Comments on: A Very Disturbing Conversation

By: Help Me Harpies!: Should I Be A Bitch? - The Pursuit of Harpyness

Help Me Harpies!: Should I Be A Bitch? - The Pursuit of Harpyness — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 13:01:16 +0000

[...] may remember that my Be A Bitch posts started when I had A Very Disturbing Conversation with a friend who was being groped in a most unwelcome way by a guy she was dating, but she [...]

By: BE A BITCH: Workplace Edition - The Pursuit of Harpyness

BE A BITCH: Workplace Edition - The Pursuit of Harpyness — Wed, 13 May 2009 13:00:29 +0000

[...] come to the right place, because these days it seems I am all about dispensing that advice, be it to my friends or myself. So while Protegee ate some leftover bacon cake from my birthday party, I made my [...]

By: In Which I Am RADICALLY Skeeved Out - The Pursuit of Harpyness

In Which I Am RADICALLY Skeeved Out - The Pursuit of Harpyness — Thu, 07 May 2009 21:07:13 +0000

[...] to me that this was the on-line version of the scenario I described to y’all in “A Very Disturbing Conversation.” I needed to take my own advice from that post, which is: BE A [...]

By: » Not Sorry. The Pursuit of Harpyness

» Not Sorry. The Pursuit of Harpyness — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 20:00:26 +0000

[...] They apologize for disagreeing with someone else. They apologize for taking up too much space, or, as Becky has noted, when others take up their space. They–WE–apologize all. the. time. It’s [...]

By: Spark

Spark — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:21:18 +0000

I think I need pointers on when NOT to be a bitch. (I have been blessed with instinctive bitch-face.)

By: bellacoker

bellacoker — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 09:05:41 +0000

Isn’t “bitch” just shorthand for women who are convinced we’re more than meat-sock girl puppets? The menz are just threatened by our “thoughts” and “ideas.”

By: lalaland13

lalaland13 — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 06:11:31 +0000

Oh shit. I’ve never had something like that happen to me-not a sustained attack, but once in college this weirdo randomly kissed me on the cheek. Crazy religious freak who was always talking about God and carried a cross around sometimes (I shit you not). Why he did that, I don’t know-he was leaving a room, and randomly kissed me on the cheek, then left before I could punch him or do anything. It stunned me. But then I put Purell on my cheek and vowed to punch him and say God told me to do it if he tried it again. He never did-he seemed to like to go after other girls.

Really scary part is he eventually got convicted of stalking and is now in jail.

By: Brigit

Brigit — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 01:11:19 +0000

@Gretchen: WTF, Creepy effin jerk!
Something similar happened my first year of grad school, and I wish I had responded like you.

This field/classmate started acting “weird”, but since this was my first year in the States I thought maybe it was me and people here had different notions of personal space.
It ended with him trying to kiss me in my house with my husband sleeping on the couch. I kicked him out and he still was looking for me – going as far as appearing in my lab on the other side of campus. So I emailed him to stop contacting and speaking to me and switched cell phones with my husband. Sick fucker.
It pisses me off so much because now thinking about it, people here in the States generally give you more personal space than back home. It’s sickening to think that this person was somewhat taking advantage of me due to my inexperience within this culture. grrr.

By: Gretchen

Gretchen — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 00:44:19 +0000

I’m a bitch in these situations and I’m not ashamed of it. Heck, I don’t even think twice. I’ve done this so many times in the past that it’s a freakin’ miracle I made it through my 20s without being charged for assault. It doesn’t matter if I’m alone with someone or in a group.

The last time this happened was a little over a year ago when a colleague of mine asked me to have a drink with him at a conference. It was late afternoon so I didn’t see the harm in that. We had business to discuss and I assumed that was his motivation – to discuss business in a more pleasant atmosphere. When we were walking back through the hotel we were in an empty hallway and he stopped to make a point, but kept reaching out and touching my arm. The first time I pulled my arm away and stepped back one pace. The second time I did the same and told him not to do that again. The third time I punched him in the solar plexus and doubled him right over. The strange thing about this is we were talking district business the entire time, but his body language was carrying on a completely different conversation. The creepy thing about this was his wife was staying at that hotel and attending the same conference. I hope I left a decent bruise that took some explaining.

By: mysterygirl!

mysterygirl! — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 00:00:58 +0000

This is really timely, because something similar to this happened to me on Friday night. I was with a friend and a big group of her friends whom I was meeting for the first time, and one of the friends started to hit on me aggressively, rubbing my back and even kissing me on the mouth– and I didn’t really know what to do, because I didn’t want to make a scene or a bad impression on these new people I was getting to know, and because I didn’t want to seem like some kind of homophobe by saying that I wasn’t into what was happening, so although I got it to stop, I wasn’t as forceful as I should have been.

Obviously my situation is different for a couple of reasons, another being that I was in a group of people so I wasn’t concerned for my safety as your friend may have been, but I felt taken advantage of. It also made me wonder if, in being friendly, I had done something to invite what happened, as if it were my fault that a stranger was doing this to me, which is obviously ridiculous. The bottom line is that I need to become more comfortable speaking up and not worrying about how others will regard that.