding a packed train in London. I’ve lost count of occasions when I have been on trains, buses, or in a tight packed crowd at a concert, and someone has pushed their erection into me, or an anonymous hand opportunistically groped at my breasts, or grabbed on my arse. What do you do? What do you do? Sometimes you don’t even know who did it.

I was 35 when a man in Pakistan at a tailor’s shop, slid his hand up my thigh. I stepped away, only for him to sidle over to me and do it again. Culturally this was seriously creepy – I know how little men value women in countries like this. I was over 40 when a skeezy little Chinese guy in Shanghai pretended to sneeze – face first right into my chest. Fucker.

Thankfully, it happens less and less these days… perhaps because I’m getting older and I am no longer as desirable as the younger version of me was. Perhaps because I no longer frequent pubs and taverns without the protection of a group of trusted friends. Perhaps, because like many older women, I have carefully cultivated a general ‘fuck off’ vibe, that I arm myself with whenever I leave the house.

I am not in any way tormented or traumatised by my experiences. Have my behaviours evolved to ensure my personal safety and to avoid situations like this? God, yes. I don’t go out by myself at night, I am careful about my alcohol consumption (even among friends), I dress fairly modestly most of the time – primarily because I prefer people to talk to my face and not my tits, but also because I don’t want to offer encouragement. Mostly I don’t think about these things because is just the background noise of my life – this constantly and habitually minimising risk. I don’t dwell on these experiences or in anyway, nor do I feel myself to be any sort of victim. I’ve never sought justice or expected sympathy over any of this. These are just things that happened to me. Sometimes I think the fact that I am not traumatised from these incidents is an indicator of how normalised sexual harassment and sexual assault is in our lives and in our thinking. Other times my thought patterns are more: ‘Yeah, that happened. I can’t change it. I wasn’t seriously hurt. I’m still here. It could have been worse…’

Mostly I just don’t think about it at all… but at the moment, with the current media climate, I don’t know how NOT to think critically about my past experiences and how/if they have effected me. What I do know is that sexual assault of varying degrees is so completely pervasive in all our societies. It doesn’t matter what your background is – it leaves no girl or woman untouched. Hell, plenty of men I know have suffered sexual assault too. I may not have suffered the torment and horror of a complete stranger raping me behind a dumpster – but every single woman I know has stories of unwanted sexual attention. Every. Single. Woman.

And now, whenever that simply horrid, overblown buffoon of a billionaire, wannabe President, opens his mouth – all I hear and see are these men from my past. These men who took liberties with my person because I am female. Fuck them and fuck him. If this self professed pig of a man wins the White House and sets a shining example for people all over the world – how do we even begin to try and fix this if it? I can’t believe he is even being considered as remotely suitable.