Waiting to pay for my groceries at the market this evening, this guy, stinking of booze, says to my 9-year-old daughter, “Sweetheart, can you put the divider thing there for me?” I move closer to my daughter; he then reaches his hand over me and wraps his hand around her arm, saying, “Now, you be nice to your Mommy, sweetie.” I pluck his hand off. “Do not touch my child,” I say. My other hand is pressed against my daughter’s ribs, and I can feel her heart POUNDING. “You have a beautiful daughter,” he says. The cashier, whom we know, a guy, looks at me, eyebrows up. I roll my eyes. So pissed. We leave. “I hated that man,” my daughter says once we get in the car. “He smelled bad, I wanted to hit him, if anyone ever does that to me again I’m going to scream.” Here we effing go: “Sometimes you have to be hypervigilant,” I tell my daughter, “because some gross men out there feel they are entitled to touch us.” And then I share my story: “When I was a little girl…” I don’t even remember the first time it happened to me. I don’t remember the last time some pervert rubbed up against me. But that’s what you have to deal with when you are a girl. We have to learn to brush this shit off, to make sure that this endless assault course of predators doesn’t take one bit of your pride, your confidence, or your sense of peace as you walk through this world. I am so angry.
We should call this the “Trump Talk.” The depressing conversation that every parent needs to have with their little girl about revolting, predatory, entitled men. The Trump Talk.
Mother And Daughter Discuss Enraging Realities