The System 673: Not How That Works
The other day I was on morning radio. On the way into the studio, I was listening to the show so I knew if any segments had some running jokes that we could reference on the air. What I heard was a poll about honking at women on the street. Do ladies appreciate it? What’s wrong with letting them know they’re looking good? Come on, it’s an ego boost, right?
To quote Kristen, I got quite the “feminist rage boner” over this one. Nope. That’s not how that works. You shouldn’t honk at women on the street. It doesn’t make women feel better about themselves. Even if some girls claim that it does (they called in to that effect), you shouldn’t do it. Why? Because you’re doing that because you’re in a car and you know you can get away with it. Would you say that to someone if they had the ability to kick you in the balls? Because that should be a baseline for words and actions. If someone had the opportunity to kick you square in the nuts right after you opened your mouth, would you still say those things? If the answer is “no”, don’t say those things. Don’t do those things. It makes people feel at the least creeped out but at the most unsafe.
And the thing I always come back to, what in the world do these people think is going to happen next? Will the woman just turn around and throw her number at them, knowing that now, after years of searching and dressing up for the sake of others, she can finally rest easy knowing that a man in a car thinks she’s attractive and has conveyed this through the level of communication worthy of her intelligence, the horn honk?
I think the “Nad Shot Test” is my new litmus test for all things. Teach it to your children.
I’ll post in a separate post with some updates, but in short there’s a Super Art Fight show on Saturday that y’all should attend. But I’ll let that be elsewhere.
The System 386: What Car Horns Are Really Saying
It’s friday, and I couldn’t be happier. As a note to all, the iPhone does not make a reliable alarm clock. Lesson learned the hard way. Also, two pieces of note:
- Wednesday’s comic is spawning a shirt! As soon as I finish designing it. Stay tuned here or to HilariAwesome.com (where the shirts live).
- The Coffee Wins Shirts contest will be posted today! Sorry for the delays, too many good entries!
Oh, and a quick note about readership. When you post comics to Reddit, Digg, forums, BoingBoing or whatever, I notice. Because it always results in a bump in traffic. I mention this because Wednesday’s comic on biking was posted to Reddit’s biking thread, and is now seeing a nice bump in traffic (that will hopefully translate to some shirt sales, which will hopefully translate to putting more time into the comic) thanks to Straw_Hat on Reddit. So thanks to him and all the others of you who share the comic. It helps, and it saves me from being “that guy” that posts his own comic to places.
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