I'm not the first woman you have seen

The rules of probability show that when there are two choices to be chosen at random, the general outcome of those choices will be 50/50. This is most commonly illustrated with a flipping a coin and getting either a heads or a tails. Using this same example, if one walks down the street, the probability of seeing a man or a woman is generally 50/50 as well. Therefore, it is NOT uncommon to see a member of the opposite sex in everyday life, and this is precisely why I don't understand why every single time I go outside with my girlfriends we get accosted, touched, hollered at, talked to, groped, and ceaselessly bothered by men. We are not the first women you have seen!

Last night, Meg, Sarah, Rachel, Clair and I ventured out into the warm night air to have an adventure and to see what only time and a bottle of wine could show us. Now the weather in Lyon has improved 10 fold. It's 78 degrees and sunny everyday and this beautiful weather has had an astoundingly profound affect on the Lyonnaise. The French have seemed to finally realize that it isn't cold, depressing and dark outside and thus have started wearing...COLOR. Blue! Pink! Green! Mauve? Okay, so they still stick to safe earth tones, black is still predominant and they do love a good white pant over here, but after 8 months of black, brown and brownish black, I feel like I'm watching Technicolor TV for the first time in my life.

This increase in temperature has also drawn people out to the riverside where there are fountains, paved bike paths, grassy plots and a relaxed waterfront mentality. Last night, all night, there were about 1,000 18 to 30 year olds listening to electro music, dancing, drum circling, drinking and being merry so we decided to join them. But first, we had to get there. A mere five minutes after departing from Clair's flat, we were approached by five lame guys who heard us speaking English and thought, "hey, I took English in 9th grade, I can talk to these girls and maybe they will sleep with me" (okay so maybe that's what I assumed they were thinking) They did the usual "hello girls! Where you come from?" and when we ignored them they got agitated and started yelling obscenities in French. Then we told them to "leave us the hell alone" and one of them grabbed Clair's butt. I stopped dead in my tracks and angrily walked/lunged toward the guy who did it but stopped when I realized I am a small blond girl and they were 5 large North Africans. We continued to the river.

We had a peaceful 10 minutes but soon came across clusters of these same types of guys who whistled, and hollered and would walk with us speaking broken english and then tell us to "go fuck ourselves" when we ignored them or told them to go away. This would happen approximately every 2 minutes. Finally, we get to the river and find a good place to sit. We ran into an Australian friend of ours and joined his party of 4 guys. We thought this might be a good idea considering the way the night had been going. We thought, "Hey, a little male company might deter some confrontation." But we were wrong.

Repeatedly, these guys would walk by and either sit down with us or ask for some of our wine or touch our arms or worse. At one point, Meg and Sarah had to pee. The public restroom situation isn't very good over here so they opted for Wilderpeeing (urinating in the wilderness however urban areas can be included in this term as well.) I saw them walk away and kept an eye on where they were. I saw two guys riding bikes about 200 feet away and I said, "please don't let them stop"....Sure enough, they stopped. I jumped up and sprinted to where Meg and Sarah were just in time for the guys to ride off, laughing. It turns out that they tried "jokingly" to push Sarah into the river. After we got back to our little spot, some time passed, with the usual encounter happening every 5 minutes or so: a guy trying to grab someones beer, trying to touch us, trying to sit down with us, almost pulling out his penis, you know, the usual. Then this crew came over to us and one of them had an inflatable guitar conveniently placed between his legs. He came over and did some vulgar movements...and I had had it. I had to say something. I got up and knowing not to get in his face, I politely asked him to "leave us alone, you aren't the first guy that has done this tonight, we're just sitting here talking, go away, we don't walk to talk to you, leave, go! go! get out! blahblahblah" And he went on a yelling rampage...whatever. We just ignored him and decided to leave.

We had to walk back home through the clusters of cat calls but we made it home safe. Disgusted, annoyed and somewhat angry about having to put up with this garbage, but safe. The thing is, nights like these are not new for us. Stuff like this happens, daily, and there is nothing that can be done about it. On one hand, I am so jaded by it all. I have pages and pages of stories to tell, just like this one, only much worse. And although I am jaded by all of this and can ignore it, it is becoming much more difficult to just sit back and let this happen. For example, last Saturday, I was full on groped in a bar.

Now there is no way in hell I can just let that slide. My friend Jane and I were calmly talking and minding our own business and whenever these guys would come around we would just brush them off or move locations. After a good half an hour of being stalked by these two creeps, we got a little more firm with our voices and moved one more time. A minute later there was one hand on my butt and two more on my chest. I flung my elbows back swung around and slapped one of the guys hard on the face. And it felt good, you know? Like when you are playing baseball and you swing and the ball hits that sweet spot on the bat and you just know you nailed that it...Well, It made the guy drop his beer on another guy, and they were all pretty pissed and starting to turn back on me when, Sofiane, a guy who is going to be studying at U of O next year stepped in and had my back. A group of my Australian friends, who had been having trouble with these guys stepped in too and all of a sudden, things worked their way outside and the bar kicked everyone out and the cops came and we all went home.

Now it's pretty cool that I started a bar fight, but it's pretty not cool that I got groped. I was not dressed provocatively whatsoever, I was not drawing attention to myself, I was just trying to have A BEER with my friend Jane. But I couldn't even do that without getting accosted. Frankly I have had it and I can't sit back passively any more. Why can't I just be left alone by these assholes? Why can't I go out of my own house without being leered at and called a whore? Why can't the men in this country have an ounce of decency and respect? I am not the first woman you have seen. I am just like 50% of the population of the entire world. There are BILLIONS of me! I am not the first woman you have seen. You're mother is a woman! Would you do this to your mother? To all of the men who have accosted me: I am not the first woman you have seen but if you mess with me any more, I just might be the last.

Happy Mother's Day.