I Have A Boyfriend

You have probably sometime in your life heard these words spoken to you. Whether you were interested in the person or not, this deterrent was issued to you. Its a verbal boundary that is being set, that while this person might be kind to you they are in no means flirting with you or interested in being with you. This usually stops men in their tracks and completely makes them ignore the person they’ve been seeking. They can also turn around and be insulting to the person who made the comment or just leave the situation in a negative way. But why is this the reaction that many women have faced before in their lives? To me it all comes down to this male ideology of respect. If we do not respect each other's relationships then we will run into some problems. But this respect does not derive from the women's comfort in the slightest, but fear of the man she is seeing. That we are more influenced by how other men perceive us than we are about how other women see us. What comes to mind historically is when women would be raped in the Renaissance period the man who assaulted the woman would be sent to a trial because of the disrespect to the family, not for raping a woman. Because back than women were seen more as property of the family unit rather than an individual, and this idea has seemed to carry over into modern western interactions. It manifests itself in jealousy, when men might become violent if jealous of another man. Instead of taking it out on the man, they will take it out on the woman they love. They target the ones closest to them to shield them from why they do it in the first place, a sense of dominance over their perceived property. This deterrent isn’t for the man to get away, but can be a protection from what an unstable and violent man can do with jealousy. These men aren’t the majority of the population, but it makes you wonder why they exist at all? And what we can do to hold these types of men accountable.