Look, I’ve been assaulted a few times (not raped, fortunately) and when the guy that I’ve said “no” to several times manages to force his way into my car, yeah, that’s really going to turn me off. (There is a shining good reason why we try to travel in packs.) When it doesn’t happen and he persists, we have to run through our various tactics of getting away from the guy who is making us uncomfortable, and our lizard brains are in high gear. However, that’s usually the rare Hollywood version. It’s gratifying to hear John and Ken mention that it made them uncomfortable because for a woman getting the pick-up line that Deanna got, it’s not just a matter of, “No thanks, I’m busy,” and the guy leaves us alone. At lot of the men that have been kind to me have been white men. Most of the men that have harmed me have been white middle class men.

Your interior alarms go off for entirely different–and legitimate–reasons than ours do. To be frank, and hopefully not insulting in any way, you guys are guys. Getting hit on like Deanna was has happened to me and almost all of the women I know, and it usually isn’t traumatic, it’s just annoying, and in the best of circumstances, hilarious. A lot of men I meet are genuinely interesting, sensitive, considerate, and…genuine. I’m just long-winded, so for that, I apologize. Granted, the conversation would have gone a little differently with Beverly around.ĭurakken, this will seem like I’m picking on you, but I’m not trying to. It’s more of a mental gauge of “Is he just being handsy, or is he rapey as well? How careful do I need to be?” Not, “Should I be careful?” Geordi isn’t really being creepy, he’s being absolutely normal for his character, as is Picard, and as is Data. After a number of years, and after a number of more blatant attempts than Deanna’s dude, I, and many of my female friends, have just gotten used to it. We’ll have the exact conversation that happens in the episode, and no matter how creepy the guy was that hit on us was, one of our friends is going to go, “Oh, him? Yeah, he is actually…” Not because they actually know about him, or heard of him, it seems like it’s almost a reflexive defense mechanism.

Some jerk is going to act like he’s God’s gift, hit on us, probably won’t succeed, and we’ll go back and tell our friends. Welcome to our world! It really doesn’t matter if we look like a bag of moldy bricks covered in oozing gunk from under the bathroom sink or if we’ve dolled ourselves up a bit to hit the bar at a conference (or just leave the hotel room to attend the conference that morning). Your discussion about Deanna getting hit on and Geordi’s response is pretty funny, from a woman’s point of view.

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