Lately, I have observed a very disappointing and disturbing culture of sexism and misogyny. Since I spend half my life on buses and trains (kidding!), I see and hear lots of interesting things. There's never a day when I don't have a story to tell. For the most part, these stories are outrageous and funny; situations when addled individuals try to kiss strangers, crazy people talk to the air and break dance, or 'hustlin' brothas' brag about how they made $15000 on their first drug run at the age of 18.

More annoying are the instances where I have heard people say things to make my blood boil. For instance, about a month ago, my roommate and I were riding the bus back from the Inner Harbor in Baltimore. It was really late, the bus was really crowded; it was a Saturday night and I had the misfortune to be sitting across the aisle from some very unsavory teenage characters. I should have known that the conversation going on among them had no place to go but south when they began to discuss the merits of pills versus marijuana. I'm so not lying when I say that there was a very serious debate about this. One dude said marijuana was better because it was easier to get high. I can't remember the rest. Mindless drivel has a very short shelf-life in my brain.

After this came some very disturbing violent language directed at the girls they had partied with the night before. The way they were dropping the word 'bitch', I was beginning to think it was an actual pronoun. There was a lot of “I saw that bitch yesterday...”, “I called that bitch and the bitch said she was busy...and then I saw that bitch last night...”. I've had very bad experiences with Baltimore youth and high-school age youth in general, so I try not to be all Wanda Sykes like “how would you feel if...” because I know they will not hesitate to open a can of 'Ignorance & Disrespect Extra Strength'. I'm not trying to fight anybody on the bus! I don't want to end up on YouTube!

At that point, I just wanted one of them to direct his hateful speech at me so that would be justified in my feminist ranting. I only say ranting because I would probably GO OFF with my head doing a complete 360 like I was being exorcised. A similar instance occurred while I was at the MVA last month. There were a couple of 'men' behind me who kept throwing down expletives like they were spitting out orange seeds. Imagine my astonishment when I turned around only to discover that these 'men' were really boys. Actually, they were about 16, and were there to get learner's permits. Even worse, the mother of one of the boys was present and did nothing but laugh at the racial, homophobic and misogynist slurs they were using.

Again, last week, I got on the bus and sat next to a couple of men who were having a very intense conversation about crack in Chinatown and black neighborhoods; and how the government began to crack down on drugs (pardon the unintended pun) because they were scared that the Chinese and black men would start to rape white women. Sometime during this intelligent(???) conversation, one gentleman said “Mussolini had tooken...”. Thinking back, I probably buried my face in the book I was reading so they wouldn't see me laughing. Tooken though? Smh. Digression aside, all this time, there was a young Asian lady sitting next to one of the men. I'm thankful that she had headphones on because she might have combusted from rage.

She got of the bus, and the larger, 'red-neck'-esque man said “I want an Asian reallll badddd”. At this point I did a double take and abandoned all pretense of reading a book to look him squarely in the face with an expression on my face that said quite plainly, “really?”. He seemed to have no shame since he continued even though everyone on the bus had clearly heard what he'd said. He was that loud. “I won't even mind if I find one who looked pretty but couldn't speak English...” To add insult to injury, he kept calling women 'females' in the tone that suggested he thought they were some kind of domestic animal. If everyone on that bus had been telepathic, they would've had nosebleeds from all that my mind was screaming. What are women? Commodities for you to pick up whenever you want? Animals? Tools for you to please yourself with? Who in sam heck is this guy?

Things like these happen on a daily basis and still there are people insisting that feminism is unimportant. To these people, feminists are just a bunch of whiny people (men can be feminists too) nitpicking at every detail. The world has gotten so used to relegating women to the 2nd-class position, that they have begun to believe that we are indeed inferior to men. We have to criticize everything or else end up with the kind of mindless, auto-pilot, subconscious sexism that spawned the Rogers Cup poster.