Someone called my mother a slut.

Or, more specifically, a sharmouta.

My memory fails me; I’m not sure how we came to the subject, but my mother and I were talking about the owner of the men’s clothing store next door. My mother owns an alterations shop inside a mall, and since they work in such close proximity, the owner or the store clerk send their customers over to my mother if a suit needed mending, or if a pair of pants required hemming.

“That crazy man! You know what he says? He says that I’m his girlfriend!”

I looked at her blankly, trying to process what I had just heard. “You’re his what?”

“Girlfriend! And I told him, ‘I’m married! I have children! How can I be your girlfriend?’ But he just replied that he’s never seen my husband at the store, where is he?”

By this time I had already made up my mind that he was some old man fooling around, and since my mother always gave him and his store clerk–let’s call them Frank and George, respectively–Christmas gifts every year, I figured that it wasn’t such a big deal. Maybe he was joking, like immature teenagers do. And he had a point, my father never visited; I wouldn’t have been able to come up with a retort to that, either.

Right as I was about to leave to study with my brother at a nearby coffee shop–I had thought the conversation was over–my mother caught my attention with another remark. “And he keeps calling me–what was it–a sarmuta.”

“What does that mean? What language is that?”

“I don’t know, something in Lebanese. I’ll have to ask Una when she comes by tomorrow.” Una used to work in a women’s clothing store in the same mall, a branch of a relatively successful company before it went out of business. From time to time, she still visited my mother to get her clothes fixed and to chat, as they had remained friends over the years.

I had my own suspicions, though. Even if I had never–or perhaps more accurately, sparingly–used profanity or slanderous language myself, I grew up with uncouth peers who had. If my hunches were right, then the word probably meant something unpleasant.

Once I got into the car, I looked up the word on my brother’s smartphone, fumbling with the keys on the touchscreen. ‘Sarmeta lebanese’, I typed, my memory of the word (pronounced in my mother’s thick Korean accent) a bit fuzzy. No luck. My additional attempts of ‘sarmita lebanese’ and ‘sarmata lebanese’ didn’t yield any relevant results, either. When I inputted ‘sarmuta lebanese’, however, Google kindly corrected me by asking if I had meant ‘sharmuta’ instead. I accepted the help by clicking on the link.

That, in turn, opened a can of worms for me. One that I couldn’t stop thinking about, and frankly, one that made me angrier the more I mulled over the situation at hand. One website defined it as “slut.” One post on Yahoo! Answers displayed another woman’s confusion and curiosity about the word after being called a sharmouta by Lebanese women in her neighborhood. Urban Dictionary provided me with a more raw, crude interpretation: “A female who can’t get enough of fucking and sucking dick, a total lowie.”

That was yesterday. Today, Una was shocked by my mother’s request to translate the word, and after confirming that it wasn’t misconstrued for another, more benign phrase, she went next door to argue with George and demand an explanation. Frank wasn’t in, and so George had to provide excuses to Nada in his stead. George denied saying anything of the sort, and pretended that he didn’t know what the two women were talking about.

He was there, my mother argued, and even laughed with his boss when she’d asked what it meant (obviously, they never answered her). It wasn’t an event that occurred only once, or twice–although my mother had a sharp memory, by her account Frank had called her a sharmouta almost daily at one point, more than enough times to have the gist of the word ingrained in her head.

I am angry for a variety of reasons. For one thing–and I hope this goes without saying–my mother is not a slut. She is a hard-working woman who sacrifices her health, time and energy into a business that is unforgiving; and as neighbors, Frank and George should know this fact better than anyone else. To joke around like that with a woman as virtuous as my mother strikes me as repulsive, sickening and offensive.

Of course, the so-called nickname was merely in jest, and I am aware of that. I am not angry about their playful attitude, but rather in the manner that they channeled it. What is so amusing about making fun of an individual in a language he or she cannot understand?

Tell me, what the fuck is so funny about calling an innocent woman a slut?

What saddens me further is that there was no one to stand up for her when this teasing took place, because she primarily works long hours alone.

I remember a time during my sophomore year when one of my co-workers kept insisting that I watch pornography with him during work–he was a nice guy, and I’m sure he didn’t mean any harm. He was joking, as a way to break the ice with me. But it made me uncomfortable, and the two other male employees who witnessed this were silent throughout the entire ordeal. No one else told him to shut up, or to stop.

Did they all think it was a game? Was it funny? Still a young child, I didn’t know how to handle the situation and ended up leaving my shift for an hour or so, to clear my head. Up to that point, I had only interacted with mainly females and boys from the Christian clubs on campus. I admit, I was a prude and wasn’t used to guys like him, who talked so freely about masturbation and porn in front of the opposite sex. When I returned, somewhat calm, he hadn’t got the hint and commenced with the sexual harassment.

I don’t think most people understand what sexual harassment is. For the longest time, I was unsure about the definition–I was almost positive that it exclusively entailed groping, or unwanted sexual advances–until I visited the counseling center and spoke with a psychologist about the mortifying event. She confirmed that it was indeed a case of sexual harassment, and why hadn’t I reported it to my boss?

A year had already passed by then, and the source of the internal torment had already graduated and left the school. There was no use in pursuing the matter. I had already written him a letter telling him how embarrassed I was, and that I didn’t feel comfortable with him extending an invitation to… watch pornography with him. Truthfully, who would? Do friends normally watch pornography together? (I wasn’t sure.)

I ended the letter by wishing him a bright future, with hopes that he’ll succeed in the real world. “Congratulations,” I probably wrote, “On your graduation.” The well-wishing wasn’t fake, and I did genuinely care for him. But the humiliation never quite disappeared.

Was it because he never replied? Because he never apologized? Or was it due to my lingering feelings of betrayal when the two other employees–two people I looked up to and thought of as older brothers–didn’t stand up for me? I’m not sure how he felt as he read my letter, but if there was the smallest inkling of sorriness in him, that would be enough for me.

So I have a request to ask of you, men: Please treat us with respect. It doesn’t matter whether it’s permissible in your culture, in your circle of friends, or in your way of life, to insult and demean us; we women don’t deserve that. Not one of us, not even the most malicious woman you know, nor the “bitchiest”, deserves to be raped, to be cat-called, to be groped. We aren’t here to be at your disposal, or to serve as objects of entertainment.

Listen, if you observe unfairness and harassment towards women in your midst, do something about it. Are you afraid of being singled out by your male peers and deemed not masculine enough if you don’t partake in the insults and jeering?

Or, is it a more serious issue at stake here, one that I’m constantly disappointed and heartbroken by–do you not realize that such action or words are unacceptable and hurtful to begin with? Are you unable to differentiate between what is right and wrong, what is sexist and non-sexist? What is something to be taken lightly (“C’mon, that was just a joke!”) or something weighty (“You’re not serious, are you?”), or… are they the same?

There is something both infuriating and tragic about my mother’s case, particularly because she and Frank are equally immigrants. Their native tongues are drastically different, and while they communicate to a certain degree through sentences in English and gesticulations, there are some things that are universal.

“Soo-Jean, how do you say, ‘You made a fool out of me’ in English?” my mother inquired in Korean. After I answered that I’d write it down on paper for her, she had another request. “Then how do you say, ‘You owe me an apology. You did me wrong’?”

My mother has been disgraced with vulgar name-calling by two men she considered friends (or acquaintances, at the very least) and yet is unable to effectively express her emotions due to a language barrier. I just hope that later, when she confronts Frank about it, he won’t be shrewd and slippery about the subject like his employee George was; hopefully, he’ll be “man” enough to admit his mistake and apologize. There is nothing worse than a male–not a man, mind you–who tells you, a female, that it’s nothing, that it’s all in your head.