Dennis RomeroDiving foot-in-mouth into that age-old feminism pool roiling with the power of female sexuality versus the objectification of women is an L.A. Tumblr user named UnWinona, who has received tens of thousands of readers for a recent blog post about how men are bad because a crazy guy and three teens harassed her on L.A. Metro trains one day.
Well, more than that, the blogger-actress is mad that men continually try to chit-chat with her over the books she reads on trains. Her conclusion?
It's not my fault I'm pretty:
Now, before you argue that it is her fault or that she shouldn't be so damn hot on those trains from Long Beach to North Hollywood (the corridor of beauty), consider the possibility that, as some of her descriptions attest, she's actually and unfortunately just a rare semi-sane non-criminal on cars filled with odds, ends and very few women.
The business man and the couple exit our new Blue Line train an exit or so later, and I think my night is ending on a good note. A seemingly normal man enters the train with his bicycle.
… So when this man leans across the aisle into my personal space and asks me, yes, what are you reading, I assertively but calmly tell him to please leave me alone, I am reading. The man stands up, moving to the front and muttering angrily over his shoulder that it isn't his fault I'm pretty.
UnWinonia and her 'Geek Show Podcast' crew.; Credit: UnWinona / Tumblr
We're not saying that it's right to harass the first woman you see on an almost-empty train. We're just saying that maybe UnWinona's issue is not, in fact, that she's pretty and a jerk-magnet, but rather that she's traveling on public transportation in a gritty and dangerous city where mostly people of color are the victims of all kinds of crimes every single day.
The bicycle man, clearly unstable, went on to call UnWinona a plethora of unmentionable names, and through her account you can see someone who probably regularly speaks to himself and is almost certainly in need of government-issue medication.
But the gorgeous UnWinona uses the episide (and another in which three teenage boys harass her similarly) as a rant against men and the way we, in general, can't handle ourselves around such precious specimens.
UnWinona writes that men …
… Don't realize how hard it is to be a woman. How we do not have equal opportunities and freedoms in everyday life. How most men, even good caring men, have no clue what we go through on a daily basis just trying to live our lives.
A previous rant on the same topic.; Credit: UnWinona / Tumlr
Apparently some of UnWinona's blow-back wasn't so favorable. One woman wrote to her anonymously:
Your story was the most sexist crap I've read. Ya, it sucks to be annoyed by stupid people. It happens. But as a person with female genitals myself, I think you were making a mountain out of a mole hill. So SOME guys are jerks and assholes, don't assume ALL guys have it easier than ALL women. That's where sexism starts dearie.
Over the weekend UnWinona felt the need to “clarify something:”
I did not mean to imply that pretty people have more problems, or that I was harassed because I was better looking than someone else. I absolutely don't believe that.
My use of It's not my fault I'm pretty was, instead, an attempt to turn the attacker's ridiculous justification of his behavior back on him …
I assert that he is to blame for blaming the face and body combination I did not earn, but was randomly assigned by fate/genetics to walk around in, for his behavior. It isn't my fault he likes the way I look, since I'm just being the same me I always am.
Who wouldn't fall for irresistible you?
[@dennisjromero / djromero@laweekly.com / @LAWeeklyNews]
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