Not long ago, I was randomly harassed while shopping at Target, a chain supermarket in North America. A warehouse employee suddenly approached me at a very uncomfortable distance and said, "You're beautiful, lady." At that moment, I was stunned and had no idea how to react. When I finally realized, I quickly walked away. I was annoyed because I felt that this was definitely not the best way to defend myself, and I didn't even have a chance to scold him. In this incident of harassment, this idiot faced no consequences. But at the same time, I was even more annoyed. Why do I have to be constantly on guard to protect myself while shopping at a familiar supermarket? I even reassessed the level of risk, reviewing if there was anything unusual in the shopping environment, and what clothes I was wearing. This is one of the supermarkets I am most familiar with, and I was just wearing ordinary clothes from Uniqlo! Risk assessment is nonsense; simply being alive is already very dangerous.
The annoyance didn't end there. The closest men around me couldn't understand my momentary fear and the anger that followed, including my father and my partner. They tend to think that this was my subjective reaction to an unpleasant event, rather than recognizing it as "harassment." This is harassment, not praise. It triggered a deep-rooted fear within me. How can you tell me to accept this "praise" and just leave calmly? What kind of praise requires crossing personal boundaries? This is undoubtedly an infringement on another person.
A day later, my friend J shared some self-defense tutorial videos in a group chat, which reminded me of this incident. I shared the details of the event with them, as well as the efforts I made as a "victim" to educate the men around me. None of the women around me needed an explanation of why this was harassment because every one of them has experienced this kind of fear. How absurd it is that this is a bizarre reality that almost all women bear, while men don't even know what harassment is. No wonder harassment is so prevalent. I am very angry, and I believe this anger is valuable and will continue.
So these past two days, I have been angry with my partner because I was dissatisfied with his reaction to this matter, and it even hurt me. I immediately told him about the incident when it happened, and he cared about my emotions, hoping that I wouldn't be unhappy, but he didn't understand why it was harassment. We couldn't reach a consensus through text conversation in a short period of time. I said, let's talk about this when we have time for a phone call. It's a serious matter and important to me. As a result, due to various reasons, we weren't able to have the phone call that weekend. Objectively, we loosely agreed on a time on Sunday when we could talk, but he stood me up because he wasn't feeling well and practically disappeared for the day. I understand that he has his own pressures and discomfort, but I still feel a sense of grievance. When he replied to my messages later, he half-jokingly said that his credit score with me must be close to negative.
Then came this past weekend. I knew I would be busy with two friends wanting to meet up and assignments to write. I told him I needed to make a phone call and gave him two possible times. He agreed. We started by talking about other topics, and then I brought up the harassment incident again. I said I felt angry and wronged, not only about the incident itself but also about how you didn't seem to care much about it, and I had to initiate this difficult conversation. He said, "I've told you before that sometimes I don't have the ability to see things from your perspective, and this time I didn't understand your pain. I'm sorry for that, but I also feel a bit helpless." And I said, you can't always use that as an excuse. The fact is, you didn't understand, and you didn't make an effort to actively understand more.
I explained in detail the sequence of events and my feelings to him, and he finally began to understand the fear I experienced at that time and told me he now realizes that it was indeed harassment. I was very angry, almost wanting to shout at him, "Why do I have to explain so much for you to understand that this is harassment!" Then I fell silent. He knew that whenever I stopped talking to him, I was really angry. I didn't hang up the phone, and I could hear his breathing, and perhaps he could hear mine. We stayed quiet for a long time, I didn't check the time, but it was probably at least five minutes, maybe even longer. Finally, I broke the silence and asked why I could hear him sniffing, if he had a cold.
We talked about other things again, and then I brought up the credit score system for emotions that he had mentioned before. I said that this system doesn't apply to me. I don't believe that relationships between people are linear, and I still think that my positive and negative feelings towards you can exist relatively independently. My anger and disgust towards you won't directly cancel out my love for you; the interaction between them is much more complex than simple addition and subtraction. He listened attentively on the other side of the world, expressing his agreement.
In the days after the conversation, I still feel anger towards him, and I believe that this anger is justified. At the same time, I still feel his love for me, and my love for him. Anger and love are happening simultaneously. I imagine in my mind, if we were back in that room in Paris, just after this argument, what would he do? I think he would give me some space and time, then try to hug me and kiss me, and I might refuse him. If I refuse him in my imagination, it means I am still angry. Today, I am still angry.
But at the same time, I miss his embrace and kisses so much. I started to recall our first night together, and he kept saying in my ear, "I love you so much, sweetheart. You are my sweetheart."
This world really confuses me!