ranting — Blog — Vivian Shaw

This post originally appeared on tumblr in 2015 (thus the unprofessional use of expletives) and racked up a lot of likes and reblogs, one of which was tumblr user one-thousand-wordsworth’s amazing cover for a book mentioned in the post. I loved it then and I love it now, so thank you very much for taking the time to make it.

There’s an article over at Jezebel about this eternally infuriating phenomenon, and the comments are about what you might expect. Because it’s Jez, the commenters going YES, THIS, PLEASE STOP DOING THIS outnumber the BUT I WAAAAAANT TO commenters, but it’s still subject to Lewis’s Law.

One of the but whyyyyyy commenters raises the question “what if she’s reading in a bar.” I would like to address this particular situation with an example to support my argument, which goes “SHE’S STILL READING, YOU DELIBERATELY OBTUSE FUCK.”

I read in bars. I read in bars because I read everywhere unless I’m with another person and talking to them. When I read, I am able to block out whatever is happening around me to a large extent, so reading while in a crowded noisy environment like a bar is relatively easy for me. When I am reading a book in a bar I am reading a book, and I don’t want you to interrupt me there any more than I want you to interrupt me in a library.

Example: Some years ago, I am sitting at a bar, drinking a beer and reading one of a stack of books I just got out of the science library. The titles of these books are along the lines of Archives of the Roentgen Ray, The History of Radiography, and a facsimile edition of Roentgen Rays and Electro-Therapeutics, with Chapters on Radium and Photo-Therapy. These books are old. These books are heavy. Some of them have gilt edging on the pages. They are full of amazing information and frankly terrifying practices and I am doing the internal equivalent of rolling around in them in gleeful delight, sort of like a cat in catnip. Cue a dude and his friends sitting down riiiiight next to me, closer than I would prefer. I can feel his eyeballs like tiresome little searchlights playing over me, and I just wait for it. I don’t have to wait long.

Dude: Hey.

Me: *reads*

Dude: *louder, leaning closer* Hey. Hey.

Me: *reads*

Dude: Hey, whatcha reading?

Me: *pauses, lifts book up and turns it so that he can see the cover and spine, holds it for a beat, returns to previous configuration, all without making eye contact*

At this point he and his buddies have seen that this encounter is not going as well as they might hope, so he switches over from just trying to get my attention to actively trying to get a rise out of me, complete with snickering and mutters.

Dude: What’s that mean? Is it good? Is it a good book? Do you like it?

Me: *still not looking up from my page, deadpan* No. It’s absolutely dreadful.

Dude: *not sure how to take that, goes for snickering some more* So, like, do you read a lot of books? Do you like reading books?

Me: *sighs, sits up, turns to face them, sufficiently irritated to unload* Yes, I do like reading, and I do read a lot. Right now I’m trying to read this book on the history of radiography. Did you know that in the early days of diagnostic radiography an x-ray exposure could take up to ninety minutes? And that in those days the apparatus relied on a spark gap run off either a Ruhmkorff coil or an electrostatic generator, and that the walls of the tube might fluoresce green when in use due to cathode rays hitting the glass? Imagine sitting perfectly still for an hour and a half while the tube glowed and the coil buzzed, or the discs turned, and the spark gap crackled, and the room smelled of ozone. Would you like me to draw you a diagram of a Crookes tube? *bright smile*

Dude: …ooooookaaaaaaaaay. *finally turns his attention elsewhere*

I shouldn’t have had to take the time to do that. He should have picked up on my lack of interest in the potential interaction around about the first non-response to his “Hey,” and definitely should have got the hint when I showed him the book title without speaking.

It happens no matter what. I could be reading Fifty Shades of Dreck or whatever Jonathan Franzen is putting out and I’ll get the HEY HEY HEY WHAT ARE YOU READING IS IT GOOD DO YOU LIKE IT treatment; I could be reading Hiding the Bodies of Importunate Fuckheads–For Dummies! and I’ll get the same thing. Guys, I don’t know why you think this behavior is acceptable, or why a woman owes you her attention when she is clearly focusing it on something else, or why you can’t take a goddamn hint when it is doing the equivalent of jumping up and down in front of your face, but please could you try to internalize the idea that interrupting somebody when they are reading is rude as fuck?

How about this: If you wouldn’t do this to a dude – if you would not interrupt a dude in public and then get pissy when he doesn’t want to interact with you – do not do it to a lady. And don’t hide behind the I’m Bad At Picking Up On Social Cues thing either. You can pick up on social cues perfectly well in all other areas of your daily existence; you just don’t want to when it means you don’t get to demand a woman’s attention.

Next time a dude interrupts my book to ask me what I am reading and whether it is good and whether or not I like it, I’m just going to turn to him with coldly offensive incomprehension and ask “what is it that you want me to say?” Then repeat whatever line he answers with, follow it up with “great, we can now consider this encounter concluded” and go back to what I was doing.