Really the complaint isn’t best expressed as “this is what we have to put up with from men,” but rather, “this is what we have to put up with.” The target isn’t “men” but instead men who do this kind of thing. I watch that video, and I know I don’t engage in the behavior, so I don’t take the video to be saying anything about me. No head-scratching necessary.
I am about the opposite of a misogynist in my personal life and even here most of the time. My life is more like an episode of Full House than anything and I have always been good to women. Even my ex-wife, her family and friends still like me because I am told I am unusually good to most women.
Be careful when you apply blanket labels to a person because it may not be true. The reason I don’t like this video isn’t because I don’t like or respect women in general. The opposite is true. I don’t like it for the same reasons I don’t like all activist videos that are based on false premises and try to stir up controversy using bad editing, few facts and unjustified leaps of logic.
My negative comments about the actor in the video had nothing to do with all women. They were just simple observations that apply only to her and the others that engineered the supposed story. I would have equivalent ones if it was some white guy trying to make some other unjustified point through a viral video. This video has about as much relevance telling anyone what it is like for a woman walking down a typical street in America as the Blair Witch Project serves as a guide for camping in the Maryland woods.
No one is saying that there aren’t places in some U.S. cities where any stranger (not just women) will get some odd shout-outs. They do happen. I have gotten them too especially in some really dangerous neighborhoods in both New Orleans and Boston but I didn’t try to present them to anyone as my daily reality either. It may be for some women and others that grow up and live in those types of neighborhoods but that is a different issue albeit one that this video didn’t focus on.
Based on what you’ve said here, you come across as really callous, even hateful. You really think it’s acceptable to refer to a woman as a bitch and say she’s “moderately unattractive” because you disagree with what she’s doing? That makes you an awesome, stand-up guy?
But women are saying it IS their daily reality–not just in random or low income neighborhoods but on a regular basis.
CNN has a conversation between comedian Amanda Seales and author Steven Santagati on the topic that–sadly–is mirroring a lot of what we’re seeing here on the Dope. Can’t wait for a chorus of guys to tell us what a voice of reason the dude is.
Seales does address the “hello” issue, pointing out that she’s from Grenada, where saying “hello” is the polite thing to do, but…
Seales: “A lot of these men they’re not just saying hello. They say hello and when you say hello back, what that means is that’s an invitation to now holler at you.”
Wow, Santagati just told women to be strong and stand up for themselves if they want catcalling to stop. It’s like you guys all get a primer on how not to listen to women.
And at the end, “Do you think the guys who are going to benefit from this conversation are actually watching this show right now?”
What makes you think they are? These are people who generally lack free time, and are much less likely to have internet access.
Someone being a man is enough to make many women feel uncomfortable. Being a dark skinned, lower class man is even more effective. In various of the discussions of this video I’m seeing women themselves talk about how afraid they are of every man they encounter, and how it’s perfectly reasonable to be afraid of a man who is, say, sitting on a bench reading.
The men in that video couldn’t follow your recommendation short of committing suicide. They make women uncomfortable by existing.
Not saying anything to someone you don’t know is a terrible burden?
I have no idea what the actor in question is like as a real person but she plays the role in that video of being a moderately unattractive bitch. I am sure that is the way it was designed as way of making some type of statement (look at this, you can’t even put on an angry face and dress down to make this type of harassment go away). Again, that has nothing to do with all women. I would make similar statements about any actor that was using their appearance as a prop in a politically motivated viral video.
And I would say they they are either overstating the frequency or misattributing many innocent acts to malicious intent when there is none. We have already established that it does happen in places so anyone that lives or works in one of those types of places may be telling the plain truth. Others are exaggerating or mistaken. I can tell you for a fact that it does not happen in the lily white suburb/small city where I live. It is hard enough to get anyone to acknowledge anyone they know at all let alone have random people shouting at anyone unless it is the high school cheerleading squad hosting a car wash. That is true for most of the rural, suburban and urban U.S. outside of a few distinct neighborhoods that tend to be known for that type of behavior.
I have some additional evidence for that claim. I am a frequent visitor to Southern Europe (Italy in particular) and the U.S. Virgin Islands and I have traveled with groups of women to them many times. One of the first things they notice and comment on when they get there is the sudden introduction of cat-calls and aggressive sexual behavior from men. They are always shocked by it if it is their first time there because it doesn’t happen to them on any consistent basis back home. You would think that they would be used to more of the same if it really happened to most women in the U.S. as often as claimed but most of the ones that I have traveled with were shocked because it was so foreign.
Don’t misread what I am saying. The problem does exist in some parts of the U.S. and much of the world but it is not common at all in white America or any middle-class or above America for that matter. There are really bad sexual predators out there even in the nicest suburbs but they do not use that style to attract victims and that makes them even more dangerous in many cases because they are so stealthy. The problem with this video is that it tries to create a case for a problem that doesn’t exist in the form presented and ignores the real ones.
I see plenty of young guys of color with smartphones. They post on Twitter and watch youtube videos, just like everyone else does. How do you think all the recent spat of police violence has become viral? Just about EVERYONE is on the internet nowdays. We need to stop assuming that everyone on the internet is a homogenous reflection of our personal realities.
This may all be so, but what you said was very misogynistic.
You called her unattractive, which was pointless – why even bring up the way she looks? Judging women by their looks, or even just criticizing their looks when it’s irrelevant (when the discussion is not about attractiveness) is misogynistic. Not rape, and not assault, but misogyny just the same.
How would you know? How would any man know what it’s like to walk down the streets of Manhattan as a woman? Generally, when someone with experiences that I’m unable to have talks about their experience, I find it’s best to listen, rather than disbelieve simply because I don’t like the ramifications.
And the fact that you think you assume they’re too stupid or misguided to know their own experiences is why you and guys like you are part of the problem.
Whether true or not, this has nothing to do with the video or with this discussion. What made the woman in the video uncomfortable was men catcalling her and following her.
Different people can have plenty of “perfectly reasonable” reasons for feeling fear, based on their experiences.
The men who made this woman in the video uncomfortable, who were white, black, and hispanic, made her feel uncomfortable because they catcalled her and followed her. The men who did not catcall (white, black, and hispanic) did not make her feel uncomfortable. Further, we have the reports of many women posters that catcalls make them feel uncomfortable. It’s not a terrible imposition to ask men to not make catcalls. There’s no cost there.
You have a serious problem, Der Trihs. You’re problem with women and misogyny is as bad as some SDMB posters’ problems with black people and racism. I’m sure you won’t just take my word for it – why would you? But please, just consider that there’s a slight chance that you just might have a problem. You’re a human being, and you are just as capable of poor judgment as anyone else. If someone tells me I might be a racist, I’d listen – racists don’t know they’re racist. I might have some biases that I’m unaware of. If someone tells me that I might be a bigot for certain religions I’d listen – I might just have some unconscious biases. Similarly, you should listen – you’re a smart guy who cares about people and cares about the world. You’ve said some things that are misogynistic, and I don’t think you want to be a misogynist.
Ladies, please, are we really doing this again?
Forget about “fighting ignorance.” We’re dealing with a bunch of clueless guys blowing text directly from their assholes about a subject they’ve never experienced and know literally nothing about. Fuck 'em.
nm
People misstate their experiences all the time - men, women and children. They may not even know that they are doing it consciously. There is a whole branch of psychology devoted to such study. Personal accounts of the frequency of certain events aren’t just unreliable, they can be flat-out delusion even without any mal-intent. I deal with it all the time at work and am working through a case now. People frequently report that an event happens EVERY SINGLE DAY and has to be addressed ASAP. You can get multiple people including high level ones to swear to it and then you try to trap the problem so that it can be addressed. It is almost never easy to trap those problems at all because the frequency is grossly misstated. Once you actually monitor it and the data comes back, you will find that it really only happens once a week to every few months at most.
There is probably a name for that phenomenon but it is widespread enough so that people that work with such reports are trained to be extremely skeptical of any claims of frequency because they are almost never correct and often orders of magnitude off. Women are not immune to that effect any more than anyone else. Just because large numbers of them claim something doesn’t mean that it is actually true. Large numbers of people, including many women, think that the U.S. government is hiding UFO’s at a secret facility as well.
This video tried to document a specific problem and failed miserably at it. If the problem really does exist as claimed, I am open to watching someone else take a better shot at documenting it.
Sure, bud.
Hey MeanOldLady, how you doin’? 
You conveniently ignored the rest of my post; they make her uncomfortable just by being alive. And killing themselves to make her happy would be a “terrible burden”.
No; a substantial portion of the population is not. Especially lower class people, like the ones being bashed here.
Seriously?
Right? It really is ridiculous. The same guys, feigning the same ignorance. It’s just for no other reason than to see if they can twist the “feminazis” up into knots. Do not engage.
I think you have misrepresented the views of some of your opposition. Katherine Adams recently took the controversial stance 'I Don’t Support Feminism If It Means Murdering All Men".
There you go. You have one strong advocate in the opposition movement.
Seriously! I read the comments and names and am like, “LOL, these clowns again.” I got sucked into a several multi-page trainwrecks about this in the past, so I’m guilty too, but there are some folks who you’re never going to get through to because they already have their mind made up.
Not uncommon for grown people to have their minds made up about something, and not uncommon for internet arguments to go nowhere, but what tickles me is unlike religion or politics or something else where there’s at least some semblance of people taking information and drawing their own conclusions, this is a topic they know absolutely **nothing **about, have never and will never have any experience with, and are also completely unwilling to learn anything about. And yet they’re so goddamn sure! Great comedy.
Anyway, enough out of me.