Please, don't "Kiss the girl"
The famous song from one of my favourite movies, The Little Mermaid" has recently acquired a different meaning for me after a brief encounter with some friends at a club. It was one of my friend's birthday, we where going out to have fun, drink a bit and dance some more. It was a self called urban spot with music, and drinks, and overall people just wanting to spend a good time.
It wasn't very late, but people where already overtly drunk, when I made eye contact with a guy from another table. He wanted me to come closer to him, lifting his drink up so that I would understand he'd buy me one, but I refused, nudging my head as to show him I was with friends. After some prompting from one of my friends who noticed the brief exchange she invited him over to our table, where we proceeded to keep dancing.
He moved places slowly until he was beside me, started talking to me, and saying sweet nothings, casual flirting I thought, and so for every compliment he shot me I would thank him and shoot him one back. Trying not to distance myself much from my friends as he wanted to pull me over to dance with him.
We ended up dancing together after much of his insisting, and in one brief moment in which I excused myself to run to the bathroom one of my friends told me I was being a prude cause I hadn't kissed him or wasn't making out with the guy. Instantly that comment shook my core, I was having overall a pleasant time, dancing with friends and meeting people, why would I want to make out with someone I just met?
She went back to the table before me, and when I once again reached my friends I started dancing with them again. The guy which was previously flirting with was talking with my friend who had previously bothered me over the fact that I was being a "prude" (matter that will be discussed further). After a while they giggle and he came walking back to me and asked me to dance again. This time I was a bit weary if we are being honest, we talked a bit while we where dancing and learned his name, age, and what he had studied. We sat a bit when I said my feet where hurting from the heels and he added his phone number and name to my phone asking me to send him a message later.
After a bit when the music stopped was when the night went crashing down. He tried to kiss me. Of course for many this might seem exaggerated to say the least, but keep in mind I have never kissed anyone before, I do not really know the guys (except for the details he told me and the fact that he was drunk on a Friday), and honestly the fact that I very much did not want to kiss him. So I turned my head side ways and received a very disgusting wet kiss on the cheek.
It wasn't much later that I figured out that it had been my friend in the first place, the one that had been apparently angry and pissed at the fact that I wasn't kissing some random guy in a club, who had prodded him to actually kiss me. With a statement that, to what I believe, was honestly uncalled for. "Men who ask permission before kissing you are fags. They aren't worth it, you need a real man." I was shocked, angry, upset, and even at some point felt useless.
The next day in the morning, already home, I opened my cellphone, and with a pang of anxiety and honestly curiosity I checked for his name on Facebook since I had his name on my phone. At least to justify to myself that he wasn't really a bad guy, that he was simply drunk, and that my friend had pushed him over to try and kiss me. Upon opening his profile I learned a few more things of the guy I was dancing with, amongst those the fact that he was older than what he had told me, and that he had a girlfriend.
Now all of the things that happened that night have got me thinking for over a week now on various things.
1. Consent
The fact that a guy tried to kiss me without my consent is a bit alarming to me. It breaches my personal space, and honestly disgusts me. Probably, if I where madly in love with somebody and the mood was right I wouldn't mind or care. We would be, after all in equal understandings of our feelings for one another. However, with someone I had just met, whom I basically knew nothing about, it is definitely a no-go for me. At least asking, would it be okay if I kissed you, would have been, in my opinion, the minimum he could have done.
Consent is a very important topic, women are constantly receiving sexual advances both verbally and physically that are unwanted, thus without consent. That is sexual harassment. Obscene remarks and actions that women receive in a social power play that comes from men's privilege, in which they can act out in such a way without, most of the time, receiving consequences. Recently the campaign #metoo brought to light various stories from a variety of women who where either sexually harassed or abused, pointing out how these are situations that need to stop.
The fact that who prodded the guy to kiss me even when I wasn't willing was a close friend, and that said close friend is also a woman made me think. Shouldn't women help each other out against situations that make us uncomfortable rather than push us to them? The irony isn't cut short from here. Many women have internalised misogyny which makes them part of the cycle, part of the problem. Since we where all raised under this institutionalised situation, we are, mostly, wired to work under and for the concept of society in which we live. Believing that that toxic ideology of masculinity is the only "right way" a man can be a man.
Which takes me to my second point.
2. Masculinity
Masculinity for me is a very weird abstract concept. While I could (and maybe will) write essay upon essay about femininity and how I live as a young women, describing what it is like being a man in an overtly-sexualised society is far from my experience. However, I can write about how I think that society perceives men, and how we, as a society, push men into this violent siluettes in which they must fit to be considered "real men".
The phrase my friend mentioned about men being "fags" for asking for consent before kissing a women doesn't fall far from what I want to discuss here. Let's start with the fact that she used a swear word meant specifically to degrade men who are attracted to their same gender. Gay men, for years have been oppressed for many reasons, one of them, not being "real men", not being masculine enough, and that swear is used specifically to make it see as if being less of what society states that masculinity should be, is something negative.
3. Fidelity
It is not my position to criticise another couple. There may be context which I am not aware off. For starters, the guy might be in an open relationship, and in best case scenario has talked with his girlfriend over what they can and cannot do with other people. How exclusive (or not) they are.
However, I don't believe flirting with women in a club, while drunk trying to kiss them would be the ideal for a relationship. Keeping in mind that where I live is a very conservative state in which people are still having trouble to accept the fact that women and the LGBT+ community should have basic human rights, so a polyamory relationship, or an open relationship may seem a bit to far fetched.
I mentioned it as the topic of fidelity because I believe it is mostly used to tied women. Men, are more likely to be forgiven for being unfaithful to their partner under lame excuses of "boys will be boys" or the traditional "well, when men get excited all the blood leaves their brain, they are unable to think". Which honestly, I call fake news, and if I where a man I would be offended at the fact that society thinks I can't behave much better than a dog on heat.
This while women are often criticised either for being too prude, too sluty, too sexy, too everything. How come, that none of his friends came to me to tell me that he was taken, or tried to stop him. After all, our tables weren't far away, and as perfectly as I could see everyone of his friends I'm sure they could see us dancing together, and him making approaches, up to him kissing my cheek. Overall, it was a very disappointing fling, if you'd like to call it that.
I am a firm believer that most of these topics intersect. The position in which women find themselves in society often ridiculed over being sensitive of this issues, when we get angry about being the end of an uncalled for catcall, or not wanting to be touched, or simply wanting to spend a night with friends in a club, not with strangers. All of this comes from such a vague context in which men are thought to act a certain way, women are thought to act another, and so on and so forth. Which leaves such a poor environment for anyone to fully enjoy themselves with out disrespecting anyone, since men are raised to believe that they can just take, and women conditioned to simply give and accept such treatments.
At first I thought to myself, it's such a stupid deal, not even worth mentioning it, there are women who are raped, sold, abused in much worse ways than what you where harassed, but something within me wasn't satisfied with that logic. It wasn't until I realised that without fixing the small things, even as small as a drunk men trying to kiss me without me wanting to, that we aren't really going to fix the bigger problem, the greater context. Without correcting my friend when she uses such slurs, we will never really get anywhere. Without teaching men that women are also people, and should be treated with as much dignity, respect, and liberty as men, that we aren't gonna really achieve true equality.