After thinking being 25 made me invisible to the sort of unpleasant street attention I remember from being 15, tonight changed all that. First there was an ass-pinching in SoHo, followed by a drunk on the subway asking me if I was a ballerina. I said no, and he said he was looking at my--I was expecting "ballet flats"--but no, it was "leggings." (Under a dress, for the record.) Apparently being accompanied by an intimidating Flemish man was not enough; I'll start looking into burkinis.
At dinner, pre-pinching, the couple next to us were discussing a friend of theirs, a woman from New York who had (horrors!) married a Belgian and moved with him back to Flanders, where this woman had been forced to learn Flemish. The man in the couple (the Village-restaurant couple, not the one in Flanders) disparagingly called Flemish a "dialect." As is typical of anti-Flemites, this man did not think to consider that he was sitting diagonally across from a native speaker of the language he found oh so amusing.
What an evening. It's a good thing we're no longer living in the age of the duel, or Jo'd have had his hands full! So many insults to honor!
Friday, August 08, 2008
Street Harassment and (More) Anti-Flemitism
Posted by Phoebe Maltz Bovy at Friday, August 08, 2008
Labels: converting to Flemish, gender studies
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2 comments:
yes but as is said in France, the flemish have much phloem but no honor.
Please take your anti-Flemitism elsewhere, it's not wanted here.
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