Sunday, May 27, 2007

Train Your Men

So I was paddling today with the guys as usual, I think it's the whole "femenine energy" and aura thing about the girls practice that I can't stand. But anyway, today's practice was pretty intense. I thought I did really well, and it seemed like the guys thought so too. Everyone did really well today.

So usually no one makes any comments or anything about me being a girl, they've even made comments about how I'm one of the boys. I like to think that I belong there with them, that I'm accepted by them as an equal.

So apperently there was a party at one of their places later in the evening. The Steersman in my boat was talking about how they had a hot tub and beer and everything, sounded pretty cool. But then he made a joke that luckly no one seemed to notice and no one laughed at. He said, "and Nicole's going to do the pole dancing."

WHATTHEHELL!! What was that! Where did that come from? I turned around and gave him a dirty look to let him know that I wasn't cool with that remark at all, but now that I'm cooled off a little bit, I'm thinking it was just a joke gone wrong. We all kill jokes, maybe he just accidentally murdered one.

But that's SUCH a girl thing to say, "oh maybe he just made a mistake." A guy would have turned around and either punched him or told him off if it really crossed a line, but I'm thinking a guy would have said something in an equally laughing tone that was also equally embarrasing. Here's a few things I came up with:

"Yeah it was HIS idea to have the party at a gay bar, but I talked him out of it. Next time man, it's okay."

Then again, if I wanted to turn the situation around in my favor, I could have said "does that mean I'm invited?" And he probably would have given me directions and everything and I probably would have had a good time and no one would have expected me to pole dance or anything crazy.

But I think I picked the worse of all the routes, I let it go. Note to girls who are trying to fit in with guys, you can't just let things like that go all the time. It's setting your place if you don't establish how you want to be treated, you don't want your place to be set for you, because it will be set very low. You definately don't want to get walked all over.

So train your men, but be sly about it. If you take offense to something, you can't just outright call them on it unless you're ready to fight, you have to show them how it made you feel in an equally illusive way, and chances are they won't do it again.

2 Comments:

Blogger Jennifer Wertkin said...

Yeah, I was on a cycling team a few years back that just started bringing in women. The comments the men made were atrocious. Since I (a) wouldn't sleep with them; and (b) more importantly, told them to fuck off whenever they made a comment about the way my ass looked on the saddle, they eventually respected me. But a lot of women DID giggle at those comments and DID sleep with them. It makes it hard for the rest of us or for any women who want to be taken seriously in ANY so-called "man's world."
Great post.
xo
jw

12:26 PM  
Blogger Raven Calister said...

dude you're so right, I wish girls everywhere would realize that HELLO, we represent each other. If one girl goes around the group of guys, those guys are going to expect the rest of us to go around, and that's just not fair to us.

11:49 PM  

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