The woman in the video is now receiving rape threats.
This really does a good job of showing how pervasive this sort of thing is, and how the cumulative effect can't be understood by interpreting individual interactions out of context (where they might sound more innocuous).
Gah. I used to see this happen from time to time in NYC but maybe didn't have a sense of how constant it is.
Yeah, I hear ya. I've only seen this in person very occasionally, and heard about it on the internet from women who experience it regularly, but the video really makes the pervasiveness of it hit home.
The guy who walks alongside her in silence for five minutes is especially creepy.
This doesn't happen much to me in DC, but SF last summer was kind of intimidating. I'd forgotten to wear my "fuck off" expression and keep my line of sight straight ahead and slightly lowered a couple of times. Maybe in a few years, I'll be crone-like enough to look at things I'm walking past and wear my normal neutral-to-pleasant resting expression.
1 (and everything else, really): People are horrible. I should go back to bed.
Ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss. Boom!
Annoyingly, the video doesn't load for me.
But from descriptions, I've never gotten hassled at anything like this rate, but I do have blank-faced/no eye contact down to a science, and have since adolescence. To expose stupid thinking on my part, I actually wondered if the video were a bit of a set up, in that she was making eye contact with people or smiling or something. And then realized that what I was thinking was insane, even if she was, that's not a reason she should be hassled.
1, 2: What the hell is wrong with people?
The comment section on the link in 1 is pretty disheartening, too.
I know, I know: "Never read the comment section."
10: I swear this isn't trolling, but: if the norm is that women who don't want to be hassled* walk blank-faced without eye contact (but nonetheless get hassled), then surely making eye contact would up the rate of harassment? I mean, otherwise why would anyone go about blank-faced and deadeyed?
It doesn't justify different harassment levels, but it would explain them.
Anyway, the question I've always had is, what are these guys thinking? I mean, we all know that they won't get any satisfaction, and presumably most/none of them are thinking, "here's how I'll assert my dominance over all women today," so what is the internal motivation? Is it purely sub rational, in the same way that my kids pick fights with each other over nothing**?
*OK, none of them "want" to be hassled
**not that I understand their mental state either, but then I just chalk it up to some fucked up aspect of the lizard brain. Sparring for dominance, I suppose, with the kids and the street harassers.
10: I have no idea if the video was edited to hide a bunch of pot-stirring behavior* on the part of the woman who is being harassed -- at this point, I'm so cynical about everything that I just assume bad faith on the part of everyone all the time -- but it doesn't appear that she smiles, makes eye contact, or otherwise invites people to interact with her in any way. She's just a curvy person wearing sort-of-tight-but-not-otherwise-revealing clothing, and so men apparently see her as fair game for harassment. It's pretty horrifying to watch, actually, and makes me think New York is an unusually awful place -- though that's probably unfair, as I bet this happens everywhere all the time (see above about my cynicism).
* Not that, as you note, such behavior would exculpate the harassers.
I still make eye contact with strangers passing on the street. Because Nebraska.
I do too. I also smile at people who make eye contact with me on the street and in other public spaces (airports, for example). Because Ohio.
17: I thought you were from the dangerous part of Ohio.
You mean where black people live? Yes, that's true.
Where the serial killers and basement-locker-uppers live.
I was a little surprised that in their supercut, nobody actually blocked her path. I hate when that happens.
LB, it looks like she's basically expressionless and looking ahead. By the end, she looks tired and a little pissed. Many of the men speaking to her are sort of hanging out in pairs in front of shops, but some are also walking in the same direction. Not sure whether that makes a difference to your interpretation.
13.1: Sure, the deadeyed facial expression helps -- that's why I do it. I don't think there's any question about that.
13. My guess is the explanation is they learned this behavior, see it as innocuous, and are stupid and self-centered enough to believe the woman secretly enjoys hearing it. But yeah, it's also about dominance.
14: Normally, I get all outraged about anyone suggesting that NY is particularly bad, but on street harassment, it might be as a matter of pure density -- ten hours of walking on Manhattan sidewalks means walking past many more people than in most other places.
24. Isn't the deadeyed facial expression part of the normal public uniform in New York, regardless of gender? It somewhat is in Boston and DC, too.
I remember reading somewhere* that you don't make eye contact in big cities because it takes effort to do that, it's a social interaction, and if you do it to everyone you'd be exhausted after a few blocks. In a small town you can actually look at and smile at everyone without wearing yourself out.
* It was writing on paper, so it must be true, right?
In a small town you can actually look at and smile at everyone without wearing yourself out.
It's not just that, but the probability that you know the people you are passing is very high. It look me years of living in big cities before I was able to internalize the idea that I could pick my nose on the street with basically the same chance of being seen by somebody I know as if I picked my nose in my room with the door closed.
My aunt was in Iran for many years. She said it was a big issue.
I don't really disagree with much here, but it does seem like the framing of this is off, from the standpoint of convincing the target audience of catcalling males. Saying "100 instances of harassment" and then showing a video where a fair number of the guys say something like "have a nice day" is only going to reach the converted. The point is, you, dude, might think you're making a polite remark to a pretty lady, but look at this video: when lots of guys do that, it takes up her attention for the whole time she's out anywhere.
And if someone has information about how black and hispanic women feel about this kind of attention (not the creeper kind; I think I can guess there), that would be great.
33: I've had to stop in Pittsburgh. I've realized that I can't walk across Oakland without at least a 50% chance of seeing someone I know on the way.
It was writing on paper, so it must be true, right?
No---only if it was on the internet.
31: Not to mention a strong Italian cultural influence, with Italy being notorious for harassment.
Following up on 13, I wonder if there's any meaningful state of mind distinction between no-doubt harassers and "smile"ers? I could see the argument for them being identical (they're experienced as roughly equivalent) but expressed differently, but there's something so aggressive about some of the outright harassment that seems to suggest some difference. Maybe it's just SES or self-image: guys without status anxiety and/or "nice guys" tell women to smile, while socially insecure and/or "real men" tell women they've got great tits, and yell at them for not appreciating the compliment.
35: Yeah, I was actually going to say that Pgh is kind of renowned for being small town in precisely that way (not the nose-picking, the seeing people you know).
34.2: I can't think of good search terms, but I have very recently seen an art/PSA project by a woman of color -- wall stencils, I think -- objecting to this kind of thing. So, if the implicit question was "Possibly black and hispanic women universally find this sort of interaction friendly and pleasant, and only uptight white women object?" I'm pretty sure that's not the case.
Did I ever mention the time that I was closing my front door for the night, wearing boxers (I had already gotten ready for bed), and a couple young black women* walking down the street spotted me and one yelled, "I see you creeping, creeper!" I should note here that between me and them was a row of cars (they were in the street, as is a weird norm here), sidewalk, 15' of front yard, 8' of elevated porch, and 3' of vestibule - I was physically far away, and intermediated by several layers of defensible space.
I was a bit mortified, but mostly amused by the phrasing.
*race mentioned in partial response to 34.last
Between the meth heads, the frat boys, and the drive-by rednecks, RWM gets more street harassment at night here in the small town Midwest than she did in Harlem.
Without conceding anything on my position that NY is a pit of hell, I think this is a density/walkability offshoot, rather anything to do with NY specifically, aside from NY having more density/walkability.
any meaningful state of mind distinction between no-doubt harassers and "smile"ers?
IME, the thing about the 'friendlier' harassment is that it has serious potential to turn hostile really fast. If you walk by without engaging or making eye contact, you're okay, but any response, like returning the greeting, often (not always -- half/a third of the time, maybe?) means that they'll keep following you and get hostile when you try to end the encounter. I'm sure there are at least some men who think of themselves as just being friendly and wouldn't escalate to hostility regardless, but a big chunk of the 'friendly' interactions are people who will get hostile.
And if someone has information about how black and hispanic women feel about this kind of attention (not the creeper kind; I think I can guess there), that would be great.
I have heard relayed a conversation about this among (mostly UMC) Latin American transplants to the US. Several of them said that, while they generally experience the catcalling in their home countries as an annoyance (and scary/threatening when it was very aggressive), they also relied it on as a way of reassuring them that, "okay, I am succeeding in my job of getting attention as a female sexual being". When they moved to enclaves in the U.S. where they weren't getting catcalled anywhere near as much, they felt a little disoriented and self-doubting without these reassurances. This conversation sort of blew my (white, USian) feminist ladyfriend's mind. Obviously, the lesson of that isn't "see, they like it".
(And the video finally loaded. You were all right, she's doing deadeyed just fine.)
44: Huh. Funny thing is, I don't think of rates of catcalling here to have much to do with how good I'm looking. On some level, yes, I get hassled much less in my forties than I did in my teens and twenties, and I assume that's related to a falloff in visual appeal, but as between me scruffy and unkempt and me dolled up and and looking sharp, I'd expect more hassling scruffy than the reverse. I think it's a class/race thing, although I'm not precisely sure of what's going on.
Here, it just wouldn't work as feedback on how good I was looking.
Would it be cruel to bring up the haircut thing again?
My aunt was in Iran for many years. She said it was a big issue.
Anecdotally, it is a big issue for women (especially but not only fair-skinned women) pretty much everywhere between the Bosphoros and the Bay of Bengal. What brought it home to me was spending some time working and travelling in Turkey - I'd spent over a month thinking nothing worse of the Turks than that they were terrible drivers, worse cooks, and prone to burning their religious enemies alive from time to time, but then who isn't, and then my (male) friend and I met a couple of Polish girls who demanded that we take them out to dinner, because they had been in the country for two weeks and they had been effectively confined to their hotel rooms from six in the evening onwards because of the level of harassment they were receiving. And that was just completely invisible to me and my friend, obviously.
I didn't get a "hrmphf" out of that guy!
I follow a fair amount of WOC on twitter, and this sort of stuff is the bane of their life. They're complaining about it every day.
The point is, you, dude, might think you're making a polite remark to a pretty lady, but...
I really think it's almost never this. It's just contempt and aggression all the way down. You can see this in how violently angry they get if an advance is rebuffed, however politiely. It's also probably not unrelated that the same type of dudes who harass women on the street will often also harass guys who don't fit their masculinity norms, or who otherwise stick out in some way.
Without conceding anything on my position that NY is a pit of hell, I think this is a density/walkability offshoot
It's not. Here, for those of you who think it only happens in big cities, read the MetaFilter thread on this video. Note how many women report this sort of thing in small towns all over the country.
A sample:
Example from outside of New York: when I was growing up in NC, we lived in a small neighborhood surrounded by commercial areas, and after school I would often walk a mile or so to the shopping center with the grocery store, dollar store, craft store, etc. Just cause I was bored, wanted some candy, whatever.
The one-mile walk to the shopping center was along a 4-lane road, and I used to count the number of dudes honking at me and/or hollering out the car windows at me. There were usually at least two or three. I think seven might have been a record. (This was one way, not round trip.) This began when I was around 12. I generally wore jeans and t-shirts.
49: I had a friend who much preferred the Gulf to Lebanon/Syria, despite everything, due to the much lower level of on-the-street bullshit.
There's a difference between harassment from a car and from other pedestrians/people on stoops and so on, I think. In rural Indiana, some guys through a glass bottle at a friend and me, maybe thinking we were a couple. In Orange County, some driver yelled slurs I didn't quite hear but I'm pretty sure were racist while I was carrying Mara, which has never happened here in Dixie. Essentially no street harassment in Turkey, but I think as long as I kept my face blank and eyes down I passed as plausibly Turkish and didn't trigger extra attention.
And ogged, come on, I've also heard a few anecdotes like the one Criminally Bulgur relates (not to mention having repeatedly seen the King of Queens episode where Doug pays construction workers to catcall his wife so she'll feel hot) but the canonical pop culture response to street harassment was written and performed by black women.
For fuck's sake. Nobody should be watching King of Queens. That's why we have so many channels.
To the class issue, I was walking down in the Wall Street area with a friend who was much more generously endowed than I, and a well-dressed man kind of leaned in, in passing, and addressing himself directly to her breasts, whispered, "nice tits." I was totally used to the "hey baby hey baby smile" style of harassment, but this shocked me. It was so creepy, and she wasn't surprised at all.
I suppose 43 shouldn't have surprised me, but it did. The desire/need to dominate is apparently really fucking strong.
Here's a thing, and I guess it doesn't relate, but it's weird for them to be unconnected: IME, African-Americans* are far, far more likely to compliment something I'm wearing (meaning strangers). No apparent pattern of age/class/gender. There's one particular straw hat I wear in the summer that probably gets comments about 50% of the time I'm out in it. I've come to the conclusion that this is simply something that is normal in A-A culture. And I have to think that, if I'm getting random compliments from strangers, then so are lots of other people, including women who presumably are tending to interpret them as, at best, polite harassment.
So I guess I have to disagree with 51.last that "it's almost never this", because genuinely friendly compliments are a thing that IME happen. But maybe there's no way for the recipient to distinguish.
*I initially wrote PoC, but my experience is with A-A, not hispanic or other PoC
55.last: Heh, that came up on shuffle about an hour ago.
59: I'm willing to make an exception to my rule for your straw hat.
As someone who gets harassed at probably an average or higher than average rate, I would say that there's a distinction between catcalls and getting hit on. It's totally possible to hit on a woman in public and not come off as a creep, but the attention might still not be wanted. It's also easy for someone to start off being fairly normal and then turn to psycho pretty quickly, but usually those guys are easy to separate from more normal men because they send off creepy vibes from the start. The worst harassment I've ever experienced was researching Muslim immigrants in the outskirts of Paris. It was non-stop, every moment I was outside, and nowhere was safe, not even in a cafe or a phone booth.
What sometimes gets me is that people often flirt with me when I'm least expecting it, and it really throws me off until I figure out that's what they're doing. I've been flirted with (at?) by airport security, DMV officials, an immigration official, and during an interrogation by Chinese police.
Anyway, the question I've always had is, what are these guys thinking? I mean, we all know that they won't get any satisfaction, and presumably most/none of them are thinking, "here's how I'll assert my dominance over all women today," so what is the internal motivation?
I've spent a lot of time thinking about this, and my guess is one or more of the following:
1. I better say something so I don't look like a p***y to my friends.
2. Man I'd like to have sex with her
3. What an uppity ****. I'll say something to take her down a peg or two.
4. I wonder if she would go out with me?
Note that the major difference between men and women with thoughts #2 & 4 is not that we don't all think them -- it's that we don't all assume we are entitled to EXPRESS them, and that the object of the comment ought to feel flattered/appreciated or at the very least be gracious and receptive.
And what LB said about never knowing if an ostensibly friendly interaction is going to turn scary and hostile in a second or two.
I say this as someone who actually DOES make a fair amount of eye contact and conversation in certain neighborhoods, and often feels comfortable in settings that other UMC people are unaccustomed to.
Also, AIMHSHB, the most scared I've ever been was from a car full of drunk white college students at train station in one of the ritziest suburbs of Philadelphia.
I swear I am not victim-blaming, so please do not misinterpret: I have never had the type of body that invites that frequency of harassment. (Her clothes are completely innocuous - I'm not saying she should have dressed differently. Just that I've never been that hot in my clothes.)
Which is to say, I'm kind of with the male reaction in 3,4,5, etc - I knew intellectually that this sort of thing happens (and it's not like I've never experienced it), but it still drives the point home concretely for me to watch the video.
58: yeah, my wife, who used to be quite buxom, says that people from all walks of life regularly made comments about her breasts, not to mention all of the staring/leering, which most often occurred without accompanying comments.
I think the biggest reason is #2, out of Witt's list. And indifferent on whether the comment might be unwelcome.
59
My experience from extensive bus riding in Portland OR (caveat being that, in the words of a homeless man from LA, "In Portland even the black people are white"), African-Americans tend to be friendlier and more open to making conversation with strangers. I've had many friendly conversations with people of color on the bus, and there was a pretty universal consensus that white people are uptight about being chatted to. This has also been my experience in Chicago, although I've spent much less time riding the bus and am probably more uptight than I used to be in Portland.
In the OP video, what are those things she's carrying in her hands?
I didn't notice them, but the MeFi thread refers to them as mikes. Not sure that's right, but it could be.
Wow. That's a lot more than I experienced in Rome in the late 90's where I consider the men to be quite aggressive.
Some of it seemed more friendly than harassing, like "Have a Blessed Day" I notice when I go into the black neighborhoods of Boston that people engage with eachother on the streets more than they do in the rest of Boston. I've felt that I've helped people from those neighborhoods when they're in Cambridge by being willing to talk to them--especially when they're black.
A QUESTION FOR THE MEN
We talk about how this happens to women a lot, but I wonder whether men who don't fit traditional definitions of masculinity also get harassed. For example, do short men get harassed too?
56: I know, but I don't control the remote. It's probably her second-favorite episode after the one where Carrie installs a stripper pole in their bedroom, so when it's on it's on.
And I think it's pretty easy to distinguish legitimate friendly compliments like the kind JRoth has received from borderline-creepy ones. I've gotten both and never felt confused by that.
There's also a general black cultural value of community "ownership" of children that means I can expect constant comments on my girls' hair, looks, behavior, demeanor, perceived school performance. They get those comments too, particularly from older women, and I'm expected to wait and let them answer and then say something supportive. This is (as I'm sure is in TFA) also why Nia's grandma yells at 20/30-something black men "I SEE DRAWERS!" as they walk by her, and they do indeed pull up sagging pants. But that doesn't universally translate to black-white interactions at all.
Assholes yell things at me when I'm jogging. But only on the stretches where there isn't a stop sign for a while.
It's probably her second-favorite episode
I know what all these words mean but I can't make sense of them all together like that.
In rural Indiana, some guys through a glass bottle at a friend and me,
This is horrible, but I read it and thought, "they yelled at you through a glass bottle?"
75: No, I just can't spell, apparently.
And sorry, Josh. You've met her and know she's a very pleasant person. There are just some inexplicable flaws.
I get way more comments about being pregnant, the further away from bicoastal elites I am. In Austin or Madison (which is where I first noticed this), no one gives a shit that another UMC white lady is pregnant. Here I get much more fawned over.
68 is definitely correct. In fact, in recent years I've become much more comfortable with making small talk with a black person in line at the store or whatever, not because I've learned to talk to someone of a different race, but because it's so much more comfortable than talking to white people. Most often I don't want to talk to anyone at all, but if I do, I know that I can make a joke or observation to a black person without worrying that it'll be unwelcome, or turn into a longer conversation or whatever.
Probably not explaining it well.
I'm not sure which of Witt's #1-4 reasons is responsible for 77, but hope hope for #2!
71: When I used to have long hair, men would shout things out the window at me from a car, and occasionally throw things.
76.1: Not meaning to pick you you -- it was just funny because I had to read it over a few times before I could figure out the obvious meaning -- and then it wasn't really funny at all.
Maybe I should write more about this.
The other day a young woman in a car yelled "Hey Baby!" at me. Actually, I'm not sure it was directed at me, but I didn't see anybody else around.
Was she in a flatbed Ford? Because I hear that happens.
78: Yeah, to the extent that I have a racial stereotype on this stuff, I expect normal good manners from black people to be a solid notch friendlier/more interactive than from white people, and I try to conform. Alone in the elevator with a strange white person, I default to stony silence, and am a little surprised if they say something; with a strange black person social chitchat is unsurprising, and I'm more likely to initiate it than I would be with a white person because I figure they're more likely to be unsurprised by it.
||
Just saw the latest Avengers trailer. Seriously, I cannot fucking take another movie of urban disaster porn. Is it just me? These are the biggest fucking movies on earth, and they disgust me.
|>
While we are on the subject of human stupidity, the the Forest Service has had to issue a warning to people not to take selfies with bears
71: IMX short (5'8") men don't get harassed generally. Short old men wearing leathers and riding a motorcycle in WeHo get hit on by young guys quite a bit. It took me a while to figure out why they were so friendly.
88: Yeah, you definitely get points for that one.
We talk about how this happens to women a lot, but I wonder whether men who don't fit traditional definitions of masculinity also get harassed. For example, do short men get harassed too?
I've gotten a few comments on the street for my weight, but that's only over the course of several years. I think being a white guy immunizes me somewhat.
And ogged, come on
Despite LB's attempt at mind-reading, I wasn't looking to excuse the behavior; I was just curious whether there's a different acceptable baseline in different communities.
Just as a side note, they picked and dressed the actress perfectly to be catnip to street harassers. She's pretty, but not unapproachably so; white, but dark enough to be ethnic; dressed modestly, but in a way that reveals her curvy, buxom, body. You really couldn't do better.
And I'm pretty sure those are microphones in her hands.
87: I was thinking, like 5'5" and small framed.
I asked the question, because I want the line to be that feminism is good for both men and women.
I never get hit on my gay guys. Is it because I'm not very attractive or because I carry myself in a very heterosexual manner?
Surely one of the harassers said, "Hey, baby, those microphones in your hands? I'll give you something to put in your hands."
I'm 5'8" but I don't think that had anything to do with the incident described in 82.
I'll give you something to put in your hands.
This could have been much more vulgar.
I said something to my male therapist who is very short, about my concern that he might not get what the experience of having men say "Smile" while you're walking down the street. The conversation was more complicated than this, but part of his response was: "They say other things to men."
94: Possibly you're drinking Rusty Nails in the wrong bars?
99 Should have said: "I asked the question about height here, because"
93: I dated a guy who fit that description, and no, he didn't get random harassment, or at least I never saw or heard about it in the years I knew him.
He did get hit on by guys fairly often, but not at random walking down the street, more at parties or bars.
This is not remotely relevant except insofar as it involves interactions between strangers walking on the sidewalk, but being a dude pushing a stroller leads to some hilariously confusing interactions with other men; two adult men passing each other, generally, you go for the non-interacting kind of no-eye-contact thing, but of course, people react differently to a cute baby. So I will be walking Zardoz someplace and dudes passing will be all making funny faces and smiling at (obviously not) me and it's all very confusing because now do I acknowledge them, or do I just play stroller-pushing golem and pretend I have not seen them break their stonefaced dudespression?
I read the end of 104 as "dudepression", attributing even more therapeutic power to baby-viewing.
As a stonefaced unfriendly NYer who used to walk an uncommonly appealing dog, I managed that with no eyecontact but a distantly friendly smile, intended to indicate that finding my dog adorable was fine with me and not violating any boundaries.
Yeah I mean I default to a sort of noncomittal vaguely pleased or pleasant expression, but I've definitely noticed that sometimes the guy who has just broken character notices me noticing and kind of snaps back to resting guyface like he's embarrassed I noticed.
Just as a side note, they picked and dressed the actress perfectly to be catnip to street harassers. She's pretty, but not unapproachably so; white, but dark enough to be ethnic; dressed modestly, but in a way that reveals her curvy, buxom, body. You really couldn't do better.
I think what you're saying is that she is perfectly designed to be catnip and also have plausible deniability. If she were wearing something more provocative, and/or smiling, she would have gotten even more attention/abuse but people would respond, "What does she expect the way she dressed/acted?" Of course some people say that anyway.
There was also the time a guy yelled at me from a parked car, "Want a blow job?", but that was about 30 years ago.
104. Babies and pets declare an open commenting area by their very presence. I almost always at least smile at any babies I encounter. Also, so many people IME are afraid of dogs, and dog owners are afraid that people they encounter are afraid of dogs, so I always smile at the dog and the owner usually relaxes.
Am I the only person for whom the video posted in the OP is obviously not the video being discussed in the thread? The video posted in the OP is some weird modern dance Shia LaBeouf thing. Not a woman being harassed on the street.
Actually it's the and weird Shia LaBeuof thing that was posted a few days ago. That's the video that appears in the OP.
I think what you're saying is that she is perfectly designed to be catnip and also have plausible deniability.
Not so much plausible deniability, exactly, but (as you said) to escape blame. You're right, she's a pretty woman sending out unintimidating class/ethnicity signals (and particularly with gorgeous hair), but you'd have to be a real asshole to attribute the level of harassment she's getting to that as if she were responsible for not being pretty in public. Anything more that might have attracted additional harassment, people would have started blaming her for.
111-13: People were talking about that a few months ago -- I'm not sure what browser to blame it on, but a lot of people were seeing the last video linked rather than the current video.
I wondered about Witt's 1), much more pungently expressed than I would have.
I've seen this relatively little, considering how often I used to be on construction sites. My association with them is of deafening noise, so that communication of anything is difficult.
And then there's obliviousness. My wife and female friends have made sport over the years to how little aware I am of being noticed or hit on. When DQ told of watching women check out her son, I was thinking, "Really? How can you tell?"
For example, do short men get harassed too?
I wouldn't say so, no. Not after high school. The worst I've experienced is people unthinkingly saying stupid things to my face, sometimes.
Hm, or did that mean harassed like hit on? But anyway also no.
116: And then there's obliviousness.
Yeah. It's a self-defense mechanism. Without it I'd be mobbed.
Since Smearcase pointed out how unbelievably rude people can be to short men, I've noticed a ton of it. (Not street harassment per se, but like a super rude unsolicited comment to a very short guy at the gym, sort of a cheerful "I'd never ever ever date you!" even though there had been no romantic approach made whatsoever.)
119: I'm told it gets worse as people age. My great-uncle was a widower, and he could barely get out the door without women jumping on him. I'm told that being able to drive at night makes you a prize.
118: I, at least, meant attacked or mocked.
Once in high school I was walking with a friend of mine from a BBS who was not so tall, and we ran into a frenemy of mine; "Oh hi [ Sifu ]!" he said, cheerfully, "who's the little guy?"
Yeah, not really. As above, and as it sounds like I've already mentioned at some point, people do sometimes equate being short with being inherently and obviously unattractive right to your face, but I can't think of any examples of being attacked or mocked as such. Probably it does open one up to other forms of attack since one is not formidable. (Speaking of which and speaking of Indiana, fucking Bloomington of all places is the only place I have had a stranger yell "faggot!" at me. Out of the back of a moving truck. Really good gaydar.)
Also there was the time a homeless guy in Chicago said "hey big guy! Got any change, big guy!" and I wasn't much in the mood to have my height pointed out to me and testily said "yeah, I don't really respond to 'big guy'" and then guiltily texted a friend "I just sassed a homeless person."
Really good gaydar.
Comes standard, along with wifi, in all the new F150s.
being short with being inherently and obviously unattractive right to your face,
There's probably a real dating arbitrage opportunity there, come to think. I wonder if anyone's written an online dating story about looking preferentially for short guys, under the assumption that it will generally be easier to find single men who are sane, intelligent, appealing, and so on if they're also under 5'6".
There's probably a group that does that already. And it's probably called "Big Where It Count."
124: I wonder if there is a height range where men do not get called "big guy"? I certainly have been called that a lot.
123: The guy who threw (peep!) something at us then turned onto the road to Bloomington, so maybe it's truly #notallmen but just one specific Hoosier with a pickup truck doing more than his share.
Yesterday some presumptively crazy homeless guy was kind of muttering at Blume, Zardoz and I while we waited for a walk signal on the way home; first thing he said was "I hate [ town ]. Everybody's gotta be transgender these days." Not sure what that was about. Then, after I had fiddled with the walk button, which was being flaky, he said "Don't you have one of those nine thousand dollar phones? Why don't you call the mayor and have him fix it?" which, fair.
"I hate [ town ]. Everybody's gotta be transgender these days." Not sure what that was about.
To be fair, lots of people react badly to the letter from the municipal authorities telling them that they've been scheduled for involuntary transition.
story about looking preferentially for short guys, under the assumption that it will generally be easier to find single men who are sane, intelligent, appealing, and so on if they're also under 5'6"
Certainly the parallel story has been written plenty of times re men looking preferentially for heavier women on similar grounds. Usually those stories are considered to be fairly sexist, I think, although maybe that's because they often are actually quite sexist whereas your version maybe would not be.
127: Ha, 5'6" really is some cutoff between short and really short, isn't it? This is why my personal ads always said 5'6" though I am very much 5'5".
saying stupid things to my face, sometimes.
To your face, or to the top of your head?
which, fair.
Either your town is really short-staffed, or your mayor has an unusual suite of responsibilities.
135: I'm not sure if that's generally, or just where I draw the line as 'shorter than me'. (Men's heights fall into 'shorter than me' up to 5'6"; 'not tall' from 5'7" to about 5'11"; 'tall' from 5'11" to 6'3" or so; and 'surprisingly tall' above that. I'm sure you all needed to know that.)
To your face, or to the top of your head?
Almost corrected to sidestep this, figured it was too obvious for anyone to go for it. You lose some, you lose some.
138: For some reason, people taller than 5'6" but not 5'7" are excluded.
Sometimes it's the fruit that hang low....
As I'm sure I've said before, my height (6-1 or so) puts me in a position where I'm not much taller than average, but am taller than most people. Additionally, my nuclear family ranged from 5-7 to 6-4. The upshot is that I don't notice the height of any men between (guessing) 5-6 and 6-6. I'm thinking of a project I've been working on for over a year, and after 20+ meetings, I couldn't tell you whether the GC or owner are closer to 6-2 or 5-6. I'm pretty sure neither is taller than I am, but I honestly don't know.
Basically same deal with women, over a shorter range - maybe 5-1 to 5-10 read "average" to me.
We talk about how this happens to women a lot, but I wonder whether men who don't fit traditional definitions of masculinity also get harassed. For example, do short men get harassed too?
I used to get, I'd hesitate to call it harassed, but frequently randomly commented upon in a usually derogatory way, back when I had long wavy hair. To be fair, it was shit hair.
IIRC technically all men are transgender because all human embryos start developing as female and change at a certain stage (or not) depending on whether they get a shot of androgen.
My experience of street harassment of this kind in the US leads me to believe it's usually motivated by a largely unconscious assumption that women are in the world for men's delectation and to affirm masculine dominance, but that also there is insecurity about the durability of thus set up so that constant policing/reinforcement via thus kind of harassment is a good, justified and affirming thing. I usually find it more class than race or national origin based, tending working class. It would be difficult to overemphasize the hostility underlying even the most "friendly" sounding remark of this type, or how quickly they turn aggressively outright nasty.
Typically the more "personal" approach (leaning in for the "nice tits" remark or some such so that no one else can hear) is more the purview of the professional.
And then there are the outright masturbators, inclusive of all classes, races, national origins, political affiliations etc etc etc.
144: yes, I'm sure that was what he meant. Probably has a PhD in biochemistry.
... okay, the odds of that actually aren't terrible around here.
To your face, or to the top of your head?
Wait, I want to amend my response to "sometimes to my ass if they're down there anyway." It doesn't quite make sense but it's more the tone I was after.
And then there are the outright masturbators, inclusive of all classes, races, national origins, political affiliations etc etc etc.
This seems to be its own pathology, rather than social behavior. There was recently a masturbator-near-teen-girls around here who was, as I recall, a pretty prominent brain surgeon.
143: back when I also had long, wavy, shit hair, i had somebody walking by me on the street run their hand through it across my scalp and continue walking without stopping. That's once in years of transit riding, so only notable in how not notable it would be to women. Ugh.
(The somebody in question was a woman of color so I doubt this was about policing gender norms.)
149: She probably wanted to know what white hair felt like.
This seems to be its own pathology, rather than social behavior
It's certainly not likely motivated by Witt's 1).
I did an informal survey of every woman I know after this last came up—ok, not my 96-yr-old mother—and all had stories. Always guy alone to 1-3 women.
last is jaw-dropping
Rabbi with the camera in the Mikvah is my favorite recent story.
white, but dark enough to be ethnic
She's Jewish, yo.
Not sure what you mean by pathology v social behavior. Maybe to contrast with the verbal street harassers? But the dude leaning in for the "you have the most incredible ass ..." remark no one else can hear isn't engaging in social behavior if by that you mean performing for others in addition to the targeted woman. I suppose the leaning in dudes are social and masturbators not in the sense that I always get the feeling from mr lean ins that they'd be delighted if I suggested we become acquainted whereas I suspect mist masturbators would be freaked out to e.g. find themselves in a note room with a woman they'd targeted in the street/bus/train.
Local angle on the OP: the woman in question is an alum of the local Creative And Performing Arts HS, the middle school adjunct of which Iris has just applied to (for writing).
She studied musical theater, so I think we need to consider the possibility that, in the cropped out portions of the video, she was singing show tunes.
Oh jeez most not mist and note should be hotel for gods sake.
154: Isn't the distinction clear? Pathological behavior is not under any control of the actor (and is not socially sanctioned, at least not in that form), whereas social behavior is, in some sense, inculcated and condoned by society. The "nice tits" Wall Streeter is being an asshole, but I don't think it's a compulsion. Whereas I suspect that most masturbators would, on some level, prefer not to be doing it.
Or not. I have no insight into their inner minds. But certainly that's the claim, and not a risible one IMO.
Whereas I suspect that most masturbators would, on some level, prefer not to be doing it.
Would prefer not to WANT to do it. Like pedophiles.
152.last: I'm really not crazy about the latest updated version of Clue.
Given the frequency of the behavior that's a hell of a lot of compulsion that the compulsion feelers sense the can act on with relative impunity. There just may be some pervasive, underlying force giving rise to that feeling...
I just read an argument about this video on the fb page of a friend of a friend that is exactly the reason the internet should just be turned off forever.
Well sure, but most pathologies are perversions (ahem) of conventional urges/behaviors. But I don't think that street harassers wish they could masturbate in front of women, but merely lack the time/trenchcoats.
158 is of course correct.
Search for mikvah hidden camera.
Presumably that's how they caught the guy.
Meanwhile the guy in the viral video at DFW airport's name is "McCleish Christmas Benham" which is the best name ever.
I guess that didn't need quotation marks.
We talk about how this happens to women a lot, but I wonder whether men who don't fit traditional definitions of masculinity also get harassed. For example, do short men get harassed too?
The only time I've received harassment is when I'm on my bike (and only in certain parts of town). I thought , this post was mostly reasonably (though I wouldn't push too hard on that analogy).
Now sometimes its dangerous for me because people in cars are just blatantly a**holes to me. If I am in the road--where I legally belong--people will yell at me to get on the sidewalk. If I am on the sidewalk--which is sometimes the safest place to be--people will yell at me to get on the road. People in cars think its funny to roll down their window and yell something right when they get beside me. Or to splash me on purpose. People I have never met are angry at me for just being on a bike in "their" road and they let me know with colorful language and other acts of aggression.
165: MikvahUpskirts.com may be gone but the perpetrator behind MivahUpskirts.ru remains unidentified.
Reflecting on this pathology/social behavior distinction I realize i don't actually care whether the average masturbator wishes sincerely he didn't feel compelled to do his thing, indeed I really don't care whether street harassers or mr lean ins wish or not they could stop. It all seems pointless from my perspective, as not going to lead to any reduction in the behavior. The only possible motivation to climb inside their heads I can imagine for myself is something like creating a fictional character. The only thing that seems to reduce actual occurrences is widespread social opprobrium, do why don't we just do that?
Further to 168, Not that I'm short, but I do think that biking sometimes reads as "not fitting traditional definitions of masculinity."
(Also the linked article is mildly problematic, but I liked it because I have had the experience of getting random harassment on my bike which I would never have noticed or expected if it didn't happen to me.)
Maybe there's some kind of public masturbatory equivalent to a methadone clinic? Like a storefront filled with timid-looking exhibitionists.
The only thing that seems to reduce actual occurrences is widespread social opprobrium, do why don't we just do that?
OK, I'm game. What's our next move?
I was at a conference last week, and was surprised to find that one of the other attendees -- I know him, but I know his wife a lot better -- and I had a mutual acquaintance I'd worked with some 25 years ago. Who has a cousin, same last name, who's in show business, and famously became quite a bit heavier long after her career had peaked.
Attendee said of show biz person: 'She got really big.' I said I didn't want to participate in fat shaming. Stunned look, he'd meant 'really famous' bot 'really fat.' At which point we tacitly agreed that nervous laughter and a quick pivot to a discussion of his favorite NFL folks was the better option.
So he told me all about how Ray Rice was framed.
170: My (very limited) experience with flashers/masturbators is that they're mentally ill. If you're hoping that social opprobrium will make mentally ill people behave according to social norms... good luck, I guess.
Maybe we should attach social opprobrium to living on the streets and begging, then all the mentally ill people who do those things will stop as well.
Anyway, ordinary harassment is clearly a much, much bigger (if less gross) problem, and is amenable to social norms. But, truthfully, I don't really see a place we get to where rape culture/patriarchy still predominate, yet (asshole) males don't use harassment as a tool to perpetuate it. Fox News, frex, actively promotes the idea that behaviors like street harassment are no problem. We can push back against that, but this isn't a situation of peer influence; powerful forces want to keep this sort of thing happening.
173. http://www.moviesonline.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/peter-lorre-m-1.jpg
148. New Trier grad?
77: Here people love babies and my kid is both adorable and extremely social, having just learned to say "hi." to everyone he meets. I had to run an errand on campus with him last week and I have never had so much attention from male students. Hi, little man! Hi!
176.1 There's a reality TV series, Girls Gone Wild, that suggests otherwise.
Before I started walking my dog, I had never had a policewoman pull up next to me and start blowing kisses.
104: I had a similar problem with pretty ladies making googley eyes at my kid on the subway. I had to struggle to avoid eye contact and maintain a resting man-face, since the interaction had nothing to do with me.
142: This same perspective applies when you're very tall. I basically don't see height, unless somebody is over 6'6" or under 5'.
OT: Tea bags from England don't come with strings. I should probably have remembered this, but did not.
Hi, little man! Hi!
Zardoz gets this too, when she's not sufficiently girlied up. Also common: Hi little buddy!
I had a similar problem with pretty ladies making googley eyes at my kid on the subway. I had to struggle to avoid eye contact and maintain a resting man-face, since the interaction had nothing to do with me.
Not that you have to be friendly with people just because they're flirting with your baby, but if you want to be friendly, that's a context where you don't have to worry about being intrusive or harassy at all (this is probably obvious, but I figured I'd say it). (A) the googley-eyes maker started the interaction, so you're not bothering someone who wants to be left alone, and (B) as a man with a baby, you're obviously not starting anything weird (oh, I guess it's probably happened, but not enough that anyone's worrying about it). So, resting man-face all you like if it makes you happy, but you don't have to.
There's a similar thing where the stranger starts asking your baby questions, "What's your name? Aren't you sweet!" and you feel like an idiot answering on behalf of your baby, "I'm Ace? That's Ace? She doesn't answer that question yet?" but a bigger idiot hanging the friendly stranger out to dry.
ALSO. Because of this thread, I've been hyper-aware of black people all day, wondering if there's about to be a conversation struck up or not. Is my friendly face on? I don't want to be Jerky White Person except I probably come by it naturally.
Yes! That! "What's your name?" uh she isn't going to tell you but I guess I could.
1) It's amazing, walking my two neutered dogs twice a day, every single fucking dog from 2 lbs to 100 lbs, goes nutzoid behind a fence of a window, barking like they want to kill. Dogs we have passed twice a week for ten years still do it. Not me, they don't even see me. What is this about, territory? Boredom and loneliness? Fuck I know. Figure it out it may help.
Am I comparing young assholes to dogs? Oh yeah.
2) Who the fuck is this video for? Do they think they will shame the young men into acting better? Are they kidding? Let me tell you about "shame cultures" where that woman would have been groped on the street. Women carry knives and stunguns. Guys drop twitching mysteriously in subway cars. Is it to show women that some men really really care, and let men feel all sensitive?
3) Why don't all men do it? Like me? Well, no need to dominate or feel utterly dominated. I'm the latter.
Told ya, looked ahead saw a 30ish black woman coming my way, did good, eyes ahead and looking down, blank expression....as she passed she sneered and said:
"Good boy"
...to a sixty year old whitebeard. I felt so ashamed.
C'mon. Let's think about this. Crossing the street when you see a black man coming? Not cool. Why do we think it right and good to even avoid eye-contact with women? It's like flinching when someone holds out their hand. This is not good.
What would be good would be to act neighbourly and kind, not aggressive or dominant, but not fearful or overprotective either. But I don't, eyes to the ground, cause they're the bosses.
4) At 5'4" I don't remember much street harassment from hetero guys. Teenage women would often be gratuitously cruel. I got my fair share of approaches from gays.
"What's your name? Aren't you sweet!" and you feel like an idiot answering on behalf of your baby
"....THERE IS NO BABY, ONLY ZUUL."
"What's your name?"
"William Jefferson Clinton, Jr. But keep it quiet."
You think I'm bullshit with "they're the bosses?" Sick of this sick shi receptive,t.
I walk a lot and encounter people in hundreds everyday, from little kids to moms with kids to male neighbors I've known by sight for decades. The guys get the guy nod, the mothers get smiles, the kids mostly get ignored or pet the dogs.
The young women? Deference
They absolutely get to determine the terms of the encounter in every way, and not only must it be eyes to the ground, but if approached I certainly must not withdraw, act fearful, hostile, indifferent, rude. If they approach me I must act kind, receptive, yet still cautious and deferential watching very carefully for what they expect me to do.
There is never a moment's doubt about who is in charge.
Asking a baby "what's your name?" is funny. My name is Horrible, Ear-Shattering Shriek, and yours?
Oh, some of them are named Gently Burbling Coo, at least part of the time.
"Excuse me, ma'am. Why are you asking questions of that water fountain?"
Okay so a) remember the dogs claiming or defending territory (not gendered, incidentally), and b) keep in mind that most people between 15-30 are assholes, and this isn't gendered either, young women come in and grab space and sidelines, especially when with peers.
Watch young women in public. By what right do they claim this space, the space in front of them, and the sightlines?
Guys, we tend to make eye contact, do the guy nod. "I acknowledge your existence and path, and negotiate our passing and sharing of space."
Now look at the video. God fucking yes, the dudes are assholes. But the staring coldly straight ahead shit is provocative.
What, should I step into the fucking gutter and bow as the goddess passes? Fuck her.
Now, back to Goffman.
Watch young women in public.
I really don't take much advice from you, but O.K.
And then there are the outright masturbators...
This seems to be its own pathology
Mrs. K-sky remembers a gentleman from her NYC days who rode the subways stroking himself and crying, wearing a hand-lettered sign that said PLEASE FORGIVE ME I HAVE A MEDICAL CONDITION.
176: On one hand, I basically agree that social opprobrium isn't going to stop public masturbating. It's already pretty stigmatized.
But -- and maybe you weren't suggesting otherwise -- it's not like being mentally ill makes you insensible to the social meaning of your actions, or that your actions don't reflect values you've learned. If there weren't patriarchy, mental illness wouldn't express itself as aggressively masturbating at a woman in public. (It might still express itself as masturbating in public just because you're really disinhibited.) It's something you do so you can fantasize about the audience's reaction; you only understand what their reaction will be from your ideas about the relationship between men and women.
200: Maybe a First Alert bracelet would have been better.
I guess I've never heard of a crazy gay man habitually masturbating in public towards alluring male strangers. Thinking about it that way, it seems that even the pathological behavior can be controlled, by the threat of being beaten up which is unfortunately not present in the mind of a man harassing a woman.
Initial response to 197 is "Christ, what an asshole".
re: 104
Stroller-golem is a great mental image.
200: I love this so much. I hope he was well dressed, too.
re: 188
Heh.
xelA could tell you his name [if he was in the mood], but since he calls himself 'Allah' most of the time that might cause some surprise.
I was going to write a comment that definitively outlined the social vs. biological determinants of what we track with the terms "mental health" and "pathology", as well the nature of the distinction between autonomy and compulsion in a deterministic world, but I'd rather be getting off.
re: 203
I grew up next to 2 mental hospitals. Strange men masturbating in the woods were not unknown.* Mind you, I don't remember seeing anyone of that type once I got past about 17 or 18, so maybe it was women and [younger / more vulnerable] males who were the targets.
* people were quite blasé about it.
Thank you to 201 & 203, well said. 176 includes some pretty unattractive rhetoric that I'm going to assume is regretted or if not isn't worth responding to.
I thought the point of the video was to educate the non-harassers re frequency of occurrence, leading possibly to greater awareness of it happening and just maybe the occasional push back by someone other than the target. Pipe dream, apparently.
206: man, and people got bent out of shape at the notion that Mohammed was the most popular boy's name in the UK...
200: Cry, cry, masturbate, transfer.
210 Awareness is great, and I think a lot of us have learned a lot about this topic in the last decade. As for actually doing something about it, that's a different problem. IME, it's really difficult because men don't act this way in my presence. And if they did, it would be a situation where they were asserting dominance not only over some young woman passing by, but me as well. Whether I'm going to return hostility (struggle for dominance -- and that's what imposing social opprobrium is in context) or just walk by ignoring the thing is going to depend on a number of things, including physical capabilities.
Privilege, certainly.
None of the people in the video cares what I think. Wall Street nice tits guy does care, which is why he whispers, and would never tell someone like me that he did it. He already knows I think he's an asshole.
Any engagement with any of these people is risky. It's too bad the woman with the nice tits can't get Wall Street guy to pose with her in a selfie, and then post a description on the internet. Just too risky.
197... actually doesn't seem crazy? I think class and race drive a bigger part of the reactions to this video than people realize. Some of the incidents they chose to highlight were objectively fairly innocuous.
200 was me.
201: Yeah, I was trying to be clear: crazy men masturbate at women (and IME mixed groups of teens) because patriarchy suggests it as a warped mode of expression. Indeed, in some sense they're cutting through the plausible deniability and doing what all the street harassers and "smile"rs really intend.
But my point was that using this universally-disapproved mode suggests that they're outside of mainstream society, either because they're not receiving the (really pretty clear) signals not to do it or because they've convinced themselves that they're not subject to opprobrium. Either way, nothing short of smashing patriarchy (one of my fondest wishes!) will stop it (OK, Singapore-style suppression might, although AFAIK that's not an area where Singapore is especially focused).
I also thought 197 was reasonable, and it would have been nice if that video had made an effort to be a little less about a white lady vs. non-white men.
Uh, that is that 215, remarking on 200, was me.
Are all the guys non-white? The bald guy at :41 looks white to me, and there are a couple where I'm not sure (e.g., at 1:39.)
And 213 gets to the nut of it. Obviously my own son will find street harassment to be unimaginable, just as I was raised to find it. He, unlike me, will know that it's common, but it will be an intellectual fact, not an experienced one. Never in my life have I been in a position to do anything about this sort of harassment (once or twice I've witnessed something more aggressive, and given a shout, but those were across the line situations, not plausible deniability ones), and I doubt he will be either. I'm not in charge of any other males. Nobody in my social circle does this (or would do so in my presence, anyway). I've never been on a construction site when this happened.
So, again, short of smashing patriarchy, what's the plan?
Does anybody need yak lard? Because I just passed a guy selling some.
217 -- Yes and no: this conduct isn't ok just because men of color engage in it too, and her suggestion of polite engagement is, in the experience of everyone who's talked to me about this, misleadingly naive. Agreed that the film clip should have been more diverse.
214 -- Because of the cumulative nature of the thing, none of the conduct, in context, is actually innocuous. Every single man there would defend himself on the innocuity of his conduct. But we're living in a society here (as George Costanza puts it) so we don't get to separate out the individual conduct for social approval/disapproval.
Obviously, the law would have to treat the incidents separately
I sort of believe that at least some percentage of random catcalls must lead to sex (because it boggles my mind to imagine why people would do it if that weren't the case). Kind of like IRL spam - low cost to catcaller with high potential benefit, costs to society spread out diffusely enough that it's hard to mobilize against.
219: To follow on, I can't help but think that this is coming from an assumption that obviously most of the people this woman passed were white, because default. Given the neighborhood(s) we know she was in, I think (honestly not sure) PoC would have been the majority of men she passed. And obviously this video represents, what, 10% of the harassment she encountered?
Thinking about it, I'm (very) sympathetic to the idea that the editing overemphasizes the amount of PoC harassment she received, but without seeing the full 10 hours, it's a cheap accusation (for all we know, the edit was 100% proportional; for all we know, they included every white harasser she encountered; assumptions to the contrary are pure accusations of bad faith, not well-grounded criticism).
225: Sex I kind of doubt, but even the occasional smile in return would probably be reward enough.
The fact that the smiles are given under duress is irrelevant, and probably not understood by the harasser.
what's the plan
Surely step one is to stop making excuses for non-mentally ill people engaging in this conduct. Maybe that's step two after not attacking the messenger.
225: I really don't think so. Underjustified (is that even a word? You know what I mean) hitting on women can work -- I've known guys who did that kind of thing, and if you have an incredible capacity for soaking up rejection, and are interested in a very broad spectrum of women, you can get laid that way. But it's really different from this kind of street hassling.
I think 225 ignores Witt's item 3 in comment 64 to its substantial detriment.
224: I didn't mean that I endorsed every part of 197, just that it's in general fair to bring up the fact that that video was not racially balanced and does play into narratives about besieged white woman/dangerous men of color.
I actually experienced this internal conflict for myself yesterday morning when one of the custodial staff in my building said, "Good morning, beautiful," and my internal reaction was, oh no you didn't, I am in my home. But, I dunno, I also have a lot of race and class power in the situation so I should at least notice that in the midst of my legitimate pique.
Sure, some of the guys in the video are drawing dead. But the "is it because I'm ugly" guy for instance - is it so implausible that his schtick might work one time out of ten thousand?
"The fact that the smiles are given under duress is irrelevant."
"if you have an incredible capacity for soaking up rejection"
The ability to coerce women into the dead-eyed stare, smiling under duress, it's a feature not a bug.
I've often experienced street harassment in the presence of what I suspect would be your doppelgangers, so it's happening in some non-harassers presence. I don't think it's ever happened when I'm obviously *with* a guy, except once had the harasser apologize -to the guy I was with- when he (my companion) returned after stepping away for a moment.
Mr lean in in my experience perceives an accompanied woman as an additional titillating challenge.
General question: do street harassers tend to look like the type of guys that get laid more than average, or less?
But, I dunno, I also have a lot of race and class power in the situation so I should at least notice that in the midst of my legitimate pique.
Once the pique is actually legit, while noticing things is always good, I don't think there's much to do in terms of taking it into account. In college, I had a short-term job canvassing door to door for a nuclear freeze group, and one of my co-workers kept on hitting on our immediate supervisor in a not-immediately-threatening-kidding-around-but-really-not-listening-to "No, I'm not interested" kind of way. And the power/privilege relationships were all weird in a way that had the supervisor kind of tied in knots being tolerant about it -- the supervisor was, obviously, the supervisor, and was an attractive, confident, straight, black guy, The guy hitting on him was gay, and white (I'm really not sure how race played into the interaction, or if it did at all, but it seems like a salient fact), and also sort of generally an awkward, funny-looking, lousy-social skills kind of guy. The way it looked like it was playing out was that the supervisor felt like a homophobic bully for insisting that the other guy back off and leave him alone after repeatedly politely refusing his advances, because the supervisor had all the interpersonal, employment, straight-privilege, and so on power in the situation, and so he ended up kind of ineffectually begging the guy to quit it and being ignored, in a way that seemed kind of miserable.
And he was completely right that in any other negative interaction between the two of them, all my sympathies would have presumptively been with the generally-less-privileged sad-sack. But still, privileged or not, that doesn't give less privileged people the right to affirmatively be assholes.
Here's a consequence of noticing it: I had an impulse to talk to the building manager, not naming any names or trying to get anyone in trouble, but just asking him to request of everyone who worked in the building if they could please not refer to residents' physical appearance when greeting them. But I'm holding off on that, seeing whether it happens again, etc., because it seems like any intervention I make that involves an authority has a potential to have disproportionate effects.
And of course "once the pique is actually legit" does beg some questions. From an actual acquaintance, which building staff might or might not be, that might be sort of actually non-hostile-friendly in a way that wasn't intended as inappropriate. Probably not, but that enters the realm of possibility in a way that it doesn't for guys on the street.
Asking a baby their name is better than asking a 3-year-old's parent what the kid's name is.
I have vivid memories of being 8 and looking 4 and not getting menus, because waitresses didn't think I could read.
If the pique is legit, you must then quit.
At Slate, Hanna Rosin does the gentler version of 197.
But the video also unintentionally makes another point, that harassers are mostly black and Latino, and hanging out on the streets in midday in clothes that suggest they are not on their lunch break.
Lacking the carceral feminism implications, but featuring The Daily Show's more race-balanced version of the video. Which in turn provides supporting evidence for the "douche" hypothesis.
Moby, we discussed this last week, but you stopped paying attention when the thread turned to Excel formatting.
Adam Kotsko is of course on the side of the angels, and admits that #allmenImeanall are complicit in the horror.
Even if they aren't going to engage in such crass behavior, all these men are clearly going to be doing things that are along the same basic continuum. "Checking out" women
The answer appears obvious. Since of course the women can't be violent, it is the duty of feminist men to do their dirty work support the victims by beating the fuck out of every man they ever see "checking out" a woman, iow, those monsters not keeping their eyes glued the ground at all times because it is possible a woman may enter their field of vision.
Since I eyes are dutifully, and gratefully glued to the ground watching our shoes at all times, the logistics o knowing when an animal is looking at a woman is tricky, since we won't see what they might be "checking out."
But freedom for all is never easy. Maybe we just have to beat each other and ourselves up randomly.
Adam Kotsko is of course on the side of the angels, and admits that #allmenImeanall are complicit in the horror.
Even if they aren't going to engage in such crass behavior, all these men are clearly going to be doing things that are along the same basic continuum. "Checking out" women
The answer appears obvious. Since of course the women can't be violent, it is the duty of feminist men to do their dirty work support the victims by beating the fuck out of every man they ever see "checking out" a woman, iow, those monsters not keeping their eyes glued the ground at all times because it is possible a woman may enter their field of vision.
Since our eyes are dutifully, and gratefully glued to the ground watching our shoes at all times, the logistics of knowing when an animal is looking at a woman is tricky, since we won't see what they might be "checking out."
But freedom for all is never easy. Maybe we just have to beat each other and ourselves up randomly.
Just 2 1/2 hours ago.
The weather in Dallas is like perfect (75 degrees, 30% humidity, light N wind) so the dogs got a long late afternoon. Kids on bikes, people under auto hoods, women talking in yards, guys playing basketball, olds just sitting in lawn chairs, really nice and friendly.
And maybe a teenage girl. I think. I moved my field of vision away so freaking fast, so instinctively that I have no idea what she looked like or what direction she went. I sure as fuck didn't want to "check her out."
Serious. God's truth. I've internalized this shit.
Just so we're clear, comical double takes when women pass by are still okay, right?
You're just bitter that Adam can ogle a butt supportability.
Sometimes I do wonder if it is too creepy. Girls up to11-12 are fine, they're kids to pet my dogs. But I get a vibe that after about twelve girls start thinking about who is looking where and why so I just don't. Cause the baseball cap and sunglasses and I can tell they get self-conscious.
Seems to have worked. Got three kids grew up across the street, now around 15. They see me interacting with everyone else but never even looking at them and when they inadvertently catch my eye they smile and wave. I smile and wave back and move my eyes away. They get it and don't think I'm weird or funny.I think they feel safe. That's my goal
Cause there are a lot of more friendly male adults who are comfortable interacting with them who aren't safe. I'll let those fucks be all charming and funny and shit.
OT: My Minecraft effort to build a trench clear to the bedrock almost ended in disaster. I fell 20 blocks because of careless digging. By dumb luck, I landed on a ledge that is one block wide. If I hadn't hit it, the fall would have been something like 40 blocks.
Does anybody play the mobile version?
I got the iOS version a while ago. I found it a lot more difficult to control than the PC, but I think it's a passable substitute.
IAMSIHMTHB (am I doing that right?), but for yucks I signed up for the Minecraft tourney at PAX East. Pretty embarrassing being four times the median age. I probably shouldn't have trolled them while their parents were watching.
everywhere between the Bosphoros and the Bay of Bengal
I guess it depends on your definition of "between", but a friend (white, female, punk rock) who regularly traveled to Israel said the street harassment there was totally next level. Like, literally: people would lean out their 2nd story windows and scream imprecations at her for her brazen hussieness or whatever. I've always thought of that business as more of a Mediterranean thing.
They get it and don't think I'm weird
Jessica Williams is funny -- I hadn't seen her before.
|| And if you've been following that #gam/er/gate stuff: Anita Sarkeesian will be on Colbert tonight. |>
I don't understand the geography in 254. Israel is on the Mediterranean.
Sometimes people use "Mediterranean" as synecdoche for certain parts of Southern Europe.
Right, no, see, based on stereotypes about Italian men, and my friend's experiences in Israel, I thought of the super-harassment as happening in the Med, not in southwest/south asia particularly. Although of course now we all know more about the harassment problem in India.
Having read more of the thread:
1. I get called "big guy" and "big man" all the time by guys on the street, spare-changing and what not. Even though, or perhaps because, I am a big man.
2. The being-a-guy-walking-with-a-baby thing is definitely odd sometimes. People seem very quick to assume I am the father, which is then sometimes tricky to talk around ("Well, his father is actually this semi-homeless gutter punk, who's never around, but his mom has a really cool boyfriend, who's not me...")
3. I've been harassed quite a bit for being fat, much more so than short guys for being short, it sounds like. Less so the scarier/older/more professional I look, but I still get a "fat ass!" every few months from some passing sub-morons.
4. I have had a few instances of being sexually harassed by women in the street, all of which I think I have previously documented. Mostly it's just embarrassing (see again the "big, old, scary-looking" part) once in awhile it has been unnerving.
Backing up a bit, I agree with Rosin that if you find you've edited all the white catcallers out of your final cut, you need to keep working.
Portland in the 80s was plenty rich in harassers, as white as it gets. Hoquiam ditto. When I lived in Chinatown and commuted to UC Berkeley, the greatest risk of being robbed was leaving campus, but the most reliable and aggressive harassers were rich drunk white guys in Union Square. (Except once when I was windburned and wearing a big frame pack and the street guys came after me.)
Black people often comment on my hats, but this is distinguishable from harassment: eye contact, not moving toward me, waiting until I make eye contact to speak, discussing the actual hat, not telling me to do anything, etc etc.
149
I was riding the El in Chicago once and seated with my back to the door. I had my hair in a ponytail, and a man getting on the train caressed the back of my neck briefly and then walked on. Somehow, to me having someone fondle your bare neck felt far more violating than if he had grabbed my boob.
With being touched by strangers: I am/was pale even by standards of my ethnic group, and as a kid that meant most people thought I was albino, so I got a lot of attention from strangers. I also grew up in part in an African American neighborhood, and I was pretty used to both middle aged black women and my classmates casually touching me or feeling my hair. It never felt hostile or invasive or inappropriate, possibly because the people casually touching me were people who seemed like casual touching was part of their cultural repertoire. I was also objectively unusual (the "albino" girl in the dirndl with a funny name and accent) so being the object of curiosity seemed pretty understandable.
I don't think I've seen street harassment of women that I'm obviously accompanying, but there are a few times when I've met up with a friend and she'd been harassed on the way and was clearly still bothered by what someone said. I've seen catcalling from a distance, but if I've seen someone being followed by a creep for blocks, I haven't seen it for long enough to realize what's going on.
When I did a summer class in Italy in the late 90s pretty much all of the women reported street harassment when alone or in all-female groups. There was one case when a classmate of mine was walking on the other side of the street and some guy was following her while saying various things at her, and the moment she saw me and called my name - I was walking on the side of the street that bordered a river and was looking in the other direction and hadn't seen her - the guy shut up and very quickly walked away, like he didn't want a confrontation with me. I was heading to a gelato place across the river and she walked with me and we weren't bothered by anyone at all. I'd like to think I'd have intervened if I'd seen her first and she hadn't seen me, but the intervention would have been (or started out as) saying "hi" and not, say, chasing the guy down and beating him up.
The creepiest story I've heard about from a friend happened in Alexandria, VA where a car stopped in front of her as she walked home from the metro one night and someone opened a door and yelled, from the car: "Get in." She ran the rest of the way home.
OK, I have thoughts on 197. I am sympathetic politically, and I do think it's not uncommon for white women to 1) be uptight and narrow-minded about cultural differences of stranger sociality (e.g. friendly comment =/= harassment), and 2) overestimate how hot men of color find them.*
On the other hand...my personal experience is that most casual harassment comes from men of color. I've certainly also been harassed by white men, but I would say that a majority of the harassment I get is from MOC, and I have also gotten a decent amount of racialized harassment.** I do think that the harassment of WOC is often a bigger problem and one that gets less attention than it should, and is especially erased in conversations of harassment. I also think there are better ways to fight against racism and racial stereotypes beyond denying that the sorts of stereotyped behavior can ever be true. (There's a separate issue that a film is about telling one particular story to the exclusion of others, and so, even if true in this instance, does the story of white women harassed by MOC really need to be the narrative of harassment presented to the public.)
*Toni Morrison wrote that she would redo "The Bluest Eye" if she could go back in time, and I think that there are lots of white women who read that book and take from it that the whole world finds them beautiful and secretly desire to look like them, which really is not a useful way to understand how white beauty standards are oppressive. (To lazy to google, but there was an XOJane article about a yoga class that is a prime example of how a little bit of poorly taught Racism 101 can actually be quite harmful.)
**I've known WOC who have the opposite experience, and I wonder if part of it is perceived distance from the harasser, a sort of "this could be my mother/sister" effect. My Italian bf confirms that Italian men are more likely to harass women who don't look Italian because there's a perception that Anglo-looking women are easy, and I feel like this holds true with much of the harassment I've gotten from men from conservative parts of the world. I've found Northern European men to be the most respectful in terms of treating me like a subject rather than object when hitting on me, and I feel like it's some combo of 1) selection effect, 2) cultural gender norms, and 3) seeing me as similar enough to other women they treat as persons.
The creepiest story I've heard about from a friend happened in Alexandria, VA where a car stopped in front of her as she walked home from the metro one night and someone opened a door and yelled, from the car: "Get in."
That has happened to me.* The car then followed me for a mile or so, occasionally driving off and then looping back. Eventually, I took a shortcut where a car couldn't follow. I wasn't initially worried the guy was going to get out and assault me, as such. He was a weedy balding guy, and teenage-me was fairly confident I'd win in i) a foot race, and ii) a fight. But I did worry he might run me down, or have a weapon.
* when I was about 17, and had very long hair. I was sometimes mistaken for a girl, but I don't think the person doing this could have been mistaken after the first time I told him to go away.
241: carceral feminism
When I read the Jacobin article on this, I wished the author had explicitly addressed why getting people to do the work we've delegated to state institutions is easier or better or more likely to succeed than reforming unjust and inadequate state institutions. The success stories don't seem all that scalable:
In 2001, Critical Resistance, a prison-abolition organization, and INCITE! Women of Color against Violence, an anti-violence network, issued a statement assessing the effects of increased criminalization and the silence around the nexus of gender and police violence. Noting that relying on policing and prisons has discouraged organizing community responses and interventions, the statement challenged communities to make connections, create strategies to combat both forms of violence, and document their efforts as examples for others seeking alternatives. [. . .]
In their article "Domestic Violence: Examining the Intersections of Race, Class, and Gender," feminist academics Natalie Sokoloff and Ida Dupont mention another approach taken by immigrant and refugee women in Halifax, Nova Scotia, one which tackled the economic underpinnings that prevent many from escaping abusive relationships.
The women, many of whom had survived not just abuse but torture, political persecution, and poverty, created an informal support group at a drop-in center. From there, they formed a cooperative catering business, which enabled them to offer housing assistance for those who needed it. In addition, women shared childcare and emotional support.
As these examples demonstrate, strategies to stop domestic violence frequently require more than a single action. They often require a long-term commitment from friends and community to keep a person safe, as in Piepnza-Samarasinha's case. For those involved in devising alternatives, like the women in Halifax, it may require not only creating immediate safety tactics, but long-term organizing that addresses the underlying inequalities that exacerbate domestic violence.
OT: Does anybody else sometimes get email in a "Secure Message" format where you have to click a link and then create an account and then download an attachment in order to read an email? If so, how do I stop people from sending me stuff like that?
re: 269
Nope. In fact, I'd make the assumption that any such format was basically malware.
I'm pretty sure it isn't malware in the sense of spoofing to get me to download malware. The message is from the usual address of a regular correspondent and the link goes to his organization's domain. The message was expected and contained a clear reply to what a third party asked us both.
Of course, street harassment (and worse) is its own issue in India, but that's a distinct phenomenon from what my friend was getting in the villages she visited.
I wouldn't be entirely sure of that - it doesn't seem impossible that the attitude "your appearance and your person are basically public property and we're all entitled to them" would lead to all those phenomena under different circumstances.
270: Not necessarily. This is how my parents' doctors send secure messages.
269: You might not be able to. That's what I have to do with the system that my parents' doctors use in order to be HIPAA compliant. I think that I can forward it to myself for viewing on a mobile phone. You might try doing that and using a web-based system with the link on your desktop.
We used to use google mail for secure messages, and the person had to create a web account to read them. Some people wouldn't bother, but the messages still needed to be encrypted.
I do occasionally get such mail; I do also assume it's malware, unless it's something I'm expecting, like an activation page for a site I've legitimately signed up with, and I delete it pronto.
Even if it's not malware, anybody who wants you to do all that shit before you even see what they're selling deserves to be kicked to the kerb.
274: Sometimes it's hard to kick doctors to the curb.
273: I think you're probably right. It is from a doctor. A doctor in your town, no less. Nothing in it could possibly be HIPAA relevant, but if the system is set-up that way, he may have to use it.
271: The default may be to encrypt the message, and the correspondent may need to actively send it without encryption.
275: Especially when they pay you.
276: We had a system with google where you put an in the subject line to encrypt. Then they figured that people weren't using it enough, so they made it the default for all mail leaving the organization to be encrypted, and you had to put to unencrypt it. They might be able to do something like that.
269: When I bought my house our lawyers used one of those systems to send documents to us, and it was pretty annoying, but I suspect the people using them are suffering the whims of their corporate IT overlords.
269: I had a client that would regularly send material through a system like that. I think their corporate policy (imperfectly observed) was to send all confidential material through it rather than direct email, at least to external recipients. Huge pain in the ass, though I'm actually surprised it's not more widespread in the legal context.
280 reminds me that I've also had real estate documents sent to me sort of that way, but in a more elaborate system set up to accommodate e-signatures.
I don't have an e-signature. So far I have been able to get by with faxing things when I have to sign them.
272: Very good, although "shame cultures" have both public and private spaces with different rules, and even in public there are more rules than "anybody can touch anybody." (The early 90s when Egyptian actresses all put on veils is an amazing story)
Now back to Harold Garfinkel...
...speaking of social interactionism, Kotsko's thread at 245 elicited an interesting series of comments. Male commenters not sufficiently "X*", woman, woman declared thread a hostile environment, Kotsko got to banning
*you can decide what "X" is. Weren't exactly rape threats or obscene insults. Is there something between or outside a dichotomy of hostile/dominant/aggressive and deferential/submissive? Were Hegel, Sartre, Levinas, Lacan all wrong?
Were Hegel, Sartre, Levinas, Lacan all wrong?
Mostly. At least as far as I can tell. I have trouble reading them and never heard of Levinas.
184: The Calabat was mistaken for a girl once when he was about six months old, probably because a) babies are pretty much gender neutral anyway and b) he was in a turquoise onesie. "What a sweet girl? What's your name?" Many apologies followed by me explaining that it's not as though one can actually tell at a glance whether this bald kiddo is male or female....
re: 285
I had that up until I was about 8, I think. Certainly I can remember it happening, so I wasn't just a baby.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3023537/album_0017_17.jpg
Me on the left, with my Dad.
286: Your dad's hair is awesome.
Mostly-but-maybe-not-entirely-off-topic story:
This morning on the bus there was a lady sitting in the seat across the aisle from me with no one in the window seat next to her. Old lady, not literally bag lady but didn't look too healthy or well-off. A woman, age 20-30, comes up and asks the old lady for one of the two seats she's taking up. Both of them are black, by the way. The only other free seat on the bus is next to a man who's probably over 300 lbs., so the request seems reasonable. Old lady says no, though. Rude of her, but personally I'm socialized to be passive-aggressive, so I'd just ignore it except maybe making disdainful looks. The newcomer didn't, though. Threatened the old lady for the seat, said she'd follow her off the bus and beat her up or something. This went on for a few minutes before I told her to leave the old lady alone, asked her if she was serious, would she really beat someone up for a seat. She said it's none of my business, I'm white and they're black, stay out of it, they're friends and this is just how they interact. (None of this is a direct quote obviously.) I didn't believe that but let it go once no one was actually being threatened any more. They got off the bus at different stops.
After I got off the bus, a guy who got off at the same stop as me caught up to me and congratulated me for getting involved and wanted to make sure I knew that wasn't normal or acceptable. Good for me and good for him, etc., but here's the thing: he mentioned in passing that the threatening person was a man, not a woman as I'd thought. Not sure what, if anything, it means that I was wrong about that, but it's weird.
Here's a totally half-baked theory. If one of the major motivations for street harassment is the hope of getting a (probably not genuine) smile from an attractive woman, then you'd expect big class differences. As an UMC man I have several interactions each day where an attractive woman smiles at me because it's part of her job. Even though I have no intention of sleeping with waitresses/baristas/etc. and even though it's clear that the interaction can't be entirely genuine, it's still enjoyable to have an interaction with a cute woman.
re: 287
Heh, it got longer. He'd only been out of the army about 3 - 4 years when that photo was taken.* He didn't cut it off until I was about 16, so it was always a bit of a surprise for new friends when they came to visit.
* my parents are, I think, 24 and 21 in that picture. Which seems shockingly young, given that I'm 42 and my son is only a toddler.
My wife had some guy stroking her hair on the bus, just this week. One of those things where she felt vaguely discomforted but didn't actually realise he was stroking her hair until just before she got off the bus.
Creepy experience in my own building.
We have a guy in our building who likes to pull out a lawn chair to sit in the parking lot or on the grass right next to it and faces the basketball court where little kids play.
When it's very windy, it blows all around. Recently, it flew up into a tree. My FE has asked him not to leave it there, since our parking spot is right next to it. The guy ignored him. The guy also repeatedly forgets to lock the door to the basement which nobody else uses, but it's next to his apartment.
Last night, FE went out to move the chair away from our car. The guy was sitting in his apartment in the dark and waved a flashlight at FE and said, "Get away from my chair, you creep."
Maybe my FE is overzealous about the chair, but that's kind of weird all the same.
BOGF once had a classmate sitting beside her in an exam start chewing (or sucking?) on her long hair. As I recall, the implication was that it was from nerves, not harassment, but obviously unspeakably gross.
Now I don't recall her response, but given that it was during an exam, I suspect she made a minimum of fuss.
Mrs. K-sky remembers a gentleman from her NYC days who rode the subways stroking himself and crying, wearing a hand-lettered sign that said PLEASE FORGIVE ME I HAVE A MEDICAL CONDITION.
I've known people who've run into him on the subways. And just a couple of weeks ago I had a conversation with some former colleagues about creepy/weird shit around work (Midtown NYC) and he came up.
Nice video, it seems that is very popular.
Handmade leather bags, check this out
The catcalling seems a lot better received if you have a horn section.
202: Your previous response was better.
296, I was hoping the horn section would be on Spadina.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZnLjRi_g9o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXy7LszpIDc
Takie Lebra, umm, Japanese-American woman anthropologist/sociologist Univ Hawaii. After Bateson.
A role that is part of a social system can be taken and played only if other roles in the same system are complementarily played. The 'central role' to be played by Ego must be complemented by a 'counter-role' played by Alter.This requirement of 'complementarity' (Bateson, 1935, 1971; Watzlawick et al., 1967) is no less compelling in the assumption of a supernatural role, no matter how arbitrary that role may appear. The complementary role may be played by Ego himself or by other persons. The satisfactory performance of a supernatural role by the possessed requires Ego or other persons to accept the complementary role willingly. This means that the complementary role should be as desirable as the supernatural role. This is a major constraint on the repertoire of supernatural roles, and it precludes the randomness of possession behavior. In actuality, however, there seems to be no special problem since internalization of a role through socialization entails internalization of its complementary role; to learn how to play a dominant role, for instance, one must simultaneously learn how to play a submissive role.
289: Yes. I get the "Pharmaceutical Rep" routine played for me often. I know the hot saleswoman is doing it, she knows I know she's doing it, we both know it's not going anywhere, but it's fun to play for a few minutes, and sometimes good for a real belly laugh, as when one guessed my age as like forty or so.
IOW, though pretty trivial and trite
"Walking undisturbed" requires an audience of people...guys...who are watching, can disturb, and don't disturb
There is not an uninvolved or indifferent social position here, at least for the one who demands to be undisturbed. The command also importantly must be unspoken.
So she is authoritative and dominant, and commands that the guys take an internalized submissive role.
And that's ok, think about streetworkers or construction workers or many other street roles who according to social roles we know we shouldn't disturb.
It's funny.
"Hey, I'm just reading my book, and that idiot just opened my front door and walked in."
No, your demand that people can't come into your house without permission is the authoritarian and dominant position, backed by social structure, police, constitution.
Your command of space or provisional claim to space, even personal space is not a passive role, but an active dominant claim of possession.
That's not saying the cat-callers are victims, just that the social situation here is about a dominance contest, in which one side, as usual, is demanding the full force of social authority take their side.
305: My institution got all ethical, so I never see pharma reps anymore.
I'm sure they still come, but not where the non-docs are likely to get a free lunch out of it.
The only pharma rep I ever knew was batshit insane and had hooked up with Edward Norton.
Edward Norton gets all the pharma reps.
And that was Fox's token liberal.
Stating the obvious, but having an unackowledged hate apeech outlet in the heart of our national political media is exhibit 1 for our political and social dysfunction.
Grumpy Me. Ovvious here. Watching Up! With Steve Kornacki which i normally and I'm hating everybody.
Fortunately, I have a memory that tends toward the pointless.
Latest from Slate on catcalling video
Texas Court Makes Upskirts Mandatory, Outlaws Kittens, Hates Your Mother ...the title is a joke based on the inflammatory headlines the Sept 19 Texas Supreme Court decision. Long detailed article analyzing the decision. Shorter:insanely broad and vague. In comments is an attempt at a broad enough law that would pass constitutional muster
Woman Faces A Year in Jail For Beating Drone Operator; Assault Caught on Video ...on a beach, she just...well let you read it and draw your own conclusions about how far this is gonna go.
Like I said, I keep my eyes to the ground in case a young woman might pass in front of me. Eyes up, looking toward the horizon is the privilege of my superiors
The last link is fascinating.
Even after she had called the cops and knew they were coming, she still felt comfortable assaulting the kid. She got to speak to the cops first, and they were ready to drag the kid away when he showed them the video he had taken of her assault. IOW, she felt her side of the story would automatically prevail.
Where does she get these assumptions?
The dynamics of the assault are interesting:
She, while grabbing and hitting him and trying to scar his face, maybe take out his eyes: "Don't you touch me! Are you touching me? Don't touch me!"
Kid:" I am not touching you, I'm just trying to protect my face." The kid went as passive as possible.
If the kid had even grabbed a wrist, he might be in jail for years.
I don't need this shit, so I keep away.
Like I said, I keep my eyes to the ground in case a young woman might pass in front of me.
Really shiny shoes?
320: Or they see an opportunity to criticize the behavior of working-class men of color.
I'm having an 'I don't even see race' reaction on this one, but while I can accept that the editing of the video was insensitive, I don't think race is particularly a breakline in street-harassment behavior. I think class is -- hassling is primarily a poor/working-class guys hanging around on the street thing, at least in NY, and in NY people of that class are majority nonwhite. But there were a couple of white guys on the tape, and I certainly wouldn't find harassment more surprising from white guys if they were poor/working class. (Hassling from middle-class looking guys is, IME, quite a bit rarer, but on average nastier when it happens. Not so much of the "I'm just being friendly" routine, straight to muttered obscenities.)
327: In my experience, white men harass me the most when they are young, drunk and in groups. But the story is far, far different for the women of color that I know well enough to have talked about this with.
For example, ALL of the under-30 Asian women that I have talked about this with have shared multiple stories of white men approaching them with horrifically crude comments or detailed stories about "who you remind me of," often starting when they were as young as 10 or 12, and often with the result of the story being "a prostitute I knew once in Vietnam or [insert Asian country here]".
For black women, harassment seems to have a frighteningly ugly edge, which goes beyond "just" the male policing of space that all women experience, and into bigoted, hateful condemnation of their bodies, presence, and personhood. The threat of and/or escalation to violence seems much, much faster.
I haven't really talked about white-male harassment issues with Hispanic women, so can't say much about that.
Finally, this post takes an interesting look at how one group is working to connect young men's experience of police harassment with young women's experience of street harassment.
Unemployed people hassle women on the street. Employed people hassle women at the workplace.
I'm really impressed by the collective effort to deny Bob a rise here.
I wake up this morning to the headline:
Should Black and Hispanic Men Be Banned From Chatting Up White Feminist Women?
Absolutely! We should make it a hanging offense, preferably from the nearest tree, with crowds of feminist women in white hoods, taking selfies with their sisters and daughters.
Of course, since the Jon Stewart video ended with the oppressed woman saying: "He's looking at my ass." the law must be extended to woman of color and include even looking at a woman in a public place.
330: Self-restraint is my middle name.
332: No, from the evidence, "hyphen" is your middle name.
If I totally stopped using incorrectly hyphenation, neb has won.
334: His victory seems unlikely on several fronts.
