'I spent months noticing when men walked toward us without even slowing their pace because they expected us to clear the path.'
About a year ago, I walked down a grocery store aisle with my two daughters. As another shopper bore down the aisle at us, I shuffled the girls to the side and said, “Excuse me.” The phrase tasted bitter in my mouth. I knew this man was behaving rudely, thinking his trajectory preempted ours, but I had yielded out of habit. Out of politeness.
Imagine me, a grown woman, with a jumping 5-year-old on one hand and a rogue 2-year-old pulling on the other. We are broad. We take up space. And now we hold that space, especially in the face of anyone who chugs toward us expecting to have the path cleared for them. So far only one person has run into us, bumping into my daughter’s child-sized shopping cart in the produce section.
Politeness, however, is not the same as shouldering the responsibility to be ever watchful that everyone around us has a clear path. What harm am I going to do? Contribute to a new stereotype that mothers and small daughters are self-focused instead of submissive? OK, sounds great. Raise women who feel entitled to prioritise their own goals? Cool.“The point is that men have been socialised, for their entire lives, to take up space. Men who would never express these thoughts out loud have nevertheless been brought up to believe that their right to occupy space takes [precedence] over anyone else’s right to be there.
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