His Flattery Made Me Uncomfortable, and I Was Asked to Justify It
By: Alexandra Ringer
Tags: Politics, Metoo, Women, Feminism, Equality

His Flattery Made Me Uncomfortable, and I Was Asked to Justify It

A reminder of how females' negative experiences with men are still not taken as truth.

Photo by Taisiia Stupak on Unsplash

Facebook 2020 is out of control. It has turned into a place where everyone spews their political views no matter how uneducated or heartless. It seems to have lost all boundaries.

Sadly, being from a small rural town, I see this nearly every time I enter the platform. Because of it, I often sign off after fighting with or even removing, 2–3 friends due to blatant ignorance.

And this is because everything that touches Facebook seems to become political; even when what I posted was my personal experience of discomfort with an elderly man.

Yes, this too, required a political conversation.

I was shamed and then asked to justify the visceral experience of an old man commenting on my body and giving me the creeps.

Sure, maybe some would say I asked for someone's political opinion. I did choose to post a PSA for older men to stop commenting on younger women’s appearance and bodies.

“Women do not walk away flattered. Instead they walk away feeling violated,” I stated.

When I posted this though, I did not realize in 2020 (14 years after the #MeToo movement began) a woman being made to feel uncomfortable by men was still political.

Yet, someone took it upon themselves to leave the comment:

“Wow, poor guy just giving a compliment and feminist taking it to another level. Grow up.”

I immediately felt like I was punched in the stomach. Not only had I been made to feel uncomfortable by my experience that morning, but now I was being shamed and guilted for it.

I was literally told to grow up. As if my negative feelings towards a strange man commenting on my body, old enough to be my grandfather, made me childish.

Soon after this comment, a second comment rolled in below it:

“In what context would it be inappropriate for a man of any age to tell an adult woman she’s beautiful?”

I was still in fight or flight when I read this. I had barely recovered enough from the first comment to get my thoughts together to reply when this one came in.

I sat there staring at my phone, enraged.

Another strange man, whom I did not know, was asking me to justify my discomfort from a fellow of his own gender. He was asking me to explain my feelings by providing the details to prove they were valid. He thought he had the right to play judge of my feelings — my own personal experience.

If I gave in and shared the intimate details to “explain” my discomfort, was he going to tell me I was wrong? Sadly, he likely would have. He thought he had the right to tell me my experience as a female was wrong. This was the moment he was searching for.

In an instant, I was reminded we still live in a world where we don’t take females' experiences of men for truth. We put them on trial and ask them to justify and explain their discomfort.

After my encounter with the older man, when I came back into my apartment, I had to ground myself on the floor. Tears started flowing from my face, and I had to remind myself I was safe.

That was a visceral reaction.

I knew what that man did was wrong. I knew it through my core. I knew it from all the experiences before this one where a man has made me feel like an object. Where a man has made my body something to be eyed, not respected. In my experience as a female, this boundary is one that men often cross.

Yet, we live in a society where my experience was made political. It made me a childish feminist who was being ungrateful to a man for telling me my body was beautiful. I was made to feel I was blowing a situation up and being a dramatic girl, per usual.

We need to do better.

We need to teach girls to trust their gut.

We need to teach men to not comment on strangers’ bodies and appearances.

We need to tell women their feelings are valid.

We need to teach them to speak up.

And greatest of all, we need to stop asking women to justify their negative experiences with men.

So maybe my personal lesson should have been to stop posting on Facebook. The place that has become so politicized that even a personal experience has to become a political war.

But instead, my personal lesson was that we still live in a world where women’s experiences with men are not taken as truth. A sign that 14 years post the #MeToo movement starting, we still have a long way to go.

And for that reason, I will keep posting.

I will keep sharing what feels comfortable for me to try to create a better world — a world where my word as a female is truth. And hopefully, when a strange man comments on my daughter’s body 25 years from now, I can only hope her experience is accepted as fact.

That she too is not made to justify her experiences with men. That instead she is instilled with power, the power to follow her gut, and never let a personal experience with her body become a political opinion.