I was at work today and one of my coworkers kept pinching my arm. Not hard, but it was simply annoying. I told him to stop several times, and he kept doing it because he thought it was funny to ignore my boundaries. I walked away when I was done with my task.

Later, I’m in a different area talking to a female coworker and he does it again as he’s walking by. Loudly, I said “Stop touching me. I swear to God dude the next time you touch me I’m going to go get [boss].” And he starts going whoa whoa you mad forreal and I was like yes I’m mad forreal. Stop touching me. The female coworker I was talking to gets real wide-eyed and goes wait, did he grab your ass? I said no, he pinched my arm, but it doesn’t matter where he touched me. I told him to stop and he didn’t. And of course another male coworker swoops in to say “jUsT tElL hIm tO sToP”. WELL, OBVIOUSLY.

So he sulks for a couple hours before starting to joke with me again, and of course goes straight to joking about “oh lemme not do that, wouldn’t want you to go postal” and I said “yeah, next time when I say stop listen the first time. I told you four times to stop and you didn’t.” I refused to let him make me look like the ‘crazy woman’ who just went off on him for no reason.

I thought on it a lot at work, and it really made me think about the fact that situations where women lash out at men, verbally or physically, have nearly ALWAYS been predicated by a continuous and consistent breaching of boundaries or other disrespectful/abusive behavior, yet onlookers are quick to label the woman as being ‘dramatic’ and crazy for reaching a breaking point.

Take the Gabby Petito case. The cops looked at this snapshot of their relationship and said, she’s mentally unwell, she has physically ‘assaulted’ him, therefore she is the aggressor. What they failed to understand was how much abuse/mistreatment it takes for a woman to lash out and break down. How much abuse preceded this point that she would be sobbing and admitting she “assaulted” him (while he’s standing there smirking, knowing full well what he’s put her through).

While my story was not an instance of abuse, it does show how men will ignore your words/feelings and breach your boundaries over and over again, and then turn around and try to make you look crazy for simply getting loud and making others aware of their behavior.

So in conclusion, stay safe and enforce your boundaries without shame or regard for men’s feelings, ladies. Additionally, men are FAR more dramatic than women. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk