The other day I got into a semi-argument with a girl I know over a sort of typical subject. She mentioned how she didn’t think it was right that guys would whistle at her and stuff on the days that she put on a mini-skirt.

“Well, that’s the reaction you wanted though, wasn’t it?”

“Well, yes, but not from those guys.”

Ah-ha.

This is one of those sort of strange quandaries. People do something that provokes a reaction and then they get upset when that reaction makes itself apparent.

“I should be able to wear whatever I want and people shouldn’t yell things at me,” she said.

“Well of course, but the point is that people are going to yell things at you if you dress a certain way so you should take responsibility. If you don’t want people to yell those things at you, don’t dress like that.”

“But that’s not right! I should be able to dress like that and people shouldn’t say anything!”

You see, this is the statement that gives me pause. A lot of people resort to statements like this in a variety of situations and use it as the backbone to support their philosophy of existence. But really, what the hell does it mean? “That’s not right!” Well, what the fuck is right? Who determines what is right? How do you know that God and the universe don’t want men to wolf-call hot women in miniskirts?

It shouldn’t be that way because it isn’t right.

It seems like people, too often start to base their reactions on some illusory way that things should be rather than the way things are. How often do you think that ends in heartache? I wonder...

Nobody ever says things like “I should be able to stick my hand into boiling water and not be burned!” Or “I should be able to go a whole year without breathing without dying!” You see, it’s simple phenomena, cause and effect. But when it comes down to some weird gender-battle issue, people get all bent out of shape.

It’s not right that men respond to an attractive woman.

Well, shit. That just seems like cause and effect to me.

But the thing that concerns me about all of this is that it seems to be not so much about what is right and wrong, but about power. The first thing the girl I was talking to admitted was that it was her ambition to provoke men with her appearance. Her objection wasn’t that men responded, it was that the wrong men responded.

So she wants a response but only from men she’s interested in.

Perhaps she’s not interested in Muslims.

Perhaps she’s not interested in Blacks.

Maybe she doesn’t like Hispanics.

And when she objects, when she says “That’s not right” she’s appealing to some outside force to enforce her desires.

“You can be physically attracted to me as long as your between the ages of 35-45, are 6 foot 2, and make between 250-500 thousand dollars a year. But everybody else should inherently know that they are not in my class, that they are unworthy of responding to my body, that I am a prize that goes only to the elite of our society. The gutter dwellers, AKA slaves, should know their place. If they overstep their bounds, there should be consequences.”

People telling you that you are little. People breaking you down and making you easy to control. It’s all about prejudice isn’t it? All about social class and power.

To me, that’s not right.

But that’s just the way it is.

The End