I’m about to leave work when my colleague starts talking to me.
“I read your blog about the Aufschrei,” she says. “I totally agree with you 100 percent. What’s the problem with being a little, tiny bit sexually harassed if it means men find you sexually attractive?”
I look at her in horror and confusion and distress and stuff like that.
“That wasn’t my point,” I say.
“It wasn’t?” she asks.
“No,” I say. “That wasn’t my point at all.”
“Oh,” she says. “So what was your point?”
I look at her blankly and consider her question. After about 10 minutes spent thinking, I whisper forlornly: “I think I didn’t have one.”
“Anyway,” she says brightly. “I made a comment. Did you see it? I called you a ‘süße Maus’!”
I look at her with even more horror and confusion and distress and stuff like that.
“You’re PeeTeeBee?” I say.
“Yeah!” she exclaims, laughing raucously. Then she notices that I’m not laughing with her and looks concerned. “What’s wrong?” she says.
“I thought PeeTeeBee was a man!” I say wistfully. “I thought a man thought I was a süße Maus. It doesn’t matter if women think I’m a süße Maus… you know why?” I twist my lips with bitterness and scorn. “Because. Women. Don’t. Count.”
I sit down in our staff kitchen, slump into a chair and glare at my colleague mournfully and bitterly and a bit more mournfully and that.
The thing is, the whole thing with the Aufschrei is a bit like Stuttgart 21. I just have to look at the kind of people who are schreiing auf – nice, feminist people who were on the right side of the Kinderbuchdebatte – and the kind of whorebagslutbitchcuntfacetrollops who are schreiing auf about people schreiing auf – like Cuntbag Kelle here, who wouldn’t like to be a man in the kind of world, ladies and gentlemen, where teenage girls are allowed to wear push-up bras, just in case her penis would explode with all the effort of not raping them every day, I assume – and I know whose side I am on without actually having to read any of the articles, which are often very long and always written in German. It was like that during Stuttgart 21, too. I didn’t actually read one article about Stuttgart 21. I just had this feeling, in my belly that I was against it. So there.
Still. It is a bit hard to properly, PROPERLY join in with the Aufschrei if you come from England. This is mainly because English men are pigs. They’re fucking swine. You hit your 13th birthday, and there’s all these taxi-drivers offering you a ride for a ride and stuff like that. The first time it happened to me, it was literally two weeks after my 13th birthday. I wasn’t an attractive 13-year-old – even rape apologist Kelle wouldn’t have minded having a penis and looking at me at the same time. I had no tits, huge glasses, a lot of spots and a mouth full of metal. I wasn’t an attractive sight. This taxi-driver goes to me: “I’ll give you a ride for ride.” I was such an innocent baby (this is a euphemism for ‘incredibly ugly cow’), I didn’t even have a clue what he was going on about.
I said: “Erm, what do you mean?”
He said: “You can pay me in kind, if you like.”
It was the first time I’d heard the expression. It wasn’t the last, though. English men are pigs, they’re fucking pigs. You get touched up in the train, you get groped in nightclubs, you walk past building sites and they groan like they’re giving birth, they’re fucking pigs. But that’s not the only reason I find it hard to join in with the Aufschrei. The other reason is: English women are pigs, too. We don’t flirt like other people flirt. We flirt aggressively. We like aggressive flirting. Basically, we flirt like it’s a Kampfsport. That’s what we do. We make jokes about tits and clits and pricks and then maybe someone having a penis that’s shaped like a banana. That’s how we flirt in England. It can get quite messy, to be honest.
I remember once, when I was a kid, I was at Romford market with my mum, and all the different fruit and veg men were vying for her attention. You know the kind of thing: “Get your juicy toms here, come orn love, get your juicy toms here, arf a pand a juicy toms here…” That kind of thing. And then my mum went up to one and said: “I would like half a pound of tomatoes, please.” And then he looked back at her and he said: “Oooh. I like a lady who can say please.” And then my mum looked at him and said: “Well, I like a man who can say thank you.”
That’s why it’s hard for me to join in with the Aufschrei. Coz we’re all pigs in England. Even our mums are pigs. And me. I’m a fucking pig, too.
That’s the main problem, really.
“I’d get in so much trouble if the men did a boys’ Aufschrei,” I say to my colleague.
“Me too,” she says.
“I reckon I’d get my own hashtag,” I say.
“Well, hopefully they won’t,” she says comfortingly.
“Yeah,” I say. “I really seriously hope they don’t.”
“They probably won’t,” she says.
“I can’t believe you’re PeeTeeBee,” I say sulkily. “It’s like when you get a Valentine’s Day card and it turns out it’s from your mum.”
“I won’t tell you next time,” she says.
I stand up and reach for my coat. “Please don’t,” I say. “I was really happy, for, like, three days there, you know.” And then I put my coat on and leave the office. We’re pigs in England. But at least we’re not evil rape apologist cuntbags like Birgit Kelle, huh. The woman needs – and I’m paraphrasing an old schoolfriend here, so do bear with me – the woman needs the words “TRIGGER WARNING” tattooed onto her forehead like the rest of us need oxygen.
