Things I Hate
1. I hate it when strange men assume that I want to hear what they think, or assume that I’m speaking to them when I have no reason in the world to do so.
Saturday night I was at a pretentious club with some friends, and as we were leaving, I said, “Don’t push me” to the friend who was pushing on me as we herded ourselves out the door.
“Just move along,” some motherfucker says. “And I’m not going to push you.” And he says it with this smile on his face, like he’s so charming. So I said, “I wasn’t talking to you, so don’t worry about it.” His response? To turn to his friends like he didn’t hear me.
So, in the parking lot, I’m herding drunken people to our car, which puts me in Mommy Mode, which makes me a little bossy and loud. Also, I’ve had a beer or two, so you can imagine that I might have been reenacting the anecdote above, but with plentiful cursewords, as I have a tendency to use.
Some other motherfucker is standing behind our car with a little group of chicks, and he feels the need to tell me, “Hey, calm down. Can’t we all just get along? Calm down, potty mouth!”
What the fuck?
You know what’s most annoying about assholes like this and their unsolicited direction? That they would never, ever say these things to another man.
2. I hate it when people tell women not to be mad, or try to shame women for expressing anger.
I wouldn’t mind people complaining about my potty mouth if it were just a matter of them finding cursewords offensive. However, I find that complaints about cursewords (coming from a woman) so very often go hand-in-hand with people’s discomfort with women’s anger.
If I am angry in front of a sexist man, he will try to cut me down in order to silence me, or else simply tell me not to be angry. If I am angry in front of a sexist woman, she will act shocked in order to silence me, or else try to embarrass me out of it. For instance, I’ll say, “Man, the way we process our widget orders is so damned slow and inefficient. I’m getting tired of this slow-ass widget shit.” And the other woman will say, “Uh-oh, Gwen. You want me to call the boss and let him know what you’re saying?” or “I don’t know why you let it bother you. It doesn’t bother ME.”
Meanwhile, if a man were to walk into the room and say, “These goddamned bitches doing our widget orders need to have some sense slapped into them. Somebody oughtta tear off their heads and shit down their fucking necks!” then the same upholders of gender-delineated virtue would giggle and tell him, “Oh, Joe! You’re so right!”
I’m starting to think that people are uncomfortable with women’s anger because it reminds them of getting spanked by their mothers.
Also, certain types of men enjoy making women angry, maybe because it reminds them of being scolded by their mothers, and that makes them feel loved. But that’s another set of anecdotes for another time.
In the meantime: I get angry, and I prefer to say so aloud as opposed to silently taking it out on my kids, my pets, or myself. If you can’t hang with that, I guess you have to effing lump it.
The Good News Is
Target effing ROCKS.
Guess how many thongs you can currently buy from the Target clearance rack for $13?
If you said “Thirteen,” then you are correct. If you also said, “Two of which will feature the visage of Hello Kitty,” then you get bonus points.
I’m not going to get too personal here, but I want to say that it’s nice that Target can support people who have experienced personal growth in the arena of underwear preference. For instance, if you were a man who had always worn briefs and then tried boxers for a few times and then decided you could never go back to wearing briefs again and then needed to buy a lot of boxers in order for that new plan to work… then you would be happy to go to a pleasant store and find thirteen pairs of handsome boxers for an average price of 98 cents each. And, as you can imagine, analogies to that situation would share a comparable resulting joy.
Also, it’s awesome when you go to Target and purposeless, purely decorative lingerie items that you’d previously dismissed as outside your budget go on clearance for $3.74.
Thank you, Target. You rule. You make a mad girl happy. You turn my frown upside-down.
