Sadie, one of my favorite writers on Jezebel, had a post today called “When the Nice Guy Down the Street Makes You Uncomfortable.”
I thought I’d share it here because I think a lot about nice guys making me uncomfortable, and it’s a huge hot-button issue on Jez. We all know that the public world is inhospitable when it comes to women’s privacy. Like most women, I get a lot of unwanted attention from men, even in my super-small hometown of 20,000: catcalls, honks, weird semi-come-ons from guys I’m talking to in the park or on the train. Sometimes the shouts are about my boobs, sometimes they’re about my skin color, and sometimes they’re just cause I’m female. Even when I had my head shaved to the bone, multiple guys yelled out lasciviously, “Hey, Sinead O’Connor!”. Like a whole lot of women, I’ve also been the victim of a train wanker.
But Sadie’s post is about the subtler liberties that men take when women are friendly, or polite, or even just interacting—when guys take your courtesy as an invitation to flirt or give you unwanted attention. Sadie mentions her friend who’s creeped out by the guy at the deli, who always notices when she’s not in for a while, and tells her to smile more (which a lot of women hear from a lot of men). Jez commenters follow up with a host of examples of this kind of interaction: a tallchanging deli guy who handed a customer his phone number on a $50 bill, a co-worker who sent a commenter a love letter after she asked how he was, bagel guys who hoot and holler as you approach their bagel stand and tailor their comments to your expression. As Sadie writes,
It can be hard to explain the complexity of a dynamic in which you just feel slightly intruded upon: in a word, uncomfortable. I’ve stopped going to delis and stores because of things like this; once or twice I even asked a male friend to go in with me which, sadly, always seems to put an end to it. In none of these cases was the guy in question rude or vulgar or even predatory — it’s not like having to brush off a creep at a bar or something — but there was always an excessive interest and a certain lack of boundaries probably only women are aware of. An insinuating look, an overly-long glance, a significant smile can be enough to make a trip to the store a daily ordeal.
At the most superficial level, it’s kind of comforting to know there are people whose minds retain you and your idiosyncracies permanently, but on a thinking level, it’s weird, invasive, and a little disturbing. Why do we have to be sex objects even when we’re getting our air conditioner fixed or handing in a report?
To be on the receiving end of that subconscious power trip is horrible no matter what the context, but the insidious inroads it makes into the minutiae of women’s daily lives are really upsetting. In my own experience, guys don’t understand this stuff. Even the guys I told about the asshole jerkin’ it on the train didn’t really get it—boys who had been writing essays about Susan B. Anthony, Margaret Sanger, and Harriet Tubman since grade school.
I do know women who don’t care about this kind of stuff, but it strikes me as especially bad that men don’t get it. Of course the notion that male support legitimizes women’s feelings, which controls our politics and our media, is wrong, wrong, wrong. What worries me is that guys don’t notice the logic of “You should smile more.” It’s the logic of possession, the underpinning of the entire patriarchy, infiltrating our everyday lives, and our relationships with men we thought we could trust, people we thought were allies in our fight. It seems pretty clear that men think women are always available to comment on, compliment, and control. How can we draw their attention to how fucked-up that logic is?
The Jez commenters have also unintentionally created a database of fabulous things to say to assholes. Check it out.
EDIT:
I’d like to add that it worries me not just that men don’t get this, but that anyone doesn’t. This post is not about simple flirting. Flirting is something different from the interactions we’re discussing—it’s not disguised as friendship; it doesn’t presume intimacy or the desire for it, it expresses a hope for it; and your reaction has the ability to make the flirter stop. We’re talking about when someone continues acting like there’s the potential for something more than a random or friendly interaction, when you don’t reciprocate at anywhere near the same level. It’s like no matter what you think of the situation, they still think you’re attainable—they still think they can acquire you. It worries me that anybody, M, F, or Otherwise, doesn’t consider the non-flirt a little intrusive. At the risk of offending women who don’t mind the non-flirt and echoing Catherine MacKinnon, someone I consider pretty paternalistic for a feminist, it seems like if this kind of stuff doesn’t bother you, you’re not paying attention to what you as a person deserve: privacy.
THANK YOU! i fucking hate fucking assholes who think they can say whatever the fuck they want to me. it makes me want to burrow into a hole and never come out again.
btw your post title was beyond hilarious and your captioned picture was beyond beyond hilarious
ahahahha, nice title. I’ve definitely felt this pressure all my life. Often from my dad, actually. He’d ask me for a kiss or a hug or tell me to smile and when I didn’t he’d threaten to not make dinner or something. I was always really creeped out by it. Because of this, I sort of constantly lived in disgust of my dad because I felt like he was forcing his affection on me. He never did anything more gross than that, but it really made me uncomfortable with our relationship. Combined with the fact that he stared at me a lot.
I think part of the reason why I enjoy dressing like a boy and keeping the contours of my body off display is so that people have less reason to gawk at me. The male gaze, via my father mostly, has followed me my whole life. So I have done my best to repel it.
I don’t get too much trouble with flirtatious men anymore; one of the many benefits of looking like a lesbian =). However, I’m still a victim of people thinking they can tousle my hair, pinch my cheeks, or yank my tie because I am a little, cute person. Why does my cuteness make others feel that they have ownership of my body?
And just so I can get some male gaze off my chest.
It also made me really uncomfortable when my dad would say something like, “Whoa, wait, come here let me see your eyes. Man! Some guy is going to FALL IN LOVE with those eyes.” First of all, I hate physical compliments to this day probably because of that. Second of all, HETERONORMATIVE. Third of all, I hate how beauty is all about my eventual presentation to some boy.
I want to go live in a community of women-loving women and see what happens.
Lol ben, if you get everyone to agree I’m down. LOL, although gender agenda seems to sound a bit more professional, YBSMHIIKYITBM has a bit more umfph to it. LOL.
And snacks, I toads feel you here. I mean like the guy at rocky’s with the red hair who does that creepy let me stroke your hand while I give you your change thing?! what the hell is that?
Recently I had dinner with a family friend and he told me in this creepy way how beautiful I am. And it’s like what is that about? I doubt he really meant much by it. He just assumed that since I’m a woman I would enjoy hearing how sexy I am even to a man over 50. Yeah, no thanks. I would never tell my uncle how beautiful he is, and so he shouldn’t tell me the same.
On the one hand these things seem like no big deal. They happen every day, and well life goes on. But on the other hand it’s like this constant reminder of power. A constant reminder of what my skirt is really saying. It isn’t saying I like skirts, it’s saying that he (whoever he is) likes to look at it. Tiny remarks and things become a symbolic ownership of everything my body is, says, or does. Fuck that.
Anyway, I feel you.
One more reason to change Gender Agenda to this is that there is already another gender agenda: http://pwc.blogs.com/gender_agenda/. I think maybe it sounds shcway professional.
also there is “thegenderagenda.wordpress.com” competing (not really at all) with us. but i like our name. i also support changing our name to ybsmhiikyitbm lol. i vote yes. but i think the URL might have to stay the same, yeah?
your comments are moderated? you won’t even engage in OPEN DIALOGUE? welcome to privileged fascist white girl vibrator town
lol pt 2,
there isn’t a fascist element to comment moderation. it’s to keep comments that are just plain offensive aren’t allowed. open discussion is encouraged, but just being ridiculous isn’t. also, its really annoying for you to assume every author on this blog is a white girl.
dear lol pt 2,
I’m interested to know what vibrators have to do with comment moderation, white girls, and fascists.
We have no girls here at gender agenda. Everyone here is old enough to be considered a woman or a man, or best yet an adult.
and as Royce has said, we’re not all white, so maybe you should stop assuming who we are.
Also I don’t believe we’ve really restricted your voice here by preventing threats to be posted under our own entries. If you really would like to speak your mind, and feel that here is not the best place to do it, I encourage you to create your own blog. this space is our own, hatred will not be tolerated.
lol pt 2:
whatever the hell you said makes no sense.
[…] a few blog posts got me thinking about this, and it’s something I’ve seen mentioned on Feministing […]
I like the way your title incites violence towards the opposite sex.
If I wrote an article entitled “you would be so much hotter if I punched you in the tits more” then I am sure that you would comment about how sexist it is, how it encourages domestic violence regardless of the content of the article.
This is the main reason why feminism doesn’t take off. The hypocracy and the double standards. Feminism (and male chauvinism) get in the way of equaliy….
Ben, I’m so sorry you feel threatened by the title, and I’m sorry you have to make this about me and feminism.
There’s no disconnect between the choice I made for this post’s title and my hypothetical anger at “You’d be so much hotter if I punched you in the tits more.” It’s disingenuous of you to suggest that an exasperated play on a common catcall is anywhere near as disturbing as an evocation of partner assault & battery, whose perpetrators are mostly male. There is not an army of women going around smacking up catcallers for pissing them off, and there never will be. There is an army of men (and women) hurting their partners for pissing them off. And finally…lighten up! Can’t you humorless patriarchalists take a joke?
The reason why feminism doesn’t take off…with who? Men? We’ve actually been going strong for about a hundred years, thanks. Believe it or not, it’s about keeping and reclaiming our power, not persuading you to agree with us and help us. Shocking, right? And honestly, when the hell did hypocrisy and double standards stop an idea from becoming popular? See: our entire culture.
On Christmas Eve I took a statutory form across town to another solicitor’s office to swear it. I’d been there a few times and we’d exchanged a few pleasantries but he was basically a stranger. Anyway we went into his office, did the swear, we both signed the form, and as I stood up to leave this fellow professional who I don’t know in a formal setting, leaned over and kissed me on the cheek right next to my mouth and said “have a good Christmas” – and as he said it, he pressed the £5 swear fee back into my hand! I’ve flatly refused to go back there even though my boss thinks I’m being ridiculous.
Thanks, Amanda. That’s fucked up and completely inappropriate – what an asshole. What did he think he was going to get from you, a fellow professional, for a fiver and a creepy kiss? I mean, you probably make at least three times that an hour, right? So fucking presumptuous and demeaning.
I’ve been dealing with some sexual harassment at work too. I hate that I’m just supposed to be completely open to my co-workers for sexual evaluation and insinuations, by virtue of being a girl, and nobody really examines it unless it’s really brazen and overt. Thanks for sharing, and I hope you can set your boss straight.