Rejecting a man's advances with 'I'm sorry, I have a boyfriend'

Last week, an 'entertainer' going by the name of SoFlo shared a video created by two young men named Moe Bradberry & Etayyim Ray. In giant letters, the video title asks, "GIRLS DO THIS?"

It's rare to come across a video on Facebook which bears all the hallmarks of casual, angry misogyny and find the majority of commenters fiercely disagreeing with it, but apparently miracles do happen. Last week, an 'entertainer' going by the name of SoFlo (and catering to an inexplicable three million fans) shared a video created by two sad young men named Moe Bradberry & Etayyim Ray. In giant letters, the video title asks, "GIRLS DO THIS?"

It shows Bradberry and Ray (who are listed as 'Public Figures') as they each individually approach a woman as studying quietly by herself on the grass. Ray speaks with her first, pulling out a mobile phone and telling her that her boyfriend left it in his class. She tells him that she doesn't have a boyfriend, at which he apologises for the intrusion and then leaves. Moments later, Bradberry walks up to the the woman and, uninvited, sits down and begins to creep on her in the creepiest creepster way possible.

"Hey, how you doin' sweetheart?" he asks. "I had to come meet you. I [saw] you over there, you're really cute. What's your name?" He asks her what she's studying and then lies to tell her he's studying the same thing. He then tells her she should give him her number so they can get together later to study - alone - and "get the job done".

At this point, the unnamed woman (whose face is mercifully blanked out in the video) apologetically declines by using the time honoured classic of apologetically nice women rejecting male suitors everywhere - she tells Bradberry she has a boyfriend.

Can you guess what's going to happen next? If you guess correctly, I'll give you shares in the vat of men's tears that I use to boil my rad pads in. And if you guessed that Bradberry blasted her for being a liar because his friend had already established that she was single, then DING DING DING! One allocated litre of men's tears for you! Enjoy the salty, salty brine.

Bradberry doesn't stop there though. Instead, he launches into a tirade that can only have made the poor woman he was 'exposing' feel even more uncomfortable and nervous for her safety. "I'm f--king sick and tired of this shit, man," he whines. "All you girls saying that you have a boyfriend but you really don't." He stands to deliver what I'm sure he thinks was a scathing final riposte: "You'll never have a boyfriend. You're on camera too. I'm getting the f--k outta here."

It should be noted that there is some kind of high-tension music playing over the top of this scene, as if Bradberry and Ray's 'exposure' of lying, duplicitous bitch-women is akin to some kind of brave social statement instead of just tinny sounds emanating from the world's smallest violin.

As far as Facebook videos go, this effort is not uncommon. More and more self styled 'entertainers' with no training in any kind of social justice fields or social issues at all are creating tosh like these, marketing them as 'exposes' or 'social experiments'. The most dangerous ones are those which attempt to highlight hypocrisy around domestic violence, primarily because they're so often designed to reinforce stereotypes as opposed to challenge them and are made with absolutely no base understanding of the issues at all.

But I was pleasantly surprised to see the public's reaction to what can only be described as whingy, entitled, misogynistic crap. Women and men came out in droves to register their disgust to such an aggressive display of boo-hoo hurt feelings. Comments were left both on the video and all over Bradberry and Ray's individual pages chastising them for harassing women and acting as if it's unreasonable for women to use their basic instincts to protect themselves by resorting to what we've been taught is the kindest rejection possible.

I get it, dating is hard. But the reason women have learned to say, "I'm sorry, I have a boyfriend" when rejecting a man's advances is because we have all been culturally conditioned to believe that respecting the property of another man is more important than respecting the wishes of a fully actualised human being woman person. We need to stop doing this, and instead embrace the fact that women don't exist to soothe men's egos.

Women are also allowed to say no to propositions, particularly when they happen completely out of the context of a dating environment - like when a woman is studying by herself because she doesn't have time to listen to you or even care about the bravery you summoned in approaching her. This doesn't make women bitches or liars or c---s or whores or sluts. It makes them real human beings with real responsibilities, goals and desires, none of which are obliged to diminish themselves in order to satisfy the feelings of a strange man on the street. And if you're gearing up to argue that preventing men from talking to women on the street will stop the human race from procreating, save your breath. You'll need it the next time you forget to inhale.

Men like Bradberry and Ray think they're speaking the universal bro language of Bitches Be Bitches, but they're really just exposing their own deep insecurities and belief that women exist to compliment them, flatter them and express constant desire for them. Instead of attempting to rally aggrieved men in a bro-down against 'lying women', they need to learn how to take no for answer. But here's the thing - women don't owe men shit, least of all their simpering attention and gratitude for being interrupted, harassed and then abused simply for wanting to be left alone. The sooner we all learn this, the better off we'll all be.

Respecting women and their autonomy isn't hard. Men like Bradberry and Ray should try it some time. Who knows, they might even get a date out of it.