How Men Deal With Unwanted Sexual Propositions
Yes, it does happen.
Medium’s female writers spare no reserve in expressing their indignant rage about receiving unwanted sexual proposals and worse from men. I noticed a comparative vacuum of men’s stories of being recipients of unwelcome or uninvited advances. I propose doing my part to fill it.
But even as I begin, I feel myself hesitating and not for lack of examples. I feel as though I am violating a code of silence that men live under, not just in matters like these. For to do so, is to expose yourself as having been vulnerable, stupid, or naïve.
It is this exposure that many men fear worse than death. The bubble of silence and fear that men live in is filled with myriad forms of peer pressure. One of these is the pressure of assumed knowledge. As men, you are simply supposed to know certain things without having been formally taught.
You are supposed to know which models of car are 4, 6 and 8 cylinders. You were supposed to know your way around a toolbox and to use its contents to fix things. You are supposed to know how to fight and how to be intimate with women.
In sports, you are supposed to know how to throw a football and baseball or if, you are Canadian, to shoot a hockey puck. For European, African, or Latino men, I suppose that your…
