AI generated image - not the author! By Selena Routley
Being alone, homeless (I am currently living in a van) and a writer, I often seek spaces like cafés and pubs to be in an environment where people, especially families with children, are enjoying each other’s company. Most proprietors in Inverloch know me by sight and are lovely to me. Most people in the area likewise are wonderful.
On New Year’s Eve, I was in a local hotel. I had been wonderfully uplifted and inspired by the gorgeous sunset and was busy writing and enjoying my wine when one of a heavily drinking group intruded on my space with a “Ow’s it goin, Luv?!”.
Being alone, homeless (I am currently living in a van) and a writer, I often seek spaces like cafés and pubs to be in an environment where people, especially families with children, are enjoying each other’s company. Most proprietors in Inverloch know me by sight and are lovely to me. Most people in the area likewise are wonderful.
On New Year’s Eve, I was in a local hotel. I had been wonderfully uplifted and inspired by the gorgeous sunset and was busy writing and enjoying my wine when one of a heavily drinking group intruded on my space with a “Ow’s it goin, Luv?!”.
When I said firmly that, as a German, I found his behavior inconsiderately forward, the whole table of wassailing yobbos erupted in a gush of constant insults and goads towards me. I was clearly considered to be “rude” and “stuck up”.
I should like to put a certain group of heterosexual men in our area on notice. I do not think I am alone amongst women in holding the following views. You are NOT entitled to a woman’s attention OR her conversation. Or that of anyone else, for that matter.
Yet some individuals become nasty and threatening when they intrude on a woman and are rebuffed – no matter how politely – when she is minding her own business and it is obvious to anyone with a shred of decency and whit of social skills that she is not seeking attention, and indeed does not want it.
I shifted tables. The whole drunken table decamped and followed me. They showed their ugly man-child puerility, petulance and sheer sense of entitlement to women. This happened three times, until the publican told me that “working on a computer is not a good look” and that I would have to leave.
Then things took a particularly dark twist. One of the men added that he knew where I – a single woman - was camping and that he was watching me.
Are Australians so rigid that they get uptight about someone writing poetry in a space that should be devoted to socialization, friendliness, inclusiveness and the comfort of others that all we humans seek? I don't think so, especially in Inverloch, where there are many of us literary types.
But there are those amongst us who clearly need to be approached only with extreme caution and are a threat to women's safety. I would not want my daughter in this particular bar.
I should like to put a certain group of heterosexual men in our area on notice. I do not think I am alone amongst women in holding the following views. You are NOT entitled to a woman’s attention OR her conversation. Or that of anyone else, for that matter.
Yet some individuals become nasty and threatening when they intrude on a woman and are rebuffed – no matter how politely – when she is minding her own business and it is obvious to anyone with a shred of decency and whit of social skills that she is not seeking attention, and indeed does not want it.
I shifted tables. The whole drunken table decamped and followed me. They showed their ugly man-child puerility, petulance and sheer sense of entitlement to women. This happened three times, until the publican told me that “working on a computer is not a good look” and that I would have to leave.
Then things took a particularly dark twist. One of the men added that he knew where I – a single woman - was camping and that he was watching me.
Are Australians so rigid that they get uptight about someone writing poetry in a space that should be devoted to socialization, friendliness, inclusiveness and the comfort of others that all we humans seek? I don't think so, especially in Inverloch, where there are many of us literary types.
But there are those amongst us who clearly need to be approached only with extreme caution and are a threat to women's safety. I would not want my daughter in this particular bar.