The Thin LIne Between Flirting and Sexual Harassment: or French Men v. The Rest of Humanity

In the United States, for the most part, all you have to do is be relatively cold to someone trying to pick you up and they will leave you alone. If they don’t get the message from your eye rolls, they will leave when you say “no.” For my part I think it is because of our awesome legal system, American boys can smell a law suite cooking from a mile away. Chalk it up to the lack of a legal culture that smiles upon law suites for anything and everything, but this is not at all so in France. It doesn’t stop at the “salut les filles, on peut venir avec vous” and the hungry, leering faces that follow you down the street as the sun sets, but follows you into bars and clubs and tries to anonymously touch your ass and expects impromptu make out sessions as you walk up the stairs. At first it surprises you. Sure the catcalls are creepy, but they still make you feel hot.  You realize quickly that the normal habits do not work here at all, that more is required, that you have to say no, flat out and you have to be mean and cold wherever you go. There are, of course, some people who are either too drunk or too small of pricks to take no for an answer. There are some that simply cannot imagine why you would not want to fuck them right on the dance floor, even if you say you have a boyfriend, or you flash them the ring you wear and say you are married. 

They lunge at you on stairways and look confused why you slap them away, they try and talk you up when you are on the bus and call you a slut when you don't respond, they never bother you if you are with a man. I find it incredibly sad that a woman cannot travel alone in the city, even in the nice parts, without a man and feel vulnerable. You want a girls night? Well, be prepared to have you ass touched as you wait for the metro and random horny boys see if tonight they can get lucky. You would think it was a town of fucking sailors. 

Dear French Men, you are not special, women are not all whores,  and no means no.