He's Harmless
Let me tell you about a harmless man in my life.
As a rabbi I met so many men who had feelings about and for me. Men who would look at my chest instead of my eyes while speaking to me, but also men who held me in high regard and respected me as a teacher and community leader. But this is a man who not only doesn’t respect me, he doesn’t respect my “no.”
We met when I was in my early twenties, living on my own for the first time in this, my favorite city. I felt that heady mixture of freedom and fear every time I parked on the street and walked the few feet to my apartment building at night. It was the “Sex and the City” years, so I leaned into the role of Vibrant Young Twenty-Something taking on the world, bought some pepper spray, and went on with it.
The MySpace years overlapped with my online dating years, and people I’d meet on the dating websites (pre-dating apps), would sometimes find me on the free social media platform, so I didn’t think anythi…
