I've been thinking a lot lately about how women often aren't taken seriously by men when we’re vocal about our frustration or discomfort. We're either laughed off as overreactive and overemotional or worse, fetishized.

Though this is something I lowkey ponder a lot, I've been highkey pondering it since an incident earlier this week. While going on a walk around the area near my university, I was catcalled. Now this isn't unusual for me to experience no matter where I am. While a man was stopped at a red light as he was driving past me, he shouted out of his car window at me in a lewd tone, “Excuse me miss, you got a boyfriend?”

This also isn't unusual for me to hear. For some reason, men constantly think the best way to hit it off with me is to ask if I'm dating anyone. But I do not take kindly to catcalling or unwelcome flirtatious advances of any kind, nor do I take kindly to being asked my relationship status as a means of a flirtatious advance. To me, that tells me that whether or not I'm another man’s “property” is the only factor into whether or not you have a chance with me, rather than just the sole factor of my own personal comfort (and if that's really how you try to get women's attention, you're not likely to gain any of it in a positive way from me or most other women).

So, being the unapologetically snarky feminist I am, I yelled back sharply, “Why the fuck is that any of your business?” And he responded in a misogynistically condescending tone, “Oh, I like that, I like that.” Now I was really ascending into a “fight-me” mood at this point, so I shouted back at him, “No, you fucking don't. Fuck off.” And he continued to nod and laugh, “Oh, I like that!”

Gross, right?

This, unfortunately, happens a lot, to both myself and other women I know. He “liked” me vocalizing my anger because men like girls with “attitude." Our frustration is pleasing to them because it somehow makes us sexier. Rather than, oh I don't know, human beings with valid opinions and emotions.

We’ve all heard it before: when a man vocalizes his anger, he's just being assertive. When a woman vocalizes hers, she's being too dramatic. Or viewed as a turn-on because women with “attitude” are more sexually pleasing to men. Either way, she's likely to be laughed off.

They think they don't have to take us seriously because we're just “cute” when we're mad. There have been times during which my friends, ex-boyfriend or even just men who have hit on me have egged me on thinking it’s hilarious to make me uncomfortable, then just laugh and say I'm cute or funny. When, well no, I'm not just being cute or funny, I'm actually fucking pissed.

And we have seen it happen in pop culture, in TV shows and movies, from the beginning of time. I'm sure you've got to be familiar with the trope: woman and man are having a discussion in which woman voices a concern she's obviously upset about, man interrupts her by kissing her, and then they end up passionately making out and woman forgets about being upset. Well, this trope is disgusting and needs to die. It furthers the notion that women are just overly emotional beings who need to be silenced.

I never actively abhorred this trope so much until I actually experienced it in real life. My ex-boyfriend used to pull similar crap on me quite often. If I was discussing concerns about our relationship with him or just generally visibly upset in front of him, he'd start stroking my chest or ass and just say “shhh, it's okay, calm down,” as if physical attention would make everything better, rather than actually listening to and addressing my concerns. Or, if it was over the phone or otherwise not in person: “it's okay, I'll make you feel good when I see you.” Once, I was attempting to have yet another serious discussion with him about how his repeated shitty behavior didn't make me feel good, and he kept inappropriately grabbing me saying, “but I can make you feel good right now!” There were plenty of other instances of him responding to my frustration with either that kind of behavior, laughter, or excuse upon excuse, empty promise upon empty promise. No matter how he'd react it would be in a way that seemed to invalidate my negative emotions.

Women are met with this dismissive attitude when it comes to just voicing our discomfort in general. Society conditions us to think we need to be polite or quiet about situations that make us uncomfortable because we don't want to feel like we're overthinking or overreacting to something. Or for fear that if we speak up about it, we’ll be met with attitudes that convey that we're getting worked up over nothing. I know I personally struggle with this all the time. I am often stuck between wondering if guys are truly being creepy or if I am uncomfortable because I'm simply not used to certain ways guys may act due to not having a lot of experience with them. I even struggle with being able to tell whether a guy is flirting or being genuinely friendly; often times I will push down my initial discomfort for worry of overthinking it and that someone deserves the benefit of the doubt, and end up talking with them, only to discover that they were indeed in fact flirting. When it comes to catcallers or men who are otherwise hitting on me in a clearly obnoxious way, I have no shame in aggressively calling them out on their bullshit, but when a guy flirts with me in a less advancing way, even if I get uncomfortable, I end up interacting with him only out of the compelling mindset that I need to be polite and give him a chance.

This is what I mean when I say women's discomfort, frustration or otherwise negative emotions are not taken seriously. They are so brushed off that we become conditioned to push them down for fear of being viewed as overdramatic if we speak up. I didn't even speak up most of the time about my frustration with how my ex treated me, due to not wanting to feel like a bitch and convincing myself I should be more understanding. I also let him pressure me into a few things I didn't completely want to do just because I had the mindset that if I loved him I should give him what he wanted. Or if I didn’t want to partake in certain things he wanted, I'd feel bad about it because he'd guilt trip me. He complained to a mutual friend of ours after our relationship ended that I was “too hostile” toward him in voicing my concerns about our relationship troubles. And just...really?! Like, buddy, if you thought everything I actually said to you was that bad, you should hear all the thoughts I kept to myself.

Poor baby, right? I mean, God forbid a woman wants to discuss a problem she has with you not just because she's making too big a deal over a minor thing, but because let's face it, maybe you're actually kind of an asshole.

The bottom line is, plain and simple, I am sick of women’s emotions being constantly downplayed. It's hard enough for us to be vocal about our problems because society has ingrained it in us that we should be held back, quiet, passive and docile. That a woman speaking her mind is unconventional. It's been looked at this way for centuries, perhaps more so before the 1960s than nowadays. But even still, we deserve to be able to be unapologetically honest if we're uncomfortable in any way without the underlying anxiety about whether or not we're overreacting. Women are not here to be brushed off, talked over, condescended to, viewed simply as sexual pleasure, or silenced.