An act of courage submission for the 1000 Acts of Courage campaign – a community-building conscious action campaign collecting one thousand courageous acts for the well-being, empowerment, and equity of girls and women:

My cousins and I went to a bar and a couple of guys came over and immediately started talking to us. It became clear to me that these men were problematic when I noticed that all they had to say was “joking rude.” For example, my cousin is a stand up comedian, and upon learning this, one of the men kept finding ways to tell her that he bet she sucked and wasn’t actually funny. He made SURE to laugh when he said it though, as if that made it ok.

I immediately looked him in his drunk eyes and told him what he was saying was not funny and that he had not earned the right to tease any of us as he had just met us and spent no emotional labor getting to know us and our boundaries. I was surprised to see that my cousin herself came to his rescue saying, “He was just joking!” I repeated myself to her and said, “It’s not funny. He doesn’t know you. And it’s not ok.” 

I doubt I made an impact on the men, but I really hope I made my cousin think twice about letting men speak to her like that in the future.

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