Question about the behavior of young women on buses [edited title]

In My Humble Opinion
101

I wouldn’t object to either. However, I probably would interact differently with the young lady than the young guy. If the young lady strikes up a conversation with me, I’m much more likely to reciprocate. If the young lady asks me casually whereabouts do I live, I’m more likely to tell her the truth rather than a lie. I’m not going to ignore the guy or be unfriendly towards him. But I’m probably not going to regale him with my wit or compliment him on his tie or tell him where I live. Because no matter what transpires between us, the girl is likely to get out at her stop and bid me a good night, while the guy is more likely to want my number. He might be a perfectly nice guy and he might be perfectly reasonable when I tell him I don’t give out my number. But I’d like to avoid that awkwardness all together.

I do this because gender is closely related to sexuality, and sexual cues are coded in our behaviors. I once made the mistake of treating men and women the same way. My reward was a psycho stalker. So I’ve learned my lesson. I refuse to send “mixed messages” again.

Like car pooling? I might have a preference for the woman simply because if we’re going to be stuck in the car together a lot, I’m going to go with the person I have the most in common with. Since we’re both women (and of course, what she has in her profile will help me to decide if this is an accurate assumption).

Something like Uber? It depends on what their reviews say. If the reviews say “This guy is great!” and “This woman is a bitch!” then my decision will be easy.

Any one who says they make “evenly random” choices is delusional. No one in this thread has said that outside of the bus-seating preference, they don’t ever discriminate against men. I know I haven’t made that claim.

Since we’re pointing to income ramifications, I’ve got a question for you. You’ve got two teenaged babysitters who are soliciting your business. One is a 17-year-old boy. One is a 17-year-old girl. The teens are both inexperienced outside of caring for younger siblings. Their references are pretty similar. They both seem equally capable. You’ve got a two-year-old and a five-year-old, both girls. Who do you pick? If a parent decides to go with the girl just because it makes the situation less complicated, should they lower their heads in shame for discriminating against the poor boy and denying him of income?

Well, no. It’s not. The cabbie who doesn’t pick up black people (it’s not just black men who get discriminated this way) does so because they fear for their lives. The woman who chooses to sit next to a woman over a guy does so because they don’t want to send a sexual signal to those who are susceptible to reading a sexual signal in every action. A white person who avoids being too friendly with random black people likely has racist beliefs. A woman who avoids being too friendly with random guys is not necessarily sexist. She may just recognize that friendliness has another dimension within the female-male dynamic.

Your shout-out to race falls apart when we consider that most women are emotionally and physically intimate with guys. Most white people are not intimate with black people–especially racist white people. Which says to me that bus-seating prejudice is of little “real world” consequence as far as meaningful interactions go. Moreover, women being wary of guys on a city bus doesn’t result in guys being denied job interviews or job promotions en mass…since being perceived as a sexual pursuer is not linked to poor job performance. However, black people are denied job interviews and promotions because they are perceived as being incompetent and untrustworthy. This is why they are discriminated against, in addition to sexual stereotypes.

The kind of female wariness-discrimination that we’re talking about is found in every society, throughout history, and yet men are still running the world. If avoiding sitting next to guys on a city bus is a problem for male advancement, it appears to be a very tiny problem.

102

As it is, I am a single young woman who regularly uses public transportation, mass transit, and taxis in a country where sexism is rampant. And yes, I do discriminate. Let me explain thus:

What is considered a “taxi” or “cab” are cars that run under semi-specific routes. They can drop you off at any point around or nearby their main route, but they won’t stray too much from their turf. You take them at specific stops, usually marked (sometimes not). These are also shared services, meaning the cabbie will try to fill the car (usually 4 passengers) before doing its ride. Also, there are two types of cabbies: official taxis have their plates start with an H. But because there is more demand than supply, many private car owners occasionally use their own cars as taxis to make some extra money. Those unofficial taxis have the same plates as common John Doe, and those start with P.

I have to take the taxi at least 2-3 times a week. IF the plate starts with an H (meaning it is an official taxi), I don’t care who is the driver, I just want to get the first one that leaves to my destination. Hence, I do not care if it is male or female driver. I also do not care if the other passengers are male or not.

IF there are only P (unofficial) taxi drivers around, sometimes I wait and wait and wait for an official one. Because I won’t get into a car alone with a P taxi driver. Only two exceptions to that rule:

  • If the other passengers are all women, or if I’m travelling with company. I am not alone, and if the other passengers are all women going to the same destination, then there is some safety in numbers.

  • If the driver of the P taxi is a woman, then I will take it.

Is it unreasonable? I think not. Again, I live in a place where crime rate is high and sexism rampant. Not too long ago, there was in the news a case where a teenager was found strangled and with signs of sexual assault, after taking a P-license taxi. She boarded it with her brother, but he stopped before her, and she never returned home. And before that, there was an article saying how they finally found a suspect rapist that operated a P-license taxi. Curiously, his route was the one I would take. And what do the men who surround me say? Well, they’re surprised that I have the guts at all to travel around at the times I do, and also, they support my precautions and have explicitly told me to follow them.

103

Here in the US, or at least the Midwest, we’d call what you’re describing a “jitney”, not a taxi… although in Chicago some cabs actually are licensed to act as jitneys, you can read it on their license they have displayed in the cab.

104

Ah, thanks. Yea, the US-style taxi system doesn’t really work here. Here they call what I mentioned taxis. Confusing to me, as I had to learn the stops for each specific route.

105

In DC I wouldn’t bat an eye. I trust the cabbies here they are largely older immigrants with families, and are organized by their companies. So they have something to lose, and something to answer to.

In the country where a cab driver pulled out his dick and said he was going to impregnate me, no. I don’t trust strange
men in my cab. In the country where a cab driver colluded with faux passengers to violently rob my friend and her mother, and threatened to cut her moms fingers off to get her wedding ring? No. In the country where a can driver broke three of my vertebrae in a violent attack? No, sorry, no strange men.

106

Oh, so it’s the women here who you think are out to oppress and kill innocent men. What suspicions should I have of you based on what you’ve said in this thread?

I can’t help but notice that you’ve been unable to come up with an argument that is based on reality and not a hypothetical situation that you’ve imagined yourself. I think I know why that is. It’s because, in the world in which we all currently exist, there is no plausible situation in which deepboy is harmed by a girl choosing to sit next to another girl/women instead of him.

Other people’s harmless personal choices are not deepboy’s business. They’re not your business either. When I am choosing a seat on the bus it’s fair to expect me to consider the comfort and safety of other passengers in addition to my own, but if a total stranger is offended because I didn’t sit next to him then that’s his problem. I certainly hope you’re not teaching your daughter to ignore her own judgment and preferences and instead base her decisions on what she thinks will please strange men.

107

Sorry. Stopped reading after this crap of shit. My point, such as it was, agree with it or disagree with it, has been made as well as I can make it. This sort of crap I am not interested in engaging with.

108

Don’t blame me for your own crap:

Well, my suspicions of you are based on what you’ve said in this thread.

109

I agree. So much goes into deciding who to sit next to on the bus, most of it pretty instantaneous.

I am apparently a very popular person or type to sit next to. I wouldn’t really mind being a little more isolated, so I’ll admit it makes me roll my eyes a little if people are really fussed about it. If you WANT people sitting next to you, I’m gonna think you’re weird. Indifference is fine. Mild dislike is fine. If you hate it, buy a fucking car. If you like it, you’re weird. :smiley:

But when I look for a place to sit down, I have a number of things I’m thinking. Is the person sprawled? I won’t sit there. Is their bag on the seat? I rarely make people move it. Are they on the aisle? I hate climbing over. Do they fit in the seat? Are they talking? Are they ranting? (This is LA, after all.) Are their earbuds cranked up too loud? Do they give me a hostile look? Are they even looking at me? Are they bopping around in the seat? Are they with a group? Are they making eye contact? (A lot of men make eye contact in public transportation. I don’t want eye contact.)

My favorite people to sit next to are usually like me: middle aged women with a book. Lone teens of either sex are good if the music isn’t too loud. They don’t want to chat with ME. I’m boring as fuck.

110

nm

111

I don’t agree with this. Right and wrong are not solely about the harm caused. The prime example is that an accidental death is treated differently than a purposeful death. Or, to use a more analogous situation, if I steal a grape, I am probably not harming a store, but it still is wrong.

What makes something right or wrong is not the harm it causes but the thoughts behind it. If you are engaging in sexism, it is too my business. It may not be harmful in a particular situation, but the fact that you engage in it without thinking means you may apply it when it does matter. DSeid definitely has the right to tell his daughter to stop and think rationally about the situation instead of going by instinct which can be influenced by incorrect factors.

In these types of threads, there seems to be a fundamental disconnect about what is acceptable. To a guy, sexism, like racism, is just wrong, period. But to women, it seems that some sexism is acceptable as long as no one is hurt. We guys think this is a faulty way of thinking, as we never thought we were hurting anyone with our sexism, either.

And how did we learn that we were hurting people? Through women who argued like DSeid. We would argue like you guys do that no one was hurt in this particular situation, but these women would point out how that carried over to other aspects of life where it did hurt women. Or they would come up with scenarios where the same situation could have been hurtful.

The only people who have made good answers to the OP of this thread are those who make arguments that do not amount to sexism, like preferring to sit with similar people, or the people who list a long list of things that are important. Those like you who argue that it’s okay for women to be sexist in their seating choices because it doesn’t hurt anyone just have no leg to stand on.

112

I don’t want to get much deeper in a thread that is going to fail to convince either side, but I do want to address what was apparently intended to be a show stopper.

If your euphemism means what I think it means (based on the guy you are responding to), then yes. Doing what’s right is rarely the simpler choice. If the parents are worried that the boy is a child molester, that means they have to do more work to assure themselves, not that they get to wimp out and choose the girl.

This is a situation right here where the guy is actually harmed. He has to deal with this prejudice all the time, and thus likely gets much less business. Since he’s the one that is discriminated against, I have a greater duty to choose him, and should if all else is equal. I would be beating myself up for deciding on the girl, or at least going out of my way to rationalize why the girl was a better choice.

At least, with the situation of sitting next to someone, you can argue that some guys will take it as an invitation. Or you can just say you feel more comfortable with people who are similar to you. You aren’t necessarily discriminating against guys. But, in the babysitting situation, you definitely are. There really is no difference between the logic used here and the logic used to avoid black people because they are more likely to be criminals. Being more likely to have a negative trait is just not sufficient to prejudge all who have an immutable characteristic.

If that is not what you meant about it being “less complicated,” then this logic may or may not apply. I just hope you didn’t use unclear language so you could change what it meant later.

113

I think I am going to print this out and put it in my scrapbook, because I never want to forget the day that a man explained to me that men are superior to women because men believe that sexism is wrong and women don’t.

114

Why do you think this was intended to be a show stopper? DSeid offered his hypothetical and I simply offered mine. He hasn’t addressed it for some reason, but that’s not my doing.

I don’t know what euphemism you are referring to. I didn’t use any.

See, I wasn’t even thinking of child molestation. I was thinking of the complications involved with toileting two little girls in public. Or dealing with an inquisitive precocious five-year-old who has just discovered that boys and girls are different “down there” and won’t stop blabbing about it.

Well, there are certainly families with little boys who won’t have any problem with a male babysitter. Yes, he’s likely to get turned down quicker than your average female is and I’m not going to deny this. But are all doors going to close in his face just because he’s a guy? No.

Your duty is supposed to be to your children and their best interests, not to maintaining gender equality, no matter what. Let’s say your oldest daughter has a history of sexual abuse and doesn’t do well around strange men. You would be a horrible parent to ignore this reality just so that you can feel better about hiring a man.

So I assume you are holding protest marches in front of sex-segregated locker rooms and public restrooms. It must really bother you that patients prefer healthcare and mental health professionals of a certain gender. Your head must explode whenever you read ads advertising roommates of a certain gender. How do you get out of bed, knowing that there are such things as fraternities and sororities?

All that logic must really make your life hard.

115

monstro I stopped engaging because there was no more fruitful discussion being had. Upon review I find the post that made me decide that and my response to it to actually be quite informative. So one more post.

Your babysitter hypothetical: I would use either a male or a female pretty much based on my take of their personalities, seriously male female would make zero difference to me.

Boy babysitters actually have been great, just too few of them around.

Truth be told I don’t really care too much about the sexism involved here for its own sake. What interests me is *the nature of the reaction *to the sexism being noted. The point I made here was a very simple one. This is profiling based on gender being done for the sake of perceived safety and comfort; the consequences in this case are obviously minor but most likely the decision is often being made with no conscious thought process involved let alone with any consideration as to whether or not there is a consequence to the person being profiled. Those who do think about it will state quite clearly that the unknown male risk is great enough to justify profiling consequence to the profiled or not. And I am not arguing that point, merely noting it. And again noting that whether one agrees with that perception of risk or not in any particular case a person who is profiling always is convinced that there is such a risk and the fear they have is real to them.

Now look at Lamia’s recent posts. The fact that someone has pointed out that some females profile and might do so consequence to the profiler or not and that such should be something done with at least some awareness and thought provokes her to twist things into untruths - stating crap like I am accusing women being “out to oppress and kill innocent men.” WTF? Now this the reaction to something pretty damn mild and inoffensive: women in these threads are defending their profiling, their prejuicial behavior, and making a decent argument justifying why they do. Not all of them are concerned about sending the wrong messages about possible attraction; they are concerned about safety, just like the cabbie: fingers cut off; being sexually assaulted; harrassment … Okay Lamia’s posts are extreme but throughout there is a level of response that I find fascinating, and telling about profiling in the more general case. And the fact that this discussion about something so relatively low stakes can quickly escalate into charges of saying such things and my sensing my temper beginning to flare enough to step out of the room … to me informs mightily on how other conversations go off rails and go nowhere fast. If we can’t do this low stakes stuff then we certainly have no tools for handling the bigger ticket items.

You have, I think, an ability to be self-aware of your prejudices and not become excessively defensive/aggressive when they are pointed out. I am not as confident of my own ability to be self-aware of how much my subconscious tapes might influence my actions and am uncomfortable with that lack of knowledge. I hope that I do not become defensive or aggressive when the possibility they exist are pointed out at least, whether I agree or disagree upon self-reflection. I think many are even less aware than I am and do not even recognize the possibility that these sorts of tapes play.

You do not think the responses shown in this thread, discussing something of fairly little import and of little controversy, inform at all on how people react to other times possible profiling are pointed out in more charged areas, areas that do have more consequences, and why people often react with explanations of why the profiling behavior was justified, with denials that such behaviors might be profiling, with wondering what the harm was that someone possibly watched you as you went through the store … I disagree.

Really though I have already tried to make that point. Maybe no one agrees - fine. I’ve been the only one thinking a certain way before. Maybe I am inarticulate. If so, well I can only try my best. Maybe some here are incapable of getting that point. Also possible. Whichever it is I have done what I can to express the point of view and while Lamia’s hostility informs intellectually it was enough to convince me that the discussion had passed the point of being very productive.

116

Oh monstro - babysitters usually work out of my house. No concern about toileting in public. A 5 year old takes care of herself. The 2 year old can have a 17 year old boy change her diaper or help her wipe off poop if she is trained. I am okay with that.

Really no complications that I am worried about.

117

If you heard of someone deciding to go with the girl babysitter for the reasons I gave above, would you feel they were being silly?

What if a person is seeking a caretaker for themselves? A medical doctor? A psychotherapist? Should someone never cater to their own gender preferences in professional settings? (My own opinion: as long as someone has the wherewithal, they should seek out whomever they think is able to help them most. Even if this results in conscious racial/ethnic/religious and gender discrimination. But if they are at the mercy of whomever is available at the time, they need to suck it up and deal).

I do think males get unfairly stereotyped and can end up getting the raw deal in certain situations, lest you think I don’t agree with some of what you have been saying. It’s just that I don’t see bus-seating preference specifically or “street wisdom” in general as part and parcel of this. And I simply can’t agree that it never makes sense to discriminate against gender. Sometimes it’s apt to draw comparisons between race and gender. But the “never discriminate!” rule frankly doesn’t make sense to me when we’re talking about something as tightly linked to sexuality as gender is. And I can’t think of anything more discriminating than sexual behavior.

118

More on boy babysitters … in the real world they are a hot commodity precisely because of gender preferences. They are perceived as being better for boys. Relatively few boys do babysitting so those who do usually have as much business as they want.

It’s kind of like the boy in ballet class, you are going to get the parts in those early years.

As usual sexism actually favors males:

Males hiring may prefer to hire males, maybe without thinking about it. If they do think about it they might defend it with explanations that hiring a male protects them from any potential later charges of sexual harrassment for making what they thought was an innocent joke, or very few men will end up taking off months after having a child. The later is a real consequence to a small business. (I right now am working quite a few extra hours each week and taking more call as a result of a female partner’s maternity leave, something I never have had to do for a male partner.) I do not think it justifies discrimination based on gender however. Not at all.

So where does the line get drawn? Obviously somewhere and for some reason. By the consequence the discrimination imposes or does not? Again, what consequence is there to the fact that a Black customer is followed through a store and watched? The lack of large consequence does not make it that much less wrong or more right. Whether or not the profiler believes safety is a concern? Whether or not you or I agree with that assessment?

I do not have a good answer, really I do not. And I can appreciate the explanation given for gender profiling offered up in this thread. I do know however that I am uncomfortable with the fact that any group that profiles thinks that the question is offensive to ask, to explore, and to critically assess.

119

I haven’t taken part in most of the thread, but I do know that women absolutely cannot win. If they avoid men, they are sexist bitches. If they don’t, and if something happens well, we’re not saying that she’s to blame, but gosh, she should have been more careful and doesn’t she know that all men are dangerous? Someone finds fault with every single choice women make. We are judged if we smile, if we frown, and if we have a neutral expression. We are judged if we dress conservatively (such prudes!) or not conservatively (such sluts!), if we’re fat (such a pig!), skinny (eat a sandwich!), or at a good weight (hey baby, you’re FINE).

So having a man complain that young women don’t want to sit next to him while he calls women slutty is not some neutral sort of exploration or assessment. It is yet another time when someone feels judging women, essentially just for being on the damned planet, is fair.

120

Silly? A bit, yes.

Yes, I think prejudging a doctor on gender, a therapist, etc. is usually silly. Yes, it amounts to similar to those patients who did not want to be cared for by Black doctors, or wanted a Jewish one, or to not get a blood transfusion from a Black donor, so on.

A caretaker too but I appreciate that others’ mileage may vary. I also cut some slack for racist statements at least out of the very infirmed aged.

What about an old Black woman who does not want a Hispanic person to be her caretaker? Is that okay or silly or what? If she did not want a White person? If she does not want a male? Which ones, if any, cross your line and why?

The discrimination based on preference for female is socially accepted while many others are not is all and that mainly because the sexism is usually in the other direction and still exists in that direction most of the time. So we are okay with it. Not sure if that makes too much sense but that really seems to be the logic.