I wish that I was more confrontational. I’m not, in any sense of the word. Conflict makes me uneasy, I get sweaty and feel nauseated and start to clam up anytime anyone fights around me. It’s not that I don’t want to pick fights. I do. A lot. But, standing up for yourself is fucking hard. It’s hard to say no when you were taught to be polite, to take the high road, to be quiet and still. 

Nothing I’m saying here is groundbreaking, unheard of, and the slightest bit revolutionary: it’s all been said before. The product of an environment which teaches young girls to be nice and accommodating raises a generation of women who have a hard time comprehending their place in society as equal humans, and not a vessel for understanding and compassion.

The problem is that I am not an overly compassionate person. I fake it, but I find most people utterly annoying and my social battery seems to run on a deficit. 

I think if any passing strangers or professors were to describe me, they would think I was “a nice girl”. My surgeon, who I was consulting with for nearly a year to remove a growth on my ovary this past September, described me as “a pleasant 21-year-old woman” in my medical record. Even in severe pain,  I forced myself to become some variation of what I’ve been taught women should be. 

It’s exhausting. 

To avoid my train of thought starting to sound like America Ferrera monologue from Barbie, which I don’t particularly think is that clever, it’s best to move onto the matter at hand: I think men should be more uncomfortable. 

It’s November, which means it’s dark at 4:30 PM and anyone who doesn’t have the privilege of looking like a straight white dude begins to think more intentionally about how they will get home after classes or work.

When I had a car, it was a lot easier. The walk to my car somewhere far off in Trent’s overcrowded parking lot was uneasy, but never anything scary. Unlike the walk in the dark back from my 10 minute commute home from work, which sort of terrifies me this time of year.

I was told growing up that I am “overly dramatic” and I have a tendency to make something out of nothing. To a degree, this is probably true. But fiction writing is my passion in life, so it’s not entirely a character flaw in that sense. And while I know there are people—some women too, I’m sure—rolling their eyes at where this article is going, it should be worth noting that I don’t have the privilege of fighting back against anyone, like ever. 

I am 5’5” on a good day. The only muscle on my body is my remaining swimmer calves from my side-quest as a competitive swimmer in middle school. If anyone attacks me at night, I’m cooked. 

And it does happen. I know several personal accounts of women being jumped, stalked, harassed, and just simply creeped out by taxi drivers or random dudes passing them on their longboards. 

Nothing ever happens until it does, and then suddenly everything that could go wrong is inevitable. I was first catcalled when I was 15 walking down the street in Cobourg, and I’ve been catcalled a handful of times here in Peterborough. Whether it’s honks, stares, or the man walking towards you on the street who is very obviously staring at your boobs, nothing is ever as simple as “going for a walk” again. Even if you’re in a turtleneck, which I often am, being a woman is the understanding that no matter what you do or what you wear, you are always being watched. 

I took that odd, mandatory self-defense class in high school, but I truly don’t think it would do any good if—god forbid—something happened. This all said, the relentless head swivels when I am alone on the street forcibly reminds me of that clip of Paul Mescal and Saoirse Ronan on the Graham Norton Show and why I find it so infuriating and equally, sort of pathetic.  

If you don’t know what I am talking about and managed to avoid the Twitter mania that came out of the interview earlier this month, do yourself a favour for the contents of this article and watch it. 

I love Irish men, don’t get me wrong. But there is a particular type of man who wears women's cardigans and short, slutty Adidas shorts and black Sambas who professes that Punisher is “the greatest album of all time” that is just, not it. It’s one woman’s dream boy, and another’s worst nightmare. These men are often found to be accompanied by the heavy crown they wear as a “male feminist.” A feminist in the sense that they repost @feminist on their Instagram story with a boygenius song playing in hopes it gets them laid.

To be honest, they probably do get laid a lot. But probably aren’t very good at it.

It’s these types of men that label themselves as feminist in their Hinge profile that are the most insufferable people. Paul Mescal, while I don’t know him at all, let his “female gaze” stature slip on the Graham Norton Show when he, and all the other men sat on the couch, fantasized about what they would do if someone attacked them on the street.

They laughed at how ridiculous it would be to pull out their phone and call the police, rather than just punch their attacker in the face. You know, dude stuff.

Saoirse Ronan, the only female in the room, reminded her male-counterparts that this is the shit women have to think about all the fucking time. 

And suddenly, the cardigan wasn’t so cute. People on Twitter hailed Ronan for being some sort of “icon” for “ending” Paul Mescal. That is a wildly stupid take, and another reason why some people shouldn’t have access to the internet. But I digress.

I think, most likely, she was just tired. It’s not iconic to tell some white dude that he’s being a dickhead, it’s just exhausting. Though also, sort of compelling in a twisted way. The silence that followed when Saoirse reminded her male-counterparts that, you know, most women don’t have the ability to just punch someone in the face, was hilarious. 

Everyone on that couch suddenly forgot they weren’t joshing around with their bros in a garage, that they were in fact on national television, and just got called out. I got a strange thrill from watching that video, and it became funnier to watch back and realize she had tried more than once to rebuttal Paul’s weird fantasy, but he talked too loud over her about said fantasy to throat-punch some guy at knife point. 

It should be worth nothing that this is not unique to Paul Mescal, and I don’t think this makes him a bad person in the slightest. He is simply just a white dude. I do think, however, that men need to be made so fucking uncomfortable that any sort of weird, offputting  jokes like these produce nothing but profound awkwardness. I don’t want any cis-man who has the privilege of going on a “night run” to peacefully jog without thinking about the fact that half of the population is not afforded to participate in this activity comfortably, while depleting the women’s knit section at Value Village. 

I want more men to be made aware of the velocity of privilege they hold in our society. I want them to feel a sliver of what it feels like to constantly be hyper-aware of your surroundings, and then put on their feminist cardigan and see if it’s all really so aesthetic now. 

For my girls out there who continue to put-up with these creatures who make you split the bill because they “value women’s autonomy” please for the love of God stop sleeping with them. If, like me, confrontation is hard and men are sort of scary when they are angry, the least you can do is to save yourself the awkward situationship breakup where he asks for his Lorde vinyl back and just stop entertaining them entirely.