Monday, November 12, 2018

Awards for Good Boys

I follow this account on Instagram called "awards for good boys" where this woman takes things she has heard different men say that makes them "good guys" and puts them on drawings of ribbons or trophies. It's all satire and is made to make a point how so many men think they are going above and beyond at being good people when really they are doing the bare minimum or even less than that. I bring this up because I was at work the other day and it was me and two college-age male coworkers. One of the men, Josh, is single while the other, Brady, is married. I am new at this store and while they were getting to know me a couple weeks ago I had mentioned my passion for feminism and women's studies, and now it is Josh's personal mission to make sure that he is not "one of the men I hate since feminists all hate men". I have told him a million times that's not the idea behind feminism but that's beside the point. So I was at work the other day and Josh was going on and on about how he thinks one of our coworkers "likes" him and how he's TOTALLY not interested and is "so annoyed" that she texts him. When asked why he doesn't just tell her he's busy or not interested in texting he says things like "I don't want to hurt her feelings/make her sad". Later in the night while we were closing up Brady and Josh were talking to each other about the other coworker while I was standing near them and the conversation went like this:

Josh: "She's still texting me about how my day went, she's so desperate for attention."
Brady: "Maybe just take her out for coffee or something bro, she has a nice butt how bad could it be?"
Josh: "I'm not a butt guy though, I'm a personality guy."

I feel like that last line deserves to be on the Instagram. This boy spent hours at work going on and on about how he "hated" the attention of a girl at work and complained how it wasn't worth his time and that he's only talking to her just to be nice and then says a line like that? At that point, I confronted him and said maybe he should worry about his own personality for a change. I was appalled but not surprised by a statement by that. Was that line supposed to impress the other male coworker? I'm annoyed that the bar for male decency is set so low that a line like that is supposed to be what sets him apart from his male coworker. I'm also mad that I had to confront him about talking about his coworkers like that because honestly the other guy should have said something. I'm just rambling about this situation because it really bothered me but honestly, I'm also tired about the bar being so acceptably low for men and it's time for that to change.

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