Listen, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to creep you out. Maybe we can talk about it over a drink some time.
You probably succeeded in scaring him off just by making a point of noticing he was there. Gross.
Ack, my comment didn't post. I guess that it is sexist, but that wasn't my first reaction. My first reaction was, how scary, I hope that Tia's okay.
He was hitting on you, but could something similar have happened in a non-sexual context?
I once had the scuzzy AAA guy who came to repair my flat hit on me. It really bothered me. I'm enough of a snob not to want to date a AAA guy (probably not ever, but especially not one whho makes Joey Trebbiani's "how you doin" sound sophisticated). I was in a not-great part of Sacramento with no cell phone and a long walk to any kind of payphone and was really isolated, and basically, it's really shitty of someone to hit on you when they're supposed to be there to do a job.
I told my Dad, and he had no sympathy. He basically said, "you're a pretty girl; don't you think taht men woudl want to date you?" And, generally, I think of my Dad as a feminist.
I don't think it is an issue of sexism if someone hits on you. I have been hit on by lesbians just as agressively as any man.
You've had lesbians follow you home, refusing to leave when you asked them to leave you alone? Man, that must have been terrifying.
I did not mean to imply that her experience was nothing less than terrifing. I was just saying I don't think it was a 'sexist thing'. Scary and psychotic, yes. Any stalker is scary, male or female.
Oh, Christ. Do we actually have to even discuss this? This is fucking sexist.
I'm sorry, Tia. That's really scary. God, what a creep. That's a lot of following.
The fact that women have to face this shit every day, that we get stared at, leered at, followed, that the only reason this guy might need to leave Tia alone is if her boyfriend's "around here", the fact that every single time a dude, hitting on me, asks if I have a boyfriend, I say yes, even if I don't, because somehow our being "possessed" by another man can be the only thing to make these fuckers go away, that I'm scared everytime I'm walking alone at night and I hear any noises behind me, that's sexism.
It's not the hitting on, per se, that's sexist; it's the not taking no for an answer. Also the "oh, you have a boyfriend" thing; as if the only possible reason a woman would say no is if some other guy already owns her and would kick her ass if he found out she was slutting around.
I'd guess male on female stalkers are more common, though, and more likely to elicit the kind of dismissive reaction that bgirl got from her dad? Still seems like a sexist thing, because the difference in frequency women have to be worried about giving off the wrong vibe -- or just leaving the house, I don't want to say "Tia, you should've given off a different vibe!" -- and men don't.
OK, pwned by J. Trebbiani in 10.
I have a possibly racially sensitive question. What I want to know is, white girls, do you get the creepy hitting-on in public from white dudes? In my six years living in the US, I've only ever had stuff like this (or lesser) happen from black or hispanic guys. I always thought that maybe it's 'cause I'm sort of "ethnic" looking, and also have a body type that is considered more attractive in those cultural sub-groups (yes, I have a big ass). But it is that way across the board? Is this a cultural problem?
13: Weiner, you may want to see this.
14: No, I get it from black men and Latinos occasionally too. E.g. tortilla guy. And from white working-class guys sometimes, like the towtruck driver referenced upthread.
I think it's partly a male assertion of dominance--"you may be higher up than I am in the social pecking order, but I'm still a man"--and partly about the fact that middle-class and professionalish women are often v. standoffish with men (especially men below them in social class), so if you *aren't* like that, if you treat them as human beings and equals, it maybe gets seen as a come-on?
One vote for cultural. When I was in Greece plenty of the girls on the trip reported getting similar treatment from Greek dudes.
16: You know, your second paragraph makes me sad, because my (female) friends have posited, inducing a lot of anger in me, that I must be doing something differently than them, because the rate at which I get hit on/followed/harrassed is fucking staggering compared to what they've experienced. It's caused a lot of fights. I think it might be my propensity to accidentally make eye contact with people. I can't help it! I like looking at faces! Not only can I not change, I don't know if I'd want to even if I could.
It sucks.
I mean, my last name isn't actually supposed to be -- oh, never mind.
18: That's a possibility -- I really rarely get approached in public (catcalled sometimes, but hardly ever that I can think of a personal approach), and I'm absolutely no-eye-contact frozenfaced in public. (I don't approve of this in myself, but I'm like that.)
18: It *is* the eye contact thing. I've decided to do it anyway, because blah blah feminism. It's like refusing not to walk alone at night. And it can be used to keep guys at bay, too. I honestly think that signalling fear by avoiding looking at people is more dangerous than letting them know that you see them. It's an unusual thing for a woman to do, and I think it does mean that a lot of guys will try to reassert their guyness by trying to close that gap, if it makes sense. But on the whole, I'd rather deal with that than the other.
It seems like men spend substantial parts of every day looking at women, and are very surprised when they look at one and see her looking right back.
But it sucks that a half-second of eye contact has caused people to follow me for twenty fucking minutes. Christ.
I think it might be my propensity to accidentally make eye contact with people.
Yeah, it's this (this and your big ass). In fact, wasn't "make eye contact" the main piece of advice the Year of Yes woman had for becoming approachable?
Also, avoiding eye contact doesn't necessarily signal fear, it's how you stand, where you do look, etc. that do that.
Gah, that sucks, Tia. That's creepy as all hell.
The only times I have been followed were in Greece and Egypt.
because my (female) friends have posited, inducing a lot of anger in me, that I must be doing something differently than them, because the rate at which I get hit on/followed/harrassed is fucking staggering compared to what they've experienced.
This was a big topic of conversation when I lived in Egypt because it seemed as though some women got harassed much more frequently than others, and people think there must be some reason to explain this. I think it's mostly random, though the fact that I do avoid eye contact with strangers like the plague (and in general give off an unfriendly vibe) might have something to do with the fact that I got harassed less than most people.
I'm always embarrassed if I'm caught looking at a woman. Sometimes there's this split second where I think maybe she's checking me out, too, then I think, "No, this is a train, not a bar -- I'm a creep who's unfit to live." Then I go back to reading my book while stabbing my leg with my little Opus Dei pokey thing.
tia--
my condolences. sounds gross, as well as unnerving.
"it is now my intention to report every fucked sexist thing that happens to me"
I think it would be good for everyone to post a log of this stuff--sexist episodes from my week--to give more perspective to those who don't believe it happens.
28: Either that, or it would prove that feminists are oversensitive bitches who need to shut up. Depends on who's reading the log.
One thing that has pained me in the past is the way men who reach out to you will then sometimes scold you if you don't respond properly. There are two categories of this: men whose outreach was benign in the first place, and men whose outreach wasn't. The thing that especially pains me about it for me, white woman, is the degree to which the whole thing is sometimes racially coded. For example, once I was in Clinton Hill, because I worked there, and a black guy called, "Good morning," to me from the stoop. I even did say "Good morning" back, but apparently not loud enough for him to hear me. I don't remember what he said, but something to indicate that he was perhaps insulted. So then I said, "I *did* say good morning back," and it was okay. I feel like he's looking at me as a white person strutting around what used to be an exclusively black neighborhood, and for that matter a dangerously cracked out neighborhood, and has now become much safer (good) but too expensive for many of the non-crack dealer former occupants (bad), and thinking it is somewhat precious of me to be stuck up. And I want to say to him, "Dude, I think you're looking at me qua white person, but let me tell you, qua woman, there are reasons I can't be that friendly, even that I have to adopt a standard defensive mode even when the particular person doesn't deserve it. In a perfect world, I would be smiling at and greeting everyone I saw." The crazy thing is, I'm still wildly friendly for New York. Everyone still remarks on it. Graham has expressed some concern over my lack of boundaries, and my willingness to engage obviously mentally ill people in conversation.
26: Yeah, the "why does M. get harrassed so much?" talk started when I lived in Egypt. Seriously, it was every fucking day there. Starting at age 12. Sick. My friends started noticing because they would see it when they were with me.
24: If they follow you, turn around and stare at them. Or slow down, or stop and stare in a window and then turn and look at them again as they walk by. Kind of like Tia did in the story--again, I think the thing is to do something that shows that you're not afraid.
25: Avoiding eye contact doesn't necessarily signal fear, no; but I think that even in combination with other things, it is read that way by the kind of men who will "hey mami" you on a train. It's just part of what women are supposed to do, because women are supposed to be avoiding contact from men at all times.
31: Word. And "every fucking day" doesn't even get at how pervasive it is. And not only do young girls get harassed; grown women get harassed by young boys. I was standing in Midan Hussein on the prophet's birthday, and a kid, must've been about six or seven, walked straight up to me and grabbed my crotch. No parents in sight, that I could tell.
33: Yup. The only time I've ever hit somebody, which I think I've mentioned here before, is when at sixteen or seventeen, I punched an eleven-year-old boy.
I think the number of times that someone drove by me, stopped up ahead and waited for me to walk past, and when I did, had his dick out in his hand, must be more than twenty. So yeah. pervasive.
I'm stating the incredibly obvious here, but this sort of thing is what makes statements like "some women get raped because they're insufficiently prudent" so offensive.
Someone could say "M. Leblanc gets harassed all the time through her own choice -- other women get harassed less, because they make different decisions about their demeanor, and are realistic about what will happen if they do certain things in public. Oh, it's not right, but if she wants the harassment to stop, it's within her power to control it." And that wouldn't be, literally, false.
But it would be an incredibly oppressive, fuckheaded and evil thing to say -- the behavior we're talking about is looking at people? And you're (the imaginary 'you' who made the statement in quotes) saying that saying that when men stalk and harass a woman in response to her looking at them, that it's in any way reasonable to suggest that this situation should be changed by her learning to avert her eyes?
I can't remember exactly, but I think this is precisely the flip-side of the Year of Yes thread where some women were incredulous that YoY woman had been asked out so many times, and others were like, "I get asked ten times a day."
It also occurs to me that if Tia had been doing a YoY, she would have had to say yes to "Hi Mami" dude.
27 describes typical guy behavior, except maybe for ethe Opus Dei thing (although the other comments in this thread make clear that there is no shortage of truly grossly horrible guys out there).
I don't think 35 works, but in the interest of comity, I'll keep quiet. Email me if you want to argue, LB.
35: Well, yeah. That's why I totally blew up at my three or four female friends who were basically telling me just that.
I don't think 35 works
Ogged, 35 could not be more right in the context in which it is written. Put down the crack pipe.
Idealist is getting sassy.
True. Sorry. Back to lurking and trying to get some work done.
Then I go back to reading my book while stabbing my leg with my little Opus Dei pokey thing.
No wonder you're so angry all the time.
ogged, women can avoid harrassment nearly altogether if we never leave the house. But that's not a reasonable solution.
Ok, ok, I'm being hyperbolic. Probably your argument which you refuse to explain is that not making eye contact is a pretty small thing, and a reasonable sacrifice to make in order to avoid harrassment, if that's what it takes. Not leaving the house is not reasonable.
But having to change the way you interact with the world is not reasonable. Seriously, it's not a conscious choice that I make to look at people. I look at men, women, the old, the young, the rich, the poor, the disabled. It's a hobby, it keeps me entertained, it gives me a lot of information about people in this city that I think I get quite a good deal of insight from. It's a big deal. It's part of my personality, and I think part of a lot of other people's personality, too, and changing it would be a pretty intense battle that I don't think would be particularly pleasant.
I love how male violence against women is always just taken as a given. The same thing happens w/r/t violence against gays -- it's supposedly totally normal for straight men to be repulsed by gays, so it's their own fault if they're too "in your face about it" and get beat up, or worse.
This supposed natural right of men to use violent force is the most egregious example of male privilege, and it saturates our society. It makes me want to fucking strangle someone.
Whoa, what I thought didn't work about 35 was the connection between the first sentence and the rest of the comment, not anything about whether the rest of the comment is true (it is).
I love how male violence against women is always just taken as a given. The same thing happens w/r/t violence against gays -- it's supposedly totally normal for straight men to be repulsed by gays, so it's their own fault if they're too "in your face about it" and get beat up, or worse.
I don't think most men I know treat male violence against women as something that is acceptable. Is it possible, Kotsko, that you just hang out with dicks?
About the pervasiveness of the harrassment/catcalls/following: until rather recently, I had never actually seen this kind of thing happen, despite my female friends saying that it happened to them all the time. It just seemed strange that people would do that. I was really startled, about a year and a half ago, when I saw a carful of guys yelling at a girl on the street in a horribly aggressive and over-the-top manner. When I asked, she said she's gotten used to that happening whenever she's walking by herself.
I guess it has to do with me being a guy. Walking through the neighborhood with my female housemates earlier in the summer, they remarked that this was one of the first times they hadn't been catcalled. The only difference was that their group wasn't all female that time.
Some of us, when we say "men," mean the men we know; others mean the men who beat up Matthew Shepard. This causes problems.
A. We're a shitty species. As a general rule.
B. I don't make eye contact in the Eastern US. It seems to be considered rude and aggressive. Just like crossing in the crosswalk, the Western Rule is different: avoiding eye contact in Montana is rude and paranoid.
47: Even men who would never dream of hitting a woman often ponder the profound implications of something like the "it's impossible to rape a slut" defense.
47: I don't think anyone claims that the men they know think violence against women is acceptable. I think the point is that even though we all think it's unacceptable, we often talk about it or think about it as a fact of life in a way that erases the fact that violence against women is a question of men's agency, not women's.
We do the same about other kinds of crime, too: people "get robbed" or "get raped." It's as though the thief or the rapist is some invisible force. "Someone robbed him" or "someone raped her" focuses on the fact that another person decided to do that--which is kind of scarier, really, but (especially in the context of rape, where the onus is always on avoiding it) puts the focus of the sentence where it belongs.
the profound implications of something like the "it's impossible to rape a slut" defense.
I guess I'm wondering if that's a defense that works in your crowd. It's been verboten in mine for nearly a decade and a half. When reading comments here, I sometimes wonder if (as a function of my unbelievably fortunate life--no cancer, even!) I just don't realize how pervasive in American life some of the archtypes I assumed had been overthrown are.
And even using "get" instead of "is" tends further to erase the agent, apparently.
53: But that's the difference between discussions of broad-scale social action, like legislation, and personal advice, like, "Do not confront the aggressive neo-Nazi in the vacant, poorly lit parking lot."
I was harassed this summer around midnight one night. As I walked home alone from the grad center (bad cala!), in a skirt (imprudent cala!) a Tattooed Asshole (just that the tattoos were prominent on his arm, not that they caused him to be an asshole) made a rude and coarse suggestion about my skirt and began to follow me after I quite possibly may have told him to go to hell.
So instead of taking the well-lit side street I normally take, I took the longer way past all the local bars with outdoor tables full of patrons. I wanted witnesses. He gave up after a couple blocks.
Glad you're okay, Tia.
53 is exactly right. "Got raped" is the construction we use for things that just kind of happen, like "I got sick" or "It got cold yesterday."
Any advice that focuses on what women should do to avoid rape, assault, and harrassment assumes that violence against women is a given, a fact of life, an unstoppable force.
54: It's been verboten in mine for nearly a decade and a half.
IOW it's something you heard as a viable defense as recently as the early Nineties? That would seem to sort of make Kotsko's point.
Wasn't that defense used in the Kobe Bryant rape case?
53 also included "got robbed", and we also say "got beaten up", "got killed", etc; the connection between your first and second paragraphs seems shaky given that we don't assume that getting beaten up is also an unstoppable force.
There's an extent, too, to which advice that focuses on avoidance (by anyone of anything) has to assume that the thing to be avoided is "a given" (though not, obviously, an unstoppable force); otherwise, you wouldn't need to take steps to avoid it; it wouldn't come up. This is parallel to the KKK example from the previous thread that got mired in this discussion; either you can act as if something simply doesn't exist, or acknowledge it and adjust your behavior accordingly (not necessarily deferentially, but adjusting it somehow)—but the latter option treats it as something out there.
59: Prior to that, I wouldn't really have been aware of the issue, for reasons of both youth and dorkiness. My suspicion is that it was available, even if not explicitly, as recently as the early Nineties. But I'm not clear about (a) what you take to be Kotsko's point, and (b) how what was true fifteen years ago speaks to today.
Don't we use "s/he got..." in situations where the identity, not the agency, of the agent is largely irrelevant? "He got pulled over." "He got a lap dance." As opposed to, say, "His best friend's wife gave him a lap dance."
54: I don't think that Adam's saying people use the defense so much as that it's the kind of "theoretical" argument that some kinds of wankery guys are wont to engage in as if it were a serious question.
That said, I think that the guys that do that are mostly young and assholish.
58 -- But that assumption is valid, isn't it? In the world we live in, at the present time. No one is saying that this world is acceptable, just that it is.
Wasn't that defense used in the Kobe Bryant rape case?
I don't think it was prosecuted.
63: I thought about that, but I really don't think it's true. We view cops, like rapists, as sort of just a fact of life. We view strippers as essentially furniture. The cop doesn't have a personal animus against you; he's just doing his job. Same with the stripper who gives you the lap dance.
I think 61 just gets it wrong. We say "he was killed" if it was an accident; otherwise we say "he was murdered." And I think "he got beaten up," while grammatical, is really unlikely; I'd expect people to say, rather, "he was in a fight" or "some asshole beat him up" or the like.
"He got pulled over." "He got a lap dance." As opposed to, say, "His best friend's wife gave him a lap dance."
If you had followed the link in 55, you'd know that you'd also want to contrast "he got pulled over" with "he was pulled over"—there's a difference. Also, your two "got"s are different; the one is used to make a passive construction and the other is an active verb meaning "received" (compare "he got a lap dance from his best friend's wife").
It seems to me that we use the 'got' construction when the subject of the story -- the person we care about -- is the victim. Bobby Kennedy got shot on the night of the California primary. Dylan got booed at Newport. CharleyCarp got his ass handed to him, again, in a Kansas City courtroom. We don't say this to minimize the culpability of the actor.
Well, 67, I in turn think you're completely wrong about "he was killed", "he got killed", "he was murdered", "he got murdered" (which you didn't mention), and "he got beaten up", which sounds completely natural to me.
60: IIRC that was the "impossible to rape a black stripper" defense, which is a hyper-obnoxious variant of the same argument. (I think there was an element of "we were drunk and frats will be frats" in there, too, but I can't remember offhand.)
62: I took Kotsko's point -- at least in 51 -- to be that it's still commonly enough "in the air" today, which I think is fair. If that habit of thinking was widely prevalent a decade and a half ago, it would make said argument more convincing.
I think 63 is wrong because identity and agency are more intertwined than you are representing. We tend to talk about identity as a way to focus on agency. For example, you might say "He was driving drunk and got pulled over." There, the cop's agency isn't important, the agency of the person who chose to drink a bunch and then drive is. On the other hand, you might say "A cop pulled me over for no reason." Since you weren't doing anything illegal, the cop is the one with the agency here, not you.
And I really don't see how "He got a lap dance" doesn't give the lap-dance receiver all the agency and the lap-dance giver none.
No, no. I'm not saying we do that to minimize culpability. I'm saying the effect of that construction is to erase the sense of an active *decision* on someone's part to do whatever-it-was. As if whatever-it-was was inevitable, or the result of something that person did. Dylan got booed (because his performance wasn't so hot). CharleyCarp got his ass handed to him (because he lost the case or fucked up somehow). Kennedy got shot (as one of a number of assassinations in those years that serve as evidence of the political turmoil of that time). She got raped (because rape just happens).
Odd cross-cultural comment: I used to get something similar to this when I lived or travelled in Asia, especially as an uber-blond white boy in a sea of, well, neither white nor uber-blond people. It's obviously not the same thing, of course -- I doubt that man was following Tia to rub her head for good luck (as happened to me on occasion) or to ask for money or to "show her a good time" whatever [well, ok, maybe, but not in the same way] -- but it strikes me more as general predatory behavior along sexist/sexual lines than inherently sexist behavior per se.
That said, that guy fucking sucks and you definitely did the right thing confronting him, Tia. Hopefully you won't have to deal with him again.
And I really don't see how "He got a lap dance" doesn't give the lap-dance receiver all the agency and the lap-dance giver none.
See, this is why it's relevant that this "got" is a different use of "got" from the others. You'd want to contrast "[someone] gave him a lap dance", "he was given a lap dance", "he got given a lap dance" (which sounds totally unnatural to me).
Come on! We can transform this into a completely abstract discussion if we just try hard enough!
And I think "he got beaten up," while grammatical, is really unlikely; I'd expect people to say, rather, "he was in a fight" or "some asshole beat him up" or the like.
Really? This isn't my impression at all.
He got killed by ten thousand pounds of sludge from New York and New Jersey.
I thought 'got' was just lazy, not implying anything about agency.
In The Wire, people say "He needs to get got" and often say it to communicate their own intent. So maybe we're leaning a little too hard on this particular way of speaking.
I don't see how the fact that "he needs to get whatevered" can communicate the speaker's intent contradicts the idea that it's a manner of speaking that tends to reduce the importance of the agent. You surely don't think that "he needs to get killed" and "I need to kill him" are equally explicit about who's doing the killing?
Under what circumstances would you say "he got beaten up"?
82: About w-lfs-n? Hopefully, all of the time.
"he got beaten up"
I've heard this a ton and it sounds totally natural to me.
A principle: It's not decisive what the individual person saying something is thinking at the time -- most of us don't really think that hard about what we're saying anyway. Language has its own structures and patterns that operate without our conscious intent.
What I really don't see is why people are attributing so much to the "got"-passive specifically when we also have another one. What about it? If it doesn't have the same implications, why?
79 is an intent thing again. It *is* lazy; nonetheless, its frequent use tells us something about the kinds of acts we think need a subject, and the kinds we think only need an object.
So like, "he needs to get got" implies intent; but it also implies that he is going to "just" get hurt, and the identity of whoever does it will remain a mystery. It also, btw, implies that the victim deserves what's going to happen to him.
You surely don't think that "he needs to get killed" and "I need to kill him" are equally explicit about who's doing the killing?
Certainly not, but then I was the one saying that what the "got" use conceals is identity, not agency.
86 is correct. Like B. said, we might not use the "got" construction in order to gloss over the agency of the rapist/robber/beater-upper, but that is its effect.
Which is basically exactly what she said, but it bears repeating.
60: Oh, wait, I was thinking of the Duke rape case. The Kobe Bryant defense was different. (And a bit confusing.)
I think it's pretty clear that it doesn't have the same implications; B mentioned it first in "get raped" and "get robbed" and since I had happened to have recently asked a question on metafilter about get vs be-passives, and since one of the answers suggested that get-passives, at least in some uses, tend to further erase the agent than do be-passives (and since that seems pretty right in the examples adduced), I brought it up, and now I'm trying to focus on that because I think it's interesting. I mean, it seems pretty clear to me that they aren't used in the same way and that there are semantic differences between "get" and "be" in some passive constructions.
we might not use the "got" construction in order to gloss over the agency of the rapist/robber/beater-upper, but that is its effect
Ok, as long as we drop intent, I'll totally buy this.
84: You know, Tim, if you just put on a duster and buy a whip, w-lfs-n will be eating out of your hand.
93: Jesus christ. I'm not the one who dragged intent into it. It's the "no it doesn't work that way" crowd, including you, who got hung up on intent.
You people drive me crazy.
95: At least some people here actually pay attention to what is being said.
As I think about it, the difference b's talking about does seem to be there. "She got raped" implies something about her that "she was raped" doesn't seem to; it focuses more on her agency. The rapist's agency isn't there in either one--I suspect you would use the active to emphasize that.
99: The link in 55 which ben's been exhorting people to read really does explain it quite well.
I'm not the one who dragged intent into it. It's the "no it doesn't work that way" crowd, including you, who got hung up on intent
It got dragged in.
I'm skeptical of the link in 55. I don't think the got-passives are as comparable to impersonal constructions the MeFi poster seems to be saying.
There should be another "as" in there somewhere.
It occurs to me that part of the issue is that there's also a reflexive got-passive which definitely focuses on the agency of the subject. This may be influencing people's interpretation of the regular one.
Actually, I think "she was raped" is preferable to "she got raped," both because it doesn't really have the overtones of "what did she do that got her raped?" and also because in that case, the passive construction (it seems to me) draws attention to itself; it evokes the question "by whom?"
107 is a good illustration of the two things I'm seeing operating here: the overtones probably come from the similarity to "she got herself raped" while the question-evoking comes from the less impersonal nature of the be-passive as per 55.
Yeah, that was actually part of my original askme question (with "he got killed" vs "he got himself killed").
In that case the comment you linked in 55 was only a partial answer to your question.
"It occurs to me that part of the issue is that there's also a reflexive got-passive which definitely focuses on the agency of the subject."
Ding-ding-ding. 'I got drunk' implies that I had agency. 'I got screwed over' doesn't.
The reflexive got-passive is "he got himself [something]ed."
I recognize that 99% of the people here understand this, but because of comments 7 and 9, I just want to make a point that should be excruciatingly obvious. For anyone who wants to say that the phenomenon of women being harrassed is just a result of individual psychosis, why would it be that as much as it happens here, it happens a hundred times more in Cairo, as m. leblanc and d.a. report? Is it that Egyptians are somehow individually more prone to craziness? Is it genetic?
Or, as dsquared likes to say in an admirably pithy frame, "How about looking at women's problems sociologically?"
solidarity, m. and tia! i also get hit on more than my fair share, more than other women (though it is because i have a "sweet" face and i'm small-sized and approachable-looking, not because i look men in the eye).
One thing that has pained me in the past is the way men who reach out to you will then sometimes scold you if you don't respond properly. There are two categories of this: men whose outreach was benign in the first place, and men whose outreach wasn't.
this resounded deafeningly with me. i've had the extreme case of this - a man in italy who acted insulted because i got up from the seat across from him and moved to another chair...after looking up from my book and seeing he was staring at me while masturbating through his jeans. but there are also the men who stop you on the street because they want to "help" in some way you haven't asked for -- and get upset if you say "no thanks" without smiling, or if you just keep walking. i got harassed on a near-empty train once because, when a group of twenty-something men asked me "if i was going to read" the magazine i had unfurled in front of me, i said "yes, actually," instead of dropping it to devote myself to their fascinating selves. ditto to the silver-haired men in an empty suburban parking lot who asked three times if he could give me directions when i had been quite self-sufficiently looking at a map in my car, but got all offended-looking when i cheerfully said "no thanks" for the third time and shut the car door. ruining his god-given right to give young women directions and have them smile in grateful submission in return.
even when a man is harrassing us or being patently insincere, or potentially threatening, or making us uncomfortable in an obvious way, they often STILL expect us to cater to their feelings.
I know, teo, but 'got' is used in lots of ways in English, including the reflexive. All of which contributes to the confusion when we're trying to decide if a form that could be interpreted innocuously is containing a hidden reflexive that is victim blaming.
I think 'got raped' is closer to 'was raped' or just a straight passive use of 'got' than to 'got herself in trouble.' It reads to me like a pure passive, but it sounds like shit anyway, which is why 'was raped' is preferable.
I can report some success on a minor, related — and minor-related — issue. Took my daughter to the Apple store, no warranty coverage for that sort of thing, bought a replacement; we'll find the money somewhere.
I told her I'd been mistaken even on the practical point, because if it was in her sweatshirt pocket and she fell on it, it would have broken anyway, because it was reasonably padded. We've bought a hard shell, which might have helped.
I told her that the other part, the desire to think about what was in our, in this case her, control to have prevented this, which was clearly entirely the fault of the jerk who pushed her onto the platform off the train, then ran away, was a natural but wrong reaction. That it was caused by my guilt and helplessness about not being able to protect her or correct even this, and therefore wanting to somehow go over what could have been done, I was thinking we but she is what it boils down to, which is what makes it wrong of me. And that my fear of this evokes and reminds me of a much darker fear. What I asked her to take away from this is that in neither case is it her fault, not even slightly. And that others will always be tempted to suggest it might be out of their own fear and guilt, not hers.
Oh, IDP, I missed that comment. That sucks! Is she ok?
I'm a guy, and a fairly clueless one at that, but for what it's worth, New York City seems just much, much worse when it comes to harrassment than any other place I've ever lived (Ottawa, Toronto, Ithaca NY, NYC). I don't know why this is, but I noticed it very soon after arriving here 5 years ago and I've been noticing it ever since. (Not to say that the other places are a paradise for women; I'm only making a relative claim.)
She's fine.
But... Skates on the Red Line? what's that about? Serve him right if he falls on his face down any of the brutal flights of stairs all the stops have.
I've asked her to watch for him, if she can, and that if we can figure out who he is, because he approaches her or something, we might be able to do a lawyer's letter or something.
When we got back, and I started reading this thread, looking first at the bottom, I saw the "awful thing that happened to leblanc" and got scared for a moment. Had been thinking of you when we turned onto the drive from Chicago Ave, for obvious reasons.
As a man who has never witnessed any acts of threatening sexism against a woman, I will stay out of this thread.
i'm not so wise as 123.
last night i stopped in a little plaza where like 5 different bars/clubs empty out at closing time, and watched as people were trying to hook up. one thing was that most of the guys seemed to adopt some sort of swaggery persona when they went up to talk to the girls.
one thing was that most of the guys seemed to adopt some sort of swaggery persona when they went up to talk to the girls.
This is a different issue, more of an issue of self-selection. I'd do the same thing if I was a guy in that situation. My thought process would be "Well, if there's a possibility that I can hook up with a girl at closing time, it's probably going to be with the kind of girl who gets impressed by a swaggery persona".
I would not actually follow up on this unless I was drunk, though. Who wants to go home with someone you met during the four minutes it takes to leave the closed-down bar?
Okay, have read the thread, and charleycarp says he never makes eye contact, but as a dude asking for advice and recommendations as to how to make encounters with women on the sidewalk more comfortable. I haven't seen much. This is usually not a problem, since the two matching large but very cute dogs dragging me around like a chew toy tends to make people comfortable. And of course at 5'4'' eyc I am less threatening than some.
But I mentioned it in another thread. Deliberately avoiding eye-contact or staring at the ground feels creepy, but is it the best response? Eye contact and a smile works sometimes, but sometimes I can sense the tension.
Advice please.
oh, i also had some guys yell "go to hell, faggot" at me from their car as i was walking home. that was a new experience.
"As a man who has never witnessed any acts of threatening sexism against a woman, I will stay out of this thread"
I am stunned. You are a very lucky man. As I said, I have encountered strangers frightened of me, which hurts. I certainly have seen a lot of stuff, minor but real and painful, from across the aisle or bar.
To put it less politely than Bob does, I find 123 really hard to believe. Unless it's a joke?
bob, you can either do the eye-contact+smile, or just look straight ahead. Believe me, not making eye contact doesn't come off as creepy. That might depend on where you live, though.
Also, I think the half-smile is better for these purposes than a genuine smile. It's like turning up your lips a little, possibly with a head-nod. The half-smile conveys acknowledgement and friendliness while a full, genuine smile can come on too strong.
Of course, the tension is probably going to be there no matter what you do.
Ding-ding-ding. 'I got drunk' implies that I had agency. 'I got screwed over' doesn't.
The "I got drunk" isn't a passive sentence, Cala, except in unusual (or sexually metonymically) circumstances.
A. I misspoke, Bob, if I said never. I'm terrible about forgetting when I come back to DC from Montana, and it takes a couple of hostile glares to remind me. Going to other way it doesn't take but a minute: I much prefer a world with eye contact, and where one is expected, on a two lane, to wave (sign really) to oncoming traffic.
B. It's obviously not genetic, but must be cultural. Women have been complaining about Italian men -- for example -- all my life. An Egyptian woman I know was telling me (25 years ago -- cultures change) about a trip to Saudi Arabia 4 or 5 years before that. She didn't wear a veil, and, although clearly 12, was hit on and followed constantly, even walking with/near her father. I can imagine that NYC would be uniquely bad for this sort of thing because of the diversity of cultures, and the ever-renewing population of people not really assimilated to your expectations.
C. I see no difference between 'she was killed' and 'she got killed' except to me the second is more about her, and less about killing. I accept that I'm out of synch on this (and that it would not be the first or last time).
D. I keep losing in Kansas City because the judge likes the other side better. It's poetic justice because I beat the other guy in a particularly humiliating way 6 or 7 years ago, and told other people out there about it. I refuse to think it's because the lawyer on the other side is about 6 inches taller than me with Hollywood good looks.
E. I briefly lived in a strange place where gender roles had become reversed, and was followed home by young women several times. It went from flattering to creepy very quickly. I'm not saying it's the same thing at all -- for one thing, I was always at least 5 inches taller than my stalker and, at the time, in great shape, so physical danger wasn't an issue. Still, the stalkers had trouble getting their heads around the idea that I thought it should be my choice whether to hang out with them or not.
Sorry I'm so late to this.
121: Except that, compared to, say, Cleveland, where the average catcall was "You come back here and suck my dick, you blonde fucking bitch!" the average catcall here at least starts with, "Why don't you smile for me, baby?" When I moved here, I was actually grateful for the change.
Cala: THE grad center? Email me. I had no idea.
I'm reasonably certain Cala's talking about a different grad center.
I was walking along a street in Italy at night on my way to buy gelato when I heard someone call my name. I looked up and saw a friend from my program crossing the street walking quickly towards me. Behind her, still on the sidewalk, there was a guy walking in the direction she'd been going. He had his head down and was obviously straining to go as fast as he could without running. He disappeared around a corner.
My friend told me he'd been following her for a few blocks and that only when she saw me and called my name did he give up, and then he did so immediately, without a word. (I'd been looking in the other direction, towards the river, and didn't see her or him until she called out to me, so I didn't see that.) She said this kind of thing happened to her a lot, but never, of course, when she was walking with a man.
Pretty much every woman I've ever met who's traveled alone has said that it can be nearly impossible to, say, quietly sit on a bench and read without someone approaching them.
A friend of mine who lives in Paris had recently started dating a new, very spontaneous guy. She was feeling particularly happy and breezy, and had dressed all cute, in a new skirt, goint to meet him. While stopping at a railing to pause and take in the view, she felt a hand slide up the back of her thigh under her skirt. She was rather thrilled, until the guy spoke to her. It wasn't her new beau. She shrieked and the guy acted all pissed off. He was like, "What's wrong with you fucking American women? Fuck you!" She was terribly shaken up by it, partially because she blamed herself for letting it happen.
Unrelated question: When an object or occurrence at a wedding is billed as 'tradition', and not obviously religious in nature, that means it was either made up by DeBeers or by the wedding-industrial complex, and therefore 'tradition' should be read as 'marketing gimmick' and calabatted to the curb, correct?
E. I briefly lived in a strange place where gender roles had become reversed, and was followed home by young women several times. It went from flattering to creepy very quickl
CharleyCarp, Where was this? I can't even imagine where it might be.
With the caveat that some such are either practical or intended to demonstrate respect for particular parties, and as such should be dealt with carefully. I had a reasonably quick-and-dirty wedding; caterer, outdoor ceremony, no attention to 'tradition', and I managed to hurt my mother's feelings in that there's some kabuki ritual intended to pick out the mother-of-the-bride as not just another guest that I omitted.
But generally, 'traditional' wedding favors, monogrammed matchbooks, color coordinated napkins? Calaflamethrower for them all.
"Pretty much every woman I've ever met who's traveled alone has said that it can be nearly impossible to, say, quietly sit on a bench and read without someone approaching them."
Too pull the thread in a completely unrelated and selfish direction, this is the main reason I've never once worked up the courage to try the stereotypical "pick up" thing. All I can ever imagine is that they're going to think "jesus, can't I ever just get a minute?"
142. Yeah, I can only think that this is made up. Sorry, CharleyCarp.
Although me and my teenage friends did once follow a rollerbading guy around in my friend's car yelling things at him in an attempt to "turn the tables" on harrassment. I still feel kind of bad about that, but not that much.
To defend CC, if you read his blog he had an extensive hippie-type past, which it seems not implausible might have included people being self-consciously anti-stereotypical-sex-roles in peculiar ways. What he said here is consistent with other stories he's told.
Wasn't it Cryptic Ned, and not CharleyCarp, who said it?
146: I don't know about followed home or gender roles reversed, etc., but I've been catcalled by women a couple of times, and found women in Country X surprisingly aggressive; this including being followed briefly. These sorts of events were exceedingly rare, exceptionally surprising to me, and nothing at all like what women have to deal with in either frequency or tone. Which is to say, it was so unexpected and unwarranted, in each case, that it wasn't creepy for me.
Where was Country X? I'm all for pseudonymity, but that can't reveal all that much about you.
To be honest, the stereotypical pick up is probably not such a great idea anyway.
Re. weddings, it's all nonsense. And as LB said, yes, some people's feelings get hurt over whatever-it-is anyway. I chose to think of our wedding as basically a big catered party that we were throwing for our best friends, and we did away with an enormous amount of silly ritualized crap, and to this day I am glad of it.
Tia, that stinks. I'm so glad your neighbor was there.
Shifting gears:
I've never once worked up the courage to try the stereotypical "pick up" thing. All I can ever imagine is that they're going to think "jesus, can't I ever just get a minute?"
These threads just keep reminding me how important context and tone are. (Latest example: Lack of anger at Dsquared despite his use of potentially explosive vocabulary.) Which is to say: Yeah, pickups can be skeevy, scary, unpleasant, or just unwanted. But also: fun, entertaining, exciting. Context matters, tone matters. I'd ask:
1) Can the person get away from you gracefully? If they're trapped (sitting next to you on a train), tread carefully.
2) Is the person in a position (salesclerk, greeter) where they are professionally obligated to be friendly? If so, tread carefully.
3) Are you approaching the person or the image? Per 134, if even the subtext is "I like X [blonde hair, whatever] and you have it," you're on thin ice.
4) Do you have fun with process, or are you headed just one place? If the goal is to "get" something (a smile, a phone number, a night), that's probably going to be communicated by your tone. Perhaps the pickup-ee will be okay with that. Perhaps not. But it does encourage the sense of feeling like a pawn.
Shorter comment: Jerky guys harass and bug women all the time. Good guys do well to be sensitive to this fact, but it'd be a shame if they completely avoided conversation with strangers because of it.
Huh -- were you around for the great "whether and how to pick people up" threads?" Because you just summarized a big chunk of them.
156: I dunno, I've been lurking for a very long time but somehow I'm not remembering those threads. Maybe I was on vacation.
(I'm remembering a much more recent thread with samk (?) and some others talking approaching service workers, which actually didn't completely agree with this advice.)
Where was Country X? I'm all for pseudonymity, but that can't reveal all that much about you.
Yeah, I have no idea why I did that. Habit, I guess. Just after I hit "Post," I thought, "That was idiotic." It was Jamaica. I am totally retiring there.
how what was true fifteen years ago speaks to today.
What does this mean? Fifteen years ago is today for all intents and purposes. That's not even one generation -- most everybody that was sentient then is sentient now and vice versa.
"3) Are you approaching the person or the image? Per 134, if even the subtext is "I like X [blonde hair, whatever] and you have it," you're on thin ice."
how do you avoid approaching the image? obviously you need to get beyond that, but you can't know anything more about the person until you talk to them.
157: I think they were shortly before ogged retired (which I think would put them in January). There's not really much reason to dig them up, since 155 covers pretty much everything useful that was decided.
155:S C
There can be a payoff. As I have said I spend hours, like 20 a week, walking the monsters in parks. Half the time on trails or linear parks, encountering joggers and bikers. I let them roam on 12' leashes so there is a dynamic where I watch the oncomer to gauge their dog fear and shorten leashes accordingly, while trying to avoid eye contact. (I trust the dogs with anything that can walk...they have licked 3 yr olds)...aww this is gettin too long.
Shortly:A dynamic of respecting space and vulnerability can get you appreciative smiles and even other-initiated conversation.
80: in "The Court Jester", a repeated bit of dialog is:
--Get it?
--Got it.
--Good.
160: Easy. You talk to people in a way that doesn't overtly distinguish between being friendly and trying to hit on them, as opposed to the "hey, pretty laydee" kind of thing.
Sorry, I was off having dinner.
It wasn't some kind of countercultural strangeness, really just an isolated resort where the female employees vastly outnumbered the male employees (4-1). Far away (like 1,000 miles) from where nearly any of either men or women lived in their real lives, and only for a short period (just a summer, then everyone would get back to real life). Some folks knew eachother in real life, but mostly people didn't, and didn't expect to later on. Just about all of us were under 25 years old; many, like me, were 19 (the minimum age and, at the time, the drinking age), most 21-23.
It was the late 70s. Concern about laws prohibiting certain victimless crimes was unbelievably low. Alcohol was always cheap, and often free. Jobs very undemanding, no TV, telephone, or personal computers.
With demographics as they were, some few of the women became a little competitive, or at least creative. Strange dymanic ensued, not generally satisfying for anyone other than those of the 'sex toy' school.
I made some friends for life there, but can't condone the arrangement at all.
I really shouldn't use the word 'stalker' -- they weren't really strangers -- they knew my name even if I didn't know theirs -- and were just as confused by the situation as everyone else.
So, really so little relation to the awful situation experienced by Tia, it's as if she had said 'I had a bowl of ice cream today' and then I piped up with 'gee, I smelled a candy bar once.'
That's not even one generation -- most everybody that was sentient then is sentient now and vice versa.
If you look at the mass of commenters, you'll note that teo was maybe six, w-lfs-n eight, Cala maybe ten, Becks maybe ten, Kotsko maybe ten, etc. This is, IME, well before the age during which notions like "you can't rape a slut" get discussed. I'm surprised guys that, for example, are hanging out with Kotsko still think that way, that's all.
Mores can change rapidly; the world of 1965 (or even 1985) is nearly unimagineable.
Your libertarian side is showing, Tim.
I have three times been harassed by gays in restaurants and bars, going beyond come-ons and conversation, not accepting "No", moving up to physical touching, shoulders, arms, hands.
The feelings were complicated, but mostly very bad.
167: I'm not understanding, for some reason. Also Eli Manning just got saved by Burress.
Mores can change rapidly; the world of 1965 (or even 1985) is nearly unimagineable.
I'm on board here for 1965, but have a much harder time with 1985. Probably because I haven't changed so much in those 21 years, mores-wise. 'Can't rape a slut' was considered an outrage when I was in high school; m leblanc's comment about advice to women about avoiding rape tracks nearly verbatim a Berkeley dorm conversation from '76. (I had thought then that we'd have gotten a whole lot farther on gender and race by now; the contrast between where we all knew our society needed to go and where we've actually gone is so demoralizing, I have to try not the think about it).
"Mores can change rapidly; the world of 1965 (or even 1985) is nearly unimagineable."
:)
But honestly, hard to remember. I wasn't watching back then.
I was walking home after dark in Berkeley one night and looked back to see a black guy walking a half block behind me. I walked another few seconds, then looked back again to see where he was. On my second look back, he waved and crossed the street away from me, to make his benign intentions clear. I thought that was awfully aware and considerate of him, but I was sad that he had to think of himself as a scary-looking person.
I get asked out by street people a lot, but so far cheerful 'No, thank you's' have worked fine. I make a lot of eye contact, and don't mind eye contact in return.
The difference between '85 and now is clearest, for me, when I think about conceptions of gay people. Just unimagineably different. Kinsley actually had an article recently (last 6 mos.) in which he noted that TNR once (it must have beein in the 80s) had a cover with two men on a wedding cake as a sort of nod to the unimagineableness of some policy or another.
mid-60s H.S. Slacks were forbidden, and miniskirts limited IIRC to 3 inches above the knee. That's pretty weird.
My freshman college class, according to my girlfriend, was 80 per cent virgin. 60 percent in the sophomore class. We hippies and dopers had more fun. Most of this stuff wasn't on the agenda for the straights, and wasn't discussed. But I wasn't very active or aware.
172: That happens to me too. It's disconcerting when you give a guy a dollar and he invites you to lunch.
I've crossed the street more than once in Berkeley to avoid walking behind someone at night. But that probably wasn't me because I've never signaled that that was what I was doing.
169: I was referring to the libertarian thing about how the universe was invented yesterday and people don't have psychology or history, so there's really no excuse for being (say) poor other than your own laziness.
But what Tim's getting at is more the liberal thing that society tends to become more open and tolerant over time; i.e., that mores change, and surprisingly quickly. This may not be true either, but it's not the same thing.
Yeah, the cross the street or wave thing is nice for guys to do at night. Also making some kind of noise, like aimless whistling, so as to not seem like you're trying to be sneaky.
178: Yeah, but that whole 1965 is unimaginable now! thing is just silly.
What I usually do is slow down and the guy behind me speeds up and then overtakes me, and then I feel much better.
I don't know about you, but I certainly have a hard time imagining what it would be like to live in 1965.
173 -- Yeah, SCMT, it's not all hell-in-a-handbasket. I'm not sure how different we really are though. I knew some single and coupled-up gay people in the 70s and early 80s, and decent people treated them decently -- like actual human beings -- while ignorant people behaved ignorantly. Maybe on this subject I'm just a lot more pessimistic than most others, because it is so totally obvious to me that, in legal terms, (a) one either accepts Loving v. Virginia as an accurate statement of the rights of human beings in our system, and thus sees that gay marriage must be permitted, or (b) one is stuck in some kind of rearguard action against the Enlightenment, conceding the holding of Loving not because the reasoning is correct, but because only a moral monster can oppose it. And yet, a great many people, including a majority of the NY Court of Appeals, are willing to do just this, for no apparent reason other than 'an ancient prejudice is a respectable prejudice.'
144: Calaflamethrower it is! Well, at least I say that. But apparently there are traditions about who pays which must not be violated.
Mores do change quickly, but we do have parents and other old people and talk to them and deal with their prejudices. I have no idea what the 1920s were like, but I'm pretty sure I have 1980 down okay.
I honestly don't think I do, and I wasn't even born then. But it's not like we don't have movies, tv, and books to give us some sense of what the social mores and expectations were. And you know, they had cars and tv and roads and everything. The suburbs had been invented, middle class women got married much younger and didn't necessarily expect to go to college, schools were pretty much segregated, liberals condescended to blacks but didn't think that overt bigotry was polite, and so on. It's not *that* foreign a place.
184: Hey, out of curiousity, what are those traditions? Is it that the bride's parents are supposed to pay? 'Cause shit, that ain't happening in my family.
Sure we know what 1965 was like in an objective sense, but I mean what it felt like to live in that society. It was similar to the one we live in now, but different enough that I can't really picture what my views on important issues would be or how I would interact with people different from me, for example. Anyone who does remember 1965 want to weigh in?
I read Freakonomics last year, and one chapter discussed his theory for the decline in crime. It brought it all back to me, how scared we were in LA in the mid to late 80's. There were driveby shootings at my high-school and gangs were about to Take Over The World and wearing any hint of blue or red would get you Killed Instantly. Instead, crime dropped precipitously and my high school age sister doesn't have any of that feeling. I'd forgotten it too. It was way different, less than a generation ago.
(Also, the kids I hang out with (who are 20ish) are all much more androgynous than I remember us being, but that might just be this crowd.)
What say you about this versus this?
The 'tradition', which I'm sure either originated with WASPs or the fashion mags and should therefore be binned, is that the bride's parents are hosts and pay for most things, but that there are certain things, like the bride's bouquet (cause it's TRADITION means it doesn't have to make sense) and the liquor, that are the responsibility of the groom's family.
If one does not know this, one can expect a mother freaking out if one's mother hasn't adjusted to the fact that it isn't 1975.
When I'm walking behind a woman a night, I'm usually very conscious of the effect that I might be having. My solution is to a) pass as quickly as possible; b) change sides of the street if it doesn't look too odd or unnatural; and c) blow my nose or cough.
I usually have allergies, so c) is easy. I'm not sure if it works, but it seems like the most harmless thing you can do. I mean, who plots to attack someone while blowing his nose?
I'm on Krissy's side, on the assumption that since women don't normally shove men who grab them into the wall, and there's a strong cultural presumption against going off like a hair trigger in such a case, that he didn't just brush against her.
I also think Dr. Helen probably hasn't been clubbing recently.
Was just talking with my lady about this, and she had her laptop. I said the big change was Griswald, so she looked up Planned Parenthood.
"During his brief two-term tenure as a congressman, Mr. Bush sponsored the Family Planning Services and Population Research Act of 1970. It was co-sponsored in the Senate by Sen. Joseph Tydings of Maryland and signed into law by President Richard Nixon on December 24, 1970. The bill authorized the then-huge sum of $382 million for family planning services, population research, education and information through 1973 with much of the money funneled through Planned Parenthood clinics. The Bush-Tydings bill mandated the infamous Title X program through which the taxpayers have been forced to pay for contraceptive/abortion-causing drugs and devices for the poor as well as abortions and treatments for the sexually-transmitted diseases resulting from the corresponding vast increases in sexual promiscuity engaged in by Title X beneficiaries."
From some right wing site I won't link to. Not everything has changed for the better. As someone who grew up on the climb, whatever amount of fall bugs me a lot.
Considering that Loving came after 1965, I can imagine my life being quite significantly different had I been the age then that I am now.
183: I think mores can change surprisingly quickly. I don't think we're guaranteed on the direction. Someone once wrote that the 80s were the great lost decade for Gay Americans--things seemed to be moving apace and then---BAM!--AIDS, Reagan, and the rise of the Moral Majority.
188: That's more or less what I mean. If I just look around my world, the number of changes that would have to be made to re-make 1965 are pretty astonishing. And it would make the world pretty unrecognizeable to me.
I say that Krissy is friggin' awesome.
One time a dude did a bicycle drive-by ass-grab of, well, my ass, and I pushed his bike over hard, with it landing on top of him. He may have been hurt, but I wouldn't know, 'cause I ran away. Fuck it.
"Anyone who does remember 1965 want to weigh in?"
I am trying, but I was a thoughtless teenager, who never hung in sophisticated crowds or payed attention. There was Griswald and the pill, and the scond wave of feminism. I read Friedan and Greer as they came out I think. Joy of Sex. Bella Abzug and Gloria Steinem. There was like, a war. There were civil rights and race riots. What did feel like 1965-70? Give me a break.
Elvin Hayes & Houston beat UCLA and Kareem's million game winning streak. Pete Maravich had hair like a girl.
(Also, the kids I hang out with (who are 20ish) are all much more androgynous than I remember us being, but that might just be this crowd.)
I attribute this to:
A) Title IX
B) Bands like Panic! at the Disco and The Arcade Fire leading the upcoming wave of fop-rock
190: "just trying to touch her." Isn't there a pretty strong cultural norm in the US that says you can whoop anyone who touches you without your consent?
190: Dr. Helen is an anti-feminist reactionary. And any guy who grabs a woman deserves to be shoved up against a wall. I'll wager there's not a woman over 18 alive in the US who hasn't had her ass grabbed at some point, and the only reason guys get away with this shit is because women don't fucking deck them when they do.
292:See 188
I remember being angry and humiliated, gauging the other guys, size...he was much bigger...holding the fork in my hand and thinking hiz size really didn't matter. I have never much been scared that way, I would have done his eye. But I didn't want the hassle, was I overreacting, was it my prejudice, women get hit like this all the time, am I being homophobic, the waitress is watching is she feeling sorry for me or contemptuous, what does he think I am whu did he pick me for a target do I look gay am I gay if I just keep saying no he will go away.
He went back to his booth with his friends and they laughed a lot. I finished my eggs. The waitress gave me a free OJ and coffee.
191: Actually those traditions do make sense. The idea is that the bride's family pays for the ceremony and reception and her dress and stuff, b/c they are hosting it; effectively this is all we have left of the dowry system, but until the girl is married, it would be very improper for a man or non-relative to pay for anything big on her behalf. The groom pays for small things like the wedding bouquet and ring, because they are gifts to the bride; he also pays for the honeymoon, because he is taking her on it, which is okay now b/c he's her husband. His family pays for the rehearsal dinner b/c it serves as a kind of thank-you to the bride's family for hosting the wedding.
I find it rather interesting that, on the blog telling Krissy that she should stop overreacting about strange men sexually assaulting her, there was an ad for a book on why women should all learn to use and carry guns.
Because shooting men for threatening you is ladylike. Kneeing them in the gut is cowardly.
But nowadays the rule is, whoever is hosting the event should pay for it; usually the couple, but if their families are jointly footing the bills, then the wedding invitations are issued jointly *by* their families: "Mr. and Mrs. Skeezit, Captain Jones and Doctor Burroughs kindly request the pleasure of your company at the wedding of their children, Julie Skeezit and Barnaby Burroughs-Jones..."
206: Yeah, ladies don't hit someone, even when someone is a jerk in a bar who squeezes a lady's boob. Because it's unladylike to have your boob squeezed, so you're supposed to pretend it didn't happen. Or some shit like that.
"A dynamic of respecting space and vulnerability can get you appreciative smiles and even other-initiated conversation."
Hah.
206:Should taken out his eye, huh. For caressing my arm in a restaurant. Felt like less a man cause I didn't.
205: They only make sense if your folks were nobility.
206: Krissy also asked the guy to stop several times and then slammed him against the wall. Only thing bruised is his damn ego. Dr. Helen is acting like she broke his arm or something.
169: So, I'm still sort of doing stuff around the house instead of watching, but the Football Outsiders message boards seem to think the Giants just got screwed on the offensive PI. Any opinion?
Dr. Helen is an anti-feminist reactionary.
Pardon me, but I don't even need to read the links to know that Insty's wife is full of shit. I'm inclined to automatically assume the opposite of anything she writes.
Oh crap, she's Insty's wife? Jeezameezus.
I'm on Krissy's side. Playing nicey-nice was not going to get that guy to bug off.
Re: 1985 vs. now, it was unimaginable in my high school for students to be out of the closet, even in my liberal Bay Area suburb. There was one teacher who was out to some of his students, and it was blatantly obvious to anyone who paid attention that he was gay, but it was something you just didn't talk about.
When my brother was in the same school in the early 90s, a teacher came out to the whole school and it was a HUGE deal.
Ha! I saw that she had gotten some link or other via Instapundit, but I didn't know that.
Oh crap, she's Insty's wife? Jeezameezus.
You've been reading her without knowing that? Awesome.
Are you basing that on the fact that she's married to Insty? You should really look at her blog; she's a lot crazier than that might lead you to expect.
(This post means I don't mind what I say about her. I do not in fact think I have to admire anyone who thinks I ought to be killed.)
219: I haven't been reading her--I've seen her linked maybe twice, and my first visit basically pegged her as anti-feminist apologist.
I was a teenager in 1965, who had an older brother who'd been dating and got married that year. I had seen a lot and been talked to a lot about what was going on. It was also the year I began to become sexually aware. My son is now the age I was then, so I have a sense of how knowing it was possible to be.
Of course the changes have been enormous, but what strikes me looking back is the continuity, the number of patterns, of expectation and initiative and so on, that remain similar, particularly if changes in terminology are allowed. It wasn't that different a country.
Let's not mis-frame the issue as a choice between whether Krissy should have either (1) let the guy "touch" her (which for all we know, could have been a tap on the shoulder, not an ass-grab or something like that) or (2) "shoved him up against a wall" and "jammed her arm into his throat".
I'm thinking there has to be a middle ground in there somewhere. And while it is fun to cheer on Krissy in a rah-rah-you-go-girl spirit, what would she have done if the guy hit her back? Or followed her into the parking lot? Or came back the next day with a gun to get "revenge"? Or sued Krissy, because, you know, he's got this funny pain in his throat where she elbowed him?
Let's also avoid the false "But Dr. Helen likes guns, so she's a hypocrite!" charges. She favors using guns to protect yourself when you are threatened with actual harm. She is not in favor of shooting lecherous men on general principle.
Playing nicey-nice almost never works. "If it wuz bodderin' her, she woulda said sumpin'." If it worked, we'd never have these problems because the guys would all stop when we demurely sidled away.
223:Unless you are on the vanguard or the events effect you personally...it felt like "fashion" and "news". It didn't feel like revolution except for a few. You go to work or school, you eat, drink, party, have friends and family...the changes are on the margin and gradual, and even if not on the margin...are just not felt revolutionary.
My girlfriend went on the Pill. She was unmarried, had to try three doctors in the midwest before she found one who would give her a prescription. She didn't think she was changing the world, although she was changing hers. The doctor might have had a different perspective.
Oh crap, she's Insty's wife?
The funny thing is: Glenn seems merely disingenuous; Helen sounds bat-shit crazy (although quite attractive judging by her photo).
which for all we know, could have been a tap on the shoulder, not an ass-grab or something like that
I don't care. It's not like she hit the guy (which you mis-frame, by the way, by saying "hit her back"). She pushed him up against a wall and let him know that he couldn't fuck with her.
After a night of harrassment, a hand on the shoulder is a big deal. It's a sign of his moving in, and a violation of her personal space. It angers me when people I don't know touch me, people of either gender, and especially men, and especially in a bar, and especially after they've been bothering me all night. This isn't a "tap, tap, hey, your backpack's unzipped and all your crap is about to fall out" kind of tap (which I get like every other day because my zipper is broken). It's not friendly. It's threatening, and she was exactly right to react the way she did.
No one's framing the issue as the false "choice" you set up. The question is, is Krissy awesome? Yes. Is what she did both awesome and correct? Yes.
She did ask him to stop several times, GB. Firmly telling him to go to hell is a good first choice, but if he isn't getting the message, I'm not sure 'let him grope you now because there's a small chance he might follow you later or sue you' does much.
I guess I'm reasonably willing to believe from her recounting (she says she asked him to stop several times) of it that he wasn't tapping her on the shoulder politely to ask the time; women get bothered in bars all the time, and most of us assess the risks just as you say, GB. I'm assuming, perhaps wrongly, that if weighing all that, she did try to make a move on him, he must have done something to warrant it.
No one's mentioned guns here, so, just make sure you're not arguing with the strawpeople who speak Swahili.
No one's mentioned guns here
206 and 211. Though my preferred inference is not "Dr. Helen is a hypocrite because she supports the use of guns in self-defence and opposes the use of light physical force to deter someone who is physically molesting you" but "Dr. Helen is known to be batshit insane and we shouldn't pay that much attention to her."
Let's also avoid the false "But Dr. Helen likes guns, so she's a hypocrite!" charges. She favors using guns to protect yourself when you are threatened with actual harm.
Christ, that guy got off easy. I've told my wife that once you've told a guy several times to back off, and he decides to grab you anyways, to go ahead and knife him and get the hell out of there.
And how is a woman supposed to discern "actual harm" here? Once he's been verbally warned, multiple times in this case, and still shows willingness to cross that barrier of physical contact, it's not the woman's problem to try and figure out in that instant to what degree this is an assault.
224: Let's not misframe the issue as "for all we know, he tapped her on the shoulder" (is this, in fact, likely based on the description we have of the incident? No, not hardly. And even if it were, again, given the description of the incident, it wouldn't be unreasonable or surprising for her to interpret that tap as a prelude to something much less benign). Or as "gosh, what if he'd hit her back?" which is just gross. So women are supposed to let men grope them because otherwise the men might do something even worse?
AWB did actually mention guns in 206.
No one's mentioned guns here
Not quite true, Calamonster, but otherwise beating up on GB is allowed and encouraged.
In my world, "actual harm" includes having strange men deliberately touch my body, yes it does. Alameida posted something about this way back when on another blog in response to a Volokh post trying to understand why a man deliberately touching a woman's body constituted sexual assault, and I presume everyone reading this thread remembers that.
My gut feeling would be that this sort of harassment happened less in 1965 than now. That may be a controversial statement. Everybody was more inhibited back then.
224: The thing is, there are any number of possible interpretations of the description given. Krissy's reaction might have been anything from wildly inappropriate to too little. So each of us ends up betting on the people involved, here either Krissy or Dr. Helen. A Blue vs. someone who is, assuming her politics are anything like her husband's, genuinely anti-American? Gimme a break. I bet Blue down the line.
Or as "gosh, what if he'd hit her back?" which is just gross. So women are supposed to let men grope them because otherwise the men might do something even worse?
Be fair, B. It's a reasonable prudential concern that a lot of people raised when Becks said she'd decked that guy at the concert. It's not a concern Dr. Helen had, but it's not a bad thing to say.
I will weiner-pwn you all!
Doesn't Scalzi's update take care of "Did he just tap her on the shoulder?"
It's a reasonable prudential concern, but again, context: following a statement that "for all we know, he tapped her on the shoulder" it really does rather end up sounding like the concern trolling, or whatever it's called.
Fair enough. I thought 206 was just referring to the ads, and 211 isn't actually here, but okay.
Plus, come on. Presumably a woman who can shove a man up against a wall doesn't need to be warned to be careful because, you know, he might hit you back.
Doesn't Scalzi's update take care of "Did he just tap her on the shoulder?"
I don't know anything about Scalzi, but isn't it a little odd that the original post said the guy tried to touch her and the update said he grabbed her in a not nice way? Maybe he just didn't want to say his wife had been grabbed in the original post....
239: Dude, yes, it's a legitimate concern, but in the context in which GB used it, it's gross. Let's revisit:
And while it is fun to cheer on Krissy in a rah-rah-you-go-girl spirit, what would she have done if the guy hit her back?
What GB is saying is that the fact that creepy dude might have hit Krissy back is a reason not to cheer her on, that makes her actions imprudent or dumb (and, along with the next two hypotheticals, weirdly fantasy-like).
Which is different from Becks saying "I hit this guy, and right after I did, I was like shit, what if he hits back?" The analog would be if Becks told us the story, and we went "gosh, Becks, he could have hit you back! Didn't you think of that?"
244: I assumed "grabbed in a not nice way" from the original.
228: It's not like she hit the guy (which you mis-frame, by the way, by saying "hit her back"). She pushed him up against a wall and let him know that he couldn't fuck with her.
She "jammed her arm into his throat."
224: Let's not misframe the issue as "for all we know, he tapped her on the shoulder" (is this, in fact, likely based on the description we have of the incident? No, not hardly.)
I think if the guy had grabbed her ass or something like that, it would have been specifically mentioned in the post. Why hold back on the description of his jerkiness?
229: GB. I'm assuming, perhaps wrongly, that if weighing all that, she did try to make a move on him, he must have done something to warrant it.
Yes, you are assuming wrongly. I firmly believe this guy was a jerk who needed to be stopped. I also believe, based on the post, that Krissy was hardly encouraging his behavior, and in fact was trying to stop it.
What I am saying is that the use of violence (while cool in the movies, where the jerk gets his comeuppance and slinks away, chastened) often escalates an existing situation, backfires, or creates new problems entirely — which is a view I would have figured many of the commenters here would share.
I think if the guy had grabbed her ass or something like that, it would have been specifically mentioned in the post.
Did you read the update?
the 'what if it was just a tap on the shoulder' is a red herring because 'tap on the shoulder' is a 'get someone's attention' move when you start speaking to someone. this guy had already intiated coversation several times with her.
Why hold back on the description of his jerkiness?
Maybe because, like ogged said, Scalzi doesn't want to give detailed descriptions of bad creepy shit that happened to his wife on the internet (possibly because people love to read about violence against women), but instead focus on the fact that she showed the guy what was what.
I have now seen the update about the guy grabbing Krissy "not in a nice way". Noted.
which is a view I would have figured many of the commenters here would share.
I share it. But she got away with it, without further incident, so pragmatic concerns such as escalation don't need to be addressed. Unmitigated win for the good guys.
244, 247: Why assume that the description of the event is a lie? I'm really bothered by that. It's just creepily close to hypothesizing that a woman is lying about rape. I see no reason whatsoever to assume that this is just some random out of control chick who likes pushing men around in bars. Come on.
In fairness to GB, he raised precisely the same concern in the thread about Becks, so this isn't just his wingnuttery talking.
But GB, I think reasonableness demands that we assume that the guy was a complete prick and in fact touched her inappropriately. People almost never just go off like Krissy did without provocation.
I firmly believe this guy was a jerk who needed to be stopped. I also believe, based on the post, that Krissy was hardly encouraging his behavior, and in fact was trying to stop it.
Then why quibble and take issue with her shoving him up against a wall when he escalated to the point of touching her in any manner whatsoever?
What I am saying is that the use of violence . . . often escalates an existing situation, backfires, or creates new problems entirely — which is a view I would have figured many of the commenters here would share.
No doubt. But you're overlooking the point that a man who repeatedly hassles a woman who tells him to leave her alone, and then touches her, is the one who is initiating the violence; his touching her did indeed escalate the existing situation, and it did indeed backfire.
What I am saying is that the use of violence (while cool in the movies, where the jerk gets his comeuppance and slinks away, chastened) often escalates an existing situation, backfires, or creates new problems entirely — which is a view I would have figured many of the commenters here would share.
This is absolutely true. But it's also true according to the updates on the guy's site and Dr. Helen's site that she asked him to stop several times, and then he grabbed her inappropriately. At this point, he's starting it, and saying 'but what if he does something further?' just doesn't seem to be prudent advice when the guy already can't keep his hands to himself and doesn't get the verbal hint.
252: Sure, she came out ahead this time, so good on her. Would I advise shoving guys in the throat as a general policy? No.
253: Why assume that the description of the event is a lie? I'm really bothered by that. It's just creepily close to hypothesizing that a woman is lying about rape. I see no reason whatsoever to assume that this is just some random out of control chick who likes pushing men around in bars. Come on.
I never said any aspect of the story was a lie.
255: Then why quibble and take issue with her shoving him up against a wall when he escalated to the point of touching her in any manner whatsoever?
Because there are ways to defuse a situation, and ways to escalate it. Krissy won this time; next time, she might get Random Jerk #453, whose response to getting shoved in the throat is to start punching.
One thing for feminists like BPhD to consider: A guy who elbows another guy in a bar in the throat has got a fight on his hands. Krissy didn't. Why not? Probably because, even in his drunken state, the jerk who groped her thought that "it's wrong to hit a girl". So Krissy's success in this particular incident was due not to her indomitable Grrrrrl Power, but by the persistence of the very sexist paradigms you despise.
Ergo, starting a fight you are not prepared to finish in the expectation that the guy will not hit you back because you are female is anti-feminist behavior, and immature to boot.
When I meet a jerk in a bar (he may not be grabbing my ass, but jerks manifest themselves in many ways), my number one thought is "How do I get out of this situation?" It is not "How do I score macho points by turning this into a fight with some loser I don't know and don't care about?"
Maybe I'm influenced by the fact that in Japan, the cops throw fighting foreigners in jail and ask questions later, if at all. But I think it's a good rule wherever you are. It's the adult, non-testosterone-fuled way to handle the situation. It's sad to see women aping the worst traits of men in the name of feminism.
For the record, since I believe it's lame to offer criticisms without proposing solutions, here's what I would have done: Complain to the bouncer or bartender. In any respectable bar, the jerk would have been kicked out before he knew what was happening.
No. Probably the guy didn't hit back because he was really fucking shocked that she didn't let him get away with it. And I'm perfectly well aware that the presumption that girls can be more aggressive than guys b/c the guys won't hit women is one that depends on chivalry underlied by sexism.
One thing for guys like GB to consider is that touching a woman who has made it clear she wants to be left alone is not just being a jerk. It is, in fact, assault. And no one is saying let's ape men's worst traits in the name of feminism; what we are saying is that if a man assaults a woman and she responds by shoving him up against a wall and telling him to leave her the fuck alone, she is absolutely in the right.
"I'll wager there's not a woman over 18 alive in the US who hasn't had her ass grabbed at some point"
False. I've gotten some unwelcome comments and stares, but no following or grabbing.
No idea why. Could be lack of eye contact.
Other countries are a different story...hit on creepily in France, though it would have ended at the non-creepy phase if I knew what I was doing. (I was just out of high school, & jet lagged and out of it). In Turkey, pretty much the minute I was away from my husband some guy would approach me. This was mildly funny when it was someone asking if I wanted to "see some ancient coins he had" and tried to ingratiate himself to me by telling how much he like George Bush. The guy who followed me to a pharmacy, waited outside, and asked what was wrong with me, not so much. And I was with my husband practically the whole trip, too. I hear it's even worse for blondes.
there's probably also the calculation of 'does she have friends who could kick my ass'
259: Actually, legally speaking, it's assault and battery, with battery defined as any nonconsensual touching. You can assault someone without touching them.
And while Krissy may be in the right, plenty of bad things happen to people who are in the right. This isn't about who's right and who's wrong, it's about the best way to handle the situation.
Says you. I think the rest of us were cheering her on because we thought it was about who's right and who's wrong. At least, that's what the original post with the links was pretty clearly asking people to opinionate about.
253: Why assume that the description of the event is a lie? I'm really bothered by that. It's just creepily close to hypothesizing that a woman is lying about rape. I see no reason whatsoever to assume that this is just some random out of control chick who likes pushing men around in bars. Come on.
I never said any aspect of the story was a lie.
This by the way, fair enough. I was under the misapprehension that you'd read the post at the same time I had, by which point it had been made clear that it wasn't a shoulder tap.
258: Odds would be good that if she involved the bouncer, the guy would take that as an escalation and wait outside for her. In that situation I'd prefer to take my chances with violence in the bar rather than violence in the parking lot where there are fewer witnesses.
GB is talking sense. It is almost never a good idea to escalate an unpleasant bar situation into a fight unless there are no other options available. You never know what you might be getting into.
It is also, as a corollary, usually a good idea to get the guy thown out if he's aggressively persisting past the first refusal. A bar whose staff will not do this is not respectable.
Having said that... Dr. Helen is an evident nutcase, and Krissy's action entirely understandable, quibble as we will about its practical aspects.
it was unimaginable in my high school for students to be out of the closet, even in my liberal Bay Area suburb
See I was going to high school in the Central Valley, far less liberal than the bay area though still I guess majority Democratic, in the mid-80's, and there were certainly out gay students in my high school.
The thing about "was it really a good idea?" is that (a) we weren't there, so we don't have a full sense of the tactics involved, and (b) it's not really much of our business -- while opinining on whether someone you don't know did something right or wrong is one thing, focussing on whether it was unacceptably risky is being a busybody. Krissy, whoever the hell she is, is a big girl, and can pick her own risks.
On the complaining to the bar management (and I'm not accusing anyone of adopting the positions I'm talking about, just teasing it out a little): It is also, as a corollary, usually a good idea to get the guy thown out if he's aggressively persisting past the first refusal. A bar whose staff will not do this is not respectable.
So, what does she do if she's not in a respectable bar? Is going into a non-respectable bar an unacceptable risk?
More broadly, what if she doesn't want to make a case to a gatekeeper about whether making the guy stop touching her is justified? The difference between taking direct action yourself and trying to sell the idea that you need to be defended to a third party is pretty psychologically significant, and one that I'd take on some additional risk for. (Not much, I'm a non-violent coward, but it's worth something.)
Ergo, starting a fight you are not prepared to finish in the expectation that the guy will not hit you back because you are female is anti-feminist behavior, and immature to boot.
I'm not sure she did that. She did manage to shove the guy into a wall and pin him at throat level; to me that suggests that either she's pretty strong and tall or that she's trained enough to know her own limits. (There aren't many guys short enough for me to do that.) No need to assume, I think, that she was hoping he wouldn't swing 'cause she was a girl.
And if we're playing the what-if game, running to management to get him thrown out could also escalate to him waiting around in the parking lot. I guess it would just be nice if someone were having this conversation about the consequences of the guy's action for once (like, duuuuude, don't grab the chick's ass cause she could sue you or wait in the parking lot or shove your sorry ass into the wall) rather than the appropriateness of her reaction to it.
It's sad to see women aping the worst traits of men in the name of feminism.
I think it's more in the name of not being assaulted in a bar, personally, rather than saying we have a duty to beat up people who make catcalls.
Ergo, starting a fight you are not prepared to finish in the expectation that the guy will not hit you back because you are female is anti-feminist behavior, and immature to boot.
Yeah, this is bullshit. Is the claim being made here that the guy who grabbed her is being treated unfairly because chivalry binds him to not 'hit her back'? Because, you know, he's already demonstrated that he's not so much bound by chivalrous norms. Is he being treated unfairly because there's a presumption that if he tries to beat her up, other men will help her because she's a woman? I'm not getting the moral difference between this and 'she should get the bartender to throw him out'.
Look, in terms of getting into fights, most women are in the position of smallish, weakish, men. You start with (a) don't start fights, because hitting people is wrong. You move onto (b) generally avoid fights where possible, because there are strong odds you could get hurt. And these two rules cover the vast majority of situations. But in situation (c), where someone else has (according to our social norms) behaved in a manner that justifies violence, and in your best judgment, the risks are acceptable, either because you think your odds in a fight are okay, or because you have backup. The idea that someone else may jump into a possible fight on your side is not unfair -- men do that for each other too.
This talk of escalation and starting fights is crap. Good hell, she didn't start it, and she didn't escalate it.he did. If she was of comparable size and strength, then her response was perfectly appropriate. If he was bigger, her mistake was not using a weapon.
268: So, what does she do if she's not in a respectable bar?
Probably pretty much what she did.
Is going into a non-respectable bar an unacceptable risk?
I would think it's up to her to decide what risks are acceptable and not.
Wait, what did I say?
(Also: Tia, ack. I'm glad you're alright. In my experience, this dude was in the dangerous stalker category, not the benighted admirer category. If you see him again, anywhere around your home, please call the police immediately.)
268 again: More broadly, what if she doesn't want to make a case to a gatekeeper about whether making the guy stop touching her is justified?
If the staff have to be "convinced" that it's justified to make the guy stop touching her, then see above re: disreputable joints. It's more about the staff being informed about what's going down so they can support you, rather than having to figure out what's going on once something breaks out. (In the general sense, I don't think this advice applies more to women than it does to men. It just seems like a generally good precaution to me.)
Of course obviously a) one doesn't always have this luxury, and b) it can be more cathartic, and hence more tempting, to take direct action and consequences be damned.
If the staff have to be "convinced" that it's justified to make the guy stop touching her, then see above re: disreputable joints.
Not really. Even in a perfectly respectable joint, she has to tell a convincing story that entitles her to have him removed. Did you notice some of the reactions in the comments in the linked posts: first, to say come on, he didn't really do anything wrong, and then when a clarification that he'd grabbed her was made, to say that she's changing her story? Her credibility is in play if she needs to convince anyone of what happened.
If the incident wasn't widely witnessed, then she has to sell her story successfully to the bartender. It may be easy, but it's still a barrier.
275: Well, maybe. It's been my experience that a convincing story consists mainly of saying "that guy won't leave me / my friends alone and is creeping me / them out, please have him removed." I've seen this done, and done it on behalf of others, more times than I can count and never once seen the staff at any establishment (including some skeevier ones) quibble with it.
unless the groper was friends with teh staff/manager, she just needs to say she was uncomfortable and most staffs will throw the guy out no questions asked. i've also heard about some guy who was causing problems who the staff didn't do anything to because he was part of some biker gang, but this is a 3rd-hand story.
she just needs to say she was uncomfortable and most staffs will throw the guy out no questions asked
The guy was Chasidic and davening? This puts a whole new spin on the story for me.
I think part of the point is maybe that women don't necessarily know that all we have to do is gripe to a bouncer. First, because in personal life one so often runs into suspicion about one's account (e.g., in this thread), and second because one isn't thinking about it in terms of "this guy's assholery is bad for business" but in terms of "this guy is personally threatening me," and since it's personal, it simply doesn't occur to one that a total stranger is going to give a shit or take my word over his. It really wouldn't occur to *me* to complain to a bouncer; I suspect that if I couldn't convince a jerky guy to leave me the fuck alone, I would simply leave.
It wouldn't occur to me immediately to take a problem like that to a bouncer, but if I did, and the bouncer were a dick about it or in any way minimized my problem, I'd SO not be going back there. And, if my opinion were worth anything, neither would any of my friends.
Cripes. This is way more analysis than this incident can sustain. This is a story about standing up to a bully. Insofar as women get bullied more often, or in specific ways, then there's a gender issue here. But, really, it's just that someone stood up to a bully, it worked out like in the movies, and that's great.
Huh. I was actually thinking about pulling this up to a post, to see if anyone other then GB shared his sense that her behavior was anti-feminist because chivalric norms mean that the guy couldn't hit back, because I think GB's a generally reasonable guy, but terribly wrong about this, and if there are other people out there who agree with him on that point I want to argue with them at length.
279: I think part of the point is maybe that women don't necessarily know that all we have to do is gripe to a bouncer.
I find that surprising, actually. But I can see why that would be the case for some people.
280: It's always seemed to me that one reason most bouncers are vanishingly unlikely to minimize or dismiss the problem is that, even if they're sexist bastards themselves (and of course a great many are), it's very rare for someone in a position of authority like that to pass up a chance to exercise it. Sometimes power-tripping can one work in one's favour.
282: Despite having agreed with his basic "fighting is a last resort" point, I think GB is over the top in using the words "anti-feminist." OTOH it seems to me you're misreading him in your 270. Maybe he'll be up for arguing it at length...
282: Because more arguing about feminism is exactly what we need right now.
Has anyone else here read "Are You A Lesbian?" by Alasdair Gray? I guess I'll spoil it -- woman goes to a bar for some alone time, is hit on by notorious lech, after telling him to go away several times has him thrown out, then is asked to leave herself because solitary women are disruptive. Of course it's fiction, not real.
I think GB is wrong to think that "It's wrong to hit a girl" is sexist, although perhaps it is part of a sexist paradigm in the following sense: In our sexist society, men frequently do beat women severely and physically intimidate them. Decent non-sexist men (and other decent men) therefore draw a very bright line around this behavior, and won't hit women at all. Maybe in some egalitarian utopia this wouldn't be necessary (or maybe it would, men being larger than women as I think LB mentioned earlier). But "It's wrong to hit a woman" certainly isn't itself a sexist paradigm, in our world as it exists now.
283: even if someone is a sexist bastard, that could work in your favor if its the 'i must protect my womens from ohter guys come-ons, even if i myself would do that sort of come-on' kind of way.
who goes to the bar for some alone time??
I think it's more like "It used to be ok to hit your wife, but it's never been ok to fight a woman." The latter half of that rule owes to chivalry, rather than progressivism. It'll be funny if we get to "It's not ok to hit your wife, but it's fine to fight a woman."
But "It's wrong to hit a woman" certainly isn't itself a sexist paradigm, in our world as it exists now.
I might disagree with that. I would say that it's wrong to hit people outside of self-defense, other-defense, or certain categories of provocation that slide into self-defense (like the one in the linked story). And that it's particularly wrong to hit people who are smaller and weaker than you (that is, although it's not a millieu I particularly understand, there is a possibility of a fair fight -- people who don't mind getting into fights hitting each other. I'm not going to call that wrong, exactly, here, but I would if it involved a serious mismatch in size or strength.) And once you've knocked out those two categories, there aren't going to be very many occasions at all where it isn't wrong for a man to hit a woman.
But saying that it's always wrong does, I think, partake of sexism in that it's a restriction that makes sense only if you assume that no woman is physically capable of being a threat to any man, and that no woman is emotionally capable of acting in a genuinely physically threatening or damaging manner towards a man.
Rule utilitarianism, while not a wizard cocksucker moral theory, seems appropriate here.
289: Weiner's a pretty big sexist, LB. You've got to give him time to grow.
290 gets it right. There could be exceptions when a woman is a genuine physical threat who can only be restrained by force (though I'm not sure how that would work exactly, since then force might not be effective), but it's still an extremely good rule. And I think that the framework of male-on-female violence makes it worse, as a rule, to hit a woman than it would be to hit a man of the same size and strength. Although that's still bad.
But I'm suggesting that it's not sexist to think there's something bad about hitting a woman as a woman, given our society.
Sorry, I can't read all the comments now, so I apologize if I'm being duplicative.
But Tia, I wanted to thank you for posting this, b/c when something similar happened to me a few months ago I almost felt stupid for being scared and angry. I don't know if it was intentional or subconscious or a misperception on my part, but I felt like most people I told didn't want to hear about it.
Milder things happen to me *all the bloody time.*. On BART, around BART, in parking lots and stores---a guy will approach me and initiate a conversation that while non-threatening in tone, is entirely objectifying (ooh, you're so pretty) and insistent. My natural friendliness evaporates at that point, and I pretty much walk away. (On the other hand I have struck many a real conversation with strangers on bart, usually about books or music or somethign funny that happened, and everything was fine, male or female. It's the notion that you, a stranger, are looking at me, someone you know nothing about, as a desirable object for anything more than a split second, and think I would want to know this in anyway, that I find offensive bordering on threatening.) I disliked it, and it gets my guard up, and I get angry about it , and feel like if these people had more power, then I'd be in trouble, but generally I never felt threatened enough to be scared.
So then this spring, I was waiting at a bus stop near the 16th & Mission station. Normally this stop woudl be packed with people, but it was pouring cats and dogs, dark much earlier than I had expected. There was no one on that street corner nor the one directly opposite, and the people at the station corner proper were all huddled under the bus stop. I thought the bus would be right there, and was looking at my watch, surprised to have missed it, about to turn back when a man walked by and asked me where I was from. He was very short, only a few inches taller than me. I demurred and started moving away, and but instead he kept moving towards me and in fact blocked my way towards the crowded area, my back against the wall, and started telling me how beautiful I was and how he was going to take me home to have dinner. At this point I said, please don't stand so close, and he said, "don't be like that," and as I backed away, along the wall, he tracked me at an arm's length, talking the same way the whole time. I realized if I tried to run past him to where the crowd could see me, he would easily be able to trip me, so I decided to keep my feet planted firmly and use the phone. I got out my phone and he said, "don't pretend to call your boyfriend, I know you dont' have one." He came evencloser and even started reaching out, but luckily my friend with the loudest voice was the last person who called me, so one button and his voice boomed out of the speaker. The man started backing away and I said, "Are you driving to M's house? Almost here?" "Yeah?" "I'm at BART come get me right now." "I'll be right there." The man backed away a littl emore, enough that I felt I could run past without being tripped, and I sprinted right past him to BART, and a minute later my friend drove up and the other passengers in the full car pulled me in, and I was totally shaken, contemplating my luck.
I'm a pretty modest dresser in public, especially when I'm by myself. I was wearing a baggy rain coat. I could not have been standing alone on the desserted side of the street for more than two minutes. It was like he was waiting to pin someone small and female there. For some reason the line, "Don't pretend you have a boyfriend, I know you don't," especially frightened me. I don't, actually, have a boyfriend. Instead I have a posse of guys who will drop everything if I even whisper help, and who complain mightily if they even hear of me walking alone on a non-busy street at night. This was one of the very few times I was ever out by myself in a non-super crowded area in the dark, and it overwhelmed my statistical brain.
I don't have a feminist or empowering interpreation of this. I once took martial arts with this same friend, and late one night I left a board game party at his house, and apologetically asked if he would walk me to my car, which was not parked right outside his house like it usually is. "My Aikido is not that good," I joked self-deprecatingly. "Don't be silly, asking me to walk you to your car is Aikido," he replied. Reassuring, b/c he's usually around--but what if he wasn't? Or was less extreme in making sure I knew to call on him. That experience, and reading about other experiences, make me profoundly grateful that I do have friends like that. They treat me as an equal in all other things, and I simply can't fault their protectiveness. But I have to wonder what will happen when they're not around, and it's upsetting to realize that the luck and kindness that gives me such friends is what's responsible for my sense of freedom in being out in the world. What about other people? What about me when they're gone? It's terrifying, really.
Ile, just wanted to let you know that I had read this. Frightening.
"Don't pretend you have a boyfriend, I know you don't,"
That's chilling. Maybe because it sounds like he's done this before; and it doesn't sound nearly nervous enough. Psycho.
Well, re. "it's wrong to hit a woman," I have no doubt that there are women who abuse men and take advantage of this "don't hit women" thing to do so.
But I remember when the older boy across the street hit me because I stood up (verbally) for a much younger boy who the older boy was bullying: older boy's mom came over to talk to my mom about it, realized that I was a girl, and yelled at her son, "didn't I tell you never to hit girls?!"
After they left, my mother said to me, "if she taught him never to hit *anyone*, this whole mess wouldn't have gotten started." And I think that's really the main point. It's wrong to hit people, period. And if someone *does* hit, or otherwise threaten you (e.g., moving into your space, laying a hand on you after being told to back off), then it is okay to use reasonable force (shove them up against a wall, hit them back) to put an end to it. It may be preferable to go find someone *else* (a cop, a bouncer) to threaten them with reasonable force, for various reasons, but it certainly isn't wrong to defend yourself.
Seriously, Ile. Glad you're okay. What a fucking creep.
Ile, you're a smart chick; it sounds like you handled a scary situation really well.
Since it's come up, what is the protocal on asking a women if she would like to be walked home/walked to the car/etc. On the one hand it seems very infantalizing, and feels like it's implying that she can't handle herself (or that women can't be safe without a man around). On the other hand there are all these very true stories. So I'd be curious to see what people's opinion is. My inclination is that it's good to ask if it's someone who is comfortable with you, but not a good idea with strangers and one shouldn't be at all insistant about it.
Well, don't ask strangers b/c for all they know you're the freaky guy. Otherwise it seems nice, especially if it's not all "oh no, it's dark out, you can't walk to the car alone!" but rather just a friendly gesture. It seems like good manners; I'll offer to walk friends to their car, or home.
But yeah, pushy = gross.
I'm having trouble imagining asking a stranger, and would think the question is more, when is or isn't it demeaning to offer to walk someone who is comfortable with you home? In which case I'd also be curious about perspectives on this.
You did great, Ile, and I'd only add that if none of your friends were around or available, you shouldn't underestimate the potential of strangers to help you dissuade such a potential assaulter. Odds are that any person you approach will be less dangerous than your stalker, and most of the time, another person involved will change the dynamic and make the stalker-guy go away.
Related: how great is the cellphone? I talked myself into getting one almost only for these sorts of situations.
**
It was *bad* in Paris, worse than I got in Spain or Italy, let alone Germany. New York has almost seemed like feminist paradise in comparison. Here's my favorite anecdote of that sort from Paris:
A friend and I were going out to a club at around 11pm. We were trying to catch a cab at the Gare de Lyon, and two guys in track suits walked up to us and tried to hit on us. Where are you going, oh, you're so fine, you should come with us in our car, and we were nice, but direct. Then, as was standard procedure for guys on the street who were told off, they called us bitches and whores and walked away. But here's where these two guys get unusual: they *came back to try again*: Where are you going, we can take you in our car, you're so fine... Later, we were able to laugh about their ability to believe that we would reconsider their proposal after having been called whores. Rather later.
That became funny in retrospect, but the guy who followed another friend home off the Metro and nearly raped her at knifepoint was not so funny. (This was during the Bastille rape/murder scare of '98; the police concluded much later that the guy who attacked my friend was a copycat, not that they didn't blame her for being beautiful and wearing fur trim.) After that, I walked around ready to deck the next guy who looked at me the wrong way: somehow, nobody approached me when I was itching for violent outlash.
By stranger I don't mean complete stranger I mean someone you know but not well who you're talking to at a party or something similar when she needs to leave.
The protocol for offering assistance is pretty fraught, I'm afraid. If I feel nervous, I might silently tag along behind someone whose appearence seems okay. If I'm really nervous (as in, I've identified an actual person I feel threatened by), I might actually approach that sort of person and ask to tag along. I would probably look rather suspiciously on offers of assistance, frankly. But then I'm a fairly street-savvy, fairly strong young woman. An older person (or perhaps a more naive person?) might appreciate offers of assistance a good deal more than I would.
305, that's a highly ambiguous situation, because there are other (consensual, if you get my meaning) reasons to offer to walk someone home, and similarly for someone to request that you escort them home.
I, personally, usually so "no thanks, I'll be fine." But I'm not offended unless someone's all skeezy about it, which usually people aren't.
Re. the party situation, I think that "is someone walking you to your car?" or similar is probably a pretty tactful offer.
305.---Oh, in that case, it usually feels rather nice. It's nicest when there's not reason to think that the accompagnier then has to walk a ways alone because he or she saw you safely to your destination.
rough story, ile. I'm not sure the first thing i would think of if someone called me and said 'pick me up right now' would be that they're were in an immediatly sketchy situation. i guess it depends on the way fear was coming through in the voice, although that might be modulated because you were right in front of him.
Ile, that was scary. Glad you're ok.
187: You mean there were students at your school who were out out, as in people other than their friends knew they were gay? Because I knew a couple of kids who were out to their friends to varying degrees, but no one who was willing to really publicly identify as gay. Sounds like Modesto was ahead of us and/or people at my school were more worried about what people would think and/or that it's easier to be a high school closet case when you can easily sneak off to the Castro on weekends.
Hey, thanks everyone. I'm glad I'm okay too! It's nice to get some feedback. I thought I did okay, and the rescuing friend did too. But oddly enough, I had a hard time telling other women about this, and that's where I wanted the most feedback.
You did great, Ile, and I'd only add that if none of your friends were around or available, you shouldn't underestimate the potential of strangers to help you dissuade such a potential assaulter.
So I think I feel better when the strangers are identifiably different parties from the offending party. When out and by myself, I feel most safe in diverse crowds. In this case the thing that really frightened me was the idea that the closest strangers wouldn't be able to see me or hear me b/c of the way he had me angled away from them, and because of the rain.
Maybe because it sounds like he's done this before; and it doesn't sound nearly nervous enough.
Yeah, I think upto then I think I was still hoping he was just being very ineptly like all the other people.
This brings up another issue. I was shaken, so I got in the car and let them drive me to the party and just went into the party and didn't talk about it to anyone until later. And then I felt bad. On one hand it seems overkill to call the police, but on the other hand--what if the next girl is not so lucky? Practically I can't think of anything they would have done--it seems like it would have been impossible to find him, and I don't think I'd recognize if I saw him now. . .not sure about then. But was there really nothing I could have done better in that regard?
I don't want to live in a society where we hair-trigger tag people as creeps, but I wish there was some middle ground---someway of making sure people know that if they act like creeps, they're going to get some trouble.
I'm not sure the first thing i would think of if someone called me and said 'pick me up right now' would be that they're were in an immediatly sketchy situation.
I don't normally use the unqualified imperative with anyone. This friend is very sharp, so between that, the voice, the location and the time he probably figured it out. But even so, he's the kind of person who would rather come when called and be mistaken and annoyed rather than something worse.
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re:stranger/newfriends offering to walk you. From the offerer's pov--don't be insistent, and I don't see why not. From the offeree's pov---part of me says trust your gut, and then another part of me wonders about things like the story of Sepia Mutiny's Anna. Doesn't our gut instinct get stunted by protective environments and then dulled by socialization to some extent?
also the first thing i thought of when reading jackmormon's post was the opening of les bonnes femmes.
Ok, I take back what I said in the Megan-doesn't-date-guys-she-can't-beat-up discussion. This is some pretty seriously creepy shit, which big-ish guys never have to deal with.
If it's worse in the Latin-ish cultures than it is in the US, where is it better? Correcting for city size, I guess, per comments re: Montana.
Ile, I think re. calling the cops, that if such a thing were to happen (which god forbid), I'd call and make a report. It's possible there's been a rape or a robbery or something in the area, and it might be helpful to know additional information, maybe.
Jackmormon---I was looking for stuff on the Bastile rape scare you refer to, but I couldn't really find it quickly. Do you think Paris is any better now, or the same? On a smaller scale, I feel like Downtown Berkeley is better than it used to be, but South Berkeley is still not great, and San Francisco may be even worse? Hard to tell since I only recently started hanging out there a lot.
I feel like foreign countries throw me off balance. I felt very safe in Japan, though later I found out about the only bad thing that ever happens there is harrasment. Less safe in Switzerland, don't know how that compares to reality. Super crazy safe in Iceland. Didn't feel so safe in Rome. For some reason I felt pretty safe in Paris, not sure why. . .no one bothered me.
Glad you're okay though. Man, I'm glad we're all okay! Yeesh.