Sunday, April 10, 2005

You’re Cute…let me harass you!

I’m just wondering, but is entering a club basically asking to be harassed by strange men you don’t know? I was at 5ive tonight for Asian Express and towards the end of the evening, this young-ish Asian guy out of the blue introduces himself to me, so I did the polite thing to say hello and the usual greetings. He then shook my hand, held it, and handed my hand to some other older white guy to introduce. That was weird in and of it self, but it gets better. This guy then walks over closer and drops a complement. I said a gracious “thank you” and left it at that, since I wasn’t too interested. He continued to lay on some complements and started to run his fingers through my hair, then nuzzled his head in my ear. All throughout this physicality he was imposing, asking personal questions that I didn’t want to answer. At that point, I flat out told him “you are intruding on my personal space”. He seemed a bit shocked, and replied with a “you mean you want me to stand over here instead?” and pointed to a spot on the ground a meter away. His hand still around my shoulder, I said “remove your arm”. He then did the “did you hear what he said…” to the Asian guy who introduced me. He continued to say some not so nice things, like “how do you expect to get laid with that attitude”, “you are really rude”… the list goes on.

I’m thinking in my head, this is not the time or space for me to have a logical, rational discussion on the etiquette of club behaviour and reading uncomfortable body language. It was as if there is a unspoken rule that as long as you provide a compliment to a person you are attracted to, you are then allowed to physically touch you any way they like. Give me a break! If you want to get touched, go to a bathhouse, go to a strip club, go online.

I was rather proud of myself being assertive in this situation. There was a recent situation similar to this club experience during a party that made me really uncomfortable. I didn’t do anything at that point in time. This time I reacted. Probably not the most tactful way, but it was dealt with. Any suggestions on how else I would have dealt with this better for next time?

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