Debauchette talks about life in France where, evidently, only prostitutes walk alone and where, evidently, men actively punish women who walk in public alone for not being prostitutes… by grabbing their breasts and groins, fondling their asses, and otherwise sexually humiliating them. Preferably when their hands are full, as with bags of groceries.
As for the tit-grab problem, nothing really works, and it doesn’t really matter. It’s an irritant, it’s something that comes with the cross-cultural territory, and it’s not a life-threatening situation. But I remember one good friend who decided to leave Lyon after she was hassled by two kids, around age nine or ten, who caught her while her arms were full of packages. They grabbed at her breasts with both hands in some kind juvenile tag team, and it did her in. She broke down in the street, and by the time she got home, she decided she was leaving for good. A few of us tried to talk her out of it, we stressed that it’s just kids, it’s just stupidity and nonsense. They don’t know how to deal with women, they’re curious and they’re socially awkward and they’re probably not being told by their parents to keep their grubby hands to themselves when they see boobies. “But they think we’re whores,” she said. “And they’re just kids.”
I have to admit that my first response isn’t exactly admiration the manliness of such behavior as it seems more cowardly and disempowered than, um, gallant. And I’m reminded further that whomever capital-p Patriarchy is supposed to benefit it most certainly isn’t the empty-lived Lads (or their French equivalents) who dare practice their “privilege” only on the defenseless. Which, in turn, I’m sure, only makes it easier for men to later get dates.
I dunno. Leaving aside whether it’s ethical, moral, just, or even fair, organizing a social order that’s designed to protect one segment of society (women) from… the segment that’s enforcing the social order (men) in order to protect one segment (women) just isn’t at all efficient! One could organize a society in almost any other fashion and produce greater individual and overall happiness.
Any gallant justification along the lines of “hey, at least we don’t practice Female Genital Mutilation” isn’t sufficient.
Not that we here in North America should get too comfortable on our “at least we don’t grocery shoppers by the tits when we outnumber them” laurels. Louise Livesey of The F-Word Blog says
According to a story in the Jan 18th edition [of New Scientist] female scientists are less likely to be published if the peer reviewers know they are female.
If that seems too subtle there’s still that chanting business at Giants Stadium and other venues to contend with.
Point being, though, that all such behavior, from slashing off girl’s clitorises as insurance against women’s libidos overwhelming men’s, to gender-role-enforcing man-handling assaults in France and Giants Stadium, to men-benefiting name-based affirmative action in the North American academic press, there’s nothing there that — when discussed objectively — suggests men are in any way actually better than women. In fact, not to adopt the language of social conservatives, anti-feminists, Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh, quite the opposite: such preferential treatment reveals not exercises based on a belief in men’s strength, dignity, or superiority but betrayals of a belief in men’s weakness, insecurity, and desperate need of mollycoddling of our “self-esteem.” (Scare-quotes for the word self-esteem courtesy of Instapundit.)
Submitted by 1900 (not verified) on Sun, 2008-01-27 17:26.
I don't blame her for leaving town. That kind of treatment, on top of the constant low-level hum of degradation, will really get to a person.
(psst, unclosed italics tag)
Submitted by 1900 (not verified) on Sun, 2008-01-27 17:40.
Yikes! Being randomly accosted by strangers on the street on a *regular basis*, even if they're just stupid kids, sounds TERRIFYING! So my city smells like human urine...suddenly it ain't so bad.
And I agree...so illogical! For men just as well as women. The more people that point that out, the better.
*ily, walking alone since 1984 :-)
Submitted by 1900 (not verified) on Sun, 2008-01-27 18:13.
That IS so many levels of wrong ... I wouldn't even know where to start with it.
Also, just what part of Lyon was this? I have to say that I've never actually seen that happen. Regardless of that, though, the attitude of "so what, they're just kids" boggles the hell out of me.
Submitted by 1900 (not verified) on Sun, 2008-01-27 19:08.
I'm curious, too, where this happens. I did have one similar situation when I lived in Berlin where a small group of Turkish boys (aged 11 or so) started to swarm me in a way similar to what Debauchette describes. I swore at them, in English, at top volume, and they left me alone. Maybe they thought I was a loony lady with Tourette's. Even though they were young, it was upsetting.
But in the near-decade I spent in Berlin, the only actual groping I experienced was on buses and subways when it was so crowded you couldn't bust the perp in the act. I went just about anywhere I liked, often alone, at all hours, usually with public transportation. And heaven knows I'm a magnet for weirdos and assholes, since I make too much eye contact.
I'm hoping one or more of your readers in France will weigh in. I'd like to know how typical or widespread this is.
Submitted by 1900 (not verified) on Sun, 2008-01-27 19:37.
From my own experience, it generally happened at night and away from the center of town (though not always). It's a strange phenomenon, and the first few times it was tempting to blow up. But the tricky thing is that they're really just trying to get a response out of you, as a woman. They're grabbing your breast but they *want* your reaction. So while nothing works to prevent it, refusing to give them a reaction at least denies them their thrill.
It's tempting to get angry, because it's wrong. As behavior, it's fundamentally wrong and absolutely unacceptable. But once I saw that other people could observe this and only shrug in response, I realized that it was, or had become, completely acceptable there. And these kids were being taught that this kind of behavior was okay. That doesn't make it right, but it does mean that getting angry won't help. Rather, it gives them what they want.
Submitted by 1900 (not verified) on Sun, 2008-01-27 20:28.
Wow, being angry gives them what they want. I feel so angry after reading your last comment and I just don't even know what to do with my anger. It is such a frustrating feeling. I can only imagine what it is like for those women. My own response would be a violent one, which would probably make it worse. I would probably move, too, if I could.
When I was in middle school we girls were regularly groped by boys and when I complained to my mother, she complained to the school and those boys were in trouble and the behavior stopped. Score one for humanity. The situation described here where women can't walk home with groceries without getting groped is much harder to do something about.
Submitted by 1900 (not verified) on Sun, 2008-01-27 21:47.
I'm sorry I did not say that very well Debauchette. What I meant to say is that I can only imagine what it is like for you and other women who have had similar experiences. I read what you wrote and I sort of understand where the "they are just kids" thinking comes from. Maybe it is the difference between an irritant and a real danger? Thinking that way bothers me a lot, but what do I know, I am not living with it. It makes me so angry. The Giants Stadium thing pisses me off, too. People can be such assholes.
Submitted by 1900 (not verified) on Mon, 2008-01-28 02:12.
Actually, someone just posted a comment about his ex-girlfriend, who was hit when she cussed them out, and it really, really breaks my heart. I stop dismissing them as kids when that happens.
Submitted by 1900 (not verified) on Mon, 2008-01-28 02:40.
I have to say it's never happened to me, nor have I heard of it, but we are live in a small town now. I have, though, spent three years wandering round Paris on my own without any incidents.
I'm wondering how much of it is the culture of the cités spilling out. There are large immigrant housing estates where young women either stay at home and conform to the strict standards of their parents to maintain their reputations, or become "fair game". It has become a major issue more or less since the publication Samira Bellil's Dans l'Enfer des tournantes (The hell of gang rape, not available in English). She helped to set up an organisation called Ni Putes Ni Soumises, Neither Whores nor Doormats.
Submitted by 1900 (not verified) on Mon, 2008-01-28 09:18.
I'm glad you chimed in, A. I do tend to think that this is one way the disenfranchised can create an illusion of power. It's not a coincidence that it was Turkish boys who swarmed me; that's Germany's closest equivalent to the cités in France.
It can be hard to talk about this without playing into the hands of racists. But at the same time it was clear to me that young Turkish men and boys were really struggling to figure out what they could get away with, sexually, when it came to non-Turkish women. (And yes, I see that this is another manifestation of the no-sex class. At least some Turkish men seemed to see their "own" women as a no-sex class, but other women as free game.)
The combination of disenfranchisement and uncertain social norms is pretty toxic. It sets the stage for men to publicly accost women, whether it's groping, catcalls, or a total stranger who asks you on a date and won't take no for an answer.
Submitted by 1900 (not verified) on Mon, 2008-01-28 11:10.
figleaf, I think that you are confusing "privilege" and "superiority."
Because most of what the patriarchy tries to argue for is both wrong and impractical* there's a lot of self contradiction and hand-waving that goes on. It's not so much that the patriarchy argues that men are inferior or superior, it's that it argues both in such a way that treats men as more privileged - even if individually, they don't always consciously feel that way.
So, the patriarchy will argue that men are more likely to be morally corrupt, while at the same time legally and realistically granting more freedom to the physically and economically strong than the morally "pure". The abortion debate is a good example of this. A lot of the rhetoric boils down not to the idea that babies need to be saved from evil women, but that women need to be saved from their own inability to be adult enough to be moral. (Doctor's should be punished, but not women. 24 hour waiting periods to encourage women to think it over - as if they haven't already by the time they make the call.) Women's "innocence" is used as a reason for curtailing their autonomy.
Generally speaking, the talk doesn't match the walk.
Part of why you get less privileged men trying to bolster their egos by harassing women and girls is because they know that it will be excused. And while the cover story for why it will be excused is because men just can't help themselves (men are inferior), since we don't (or are less likely to) buy that same cover story when it comes to crimes against people other than girls and women (or other non-privileged groups) the patriarchy ends up also arguing that such behavior is allowable because women don't deserve any better (women are inferior).
People internalize both arguments and end up parroting the "men are inferior" verbal arguments but also acting on what they learn from all the the "women are inferior" behavioral arguments. You need both for it all to work, because while we may excuse bad behavior on the grounds that "men are inferior," since men are not actually bad, it would not be so epidemic for boys and men to act badly if we did not also teach them that it is not only acceptable but often encouraged/required that they act that way.
*I'd say all of it is at least one of the two, but not everything is both.
[Actually while I think traditionalists may confuse superiority and privilege I've lately realized I don't. That most of this crap is just routine, traditional, mainstream "affirmative action" -- mandated privilege for perfectly non-superior men -- was sort of the point. And what particularly chaffs my butt, Mickle, is that those privileges are what's making and keeping men inferior. To the extent that expectations to be lazy, emotionally remote, tempermental, coarse, and irresponsible counts as inferior that is. --fl]
Submitted by 1900 (not verified) on Mon, 2008-01-28 11:22.
This is just terrible behavior ... this would certainly make me think about carrying around mace. I hope it wouldn't fly in my city -- people have gotten arrested on the subway over such behavior, but they were grown men.
Submitted by 1900 (not verified) on Tue, 2008-01-29 13:29.
Perhaps the best thing to do, would be for those who are not being groped, to intervene? If the boys are groping a woman on the street and the bystanders just shrug, it reinforces the idea that it is OK. But if a bystander (male OR female) were to wade into the fray, that would communicate to these boys that the behavior is not sanctioned by the community, and they might think twice before trying it again.
Of course, this would require creating a social norm where bystanders feel that it is right and proper for them to step in. Maybe a public education campaign of some sort?
I've encountered such behavior a few times in my life (in a medium sized city in the midwestern USA) and I've responded with kicks and slaps. I've found this response quite effective, but in each case the offenders were from my own race/culture, and there were plenty of other people within earshot. I would be hesitant to escalate a situation like that, if the perps were of another race/culture that I didn't feel familiar enough with to predict the response, or if I were alone somewhere.