Me a few weeks ago:  Eating sourdough pancakes at the counter, reading the last pages of a thick Peggy Guggenheim biography. Guy: sits next to me, sees what I’m reading, and proceeds to tell me all about the life of Peggy Guggenheim as if I’d never heard of her.  Hello? I’m on the last fucking chapter of a 1,000 page biography. You really think you need to educate me on the topic? Who are you and why are you giving me a lecture while I’m trying to read?  Are you expecting me to take notes or some shit?

Tell me, what are men thinking when they approach a woman reading a book and attempt to teach her everything they think they know about the subject she’s reading about?  Are they thinking “Hey, it’s a girl! Maybe she’ll fuck me!” or is it “I’m totally smarter than her because I’m a dude. I better go make sure she knows it.” Or possibly “I hate women.” Perhaps a little of each?

Me a few days ago: At the bar reading a thoroughly entertaining book about TV (the ideal gift for any Gen-x’er who was raised by the nanny named television and who found themselves abnormally attached to TV’s rich California high school kids/vampire slayers/”start getting real” roommates long after they left home).   Guy: Sits next to me, sees what I’m reading, and tells me all about the kinds of books he reads, as if I was sitting there wondering about exactly that thing and not, in fact, reading a book. To make matters so much worse, the kind of book he’s damn proud of reading is Bukowski. This is seemingly intended to convince me that he’s WAY smarter and cooler than I am because I’m reading about television and he prefers the shitty prose of a drunken misogynist asshole.  Edgy!

Tell me, why do so many men think that a woman reading alone in a public place is the perfect listener? Is this because they believe they are smarter than any given woman near them and that women, especially the ones that are trying to look all smart by reading a book, are anxious to be subtly reminded of their supposed deficiencies? Do they see a woman reading and assume she’s only doing so in order to get a man to come talk to her; that she can’t possibly be just simply reading a book? Is it because she’s without a male companion and has therefore made herself open game – i.e. that she brought such attention on to herself by daring to venture out into the public realm without a man clearly claiming ownership over her?  

Me since I was old enough to read in public:  Asked “Whatcha readin?” by countless men who never attempted to engage in any sort of real dialogue about the book I was reading, who never asked me questions about what I thought about the author or the subject, who never did anything but spew paraphrased, hand-me-down facts and theories about whatever topic they felt like discussing regardless of whether or not I seemed even remotely interested, who never assumed I might actually know anything about anything.

Tell me, would the kind of men who shamelessly approach single reading women suggest that these women not read in public if they don’t wish to be approached by men pretending to be curious?  And if so, how unbelievably fucked up is it that?