The heat these past few days has been unbearable. Despite the rain and all the fans in my house running at full speed, my skin still felt like fly-paper. Unable to tolerate it any longer, I decided to get my air-cons fixed.

So two days ago, I made an appointment with an air conditioning service centre.

Yesterday morning, two men arrived at my door, introducing themselves as technicians from the service centre. After checking their tags, I unlocked my gate and allowed them in. After they had carted in their ladder and other equipment, I made sure my gate and front door were left wide open. That’s something I do whenever strangers are in the house.

As I showed them the various air-conditioning units and explained the problems I encountered with each, I began to feel a little uncomfortable as their eyes were starting to stray. Instead of looking directly at my face, they were staring at my chest.

At first, I dismissed the negative thoughts. I did not want to make wild assumptions or be judgemental. However, as the repair work progressed, the technicians started making frequent trips to the dining room where I was working, asking me a lot of irrelevant questions and updating me unnecessarily about the air-con units. Every time they did, they moved closer to where I was sitting and stared harder.

Eventually, I felt uneasy enough to decide to move to the living room. It was then that I found my front door shut. Instantly, I remembered an incident a few years ago when my neighbour asked me to help move his things into his apartment only for me to be sexually harassed by him behind closed doors. Not wanting a repeat episode, I grabbed a plastic chair and sat outside my house.

Once I was in my safe zone, I shared my little experience on my Facebook status. I wrote: “That moment when your air-con technicians who cannot stop staring at your chest decides to close the main door which you had left widely open … and you are home alone.”

Comments poured in soon enough. Among the 70 comments I received, only a handful were from women generally worried about me. Most of the comments from the men were pretty upsetting.

“Maybe he was thirsty.”

“Your front light must be very bright.”

“Maybe they thought your chest was too dusty and needed servicing.”

“Can I service your air-con next time?”

“Don’t worry, your chest ok-ok only.”

While some of my friends and followers were having fun commenting about my status, some sent me private messages, asking what I was wearing and suggesting I wore something more appropriate in the future. I was gobsmacked because these people did not even know what dress I had on at the time. Yet they imagined I was in skimpy attire.

I wonder if they will laugh and accept the objectification of women as normal if it was their sister, wife, mother or daughter who was in my place.

Disappointed, I reached out to a special friend, knowing full well that he would say the right thing to make me feel better. In less than a minute, I received his text:

“Please be careful when you have strangers in your place. Inform your brother so he can accompany you. I don’t want anything bad happening to you. If wearing a burqa can protect you, then wear it.”

Wow. Men surely have a very odd way of protecting women.

The truth is that women today continue to be harassed, abused and raped because men fail to see us as creatures worthy of respect. Having a cleavage and breasts doesn’t mean we are to be stared and laughed at or blamed if we are sexually harassed.

And if women have to wear rice sacks to be worthy of some men’s respect, I do not think those men are worthy of anyone’s respect themselves.

Note: Time to get a baseball bat for protection.