27 June, 2006 | Leave a Comment
Something Bitch Ph.D. posted last week resonated with me in many ways. She’s been writing about how women are conditioned to be fearful for their safety in every facet of life (even blogging), while men aren’t trained to feel this way, even though men are more likely to be the victims of crime.
I moved away from NYC in 2000, so it’s been a number of years since I’ve lived in a big city. But now that I’m in London, I’m reminded of how often strange men think nothing of approaching women on the street with sexual come-ons. These kinds of comments are usually along the lines of: “Hey baby, do you have a boyfriend?” and lame stuff like that, and occasionally when you ignore them they’ll say something slightly threatening, like “Do you think you’re too good for me?” Uh, yes. So anyway, I’ve been wondering about this phenomenon. Why do these guys do this? They know that no woman is going to take them up on their offer, so what do they get out of it? I was surprised to see Bitch Ph.D. address this very issue on her blog (the latest post in a series on women and fear):
Men who hassle women online (”hey baby,” “you stupid bitch”) or in real life (wolf whistles, etc.) are actively training women to be afraid. Whether or not they realize it, that’s what they’re doing. Which makes the answer to the question “why do guys do that? Do they think I’m going to say, “hey, daddy, let me give you my number?”–and we’ve all asked that, and laughed about it–suddenly clear. Of course they don’t do it to pick up women. No women has ever responded to that, and men know this. They do it to instill fear.
God damn, that’s shitty.
This makes perfect sense to me. The men who like to harass women get off on the intimidation. Most sexual crimes are about power and dominance, after all.
Bitch Ph.D. writes about how the female fear of violence extends into the blogosphere. She has been surveying male and female bloggers and her survey revealed, not surprisingly, that women are much more likely to use pseudonyms because they are afraid of harassment and stalking. Men tend to use pseudonyms if they want to keep the blogging they do in their personal life completely separate from their professional life. But the more she thought about the fact that female bloggers feared for their personal safety while male bloggers didn’t, the more it didn’t make sense.
Sure, if you post your name and picture you could be recognized. If you post your addy you could be stalked. But really, it’s pretty unlikely. AND, I realized, why are women more afraid of it than men? Immediate answer: well, studies have shown that women are a lot more likely to be harassed online than men are. Ok, so that’s conditioning women to be afraid–but it isn’t the thing women fear. We don’t fear being called “bitch” or “slut” or asked “are you hot?” by random internet strangers. What the women in the surveys feared, and I’ve seen women say this online too, is being personally and physically threatened as a result of their online presence.
And again: why would women fear this more than men? Random internet person develops some weird obsessive fixation on another random internet person, stalks and threatens him/her. I’ve seen this happen to both women and men. But guys don’t seem to fear it the way women do.
And what hit me suddenly–duh!–is that the only reason women fear this shit is because we are trained to fear it. And of course, underneath all that training is the fear of rape.
She goes on to write that advice about staying safe is aimed almost exclusively at women, as if men don’t have to worry about crime. Women are taught not to walk alone at night, for example, but men aren’t, even though they should be. And this is because the fear of violence is so often sexualized.
I wager that, with the exception of rape, men are more likely to be the victims of random street crime. But all the precautions about avoiding it are aimed at women, and they are all implicitly about avoiding rape…we perpetuate the idea that violence is sexualized (and therefore men, who are not sexualized, do not have to worry about it), and we turn reasonable things like walking home with a friend into things women do out of fear and men don’t do at all. If everyone did it, it wouldn’t contribute to the sexualized fear problem: it would just be a matter of common sense…
Many of the commenters to this post raised the issue that rape is a special sort of crime; it’s not the same as being mugged. I agree with this, obviously, but I also see Bitch Ph.D.’s point that crime can affect anyone (and that women are more likely to be victimized by someone they are already in a relationship with, rather than a stranger). The intense focus on sexualized violence perpetuates the idea that women are victims-in-waiting.
Furthermore, the sexualized fear of violence creates a power dynamic wherein women must always be thinking of themselves as potential rape victims. And this, by default, makes all men potential sexual predators who then must prove to women they meet that they’re decent human beings and not sexual deviants or psychos. I think we’ve already reached this sorry state of affairs.
This is an extremely complex issue and I’m really just thinking “aloud.” But as a woman who has a blog and lives in a big city, these issues hit home with me. I often experience this kind of fear (as most women do), but I thought of it as an important defense mechanism. It is to an extent, but now I see that it’s also extremely disempowering.
Anglofille said @ 9:35 am | feminism |
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amen to that.
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Very interesting. . .
I’ve decided to not hide because it seems a bit silly. I have said what neighborhood I live in, but I haven’t said more and I do have pictures on flickr.
Maybe I am naive?
Stu has asked that I not blog about when is away from home. He just got back from Qutar for example, and he didn’t want anyone to know that he wasn’t around-
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The main reason I don’t put my name on my blog is because I need to keep it separate from certain professional commitments that I have. And also, I have an unusual name, which affords me no degree of anonymity. But I think people are deluding themselves if they think they can stay anonymous, even by using a pseudonym. If you have a blog and you put yourself out there (especially by writing about personal issues), then you’re taking a risk. You have to accept that.
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Sports Fan Says:
July 3rd, 2006 at 10:01 pmI generally agree with most of this post. It is a sad fact of life that men and women act the way they do from conditioning. I can tell you that most men are afraid of women and act this way as a reaction to that fear. Cat calls and that sort of thing is basically a group of chicken shit men who are trying to impress their idiotic friends. When my daughter went off to school in the big city (after recent terror attacks) I told her to not let the gutless cowards scare her into changing how she wants to live her life but to not be stupid either. Watch where you are and who’s around and be prepared. Fight back, if they’re going to hurt you they’ll do it if you fight back or not. Most cowards are just that, cowards, so show them your not afraid of them (EVEN IF YOU ARE, LIKE ALL THE REST OF US)!
