You step innocently into an elevator with a man somewhat larger than yourself. When the doors close he catches you off guard, pins you to the wall by the neck and starts groping your junk. A moment later, the door opens and the guy bolts out and disappears into the night.
You’re shaken, you’re upset, you’ve been violated, your heart races and you’re scared. In a few minutes your breathing will return to normal and your heart slow. You’ll realize you’re okay, you’re not hurt. You haven’t a mark or bruise and no one witnessed what happened to you. But a crime happened to you.
It’s going to be difficult, and humiliating beyond measure, to go to the police (count your blessings you’ll not need an ‘internal’ exam!) and tell. You can’t really describe the guy and there’s no film. It’s entirely possible they won’t believe you. And unless you know the guy, there’s literally no way for them to catch him.
Eleanor Roosevelt was a rich woman with Secret Service protection. I’m pretty sure she never had to bother with anyone sexually harassing her without there being serious consequences.
Eleanor was born in October 1884 and FDR became President in March 1933. Was she always accompanied by a chaperon? What protection/seclusion was available at Allenwood Academy? Was Secret Service protection retroactive?
Eleanor seemed pretty down-to-earth, and worldly, as a person. Maybe she read about real life in books?
I take harassment of women seriously. I freely offered advice for a problem. You don’t have to accept that advice. I didn’t assume that women don’t know what they are talking about. You incorrectly assumed that I did.
You can handle the situation anyway you wish. You don’t have to listen to anyone’s advice. I’m sure you’ll think of something, eventually. Good luck.
When it comes down to it, giving advice to women does not fix the problem. The problem does not source from women. So no matter what you tell the woman to do in response, it will not fix the problem. Telling women to walk with friends does not fix the source of the problem. Telling women to carry pepper spray does not fix the source of the problem. Telling women to yell does not fix the source of the problem. These are all reactions to the problem.
What will fix the problem is teaching men to not do these inappropriate or criminal things in the first place. Start there.
Of course you don’t think women know what we’re talking about. That was the entire reason you posted your asinine capslocked “advice”. Like we haven’t heard it a brazillion times before. Like we haven’t determined through personal experience that your “advice” isn’t worth the pixels wasted to display it. Like we haven’t spent far, far more time thinking about it than you.
It’s easy for you to suggest the aggressive and confrontational options. It’s theoretical for you. You’ll never be a woman and be far too aware that the groper/asshole is half a foot taller, dozens of pounds heavier and has far more upper body strength than you. You’ve never experienced this harassment or assault and responded to assholes in ways like you advise, only to have the situation get worse. Then people chastise you later, asking why in the world did you think it was a good idea to escalate the situation?
It’s not theoretical for us. It’s very real and we are the ones who risk further harassment (or worse) if things go further south.
That’s what I remind myself when “we need to teach young men not to rape” initiatives take the format of gathering all the boys into a room and telling them “OK, left to your own devices, you are all naturally rapists…”
I am skeptical ogling and harassment is commonplace. I’ve been working out at the base gym for many years, and have never once seen anything that even remotely looks like ogling and harassment.
You may not see it because the bar for what you consider ogling and harassment may be too high. Harassment can be subtle and not immediately noticeable, but ogling goes on all the time. If you don’t see it happening, then either you’re at a unique gym or else you’re just not noticing it. Maybe it’s like how people who are color blind don’t easily see certain colors.
I think also a lot of people don’t recognize it because, to them, it’s just being friendly. They see a guy talking to a woman and think nothing of it, but if you look closely you see that the woman is bored and her body language is uncomfortable. And then you notice that that same guy seems to only chat with women in the gym and none of them seem to be interested. What are the women supposed to do? Report him for chatting?
I think there are people who are “body language blind”. Otherwise, I can’t see how they can continue to talk to someone endlessly who is clearly bored and doesn’t want to listen. Not necessarily just at the gym, but this happens everywhere. It’s like the manager who goes on endlessly in the dept meeting about his kid’s little league game, and if you look around the room, all you see are bored, blank faces. I think these type of people may be guilty of this “innocent” harassment where they think they’re nice and interesting, but really the woman is not interested and is just being polite.
Just body language blind? Just being overly friendly? Innocent harassment?
What the…?
Because it’s impossible for it to be exactly as women have described it to you because, you would never, and you haven’t seen it? Surely it’s just innocent!
You’d be amazed the hoops people jump to to avoid doing that.
Not me, but then I’m the best person in the universe (at least, I’ve never heard anybody deny it so ipso bono I’m correct and also using Latin terms correctly).
