the ubiquity of sexual harassment

[helenic]

I should know better than to open up this can of worms again on LJ, but there are two really worthwhile discussions going on which you should read:

On rape and men by cereta, challenging the non-sexist or non-sexist-identified men who always protest that "not all men are like that" to stop telling women they're wrong about their own experiences, and start actually challenging sexism where they encounter it.

You're the guy who would never rape a girl passed out on your bed (who, for that matter, knows that such an act would be rape), or the woman in the village your battalion/troop/whatever is overrunning. You're the guy who wouldn't do such a thing even when his buddies were heckling him, telling him he's a fag and a pussy if he doesn't. Even more, you're the guy who would stop his frat brother from raping that girl, and get her home. You're the guy who would stop his comrades, or at least report them.

Now, here's my question: where the fuck are you?

It's a challenging post, and the thread is full of heart-warming stories of men who didn't rape someone, which didn't particularly surprise me. I know an awful lot of men who are prepared to be decent when in a situation with a drunk or vulnerable woman; who will not only fail to rape her, but will look after her and make sure she gets home okay. That's not really the issue, for me. The issue is that I also know an awful lot of men who aren't prepared to be decent in those situations, and most of my friends have been raped or sexually assaulted once or multiple times, because no-one is prepared to challenge the sexist fuckwits. To tell them to shut up when they make rape jokes. To get them to chill out when they're drunk and yelling at strange women. To tell them to their face that they were out of order when they groped a woman in a club, or pestered someone for sex after they'd already said no, or carried on messing around with her after she passed out.

Before you join in the next conversation about rape protesting that "not all men are like that", think about how much you've done lately to challenge the idea that men are entitled to look at/comment on/touch/fuck women's bodies and if the woman objects or resists she's a stuck-up bitch; as cereta put it, "the idea that if a woman is not actively preventing a man from sticking his penis into her (and even then, if she's an enemy), he is doing nothing wrong, and hey, who can blame him?"

The second post I want to point you at is Perusing Penises in the Park (no, seriously) and some street harassment stories, khalinche's response to cereta. This is not so much about sexual violence or living in fear of rape, but the ubiquity of sexual harassment, especially if you live in the city:

I suppose the point of this long, long post is to do what I always try to do - tell a story. Today it's the story of what it's like to live with the constant possibility of having your appearance or person commented on, loudly, by strangers, and of being on your guard many times a day. It is not about my fear of being raped, because that doesn't figure in my life as much as in those of some of the commentators at the linked post. It is about men feeling that they have a right to talk and shout to me about what they want to do and what they think of my body. It is about trying to get through to the men who don't do this quite how common it is and how it affects the lives of most women.

I had limited success expressing this a year ago; and the number of men who told me then that I was wrong, that this was nothing to do with gender, that if I'd only been more sensible I could have avoided it, only proves how necessary this conversation continues to be. khalinche's post is excellent, and deserves a wide audience.

Edit: Talking about this in IRC, I ended uo looking up this post by Kate Harding, which has a lot of practical suggestions on how men who aren't like that can act to confront harassment and sexism where they encounter it, and why it's important that they do.

Comments

[nanaya]

I thought a sizeable number of the comments to your post last year were extremely blinkered, because I'm not sure how much more "reasonable" you could have made your presentation of the subject.

That said, I've read both the posts and they are excellent, but I'm very glad you've linked to them again.

[helenic]

Thankyou for the reassurance! I think khalinche had it spot on with "the discrepancy of lived experience".

[nanaya]

It's an excellent phrase, and one I may well keep for future use.

[khalinche]

Thank you for the link, and for the compliment, and for having the energy to continue the discussion! But it is on lj, not dreamwidth. People directed to my dreamwidth will get a blank page and a list of thesis-related tags.

[helenic]

Ah, I forgot to include the actual link. Fixed, thankyou!

How do I link to LJ users from DW then? I thought <lj user=""> linked to LJ, and <user name> linked to DW; have I got it wrong?

[khalinche]

What a silly title I gave that post. I wonder if anyone has spotted the Tom Lehrer reference?

[helenic]

Of course, that's why the cadence was familiar! Hahaha, awesome :)

[nanaya]

It's a FANTASTIC title!

[helenic]

Ah, apparently I should be using <user name="khalinche" site="livejournal.com">. At least I know now :)

[kerrypolka]

I still get so angry whenever I remember some of the responses you got to that post that I can't even go look at it. I just remember that I thought it was a brilliantly well-written, well-argued post and that I came out of the comments wanting to punch about twenty-five people in the face.

So, uh, well done on not punching anybody.

[biascut]

Ditto! There are still a few names I see around and think, Oh, I remember you...

[bard]

With me it's as much a job thing as a personal thing. Professionally, I've been an access security officer (bouncer to normal people) and am currently a pub landlord. In both jobs, one of the things you do is have a word with someone who is exhibiting sexist, racist or other harrassments; my pub's quite nice, so it comes up maybe two or three times a month.

Privately, it's more rare; partly because I have the instincts of a bouncer but on the Underground, I don't have the legal mandate of one. Most recently, for example, I was involved in a fracas at Leicester Square station. A man was having a domestic with his girlfriend. A white woman suddenly involved herself, shouting at the man (who she thought had said, to her, "Move, you stupid effing bitch"). He claimed he'd been talking to his girlfriend.

Point one: that doesn't make it ok.
Point two: it does mean I can't really do anything about it, because in the eyes of the law, if I did, I'd be in the wrong.
Point three: that kinda sucks.

When the white woman kept hassling him, he started getting aggressive back. Eventually, she shoved him, he raised his hand, I grabbed it, put him in Wristlock 3 and folded his knee so that he dropped from standing to kneeling. I then suggested that violence was not the answer and asked the woman who was shouting at him to kindly fuck off. She did. His girlfriend had already evaporated to outside the barriers: I suggested to him that picking a fight with me would be a mistake, he fumed off and that was all there was to it.

Should I have involved myself when he was arguing with his girlfriend? Hmmm. Probably not due to lack of context and supporting data. Should I have stopped the third party from harrassing him? Hmmm. Possibly. Should I have stopped him hitting her, even though she started the physical confrontation? Absolutely.

[sinsense]

I could not agree with this comment more. I actually shook my laptop screen at one point.

[kerrypolka]

I just remember yelling "Oh, FUCK YOU" at my screen a lot and sitting on my hands.

[emperor]

I approach this subject with a little trepidation, because I don't want to piss anyone off. I think sexual harassment is shit, and I'm sorry that women are exposed to it. I'm fortunate that the circles I move in don't on the whole accept sexist crap in conversation; I think I'm at least not-bad at confronting it when I see it, but the fact I don't recall it happening very much makes me worry a little I'm missing it. I'll try and pay a bit more active attention to the subject, and see if I have been.

[helenic]

...Which is about the best anyone can hope for, really?

I think people's drama filters are responsible for more of this shit than any inherent sexism. Like, okay, the Kate Harding post about women getting hassle and misogynistic comments online for Writing While Female (esp While Female And Brown, or While Talking About Sexism) and sure, the silence of the many allows this behaviour to continue to be acceptable. But who, honestly, has time to plunge around the internet debunking every offensive or stupid comment they see?

There are rapists who know that what they're doing is wrong, and telling them so won't help, although it might get you punched. And there are rapists who honestly didn't think there was anything wrong with what they did, because consent is a big huge messy grey area. But even if you know that something happened, how can you confront them? I wouldn't want to. Is it reasonable to ask a guy to?

So, I think this is more about the low-level stuff, and working up from there: like, there are certain assumptions about how it's appropriate to talk and think about women's bodies which surface in all sorts of contexts, and they support and validate the culture that makes rape acceptable. Which is the sort of thing feminists try to challenge whenever they encounter them, in the office or the pub or wherever, and while I see guys helping me out sometimes and telling people they're being offensive and unfunny, it's nowhere near as common as guys claiming "they're not like that". It seems to me that it would be helpful if that was the other way round.

[wildeabandon]

I think trying to pay more attention and confront things when you see them is a good start.

And on that note, there's a meme, which I've occasionally noticed you participating in, of jokingly referring to "surprise buttsex", as though it were funny. And I've not ever said anything, because it's just a joke and I'm feeling pretty uncomfortable even saying this here. But it's not funny, and I wish you wouldn't.

[helenic]

If that's directed at me, then fair enough, and I'm sorry for upsetting you. There's a whole pile of consent-related in-jokes among the geeky London crowd which I participate in, but which aren't comfortable, and aren't really funny enough to be worth perpetuating at the risk of offending people. Sorry.

Even if your comment wasn't directed at me, I should pay attention, because it's a joke I've propagated/laughed at in the past, and there are other worse ones. I've found them less funny lately, but the "surprise!" one is hard to shift. I'll be over here in the pile of broken glass.

[biascut]

Oh, I am so with you on the "surprise buttsex" thing. I haven't come across it in any of my immediate social network, but it's about two degrees away, and every now and then I see it and think - how is that a joke? Am I the only person for whom that is not separate from non-consensual sex?

I don't like "butthurt" as an adjective for people being pissed off, either. It seems to come from the same place.

[emperor]

That's a fair point; sorry.

[thene]

I read that first link last week; Kiya pointed out that some of the responses to it are troubling to her.

[helenic]

Really good article: thankyou. I hadn't got that deep into the comments but the "all men are potential rapists" thing is tricky. I can see how you get there, but I don't think it's helpful, any more than lesbian separatism is helpful.

I'm not comfortable making this all men's problem either, but I think it's necessary to get some men to start thinking of it as being their problem, and they are often the same men as the one who disrupt conversations about rape or assault or harassment to make it all about them. Of course this isn't all about what men to do women, and it's not solely up to men to stop it. I don't think any of the people I know who most need to read the two posts I linked are going to; and the ones who don't need to read it are going to feel defensive. Does that mean it's not worth trying?

[kerrypolka]

I love, love, love the point that cereta made in comments (in comments, I think?) that one has, effectively, two options:

a. working actively toward fixing sexism (and racism and all the other isms)
b. not doing this (and therefore passively contribute to -ist society)

Turning up and saying, "but I haven't done anything horrible!", that isn't enough. You are still doing (b) and therefore acting harmfully. If you want cookies you are going to have to work for them, because what is perceived as "not doing anything" is still maintaining the status quo, and the status quo is fucked.

[sevenhelz]

Thankyou for the link. I'm happy to hear Trinity's voice again, as well as the main post.

[sevenhelz]

Thankyou for this. I first saw the link in the backupproject community, then you and lightcastle both posted it. I'll link it myself when I've got something to say, or when I decide I haven't.
Much love
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