I have no idea why this happens to me, and I always assumed it happened to other women as well. It certainly happens to my friends and my sisters, and it pisses them off too. You want to know what I was wearing this morning when the douches at CVS decided to heckle me for half a block? A pink hoodie, blue jeans and Saucony Jazz sneakers! What is so titillating about that? I don’t walk around in mini skirts and thigh-high boots. I don’t have the ladies prominently displayed for America’s viewing pleasure. Under the hoodie, I was wearing a plain black tee shirt with what I think is a reasonable neckline.
I don’t think my physical appearance has anything to do with it. I happen to like the way I look, but that’s irrelevant. Like a lot of people have said, it’s the douchebags, and not me. I’m sure they did it to the next girl they saw too.
The term, “Blaming the Victim”, doesn’t sway me as I think it’s just a copout. An emotional way to sway the argument, most of the time. I don’t think those in Afghanistan who are working for women’s rights are at fault. I think the women who are raising their children to believe that this treatment is correct are the ones who are at fault. In these patriarchal situations the female perpetrators too often get a pass. Sure we can blow them off as being ignorant, but we could do the same for the male perpetrators, thing is, we don’t. We ignore the complicity of women in their own subjugation. I am not even talking about those who are afraid to fight, I am talking about those who will fight tooth and nail to uphold the status quo.
72 years is not a long fucking time when it comes to changing long held tradition. In my opinion 72 years is lightning quick for such monumental cultural changes.
There are plenty of people here just on this message board who despite being total misanthropes think they are more qualified to make people’s decisions too. What’s your point? I’m thinking Machiavelli here, you cannot occupy an uncooperative populace. It’s that simple.
Glad you agree with the core point I am making.
Hey, you’re the one who considers them to be the weaker sex, not me.
Oh it’s definitely the douchebags and not you. Of course. I’m just suggesting that you might be projecting some type of energy that invites the douchebaggery. But if it happens to other women around you, it may be something else.
Does it happen to you more in some neighborhoods than in others?
Heh, you know, this doesn’t upset me, but it does remind me of something a (male) friend said to me. He told me to mangle my face and chop off the twins, then see if it continued. It would. It most certainly would. It’s not about physical attractiveness. But let’s say it were, and this only happened to pretty people, whilst the Plain Janes and even less fortunate in the looks department were allowed to live their lives in peace. Is this type of behavior acceptable then? I’m not going to sit here and throw a pity party for the beautiful people, but bullying and harassing women in public just because you find them pretty is still mightily fucked up.
I think you’re crazy. I’ve lived in Minneapolis for 8 years. The kind of behavior you’re describing is so rare as to be nonexistent. You might occasionally be catcalled downtown on a Friday night at 2 in the morning, but at the grocery store? On your way to work? I think you are probably just jumping at shadows or just plain making things up.
I don’t know, maybe I’m exuding raw sexual energy. Maybe someone taped a “Please come fuck me” sign on my back. I don’t think this is the case though.
It does happen more in some neighborhoods than others. In crappier neighborhoods, it occurs with a mind-boggling frequency. But still, this happened in even Palo Fucking Alto. Not East Palo Alto. The one with the rich people.
I live and work in downtown Minneapolis, and it doesn’t just happen at 2am. Why on Earth would I make this up? It happened to me this morning. As in today, August 21, 2009 at 8:00am on the corner of Portland and 10th. Two guys were standing outside and they started screaming “Hey girl” at me repeatedly. They followed me to nearly the end of the block, and asked me if I thought I were too good for them, heckled me and the like, and I continued to ignore them until it pissed me off enough for me to tell them to shut the fuck up. This happened. Today. What also happened is they lectured me about having an attitude, even though they were the ones who yelled at me from across the street and followed me for almost a block. This happened. Today. It happens all the time. It happened in Los Angeles, it happened in San Francisco, it happened in Philadelphia, and it is happening here.
Don’t tell me I’m making shit up because it doesn’t happen to you.
OK. You are getting heckled repeatedly. At 8 am. In the grocery store. At the pharmacy. All the time. I am friends with some very attractive women. Doesn’t happen to them. They are friends with some other attractive women. Nope, not like you describe. I am downtown during the day quite often. I have never witnessed anything like this. Either you are an extremely special case, or you are exaggerating a great deal.
Do any of your friends have a ‘Please come fuck me’ sign on their back? I mean that’s hot, especially since she’s asking for it, nicely.
I don’t know what it is but some people just attract harassment more than others. My ex-wife was one of those. She must’ve had a ‘Come fuck me’ sign too, but she was Israeli so I doubt there was a please in it.
But it’s not just that, when I lived in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn some people just stopped coming to my house because they were afraid of the neighborhood. Myself, my wife, we never got harassed.
I didn’t say that every time I’m exposed to natural sunlight, a swarm of people come out to attack. I am saying that it happens on a regular basis to many women, and by the time a girl is, say, 19 years old, she is sick and tired of it. Enough already. It is not okay to harass women this way. You know this group of women out in Plymouth somewhere who this never happens to, and good for them, they are very lucky. I’m not sure how you’re so sure of how often they’re bothered in this fashion, but I’ll assume you do.
In another thread you mentioned you aren’t white. Do you think whatever racial group you’re in is causing it to happen more? Like, there’s some unwritten societal rule that black women or Latino women like to be hey-babied?
I have. Not very often, but every now and then. Usually not that hostile, but sometimes. And the women that are the targets of it are not always supermodels.
I’m going with my theory that women that get this are inadvertantly projecting some sort of vibe.
Maybe a poll is in order. I’m not a woman, so I don’t know how common this is. From my observations, I can’t remember the last time I heard a cat call from a group of guys to a woman anywhere in public but, like I said, I’m not a woman.
The term isn’t what’s important, mswas, what’s important is what you said, and the meaning of what you said. You were very specific in saying “Women are responsible for their own subjugation,” and by saying so, you blamed all women for their oppression. If that’s not what you think - and you go on to say that it isn’t - I’d recommend you not say that in the future, because that’s absolutely what it communicates.
Yes, they’ve made amazing progress here. And that means it takes longer elsewhere. And 72 years is approximately a lifetime for the average human being. And that’s only the time it took to go from the birth of the feminist movement to the right to vote, which is not the sum total of all equal rights.
My point is that I think your statement was naive.
If you say so. (Do you think anybody’s buying this?)
Ok, how about, “Women play a significant role in the subjugation of women.”, is that better?
Yeah, it’s two generations. For sweeping culture change of 5000 years of tradition to occur in just two generations is pretty mind-bogglingly swift.
shrugs I think yours is dismissive of relevant factors.
I’m teasing you there buddy.
Bottom line, when women stand up for their rights and there is a groundswell, they get them. The fewer there are standing for the subjugation of women to tradition and the more who stand up for equal rights the more likely they are to get those rights. What is it that you so dislike about that position?
I don’t know, it’s possible. My favorite is when random white guys will tell me that they’ve never slept with a black girl before. “Oh my! How shall I remedy this? Let’s get a hotel room, where I shall allow you to fuck me silly!”
If you can find out what vibe that is, you must let me know so that I may try desperately to correct it. I will love you forever.
Unless you all have a cite to the contrary, I would guess that this kind of street harassment has little correlation to traditional attractiveness.
WAG ALERT: Or that if it does, it actually happens more to “plain Janes.” Whether it’s about power or sex, it is still the case that a certain power dynamic is prerequisite to this kind of behavior. Bullies don’t bully someone they think will beat them up, and I would guess that sexual street harassers probably pick people who aren’t “out of their league.”
