7/12/00

I recently had a romantic weekend in New Hampshire with my sweetie. We stayed at a fabulous B&B, and had a lovely time kayaking and playing tourist. There was, however, one minor blip, one night as we were walking around Keene, NH, a generally pretty nice town.

Walking hand-in-hand, having finished a very tasty dinner and a sinfully good sundae, we were enjoying the peaceful evening, when a group of young men passed in a car and yelled out the window, "Faggots!". Being women, it took us a moment to realize they meant us. A few minutes later, someone whistled at us. Fortunately, we were almost at the car by then.

Now, my question here is, why is this considered acceptable behavior? I've always wondered what it is that makes men feel like it's okay to yell or whistle or hoot at women on the street, and I've gotten that on more than one occassion. This, of course, was a different situation, since it involved the whole question of homosexuality, but the question remains the same. What makes people think that I care what they think, or that I want to hear about it? What makes them think that it's appropriate for them to invade my privacy (yes, even if I'm walking down a public street) by yelling at me?

Frankly, I don't care what kind of problems someone has with homosexuality. First off, simply holding hands isn't necessarily an indicator of sexual orientation. In this particular instance, it was, but I think people who make that assumption are painting society with a too-broad brush. Beyond that, however, whatever choices I make in my life really don't have anything to do with people outside of my life. I find it extremely politically offensive that some shitty little punk driving by in a truck (note, they didn't bother to stop and introduce themselves) thinks it's a fun game, and an okay thing to do, to yell at people on the side of the road. If you have a problem with nonstandard sexualities, fine. Frankly, I don't care. But where do you get off butting your backward sensibilities into my life?

Piss off, little boys. I have better things to experience than your small-minded, idiotic comments.