A City TV reporter in Toronto is making national headlines all day long for confronting some boorish fans at a soccer game when they hijacked her live interview, making FHRITP a real thing – and a real offense. One of the men was canned from his six-figure job.

Just yesterday, men in a passing car interrupted my interview with the obscene comment. Then today, I received a Twitter message about how “hot” I was in comparison with other women staff members.

I want to scream sometimes: “You can’t talk to me like that! I am a professional person who works in this community. I need to be safe to live in this community.”

And then a very sudden and very comforting idea comes to me:

I am intelligent.

I am intelligent, reflective and curious, as well as articulate. I have spent time on my own development and I can’t help that I am attractive (although I’ve spent a lot of time on my appearance as well) or that I am a woman.

Contrarily, these men think they can act like frat boys their entire lives and get away with it. They can even have good-paying jobs and earn a better living than me, but they don’t have any influence. And their lives are void of any real substance. They remain unengaged from their communities and uninvolved politically. In other words, their lives are insignificant.

With so little significance, I am not convinced they even really exist.