sexism: the little things

[helenic]

I'll admit it: the main reason I repost links like these isn't because I think I need to check my own privilege (although I do); it's because I'm tired of having conversations about gender with people who don't believe that sexism is a problem for most women today. Usually well-meaning, smart, decent guys who live in the same queer-friendly alternative bubble as I do. Asking them to listen before they become defensive is an important part of that conversation. However, I've started to think it might be worth actually keeping notes on the sexism I experience.

One of the problems I have with feminist analysis is that I have no stomach for anger. I just don't have the energy for it. Sometimes something will offend me, but I'm much more inclined to shrug it off than dwell on it. Sometimes something that happens to me will strike me as intellectually offensive, but my emotional barriers stop me from being personally riled by it. This is a valuable self-defense mechanism and a political weakness. I'm much more interested in putting my time and energy into creating positive, beautiful, affirming artworks and experiences for people than I am in maintaining an anger at the injustice I perceive around me. Injustice is everywhere: being angry all the time would make me unhappy. I have a flash temper and it often doesn't take much to hurt or annoy me, but I don't stay angry easily.

I'm pretty sure I have no real concept of the scale of the sexism I've experienced in my life. Women are, let's face it, used to being victims of sexism - we rationalise it away, shrug it off, don't dwell on it. Which is all very well for short-term personal happiness, but not for revolutionising society. We go out of our way to avoid sexism, which is often self-defeating when our long-practised skills at avoiding abuse result in a lack of convincing examples to persuade anyone that there is, in fact, a problem.

I'm not interested in being angrier, really. But what I can do is observe, take notes, make a record. I think it might be interesting to start using this LJ to record examples of sexism when I notice it. And I won't notice everything; I'm not trained in this sort of analysis. But it would be useful for me to have a better idea of the scale of it, rather than having a transient, unsubstantiated, emotional sense that it's there, but never being able to think of good examples during relevant conversations. I don't want this to turn into a list of complaints; I certainly don't want anyone to start criticising me for not balancing this list with examples of female privilege. That's not what I'm focussing on, here. Nor am I trying to say that women are the only victims of sexism or oppression. I'm just trying to combat a very real belief among my (mostly male) friends that a feminist perspective is out-dated and inappropriate in our society.

I'd encourage anyone who's had similar experiences to comment, just because I know it's not just me, and I think it's important to notice the little things.


1. Today I was walking through Cavendish Square, eating a sandwich. My phone beeped, and I held the half-eaten sandwich in one hand while I read the message. A middle-aged bloke - he looked more like a construction worker than a city office worker - was walking towards me. I didn't notice him until he passed me, but he'd obviously been watching me for a couple of minutes. "I bet that was tasty!" he said unpleasantly, looking me up and down and gesturing to my sandwich. "I saw you licking your fingers." I gave him my best contemptuous look and kept on walking.

The bloke would not have said that to another man. A woman would not have said that to a man, because men eating while walking is normal. When a man is eating it is unremarkable: to men, food is fuel. To women, food is a complex socio-political issue. Women are not meant to treat food as fuel: a woman eating in the street is making a public display of herself that invites comment. It is a sensual display that draws attention to her body and figure. She is not permitted to mind her own business; men are at liberty to approach her and make personal remarks. This applies especially if she's alone. The discomfort or threat felt by a young, solitary woman approached by a strange man making personal remarks in public is irrelevant; the most important thing is that, by engaging in such a lascivious display right there on the street, she is clearly attention-seeking and will welcome scrutiny and criticism from any man who happens to catch sight of her.

2. Several times - four now, I think - in the last few weeks, I have been sent photos of a stranger's cock via Bluetooth while sitting on the bus.

The first time this happened I was on the 67, going down Kingsland Road. I was sitting upstairs and having a flirty text conversation with mr_magicfingers, whose house I'd just left. My phone beeped, asking me if I wanted to accept $random_img219278. Surprised and not really thinking, I pressed yes. It was a photo of an erect cock belonging to a white man who was sitting down with his tracksuit bottoms pulled down to reveal his erection. He was holding it in one hand.

I deleted it, instantly, heart pounding. My first thought was: Oh my god. It's the guy sitting behind me. He saw me using my phone, checked to see if he could see any active Bluetooth devices, and sent it. Now he's seen me receive the message, he knows the Bluetooth device he detected is mine. He might be sitting behind me. Oh my god. He's sitting on the bus with his cock out and he's going to come and sit next to me any minute. Shit. Shit. I disabled my Bluetooth, nonchalantly put my phone away, and stared out the window. I was shaking. I was certain that whoever sent the message had now worked out who I was; that any moment now when the bus stopped, a man would walk down the aisle, sit next to me, and get his cock out. The photo had been a threat. It had been a violent threat.

The second thing I thought was: That'll teach me for leaving my Bluetooth turned on. I shouldn't have been so stupid. This is my fault.

The third thing I thought was: Wait. That wasn't mr_magicfingers, taking our flirtation one step further? Shit, have I just got completely the wrong end of the stick? No, no, it didn't look like him. And I'm too far away from the house, surely. But oh shit, I don't actually know how Bluetooth works. It wasn't him. Damnit, I can't check the picture to be sure - I've deleted the message. No, it can't be him. That's not like him, even if he had meant it well. I'm too far away, it must be someone on the bus.

It wasn't until then that I started feeling angry, started thinking How dare he. How dare he make me feel threatened like that. I sent an angry Twitter, and received a couple of sympathetic/aghast texts in reply, which made me feel a little better. After a few minutes, I got up out of my seat when the bus stopped, and made my way downstairs without looking back over the bus. It was an effort not to try and work out who had sent it. I kept my head down, not wanting to draw attention to myself, sat downstairs next to an older woman, and tried to put it out of my mind.

About a week later I was sent another photo by an unknown Bluetooth device on the same bus, just as I was about to get off on St Ann's Road. I cursed myself for leaving my Bluetooth on and refused the photo without looking at it.

But thinking about it, I wondered if I was right in assuming the photo I'd refused had been like the first. I was so surprised by the frequency of this new form of sexual harassment that I decided to leave my Bluetooth on and accept all the photos as a deliberate exercise. If I refused to accept them, I couldn't be sure that they were the kind of photo I thought they were. It was pointless getting angry about the phenomenon if I was making assumptions. It's happened four times in total, including the unverified second time, and as far as I can tell from a cursory glance (I really don't want to look closely) it's been a different sender each time. I've deleted all the photos.

I actually doubt that these photos are taken on the bus. They're probably saved on the phone and the mobile flasher spends his time trying to send them to random phones, on the off-chance that any of them are girls. The recipient has no way of telling who the sender of the message is by looking around them; and if they're female, they're probably too unsettled to want to try to identify the sender. Maybe they just get a thrill out of knowing that a possibly female stranger has unwillingly been exposed to their penis. Maybe they're keeping an eye on the girls in the bus to see if any of them has a phone that goes off; if any of them look upset or scared after checking it. I don't know. But whatever it is, I find it grossly offensive and borderline threatening. I don't care how bizarre your kink is; don't involve unsuspecting passers-by in it, particularly not when women are so constantly aware of the risk of sexual threats in urban environments. This isn't just me being a wimp. It is normal and valid for a woman to feel threatened in those circumstances, and it's sexual harassment to deliberately make her feel that way, even if you can't identify her in a crowd.

3. A more general example: strange men shouting after a woman who is jogging or running down a public street. Occasionally after a woman riding a bike. The shouts may be encouraging, jeering, sexual - there's a broad range. I don't run or cycle in public myself so I only notice this as a passer-by, but I still notice it a fair amount. The point is not the content of the shout, but the fact that the shout is made by a man or men about a woman who is doing something physical in public. Like my first example, anything a woman does that draws attention to her body in public - however normal or non-sexual the activity - is fair game for male commentary, no matter how uncomfortable, threatened, upset or irritated it will make the woman in question. Do these men really think the women will be glad of the attention? No - they don't think about the woman's feelings at all. They are objectifying her. She is running in public: her jiggling female body's only purpose is entertainment for any men watching, and her feelings and humanity are irrelevant.

4. Another more general example: strange men commenting on my mood when I'm out in public. This ranges from the all-too-common variations on "Smile!" which almost every woman I know has experienced, almost always from a man ("lighten up, love!" "it's not that bad!" "give us a smile, darlin'!" ) to any comment on how a man perceives me to be feeling. They almost always read my expression wrong and even if they do, it's none of their business. I am not a public object, I am not here for your entertainment. My face's only purpose is not to be cheerful and attractive so as to brighten your little world. I am a human being with my own ups and downs and I do not presume to comment on yours - at least, not with a shallow one-liner; sitting next to someone and offering a sympathetic ear is a very different thing. You are not concerned for my welfare. You are telling me to modify my appearance to please you. Women do not tell me to do this. Men do not do it to other men. Kindly do not do it to me.

5. Ooh, another one: men groping me in clubs. I go to a lot of clubs and they tend to be very hot. Both men and women tend to wear skimpy outfits; men are often topless, sometimes in skirts or shorts; women are often in miniskirts or bikinis. Everyone's sweaty. There seems to be an unspoken assumption among a lot of the men attending such clubs that if female flesh is exposed, it is inviting touch from anyone, including strangers. Every time I go out I'm groped at least once; one night it happened over a dozen times. This isn't just men - sometimes it's young women who are pilling their faces off and just not thinking. But it's mostly men, and I'm much more confident asking the women to please not do that without asking than I am with the men. I'm sure they mean well - they're having a lovely time, everyone's so pretty, let's spread the love, man. But I hate not being able to move through a crowd without anonymous, sweaty hands reaching to grab my bum or breasts or belly, and I hate being made to feel like a kill-joy for wanting people I don't know to get their hot, smelly paws off me. Someone coming up and complimenting me, and asking for a hug or a kiss? No problem - sometimes I'll say yes, and if I say no I'll do so politely. Just assuming that because my body is in their vicinity, it is available for them to fondle? Not fucking on. It's such an endemic problem of club culture that you can't even complain to the venue staff - it happens to everyone, it's normal, and they won't do anything about it. If they're a particularly lovely club and you talk to one of the organisers rather than one of the venue staff, and you can point out the person involved, they might go up and ask them to stop, but keeping track of someone you've barely seen in the first place in a crowd like that is not easy, and most of the time I don't even want to take a closer look - or I might not be able to if the crowd is particularly busy.

That's all I can think of right now. I'll add more as and when they happen; I have no doubt that they will. Please feel free to contribute your own, whether or not they're related to the above. The more anecdotal evidence I have, the more chance we have of persuading the non-feminists reading this that we aren't imagining things.

Next question: what's the best way to respond to this kind of thing? The older and more confident I get, the more ready I am to stand up for myself in public, to make a fuss. I would dearly love to respond to these examples by loudly and clearly calling attention to the behaviour and making it clear that it's unacceptable. I don't; I keep my head down and hurry on. Occasionally I manage a contemptuous laugh or a withering look first. I'd love to have a clear, pointed comeback that called people who do this up on it without starting a confrontation that could get nasty, but sadly, I doubt it's possible. If anyone has any bright ideas, I'd love to hear them.

In the meantime I shall await the inevitable responses from male readers telling me that they're not like that; that I'm overreacting; that the above are neither indicative of endemic issues nor examples of sexism. G'wan, prove me wrong. :)

Comments

[friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com]

I love this idea. Well done. I shall be interested to read your further updates on the subject.

#4 especially makes me want to grind glass in the speaker's face. I try and think of anger as an energy, which can be dangerous but is wonderful if used wisely. I find that helps.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

I have a tendency to get very disillusioned very quickly when it comes to politics. I'm not really cut out to be an activist. That's probably a lame excuse, but I'm much happier starting conversationally than I am thinking about The Big Picture.

The trigger for this post has been building for some time, and started with a post abuot sexism I made a couple of years ago, which prompted a vast array of aggressive, critical, or defensive comments from the men on my friendslist. Even my boyfriend accepted that he didn't have the range of experience to qualify him to make a judgement, but still had a "gut feeling" that it wasn't as bad as all that and we were unjustly extrapolating from isolated incidents.

I'm close to a lot of men; I have at least as many male real-life friends as I do female. Very few of them are explicitly pro-feminist. Neither of my boyfriends are, for instance, although they're both supportive and sympathetic in their own way. This si a real challenge to me. I've been awakened in my own feminism since getting together with either of them, and while these days I wouldn't consider a new relationship with a non-feminist man, I'm not willing to let it get in the way of my current very happy relationships. So I'm trying to think of ways to educate people, both friends and partners. Women as well as men. I don't really know anything about theory. So personal experience seems like a good place to start.

I don't tend to use anger like that. At the moment, for instance, writing this and replying to the comments, I'm determined, assertive, and confident to challenge people when they're being inappropriate or making me uncomfortable. I'm not angry, though. There just isn't space in my heart for it. I guess that's a side-effect of my privilege, though. There are lots of people who can't help but be angry. I am grateful that I'm not one of them, and trying to work out what I can do to help.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

WOW. I have never heard of that Bluetooth thing before, but good God, that's awful. I'd seriously consider pitching someone about that to the Guardian Comment is Free pages or something (or getting someone to write about it on thefword?) because if that's a new form of harassment that technology has enabled, it should be made public.

Just to add my own harassment tales of the past week: Glitz and I were walking to the station on Saturdsy morning, pretty briskly, deep in conversation. A big group of lads tried to get our attention shouting something which finished in "girls", and I kind of glanced up, irritated at being interrupted. Didn't do anything apart from look kind of irritated. So that turned into, "Well fuck off then, yah stuck up cunts!" Super.

I stuck my middle finger up at them as we carried on walking, which is the kind of thing I usually do in situations like that, because it at least makes me feel like I've responded, you know? But it's not what you'd call a solution.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

Also, it sucks that you have to "prove" to your male friends that this is something that should be taken seriously. One of the things that Glitz and I talk about is the fact that we have relatively few male friends, and even fewer straight male friends, except those that we know because they're the partners of various female friends. I'm just not interested in having to make those explanations, so I generally just strike men of my list of "people I'm interested in getting to know" if they don't demonstrate an awareness of how sexism works and the ways in which they experience gender privilege. I'm just not interested in having to argue that.

(Similarly, I can entirely understand it if people who are not members of the privileged groups that I'm a member of feel the same way about me. I do try hard to be an ally and I know that I am massively more privileged than I am disadvantaged even within a UK context, never mind a global one. But it's far enough if someone is, "You know what? Actually, I want to talk to someone who gets this firsthand.")


Edited to add: Would it be too cynical to add "completely ignoring the substance of the post and commenting purely on the technical aspects without offering any empathy or solidarity whatsoever" to the list of tediously predictable male responses?

[forthwritten.livejournal.com]

I think my most disturbing one was a man coming up to me when I was waiting for a friend. He started being all creepy and sleazy, asking what I was doing, what I was doing later and clearly coming on to me, and it transpired that he thought I was 14. I made the excuse that I'd seen my friends and went to wait somewhere else. It still horrifies me that he thought it was okay to do this to someone he thought was 14.

[wildeabandon.livejournal.com]

Ugh. The bluetooth thing is awful :/

Recent thing that happened to me is that I was waiting for a bus and a guy came up and asked me for a cigarette. I said no, and after harranguing me for a while whilst I ignored him he turned to my (apparently male) companion and said "I don't know why you're bothering with her mate, she's a lesbian".

In general I think the best way to respond is to calmly say "I find that inappropriate, please don't do it again", but usually I just ignore it.

[chiller.livejournal.com]

Oh GOD I love your icon!

[alohura.livejournal.com]

I find that "Get your fucking hands off my arse and go trawl for meat elsewhere, dickwad" usually works.
especially if said loudly, and in the presence of other men who *haven't* got their hands on your arse.

Most of these assholes are quite taken aback by a vivid, explicit response.
If you can add looking right in their eyes and giving them a big, crazy, I-could-carve-out-your bollocks-out-in-a-heartbeat kind of smile, it helps...

[thegreybear.livejournal.com]

Brilliant! This is similar to how I handle people (I'm an overwieght, white middle class guy). I mock and humiliate them verbally, highlighting how much of a moron they've been and suddenly, spotlight is on them.

I'll post something else when I've finished reading, but this was too good a response not to cheer.

[fluffymark]

This post is enlightening. I'd not actually realized these things actually happened, and on such a regular basis. Not you're not overreacting, those are all squicky and nasty things to happen and make me shudder. Presumably because I'm male, I guess, they don't happen to me, so I don't see them. And I really can't fathom the mindset of any man who would behave like that. I should just learn to appreciate how lucky I am that these things don't happen to me, I guess.

[sharp-blue.livejournal.com]

Accepting random Bluetooth file transfers is a bad idea for other reasons too: there are various viruses that propagate through Bluetooth connections and can then do all kinds of unpleasant things to your phone.

[cokephreak.livejournal.com]

I'd say the same

Also, after thinking "that will teach me ..." after the first one I'm slightly bemused / amused that it happened another 4 times.

You said the second one was on the same bus ... were the others? If so it's probably a staionary device sending it to everything in range.
Same place or not, sending things like this is fairly random. You never know who owns a device from it's name, and thats all the info the sender has.

Also, is your(libellum) phone's bluetooth name something distinctly feminine? If so, you could be advised to change it. Maybe an idea to change it anyway.

[whatifoundthere.livejournal.com]

Since my name is rather unusual, I'm more uncomfortable than most when people (read: men) ask me my name. It always, ALWAYS leads to a tedious conversation ("what? can you say that again? how do you spell that? where is it from? were you born there?") that I'm just not interested in having with strangers. In fact, I don't even like having it with public officials or bar servers or other people that might have a good reason to ask my name. But among strangers it is only ever men that ask my name, and the accompanying conversation is simply not welcome to me.

When a man does that, on the bus or whatever, I usually tell him that it's none of his business, and then he is SURPRISED. Because he OUGHT to know who I am so that he can REFER to me.

I don't know how it is with the women who have more common names; with me, along with the implicit threat in telling a strange man "who I am" there is the added threat that he will be able to "find" me later (which is kind of silly, but perhaps less silly than it would be if I were a Susan or a Joanne).

In that poll I posted a few weeks ago, I was trying to get at the "objective" differences between how women live in the world and how men do. I was less interested in feelings and opinions on political issues, and more on how the world, as it is, reacts to you. I'm still planning to do a full-on analysis of that post, but the hostility I got when I tried to give the poll to my students really upset me, and even though I've mostly recovered now I just haven't gotten around to it.

[forthwritten.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean. Then you have the "That's exotic" comments (exotic? ugh, halo thar, exotic other) and also people asking where you're from and if you're a member of a random ethnic group...I once had someone asking for directions, then asking if I was Turkish, and then asking if he could walk by me.

It's the naming of things, but I think it also works in a broader context of wanting to identify you and classify you in all sorts of ways.

[maga-dogg.livejournal.com]

I find it entirely bizarre that men exist who either aren't aware that this sort of bullshit goes on, or don't see that it's a problem. I suppose most men didn't have a parent who carefully fed them feminist lit from a tender age, though.

Even so, I still forget, often. And it's good to be reminded of things that society in general would like to forget, which everyone by default conspires to make easier to forget (forgive hideous sentence construction). So thank you.

[the-lady-lily.livejournal.com]

This is an excellent post, and I know exactly what you mean about having no concept of the scale of sexism. I also think there is a division between being treated differently because we are different (e.g. the way that students interact with me compared with how students interact with male graduates), and being treated differently in a way that is wrong and inappropriate. That too is a difficult line to walk.

The problem is not just young men who are saying 'why do we need feminism?', but young women who see women in political office and assume that all is now well. That's a whole other kettle of fish, but one that got opened out at FemCon.

It's interesting you mention the Bluetooth thing, as I read this (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/world/middleeast/13girls.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all) in the NY Times the other day:

Saudi newspapers often lament the rise of rebellious behavior among young Saudis. There are reports of a recent spate of ugly confrontations between youths and the religious police, and of a supposed increase in same-sex love affairs among young people frustrated at the strict division between the genders.

And certainly, practices like “numbering” — where a group of young men in a car chase another car they believe to contain young women, and try to give the women their phone number via Bluetooth, or by holding a written number up to the window — have become a very visible part of Saudi urban life.

A woman can’t switch her phone’s Bluetooth feature on in a public place without receiving a barrage of the love poems and photos of flowers and small children which many Saudi men keep stored on their phones for purposes of flirtation. And last year, Al Arabiya television reported that some young Saudis have started buying special “electronic belts,” which use Bluetooth technology to discreetly beam the wearer’s cellphone number and e-mail address at passing members of the opposite sex.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

That article is very interesting. The car-chasing thing is just horrible - and the last paragraph feels wearily familiar. Why are these men so desperate? At least love poems and flowers are better than unwanted erections :/

[cokephreak.livejournal.com]

OK, lots I 'd like to say ... but I'm unsure of this bit :
In the meantime I shall await the inevitable responses from male readers telling me that they're not like that; that I'm overreacting; that the above are neither indicative of endemic issues nor examples of sexism. G'wan, prove me wrong. :)

I'm not sure what you're saying. Are you wanting to think your male friends are like this,or not; is this meant as a hope or a challenge(?)


oh well, how badly can this go?
As an attempt at not getting into unwanted arguements, I'll stick to specifics


responses from male readers telling me that they're not like that

1 - 3 - I'm fairly sure I'm guilt free.

4 - I don't "comment on peoples mood". I do smile at them, directly and with eye contact, and I guess this is the same kind of behaviour. I do this with both sexes though, on the train, bus, street, queue in the supermarket etc.
Maybe I do it more with women, maybe not.
It's certainly not limited to people I find attractive.

5 - *shame* ...... My only words of defence are that I don't do this with strangers, and I tend to get the hints about which of my friends this is acceptable with and which would rather they didn't. Eventually, anyway.


responses from male readers telling me ... that I'm overreacting
No overreaction that I can see. The only reaction to these things from the post are that you wrote this post. How can that be an overreaction?
Ok, you got distressed on the bus. This seems normal. No overreaction.

And for the record, I've never witnessed you overreact to unwanted groping. Seen you react : yes. Overreact : no.


responses from male readers telling me that the above are neither indicative of endemic issues nor examples of sexism.
They are indicative of issues and examples of how people differ in there actions towards different genders. "Endemic" I'd not agree with though. I'd not disagree either, though. Here I sit, on my fence *twiddles thumbs*

[whatifoundthere.livejournal.com]

:: In the meantime I shall await the inevitable responses from male readers telling me that they're not like that...

: I'm not sure what you're saying. Are you wanting to think your male friends are like this,or not; is this meant as a hope or a challenge(?)

I'm not libellum, but I think that if you followed the link to her previous post, it would be pretty clear the answer to your question has nothing to do with either hope or challenge. Whenever I talk about sexism, I dread the inevitable moment when a man pipes up with I'M NOT LIKE THAT! I AM LIBERATED! I AM SENSITIVE! WHY ARE YOU COMPLAINING TO MEEEEEEE?!

libellum said something similar in the post she linked:

This [comment] by sammaelhain struck me as summing it all up pretty well:

"If it's more important for me as a white hetero male to assert how i'm not "like that" than it is for me to shut the fuck up and consider the perspective of someone other than me, then functionally I'd rather have my privilege than work for a more fair society.

So perhaps instead of protesting, and making the conversation all about YOU, it would be more helpful to say, "Shit, libellum, that really sucks, let's see what I as a man can do to help change that environment for women in the city."

[taimatsu]

Doom! Reading this I realise that the last week or two has been remarkably free from sexist crap - then again, I have been doing exams or hiding away in bed with my girlfriend, so I either haven't noticed or haven't been exposed to any.

Tangentially relatedly, I'm going to be spending my summer reading up on feminism, about which I intend to burble on LJ, which is probably going to also involve ranting about sexist crap in general. I'm up for more conversation on the subject, depressing though it can be. I hear what you're saying about anger. I'm wondering how far your ability and perhaps opportunity to shut off or avoid the anger that might otherwise be prompted by the sexism and other kinds of injustice around you ties into the discussion of privilege that you've mentioned and which has been permeating the feminist blogosphere. That was a long sentence.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

I think I've spent large parts of my life in your first paragraph - which is fine for me, but a bit rubbish when it comes to trying to educate people who will only accept personal experience as valid evidence. So I've resolved to start paying attention. As I say in the post, I don't really want to get angrier, so I'll probably keep it to interested observation, and let the emotional effect roll off me as it always has.

I'll be very very interested to read your posts on this :) I need to put aside some time for feminist reading at some point, because EVERYTHING I KNOW (= not much) has been online, and reading some actual theory at some point would probably be useful.

As for your penultimate sentence - yes, indeed. I am privileged to be able to stay not-angry, even if I can't avoid the actual triggers of it. If it was worse, I probably couldn't. Which is why I'm trying to raise awareness, rather than being complacant in my lack-of-anger. I don't know what the answers are, but starting at home seems a sensible first step. And home is obviously livejournal :)

[arachne.livejournal.com]

Fantastic post, worthy of far more comment than I'm capable of giving right now.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the support :)

[lady-illflower.livejournal.com]

I don't have bluetooth myself (I'm too low-tech with my phone), but I've got friends who've had that same experience... lovely... it would seem it's an international phenomenon. -_-

Other than that, yep, I know what you're talking about.

Sometimes one despairs about the state of the world.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

That's very interesting that you've had friends who have had the same experience. I'm the only person I know whom it's happened to, but presumably it happened to other people sitting on the same bus? I've had my phone set to "hidden" since that fourth time - which was enough to demonstrate to my satisfaction that it hadn't just been a one-off - so I haven't had anything since, but it might be interesting to turn it on again, and next time it happened stand up and loudly ask who else on the bus got that pathetic picture? Sadly, I suspect the English would all just ignore me and I'd be left feeling embarrassed as well as victimised.

I don't despair. I know we can't change much quickly. But I do think it's important not to become complacant - to keep talking about things. I'm not a radical and I don't think a complete overhaul of our society is possible. But I do believe in starting small. And since I've been online, feminism has become much more of a hot topic, and the general awareness of the people around me has been much higher. I'm keen for that trend to continue.

[woodavens.livejournal.com]

It's depressing to think that I was on marches about this sort of thing (well, not Bluetooth, which had yet to be invented) in the 1970s, and not nearly enough has changed since then.

My most successful retaliation has been a loud and outraged "HOW DARE YOU!" which drew the attention of passers-by to the creep in question, who melted away as fast as he could.

I'd love to come up with something which was guaranteed not just to get rid of them but to instantly educate them, so they didn't try it on anyone else, but I think that's rather a tall order; at least, I haven't got it yet.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

For a while at fetish clubs I reacted to being groped by wheeling on the bloke in question with as much anger as I could muster, glaring daggers at them, and saying "EXCUSE ME, did you just GROPE ME?" They normally muttered something and slunk off. Occasionally if my boyfriend was within grabbing distance I'd make a big show of getting his attention, pointing at the offending bloke and saying "that wanker just felt me up" as loudly as I could. I haven't started doing it at non-fetish clubs, though. I'm not sure why - I guess because the loved-up feel of a rave is a lot more forgiving of anonymous physical contact, and because a lot of the time I have been wearing outrageously skimpy outfits and therefore feel sort of complicit in the unwanted touching, even if I know that's irrational.

I'm so conflicted on the subject of educating anyone. Strangers I know there's probably no hope, and I don't try, unless we're actually in conversation and I don't feel threatened. Friends - I feel it's worth making the effort, which is why I wrote this post, but if people aren't listening and aren't getting it it's really not my responsibility. I've never been very good at leaving friendships where I feel the other person has misogynistic tendencies, but I have started gradually drifting away from men in my social group who make me feel uncomfortable.

As for educating boyfriends ... Unfortunately, that's much more complicated. :)

[emperor]

I'm dismayed that things like this still keep happening to women :-(

[libellum.livejournal.com]

So are we. :( If you want to help, you might find some of the following resources useful, or at least food for thought? I don't necessarily agree with everything written below, but you don't have to throw up your hands in despair - there are ways you can help. Being sympathetic is a very good start, though - thankyou :)

Being a feminist boyfriend (http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2008/04/11/feministe-feedback-being-a-feminist-boyfriend/) (there's more on the same topic here (http://threeriversfog.blogspot.com/2008/04/how-to-be-feminist-boyfriend.html)
Men in Feminism (http://www.thefword.org.uk/features/2003/05/men_in_feminism) at the F-word
Feminist resources for men (http://www.menstuff.org/resources/resourcefiles/femenist.html)

[smhwpf.livejournal.com]

Excellent post. Although I should know it, I still manage most of the time to (because I have that option) remain blithely unaware of just how sodding ubiquitous and unrelenting this sort of shit is. That Bluetooth thing is just... gyeaaagghh.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the support. :) I'm equally blithely unaware of the experiences most people of colour have to put up with on a daily basis in this country. I still think being an ally is possible - and I do think it's particularly possible when it comes to gender activism, although perhaps that's just because I know more about it than other issues.

Politically I don't know what the answers are. But on a personal level, talking about it and being listened to definitely helps :)

[hythloday.livejournal.com]

I've spent the last - ooh, 5 hours - reading and re-reading this post. I think that the idea behind it is excellent, and I really sympathise with your experiences, and the other ones you must have heard of or experienced that prompted you to make this.

I have to ask, though, why you presented it in such an inflammatory way? I'm thinking partly of the last paragraph, which lets the whole thing down, but also of the underlying assumption that what you're seeing is sexism rather than "man's inhumanity to man" (ambiguity intended) - as I can assure you that at least 2-5 have happened to me.

Having not wanted to be That Guy, I was intending not to write this comment, and perhaps even to talk with you about it face to face! so as not to derail your post, which I don't want to do, until I read "I feel it's worth making the effort [with friends], which is why I wrote this post". Hopefully that's what I come off as doing.

[whatifoundthere.livejournal.com]

Pardon me for butting in. With all due respect, I see your argument in this comment as just one step away from "Men get raped too!" This sort of co-opting of the argument is exactly what synecdochic talks about when she asks people not to be That Guy.

It's terrible that the things that happen to women all the time also happen to men sometimes. One male rape victim, or even one man harassed for not smiling enough, is one too many. But libellum's post is about sexism; it's about the fact that women are special targets for certain kinds of treatment, and that the invisible assumption is in place at all times that we can be treated that way. (I told a story in my own journal just a few days ago about loudly being called "uptight" because I wouldn't let a drunk stranger on the train hug me. THIS IS PAR FOR THE COURSE. This is not one isolated weird incident; it's what life is like for women who happen to be on trains with drunks.)

Claiming that this isn't about women but about "all people" is disingenuous at best.

[thene]

Women are not meant to treat food as fuel: a woman eating in the street is making a public display of herself that invites comment. It is a sensual display that draws attention to her body and figure.

Another classics postgrad I know once told me that one thing she'd taken from her studies was that misogyny began with the belly, with women being expected to starve themselves while men ate in times of famine.

[fellcat.livejournal.com]

Women are expected to starve themselves now if they have a dress size bigger than size zero. In the eyes of patriarchists, a woman eating in public is inviting comments about her weight and figure.

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

Making a fuss - or rather, the calm, cold and cutting response that shows that you haven't been 'needled' or 'lost it' is the right and necessary response to verbal harassment. The repeated experience of effective disapproval is the only thing that'll stop men doing it.

The Bluetooth prick shot is revolting but predictable. Regrettably, it is untraceable - your only responses are to keep Bluetooth switched off, ignore it, or broadcast a suitable reply. Anatomically-explicit photographs of monkeys and their lamentably undersized genitalia are one possible source: if you have a strong stomach, seek out some of the more explicit genital mutilations highlighted by Warren Ellis under the tagline 'Conan! What is Best In Life?' (http://www.warrenellis.com/index.php?s=Conan) Be warned that some of this material is disturbing. I'm sure you're aware that media messages by mobile - GPRS rather than Bluetooth - are throroughly traceable and the minimum result of forwarding the message to the abusive caller hotline or customer services will be deactivation of the pervert's Pay-As-You-Go SIM and all the credit on it.

Unwanted physical contact is an assault, and a sexual assault at that; break his finger - yes, you're strong enough - and grind the bones 'til the screaming stops. "He kept on groping me, I tried to prise his hand off and he kept on doing it even after I felt it break" will stand up in court - and he'd be a fool to prosecute because it means admitting to a sexual offence. A degree of confidence in the use of violence is necessary but I can assure you that this can be acquired by supervised practice. Yes, I would like to think that there is a more civilised way of re-educating gropers but these individuals have gone a very, very long way down the path to being violent predators on women, and mere admonishment might even be seen as affirmation.

[robert-jones.livejournal.com]

"He kept on groping me, I tried to prise his hand off and he kept on doing it even after I felt it break" will stand up in court

It might, if it were true, but that wasn't the scenario you described, and I think the jury would have a hard time swallowing the line. Also, prosecutions are brought by the Crown: it's not a matter for the victim. In any case, he could argue that the contact was accidental, and then libellum broke his finger. Groping is easy to deny; a broken finger is not.

In fine, while I can see the attraction of this response, I think it unwise.

[tim-skellington.livejournal.com]

I think i thoroughly agree with you that sexism is alive an well in the world at large but also that all sexism is not necessarily considered taaboo. Women who expect or simply like to have men to open doors for them are promoting it. Personally, i enjoy open the door for a woman but then i grew up in a household full of women and learned at a young age that my place was to stay quiet, open doors, carry things and if at all possible to be the one that pays for them as well. These are all things i was taught by the women in my life, not the men.

Having said that, i think a lot of what you say above is very valid. The eating in the street thing s just creepy but then i am not that fond of eating while walking anyway - men or women.

Sending pictures of your erection to random strangers is just tacky and i can totally understand why you perceived it in the way you did and why you felt like that. Mind you it is as likely to be some teenage idiot trying to prove he is a big man (no pun intended) as it is something more sinister - not that that excuses the situation in the slightest.

The other thing i agree with you about is the whole "give us a smile darlin'" thing. I know it happens massively more to women than men and more to children than men but i wonder if it is more because men are more likely to tell someone to fuck off if they get aksed that by another man? Although being Lithuanian-Irish I spent most of my teenage years getting stopped in the street by the elderly and told "you look terribly pale dear, are you alright?" While i can agree with the label od sexist for the way this sort of thing happens these days, is it because as a society we are less interested in how a stranger on the street is feeling and rather than it being a carry over from a period of genuine respect for people, it is now only "comfortable" for men to do it to women?

Anyway those are my random thoughts for first thing in the morning :)

[adjectivegail]

Re the groping thing. Best suggestion I ever heard was to grab the offending hand and hold it high in the air. Ask "Whose hand is this?" in a loud voice. "I found it on my breasts/bum/etc and I know I didn't put it there!"

Not sure it'd work so well in a club but in general in public, particularly on public transport, I think it might. I think there's enough general social awareness these days to make it work.

[vardebedian.livejournal.com]

In the meantime I shall await the inevitable responses from male readers telling me that they're not like that

Don't be silly - of course I'm like that. I used to thing it was wrong and weird to be like that, but the more I read the more it seems that's normal and I shouldn't worry about it.

I might be joking. I'm not sure.

[fayroberts.livejournal.com]

There are so, so, so, so, so many otherwise enlightened, clever, sympathetic, well-intentioned men out there who a) are convinced that there is not significantly more female-negative sexism than male-negative sexism, b) don't think that they act in a negative (i.e. harmfully) sexist manner themselves.

In fact, it mainly seems to be otherwise intelligent, sensitive, etc. men that I find the worst - almost as if they assume that their intelligence, sensitivity, etc., protect them from that because they, you know, know stuff, and they don't see sexism.

Of course you don't see sexism - you're not immediately judged as less worthy in a whole range of ways (by both men and other women, incidentally) as soon as it's clear you have breasts.

It's true that men have a more complex time of it now, and balancing biological urges and reflexes with societal expectations and mores has possibly never been so difficult for men. I sympathise with men who complain (and how they do!) about this - it really can't be easy. However, women are facing similar problems (we have to be pretty, yet clever; and work hard and be properly ambitious, yet be mothers; and be in tune with our bodies, yet erase all evidence that being female can be incredibly messy and inconvenient at times; and enjoy a good sex drive, yet erase also much of the inconvenient evidence that we're sexually mature beings in the form of any bodily hair, for instance, below the eyelash line; and etc. etc.) while at the same time still dealing with the left-over woman's-body-as-male-possession thing and the fear that comes from the omnipresent litany of thought about being less physically strong, in general ("if he decides to hurt me, I'll be hurt, and damaged, and no use any more; I should be grateful that at least he isn't hurting me...") than men.

I've been told on my journal, recently, that homophobia isn't a problem anymore because laws exist about it now. I am bowled over by this one. Just because there are laws that make it slightly harder to fire someone for being non-male/white/straight/able-bodied/non-typical age group, doesn't mean that sexism, racism, homophobia and ableism don't exist, or that, for instance, it's harder to get the jobs in the first place...

/rant - sorry, diversion. Where were we...? Casual sexism. Oh yes.

So - here's another little thing for your list: use of the word 'love'.

I grew up in South Wales, and I'm used to people calling me love (flower, petal, bach, cariad, lovely, etc.). Men call women love, women call men love... it's a thing. But... here [south-east England] it's different. And again I've heard this from the intelligent, midle-class, sensitive blokes who, when they really want to put a women in her place, put as much spin and invective on that one little word, bringing her down to the size of tiny, weak thing reaching beyond her grasp or status. A [straight?] man wouldn't call another man 'love' in that same way. "I know you think you know what you're talking about, love, but..." And again it's another one of those post-bullying things where, writing it down, it looks so stupid, and not something to complain about at all, but right there in the moment of non-verbal hooks and hang-ons, one tiny word, which should rightwise be a happy, beautiful word, gets subverted into another weight to drag a woman down off her step.

Sorry for the ramble - I get angry about these things (then get accused of talking irrationally about something that's an emotive subject... which is kind of the point, isn't it? that we're trying to tell someone how it feels in this skin...).

Good post - please, keep them up, because I'd be very interested in tracking this debate. May I link?

[numberland.livejournal.com]

Several incidents come to mind for me:

(1) When I started uni I was paired with the only other women in the college yeargroup automatically it seemed. This was ridiculous as I was clearly at the top of the year group and she at the bottom. Unfortunatly I had just become ill and didn't have the energy to fight it heavily. I did eventually get it swapped but only after several requests. I do know for a fact that there was no other reason for the pairing and that some of the supervisors had commented that it wasn't working. I would spend 90% of my supervision time waiting while stuff that was trivial to me was explained.

I am pretty sure that if it wasn't for this I would have got a 1st rather than a 2:1 in my first year and maybe even been able to continue rather then intermitt.

For reference this occured in 2000/2001 but has reoccured since then in 05/06 (I think).

(2) This is something that I have only experienced in a small way but I've spoken to others who have experienced it a lot. Certain supervisors if given a male and female student will try and teach the male student and ignore the female. They will also treat a female pairing in a going through the questions and just giving the answers by rote regardless of whether the students had done the question correctly and often not responding to questions.

While (2) is a small reason for (1) I'm sorry but if you are aware of the issues then you should be disciplining the supervisor in question or finding another supervisor for the female students. And even if this is the only solution for 1 supervisor you shouldn't force the pairing for all subjects.

So now for a few less dire ones...

(3) When dealing with diy and people coming in to work on the house or volunteering to help out with electronics at a railway men generally try to talk to Chris and not me. This is frustrating as I am far, far more competent in this area. If they just did it once it would be offensive but not direly so but often they continue regardless of the fact that I am the one responding and even if I've asked them to talk to me. I think I even had to ask Chris to leave the room one time so I could actually get them to talk to me.

I understand there is a bias here and guessing that it is probably the man in charge is understandable if still a problem. Continuing to do so when it is clear it is not the case is offensive in the extreme.

I manage almost everything to do with the house and I do not want to waste time trying to get people to talk to me.

(4) When we applied for the mortgage even though the form was filled in with me as the first name and asked for communication to go to me they changed it to have Chris as the first name and sent stuff to him. Again a boldy waste of my time.

I think that these examples show a side to the discrimination that many, many people this is long gone.

As someone who is moderately disabled (I sometimes us a wheelchair) and poly amoung other things I have been discrimated in in many other ways but I think though people are aware of discrimination against disabled people (in the sense of how people react etc rather then access which is boldy fantastic atm) they think that sex discrimination is a thing of the past. Well it isn't.

We have laws that prevent many of the overt forms of discrimination that used to happen but people still treat you very differently where that does not apply.

Sorry if that's somewhat of a brain dump - I am somewhat sleep deprived.

[denari.livejournal.com]

I feel compelled to comment on these points, even though I agree that they are problems. These things that you state are offensive behavior but I disagree that they are sexism. In order for them to be sexism, they would have to happen only to women.

1: I've had a man in the street comment on me drinking a milkshake through a straw. Comment "You're sucking hard on that laddie, must be good!"

2: This isn't sexism unless your phone ID is labelled something intrinsically female, as he's sending it to any device without knowing who it is. It's unsolicited exhibitionism basically.

3: This is a valid problem from what I've heard from various friends. I would add that I have heard shouting in the street before that I thought were directed at me, when in fact they weren't. But yeah I can see that would be annoying.

4: Again, I've had these comments before.

5: I've also been touched up in clubs in various forms. I'm sure is much less than girls though although every time I've been clubbing someone will trail their fingers over me as they go past. But yeah, not a lot that you can do apart from experiement with effects different clothes have. Interestingly, my sister and her friends played a game in their circle of friends. The men played titty tennis and the women played cock cricket. I'll leave you to figure out how to play :P