My Unsolicited Opinion of the Week (The Even When We Get It Weāre Clueless Edition)
So. Iām driving to work, listening to clipping. like my life depended on it, when I get the dreaded text from one of my coworkers āheās here.ā The he being referred to is a gentleman who is committed to establishing āregular statusā at the bookstore, but is doing so in a rather unsettling way.
Picture this: a...not unattractive gentleman sits at the bar, reading from a book called Flirting 101. Every now and again he lifts his head from the book in order to make small talk with you. When the conversation dies down, he reads a few more pages, lifts his head, and tries again. Itās awkward. And cute. And funny. So you talk with him, for what turns out to be most of your shift, and then he leaves. You hear that he comes in again a few days later, asking about you, and when your boss casually mentions the next time youāll be in the store, heās back, with his book, and at it again. This time, itās only awkward, and you try your best to engage with other customers, only making conversation with this gentleman when itās pertinent to suggesting which menu item he should try, or refilling his tea.The book changes. After Flirting is The Art of Small Talk. After that is The Power of Body Language. At the bar. Every week. Only on days when I work. Coming in exactly five minutes before or after my shift starts. And leaving exactly five minutes before it ends. Exactly.
Hereās where I automatically hear all of the mansplainers in my head telling me that āthis is just a nice guy making small talkā and āI shouldnāt have led him on in the first place by having a conversation,ā and I almost feel compelled to justify my discomfort and decision to stop dealing with this man, but I wonāt. Because (A) that compulsion to explain myself to any man who has a problem with my problems with the way another man is behaving...is another symptom of patriarchy with which Iām actively choosing not to engage; and (B) in a world where women are murdered every day for āhurting a manās feelingsā and āsaying no,ā when my intuition starts popping off, I listen - no excuses. (I will say here, that on an intellectual level, I understand that this could be a perfectly nice guy, with poor social skills and no ill intentā¦.but when being wrong about that could mean my life, Iām perfectly with fine on erring on the side of treating him like a serial killer.)
When I walk in the door, my boss and I make eye contact; he moves over to work the bar, and I take over his station across the store. I am beyond grateful. I was almost reluctant to tell him about my being being unsettled, for fear that my discomfort would be brushed off, but he immediately responded by making it a store rule that I donāt have to work the bar on days that this guy is there. He told me about an article heād read once about women being catcalled and abducted that had kept him up that night. Reminded me of his daughters. Escorts me to my car on nights that we close the store. He gets it. And last night, in that moment of coming to work in what could potentially be an unsafe situation, I was reminded that my discomfort was understood, and that I would be kept safe.
Fast forward a couple hours, and I pick up a copy of Claudia Rankinās Citizen to ward off mid-shift boredom. Fifteen pages in, thoroughly engrossed in an inner dialogue about microaggressions and casual racism, my boss steps from behind the bar to ask me if Iād like to accompany him to the North Carolina Republican Party State Convention as a representative of the store, to sell books. I chuckled. I thought surely he was joking. Surely the same man, who so readily understood why I would be unsettled around a male customer who had never actually threatened my physical safety, would not suggest that I make myself available at an event where it would not only be possible, but quite likely, that Iād endure some sort of emotional or physical violence. But he was. Even when I remarked that my experience of selling books there would be drastically different than his, he still did not understand my reluctance to go. Still could not fathom why I would feel unsafe.
And the questions come rolling in: Where is this cluelessness coming from? Why is it inconceivable that I, as a queer woman of color, would not be comfortable at the NC State GOP convention? Especially with all the unrest surrounding HB2? Especially the weekend after Trump, whose entire campaign is based on fear mongering and violence Ā is slated as the presidential nominee? How could I not feel unsafe? How could you, while being so protective of my personhood in one regard, be so callous about it in another? If you canāt understand my fear of going to this convention, how can you understand my fear of working near one customer? Is it only because you have daughters? Is it partly because this customer is Black? Do you even know? And why donāt you?
In that moment, I stop there, because I had to negotiate covering someoneās weekend shifts in order to allow them to attend the convention, but later (read: as Iām writing this) I also have to negotiate the ways in which I get it and am also clueless. The ways in which we all allow our experiences to shape the experience we expect, and in some cases allow, other people to have. Because itās not enough to create safe spaces for people only in instances where we can readily understand that they are unsafe, if we will then turn and attack them in instances where we donāt. Weāve got to show up for people in the ways that they need showing up for...even when we canāt see it.
gummygunk
2087
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annaxmalina
theartofmadeline