Speaking up...sort of.

For a good portion of my life I have always felt it easy to connect and be friends with males. There weren't that many around in my hometown of 250 people, graduating class 10 BUT guys have always seemed attractive in the sense of no drama, no frills kind of friendship. I went to college had a wide array of guy friends who truly were just friends, brothers if you will. I met my now husband and all of his buddies adopted me. He was in a fraternity and since I stayed there quite often many of them began to think of me as one of the guys. Granted this had it's positives and negatives. It was nice to have this sort of platonic/fun relationship that required a lot less work than most of my close female relationships BUT then sometimes I found myself being annoyed about feeling invisible, asexual, and subject to some chauvinistic comments that I rarely showed my upset over.

So fast forward a few years, I'm in graduate school in a helping profession and again I'm not surrounded by many males. However, a few of the guys in my class who of course became my instant friends have said some of the most misogynistic things I have ever heard. Yet I stand by with my mouth closed. I might roll my eyes or make a classic scoff at them but never really voice how their words hurt me. I'm not sure if they watched too many episodes of the Pick Up Artist on VH1 and they think "negs" (put down comments that help draw in a female) are cool or if they really think talking to or about a woman that way is okay. I would have to say most of my interactions with them involves some sort of "I'm-higher-up-slash-better-than-you-in-every-sense-of-the-word-and-I-should-be-worshipped" For example, if they are talking and I were to interject something I would get a "excuse me, the adults are talking" Like really?! What the F does that mean? I also get to hear the tawdry commentary about other females. Both seem to have an affinity for extremely thin, barely legal girls and I get very tired of hearing them talk about women like cars or cuts of meat.

What's worse is I begin to wonder why am I supposedly friends with these people who make me feel lesser than myself and what that says about me, a self-described liberal woman? I always end up biting my tongue and then bitch about it later and threaten to either punch both of them in the face or kick them where it hurts. So passive aggressive of me!!! Thought: Am I being a woman that they think I should be (quiet & subservient)?? But really, what good would a kick, punch, or sharp tongue teach them? Would that just make me (in their eyes) to be some feminist man-hating bitch who's opinion they would ignore anyway? Only one way to find out I guess...where can I get a sexy yet practical pair of pointy heels or boxing gloves?