I picked up a hitch-hiker years ago. Turns out he was a young farm worker who was studying to be a farm manager. I was genuinely interested and asked him lots of questions about his work, how he felt about it, what he wanted to achieve and gave him positive feedback throughout.
We had just got to the top of Mount Messenger when he suddenly reached over and put his hand in my crotch. Surprised, my first thought was that he was giving me some money for petrol and looked down. When I realised it was more than that, I put my spare hand up and said assertively "Do Not do that again! Are we clear?" Then pulled over the car. He couldn't look at me and just mumbled that he was sorry and could I let him out as soon as we got down to the next village. I said that I was happy to keep driving him home as long as he didn't do anything else inappropriate but he was so ashamed that he insisted that I let him out. Which I did. Even before I'd dropped him off, I'd realised that he'd clearly never experienced role modeling from a male around appropriate behaviour with woman. His reaching between my legs was his naive and inexperienced way of showing me that he was feeling attracted to me and didn't know any other way of showing it. And of course, he wasn't attracted to me perse, he was responding to being 'noticed'. I tell you this because it taught me that appropriate behaviour is learned and not everyone has access to a good teacher. And that's on both sides. There are a lot of females who haven't learnt to read the signs that lead to unwanted male attention (obviously not including random attacks and situations where they can see where things are headed but have no way of escaping etc) and just as many men who haven't learnt how to interact with women. Before the haters start commenting, I'm not justifying anything, I'm merely saying that rather than look at the results and pointing fingers at who are to blame, that we look at the cause and ask at what can be done to avoid these situations in the first place. What do I know? I was bought up surrounded by patched members of a bike club who never once, even when I'd grown up, made any inappropriate advances toward me but I had strong and clear role models - both men and women. And from watching everything going on around me, I was also able to identify risky behaviours in women who weren't so aware and learn from them too. But not everyone has the benefit of this kind of classroom when they're growing up. Not every woman has been abused and not every male is an abuser so what can be learned from them?
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Pimp My Attitude
You need to know, right now, this is all about me. I'm not educated. I don't have any (non-driving related) qualifications therefore, I'm not about to tell you what you should do - I know my place.
And here you are. At my place. So - welcome. If you're here for 10 seconds, I won't even know so I won't be offended that you left early. If you're here for hours and keep coming back, I will consider you a friend because the only thing my diverse yet loyal friends have in common, and what I appreciate most about them, is that they just keep coming back.. Archives
September 2020
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