Photo by Flickr user Myrmi. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Amber Rhea of Being Amber Rhea quotes the nominally “anti-feminist”** Renegade Evolution on street harassment and adds a point that’s very dear to me.
“[C]at-calling, honking, or otherwise making loud overtures towards a woman will, often, annoy the shit out of that woman and it is, generally, not something men have to deal with as often, if at all. I give a thumbs up to the idea that attraction is natural, but a thumbs down to ‘society expects/forces this behavior on us, thus I must’...the God Emperor of Rome believes in free will. And that both men and women are capable of employing it and using it to not do what society tells them to do all the time.”
And seriously, I do not understand why more men are not, apparently, offended at the idea that they’re basically mindless automatons doing whatever society or “biology” (to which they often nebulously appeal) tells them to do. ‘Cause I’d be pretty offended if people were suggesting I’m incapable of making my own decisions. Oh wait, people are suggesting that, and yeah, I’m offended!
Seriously! Once it occurs what’s gone on it’s infuriating to realize you’re a grown man raised to believe you had the impulse control of a two-year-old. Actually that’s not even fair! When my son was two he was able to keep from grabbing Christmas tree ornaments and I’m… pretty sure that a tree full of sharp, colorful, and shiny ornaments and lights is even more compelling to a toddler than a whole room full of people with boobies is to even a teenage boy let alone a grown man.
So that means one of two things: either nobody’s ever bothered to teach men not to irritate and alienate exactly the women they’re nominally attracted to or… some people (cough, real anti-feminists, cough) teach us we’re not supposed to be control themselves. Either way, though, it’s not a particularly “natural” male behavior at all.
One clue, based on my early 1970’s experiences as a high-school dropout construction laborer/painter? Nobody catcalls women they imagine they’d ever “have a chance” with. (At least not in the South, the mid-Atlantic, New England, or inland southern California, all of which places I noticed it and/or increasingly-reluctantly-over-time participated.)
As usual I’m not trying to pull some kind of “but menz suffurz from sexitsim too.” Instead I’m just always baffled how hard people struggle to maintain an anti-feminist gender regimen that — whatever its one-time merits might possibly have had during the reign of Hammurabi — is and has been worse-than-zero-sum for generations. Its design, intentional or not, doesn’t make anybody happy, so why our gigantic investment in its perpetuation?
[** Clarification: that was “anti-feminist” in scare quotes. I understand from SnowdropExplodes that Ren prefers “ex-pat feminist” (those were just quotes and not scare quotes.) —fl]
Submitted by 2225 (not verified) on Sat, 2008-06-14 14:01.
Because it's a class-based putdown as a response to an implicit class-based putdown, fl. I think you came very close to something quite important when you considered the UConn harassment incident, but missed the characterization of it as a form of compensation for insufficient patriarchal privilege. I mean, the mechanism is known, it's a tu-quoque denial of comfort in public space the same way the harasser experiences the woman's/womens' presence (interesting conflation of individuals/class here, as BitchPhD noted in an old post, also interesting conflation of essence and agency) as a pre-existing denial of his agency in the social/sexual sphere. (You must understand the dating lives of "sandhogs" even better than I do.) It's experienced as retaliation for dangling an unattainable object of desire in the faces of low-status men, or, on the flip side, reinforcement of hetero beauty/sexuality standards in the face of their implicit rejection.
[Yup. I'm not positive the intent is denial of comfort for the women being simply whistled at or "hey, baby'd," which I mostly experienced on job sites and in bars. But it sure makes sense for the second, more aggressive sort of drive-by harassment that involves threats, epithets, and sometimes (as Nightfall notes) thrown objects that can happen to someone in almost any identifiable "other" group. Thanks, Eurosabra. --fl]
Submitted by 2225 (not verified) on Sat, 2008-06-14 17:09.
Kinda off-topic, but what I don't understand is why people (male or otherwise) bother shouting more than one syllable at pedestrians (female or otherwise) from rapidly moving vehicles. You can't *hear* more than the first word. That's how sound *works*. Most incidences, I'm more annoyed than offended because I'd like to know whether I have *cause* to be offended seeing as I usually have no idea what they were saying to me.
[Good point. And by the way I'm not sure why but I *still* get catcalled every now and then. Late last summer I was crossing the street looking pretty much the way I do in a lot of photos -- jeans, t-shirt... ok, and shoes... ok, and everything buttoned up :-) -- and a 20-something passenger in one of those classic toolbag cars leaned halfway out the window and yelled "bblubl-something-blubba *faggot!!!*" Again I have *no idea* why they do that unless it's the same sort of insecurity/inadequacy/whistling-past-the-graveyard aggression/self-admission they have for catcalling women. Thanks, Nekobawt. --fl]
Submitted by 2225 (not verified) on Sat, 2008-06-14 17:28.
Just a point of information - as I understand it, Renegade Evolution describes herself as "feminist ex-pat", and possibly (since she used to contribute to a blog of the same name) "feminist critic"; I don't think that makes her "anti-feminist", even in a nominal sense. Again, as I understand it, her self-described "ex-pat" status is more to do with the crap she got from (certain) other feminists because of her chosen career, then any disagreement with the ideas and aims of feminism in general.
[I was being ironic but I think enough other people get turmoiled about definitions that I should have been more clear that irony was intended. Thanks, SD. --fl]
Submitted by 2225 (not verified) on Sun, 2008-06-15 02:08.
On the other hand, there are days when you feel so bad about yourself that you get to think "Sigh, not even the catcallers hit on me anymore". Which, of course, is a whole different can of worms. Because needing approval of others to feel good about yourself is so not cool.
[I know what you mean, colorlessblue. I'm pretty sure you don't feel that way until it's already pretty bad everywhere else. Thanks. --fl]
Submitted by 2225 (not verified) on Sun, 2008-06-15 03:52.
There is a dreamworld out there where some people actually believe that a catcall means they are desirable, and where there is a belief that men are justified in expressing appreciation for the human form in both verbal and physical terms. I think this is thing that is convenient for certain types of men (the misogyny-is-manly types), and it is perpetuated by the type of woman who will construe a grope on the train as proof of her desirability rather than evidence of someone else's lack of control. And so it goes on, and progress is hampered once again by the twisted sexual responses of low self-esteem.
[Well, I know it's not as binary as that (as other commenters hint) but... at least in the mainstream version, with each catcall an admission of imagined "unworthiness" and peer acknowledgment of shared-dream inadequacy. Like it's healthy for anybody in the long run to have men thinking about themselves, and others, that way. Even if no one else minded. Thanks, Z. --fl]
Submitted by 2225 (not verified) on Sun, 2008-06-15 06:04.
Another facet to this topic is the fact that while most men are a-holes for such behavior, those of us who are 'nice guys' are constantly reminded of the fact that these same a-holes and their condescending behaviors also tend to end up with more sexual partners.
When we see them demonstrate this behavior and get sex for it, the rest of us feel like women aren't being straight with us when they tell us they don't appreciate this activity.
BB
[I'm... pretty sure they didn't end up with more partners, BB. Or at least not *because* they were assholes. My big realization about being a "nice guy" is that often when I thought I was being "nicest" I was really just being weasely. I got my epiphany while shopping for cars when I realized that some of the guys acted like they wanted to be my friend and just came across as phoney, while others just wanted to know if I wanted a car. The former and latter were interested in the same thing, the former thought it would be smarter if they pretended to be "nice guys." Instead I wound up buying the car from someone who was up front about what was going on. Know what I mean? --fl]
Submitted by 2225 (not verified) on Sun, 2008-06-15 06:07.
I wonder what would happen if the women would just speak, like say good morning. I don't mean stop and talk but acknowledge another's human being existence.
Maybe it just me, but I never really thought of a cat call as harassment. It is a part of the urban noise like those voices that nekobawt speaks of. That is not to say it doesn't exist, it is that what I have seen does in no way compare to a cat call.
[I think there's also a difference in the way catcalls are delivered -- because like you say, it's probably a different thing for both deliverers and recipients if there's other acknowledgment. At least among the men I know if the woman stopped for a confrontation or anything else our heads would disappear the way gophers do. Thanks, Five. --fl]
Submitted by 2225 (not verified) on Sun, 2008-06-15 13:19.
My theory on the "assholes get the girls" thing is that the "assholes" know what they want and they go for it unapologetically. There's something almost refreshing about it, if you ask me*, and I think people might tend to confuse being assertive or aggressive with being an asshole.
*That's probably because I don't usually notice if anyone's "into" me, so someone being upfront about their attraction reeeeally helps.
Submitted by 2225 (not verified) on Sun, 2008-06-15 17:13.
I haven't been the focus of catcalls, at least not that I've ever noticed. However, if I hear someone calling out from a moving car that's behind me it means that I have a fraction of a second to avoid being hit on the back of the head by someone's drink. That's happened 3 times in my life so far - okay, once it wasn't actually a drink but a chunk of ice in the middle of summer. Even if I've just been unlucky, why the hell do people do stuff like that? (Aside from being general a-holes, that is.)
[Yup, having things thrown from cars is really familiar to me too. My college was in a failing logging/nuclear-construction town and the townies were pretty merciless to anyone on, for instance, a bike since only college students "stooped" to riding bikes. (Their slang was "greener grilling" for the practice of veering sharply to run the cyclist off the road.) I always figured they did it because they didn't have the same levers of power the local politicians, nuke-plant operators, clear-cut logging companies, and newspaper editorials had to fulminate against progress and change. I'm guessing it's the same for all of them -- they don't think (or maybe even know) they can't win a conversation so they throw epithets and bottles. Thanks, Nightfall. --fl]
Submitted by 2225 (not verified) on Sun, 2008-06-15 22:36.
Yes, but you gotta remember that anyone who's jerk enough to do things like that is easily jerk enough to tell all manner of lies about sex he never really had with women he never really went out with.
Some kids tell lies about expensive toys they have "at home" to get other kids to like them. Some very...sad men will tell other men about women they've had sex with who "you don't know" or who live "out of town" or "I met on vacation" because they think that's the way to get respect/attention/whatever it is they're after.
Unless you're in (or next to) the room when all this sex you think is happening happens, anything that comes out of the mouth of someone who you know to be a jerk should be received with suspicion.
Like FL said, there's a big difference between being nice, just because you are, and pretending to be some put-on version of "nice" that's manifested a lot more like "I'm letting you run over me because I think there's something in it for me later." If you're just pretending, you end up resentful that the reward you feel you've earned - by twisting your personality into what you think is the desired shape - was not handed over.
Be not deceived, a man who acts an ass gets sex DESPITE it, not because of it, if at all. Besides, say there are women who find condescending jerkitude attractive. Do you really want to get mixed up with them? They've obviously got problems of their own.
["anyone who's jerk enough to do things like that is easily jerk enough to tell all manner of lies about sex he never really had with women he never really went out with. " Yes! That's a huge part of it too. For the most part people, men especially, who are actually "getting lucky" are the least likely to brag about how "lucky" they are. --fl]
Submitted by 2225 (not verified) on Mon, 2008-06-16 06:02.
I think this is a somewhat facile answer to a more complicated question, which is handled more effectively on some other blogs that are about mating behavior per se. There APPEARS to be a correlation between status/dominance for men and the kind of fast, easy erotic attention from the opposite sex that (the vast majority of) young straight men tend to crave, and the type of people who say "Just get out there and be honest" haven't approached 50 strangers for a date in the course of a week in order to get that ONE phone number. Well, a poor, low-status ugly extrovert is STILL poor, low-status and ugly. A more interesting issue is WHY Nice Guys'(tm) approaches fail, and the fact is that social traumas tend to get inscribed in one's body language and presentation. Someone having a full-bore panic attack at approaching a potential date is going to be too much of a hormonal storm to get much of ANYTHING right. There is also status anxiety about one's partners, which gets translated into the gripes of nice, nerdy women that nice, nerdy guys aren't interested in them.
Fortunately there are advice blogs out there dedicated to the proposition that every man deserves a 10. :-) But this is not one of them.
Submitted by 2225 (not verified) on Mon, 2008-06-16 07:43.
In my experience, saying "hello" works to stop someone from staring/glaring at me. It is like a reminder that I am a person, not a magazine.
However, saying "hello" or being friendly often comes across as a sign of availability.
I don't say "hello" to cat-callers. If I say anything, it is a list of expletives. Acknowledging a greeting, has always ended in being hit on in one way or another with varying degrees of respectfulness. Hence, I don't even recognize greetings anymore. When I do, it is usually very curt, mechanical and almost begrudging.
Submitted by 2225 (not verified) on Mon, 2008-06-16 18:59.
This may be a little off topic, but it is interesting that we all would comment on figleaf's HNT pictures in print and acknowledge his sensualness and sexuality. Some how in the real world there is no real way to do this without assigning to many motives. Sometimes there is something about the person that make you appreciate their sensuality, without wanting to know that person; but you would like them to know it.
[Wow, thank you Five of Nine, I really appreciate that. Thanks again. --fl]
Submitted by 2225 (not verified) on Mon, 2008-06-16 21:49.
"those of us who are 'nice guys' are constantly reminded of the fact that these same a-holes and their condescending behaviors also tend to end up with more sexual partners."
And being concerned with the scorekeeping of "more sexual partners" isn't condescending? Especially when what you're doing is griping that some other guy has a higher score than you do?
(Recaptcha: "impel deductions". One can only hope.)
Sunflower
Submitted by 2225 (not verified) on Mon, 2008-06-16 22:26.
I think that you and I might be having two different conversations. By the time I was 12, I was already 5'4" and weighed 154 pounds. So, from a distance, I probably looked a good ten years older than I was. I grew up in the 80s in a city in Tennessee of about 50,000 people. So, not a super-tiny place, but not a big city either.
This is why I mentioned all that: You would literally not believe the way I was spoken to, shouted at, breathed on, whispered to and touched by strange men/boys whose ages ranged from barely past my own to easily old enough to be my father, starting when I was around 11.
When you're 12, being told that you're sexy by someone who looks to be about twice your age is not flattering or exciting. It's embarrassing and frightening. I tried in vain to figure out what it was I was doing to bring all this revolting, humiliating behavior on myself. It wasn't until I was in my mid-20s and looked at pictures of myself from 10 or 12 years earlier that I realized that I'd been so big.
So, unless I'm misunderstanding,you're thinking about men who are perhaps acting out due to frustration with having had little success with the whole "just get out there and be yourself" approach.
What I'm thinking about is men who are misogynists and pedophiles, who ought not to be within a mile of any woman of any age at any time under any circumstances.
Submitted by 2225 (not verified) on Tue, 2008-06-17 06:10.
Oh, I believe you all right, having seen such things, but you are answering the question that BigBorker did not ask because our society's vocabulary for such issues is imprecise. He is talking about success through the telegraphing of dominant masculinity versus the telegraphing of sensitivity, the shorthand for this in Bloglandia is "Nice Guys vs. Jerks." You are discussing sexual predators. So we are indeed approaching from radically different angles and my reply might have been better addressed as a reply to BigBorker's original comment.
Submitted by 2225 (not verified) on Tue, 2008-06-17 06:26.
I would submit the latest Twix commercial, titled "Get the Girl" (www.twix.com) as an effective synopsis of the way American culture views the issues of male dominance and male sexuality. The implicit message is that one must be deep in denial of female sexual agency, supply a non-sexual pretext for hooking up, and dominate other men as potential obstacles and competitors in order to get sex. (The implication, due to the needy behavior of the rival hetero men in the commercial is, "to EVER get sex.") It's not condescending to notice that you've been sold a bill of goods, particularly when you really DO live in a culture where demonstrable mainstream masculinity reliably triggers attraction in enough women to make a very real difference in one's experience of life. The concern is not score-keeping as much as the realization that mixed messages don't work. BigBorker is thinking of the question as descriptive, rather than prescriptive. Why is it condescending to feel a twinge of cynicism about the real reasons one is being shut out of a marketplace? BB can deal with the Buberian implications of a discourse that instrumentalizes women ("This Woman-Thing is broken, it won't do what I want!") on his own time, if necessary.
Submitted by 2225 (not verified) on Tue, 2008-06-17 09:25.
Five of Nine said:
Excellent point, Five of Nine. From my personal experience, I can say that, in certain situations, it can work. Near the office building where I worked, there was a group of young men who were doing the raucous commentary on the women walking past them. When I had to pass them to get to the front door of the building, I said, "Good morning, gentlemen." And most of them just replied, "G'morning." (Who knows what they said behind my back after I was inside the building.) If I encountered the same group while I was the lone pedestrian on a deserted street, I don't know how I would have reacted. I think you have to assess the risk and trust your instincts.