Street Harassment and (More) Anti-Flemitism

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!