Hey Baby, I like your tits!
HollaBackNYC got me thinking about street harassment this morning. I'd be willing to bet money that almost every woman in the United States has experienced this particular form of unsolicited attention at least once in her life; I've got dozens of incidents stored away in my memory, and I was a small-town girl for the most part.
It's difficult to describe to a man why street harassment is such a big deal for us. It's really hard to come up with an equivalent situation; while most men have undoubtedly found themselves outnumbered and feeling physically threatened at some point in their lives, this threat was likely not coupled with graphic descriptions from the threateners of just which holes they'd like to stick their dicks in and how entitled they feel to do exactly that. This is something with which we are confronted every time we go out alone. Not only are we objects to be intimidated physically, we are objects that exist to satisfy their sexual urges.
For a more personal touch, some anecdotes just from my high school years in Bend, Oregon:
When I was in high school, I lived a little over a mile from the school and thus did not fall within the radius of bus service; I walked to and from school every day. One fine spring day when I was 15, I was walking home in the sun, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt and carrying a heavy backpack like I always did, when a pickup truck piled full of high school boys drove past me, its occupants hooting and whistling, and then pulled over across the street several yards ahead of me. They were all older than I was, somewhere between 16 and 18, and there were at least seven of them. My heart raced as the three boys in the cab of the truck and the (at least) four in the bed began climbing out of the truck and crossing the street to block my path. I had no choice but to stop as they surrounded me. "You've got a nice ass, you know that?" one of them asked with a sneer. "Thanks," I said flatly, staring coldly at his face. "You want a ride?" another offered, looking me up and down. "Thank you, but I prefer to walk," I replied, giving him my best disapproving mother gaze while clutching the straps of my backpack so they wouldn't see my hands shaking. "Excuse me." I pushed forward, and they moved miraculously out of my way without trying to restrain me. I could feel their eyes on me as I walked away, but the relief of having them out of my physical space was so great that I couldn't bring myself to care. They hooted and whistled at me a little more as they all climbed back into the truck, and one of them waved as they drove off.
Another time, when I was 15 or 16, I was just walking into my neighborhood when a car with two much older young men (I'd guess they were in their early 20's, which seemed very old at the time) slowed down next to me. "You want a ride home?" the driver asked me with a salacious grin. "No thanks," I said, "I'm almost home anyway." "Come on," he pressed. "We'll take you up the street." "No thanks," I said again. I was still walking during this exchange, while the car crept slowly along the rode beside me. The driver finally shrugged and rolled his eyes dismissively, then drove slowly up the street. I watched his car turn down a side street and then reappear. He was following me. Not wanting him to see where I lived, I walked past my house and up the dead-end street at the end of the block, where I ducked through a gap in the fence and ran down a trail to the Forest Service supervisor's office. I took a circuitous route back to my house, cutting through a cemetery and watching every car that passed to make sure it wasn't the creepy older guys.
Walking through the high school parking lot one morning during my senior year, I was followed by a group of five guys. They talked loudly and explicitly about the sexual things they wanted to do to me, described different parts of my body, and one kept saying, "Hey! Turn around! We want to talk to you!" I walked resolutely toward the school, terrified but pretending to ignore them, while they kept up the lewd commentary. As I neared the building, one of them shouted, "We'll get you next time, you rude bitch!"
They're describing in detail how they're going to rape me and I'm the rude one. Yeah. That makes sense.
I have many more experiences just like these, but these three were some of the most memorable and most personally frightening because they happened at a time when I was much less self-assured than I am now. I know from experience that acting confident (even if it is just an act) and refusing to take shit from men like these is generally the quickest and easiest way to end the situation and get away, but this is yet another case of easier said than done. In our society, we are generally conditioned-- especially as women-- to be polite and avoid drawing attention to ourselves unnecessarily, so it is difficult, even in a situation where the behavior is entirely warranted, to summon the willpower to be both rude and loud.
There are, of course, varying degrees of harassment and every woman has a different idea of just what "harassment" is. While I personally wouldn't take offense to a stranger saying something like, "Smile, beautiful," some women would and do. The thing we must remember is that these gradations start to disappear after one has spent a lifetime being weighed and measured and undressed by a male gaze that believes it is entitled to do all of these things. Though men might see a stark difference between telling a strange woman she is beautiful and grabbing that woman's ass on a crowded bus ride, the emotional and psychological effect of both of those encounters may not be so different: in both cases, the underlying message to the woman is that she is only a physical being, that her value is contingent on maintaining an appearance that is pleasing to men, even men who don't know her. I have had strange men comment on my ass, my legs, my hair, my smile-- and it all starts to feel the same eventually. In each case, I am faced with a man who does not know me presuming that he has some right to express his opinion about my body. It is rude and insulting, and also a hard thing to explain to someone who has never experienced it.
I'm not trying to say that all men are like this or that all compliments on a woman's appearance equal harassment. I appreciate it when my husband tells me I look beautiful, because I know that he knows me, and he also thinks I'm smart and funny and fun to be with-- I'm more than just a body to him. Additionally, I find him very attractive and I want him to be attracted to me too, so it pleases me to know that he likes the way I look. Other men, however, don't hold the same status. I neither want to appeal to them nor care to know what they think, so for them to offer their unsolicited opinion is at best irrelevant and at worst offensive.
It's a complicated issue with lots of gray areas, and a difficult one to discuss without unintentionally stepping on some toes. It is a real issue, however, and any woman who's ever walked anywhere alone knows exactly what I'm talking about. Big city, small town, dressed to the nines or dressed in sweats, whether we are fat or thin, short or tall, dark or light, there is always a man around who will tell us exactly what he thinks of our appearance. And no, we don't like it, no matter how good-looking he might be.
It's difficult to describe to a man why street harassment is such a big deal for us. It's really hard to come up with an equivalent situation; while most men have undoubtedly found themselves outnumbered and feeling physically threatened at some point in their lives, this threat was likely not coupled with graphic descriptions from the threateners of just which holes they'd like to stick their dicks in and how entitled they feel to do exactly that. This is something with which we are confronted every time we go out alone. Not only are we objects to be intimidated physically, we are objects that exist to satisfy their sexual urges.
For a more personal touch, some anecdotes just from my high school years in Bend, Oregon:
When I was in high school, I lived a little over a mile from the school and thus did not fall within the radius of bus service; I walked to and from school every day. One fine spring day when I was 15, I was walking home in the sun, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt and carrying a heavy backpack like I always did, when a pickup truck piled full of high school boys drove past me, its occupants hooting and whistling, and then pulled over across the street several yards ahead of me. They were all older than I was, somewhere between 16 and 18, and there were at least seven of them. My heart raced as the three boys in the cab of the truck and the (at least) four in the bed began climbing out of the truck and crossing the street to block my path. I had no choice but to stop as they surrounded me. "You've got a nice ass, you know that?" one of them asked with a sneer. "Thanks," I said flatly, staring coldly at his face. "You want a ride?" another offered, looking me up and down. "Thank you, but I prefer to walk," I replied, giving him my best disapproving mother gaze while clutching the straps of my backpack so they wouldn't see my hands shaking. "Excuse me." I pushed forward, and they moved miraculously out of my way without trying to restrain me. I could feel their eyes on me as I walked away, but the relief of having them out of my physical space was so great that I couldn't bring myself to care. They hooted and whistled at me a little more as they all climbed back into the truck, and one of them waved as they drove off.
Another time, when I was 15 or 16, I was just walking into my neighborhood when a car with two much older young men (I'd guess they were in their early 20's, which seemed very old at the time) slowed down next to me. "You want a ride home?" the driver asked me with a salacious grin. "No thanks," I said, "I'm almost home anyway." "Come on," he pressed. "We'll take you up the street." "No thanks," I said again. I was still walking during this exchange, while the car crept slowly along the rode beside me. The driver finally shrugged and rolled his eyes dismissively, then drove slowly up the street. I watched his car turn down a side street and then reappear. He was following me. Not wanting him to see where I lived, I walked past my house and up the dead-end street at the end of the block, where I ducked through a gap in the fence and ran down a trail to the Forest Service supervisor's office. I took a circuitous route back to my house, cutting through a cemetery and watching every car that passed to make sure it wasn't the creepy older guys.
Walking through the high school parking lot one morning during my senior year, I was followed by a group of five guys. They talked loudly and explicitly about the sexual things they wanted to do to me, described different parts of my body, and one kept saying, "Hey! Turn around! We want to talk to you!" I walked resolutely toward the school, terrified but pretending to ignore them, while they kept up the lewd commentary. As I neared the building, one of them shouted, "We'll get you next time, you rude bitch!"
They're describing in detail how they're going to rape me and I'm the rude one. Yeah. That makes sense.
I have many more experiences just like these, but these three were some of the most memorable and most personally frightening because they happened at a time when I was much less self-assured than I am now. I know from experience that acting confident (even if it is just an act) and refusing to take shit from men like these is generally the quickest and easiest way to end the situation and get away, but this is yet another case of easier said than done. In our society, we are generally conditioned-- especially as women-- to be polite and avoid drawing attention to ourselves unnecessarily, so it is difficult, even in a situation where the behavior is entirely warranted, to summon the willpower to be both rude and loud.
There are, of course, varying degrees of harassment and every woman has a different idea of just what "harassment" is. While I personally wouldn't take offense to a stranger saying something like, "Smile, beautiful," some women would and do. The thing we must remember is that these gradations start to disappear after one has spent a lifetime being weighed and measured and undressed by a male gaze that believes it is entitled to do all of these things. Though men might see a stark difference between telling a strange woman she is beautiful and grabbing that woman's ass on a crowded bus ride, the emotional and psychological effect of both of those encounters may not be so different: in both cases, the underlying message to the woman is that she is only a physical being, that her value is contingent on maintaining an appearance that is pleasing to men, even men who don't know her. I have had strange men comment on my ass, my legs, my hair, my smile-- and it all starts to feel the same eventually. In each case, I am faced with a man who does not know me presuming that he has some right to express his opinion about my body. It is rude and insulting, and also a hard thing to explain to someone who has never experienced it.
I'm not trying to say that all men are like this or that all compliments on a woman's appearance equal harassment. I appreciate it when my husband tells me I look beautiful, because I know that he knows me, and he also thinks I'm smart and funny and fun to be with-- I'm more than just a body to him. Additionally, I find him very attractive and I want him to be attracted to me too, so it pleases me to know that he likes the way I look. Other men, however, don't hold the same status. I neither want to appeal to them nor care to know what they think, so for them to offer their unsolicited opinion is at best irrelevant and at worst offensive.
It's a complicated issue with lots of gray areas, and a difficult one to discuss without unintentionally stepping on some toes. It is a real issue, however, and any woman who's ever walked anywhere alone knows exactly what I'm talking about. Big city, small town, dressed to the nines or dressed in sweats, whether we are fat or thin, short or tall, dark or light, there is always a man around who will tell us exactly what he thinks of our appearance. And no, we don't like it, no matter how good-looking he might be.
posted by MJ at 12:26 PM
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