I had an interesting conversation recently with a woman on Twitter who told me that my policy of letting MRAs and misogynists comment here, at least so long as they’re not abusive, was keeping her and others she knew from joining in the conversation; she wanted a place to discuss MRAs where she didn’t have to deal with them.
I know a lot of the regulars here like engaging with the trolls and MRAs who stop by, but I’d like to create some space here for commenters who want to discuss the issues in a Troll- and MRA-free zone.
So I thought I’d try starting a new kind of Open Thread: A No-Troll, No-MRA, No-Misogynist, No-Rape-Apologist, No-Douchebag Thread to discuss the issues I cover on the blog and anything related to that: Misogyny, MRAs, PUAs, MGTOW, the “Red Pill,” and so on. Enjoy!
Oh, and if a troll wanders in, or if someone starts being douchey, ignore them and send me a note. I’ll delete their comments and ban them. No warning, no moderation, straight ban.
Ok, I just got in from a walk around the neighbourhood, and have a funny harassment story now!
It’s one of the first days it’s actually been warm enough to wear shorts here in Toronto, and I’d just grabbed some nice ones in a clothes swap, so I was giving my legs a good airing out. On my way to my favourite bookstore, I walked past/through a small group of teenage Jamaican guys, showing off at each other in patwa, and one of them said something very unsavoury about my “white ass”. I turned around, almost five feet of fury and snapped “You kiss your mama with that mouth?”, then turned and stomped away. They couldn’t speak. The looks on their faces were just priceless, since I guess they figured that a little white chick wouldn’t know what they were saying.
Too bad this little white chick has a Jamaican step-gran, and has pretty much heard it all. 😉
RE: Lex-Man
I recently have had an uptick in street harassment, so it’s happened at least once a month, and it’s the same fucking guy pretty much every time. Before that, harassment had basically stopped for the prior year or two. But my dread was never street harassment; 90% of the people who’ve tried to break me were people I already knew, online or off, and usually the closer the relationship, the worse it was. So a lot of rape, a lot of abusive relationships… not so much asshole strangers. Thank heaven for small favors?
RE: katz
You bought a single? You’re old.
Hey, I’m your age, and I’ve bought singles! (Chumbawamba on CD, a couple 45s, all from rummage sales.)
RE: AL3H
But, seriously, who goes around chasing other people with balloons ???
I will admit, that’s a new one on me.
I hope it’s okay to share a harassment story that happened to someone I know.
A few years back me and my then partner (now wife!) were at a house party held by a friend, and he’d invited a bunch of people from differing circles, including the SES (for non-Australians, the State Emergency Service is a bunch of volunteers who are called in to help out during natural disasters, clearing branches and providing logistical support during floods, stuff like that). Now this guy’s SES buddies tended to be a bit more blokey-manly-types than the circles I run in.
Anywho, this SES dude is talking to my gf and she’s about to walk off outside to go join the BBQ. He puts his arm across her path to the nearest wall and indicates he wants to continue the conversation. She ducks under and heads out, clearly rattled and annoyed. I went and followed her to make sure she was okay.
I was too dumbfounded to call this guy out on his bullshit in the moment, but afterwards I was furious. Who the hell was he to think he had the right to command her time and space, just because he was a man and she was a woman? I’m 6’1″ and this guy had a couple of inches over me, and was solid with it. That was very clearly an act of intimidation, and even though there was no sexual element to it, it just hammered home how some men think that if they want a woman’s attention and time they should have it, and a woman’s wish not to give it is irrelevant.
Still mad thinking about it. Grrrr.
@Tea for Two it’s really just curiosity. I read through some of the #yesallwomen comments and they sound horrible to be a woman. I guess I wanted to make sure it wasn’t a daily occurrence, not that people should ever have to deal with that stuff at all.
As a man it’s really hard to understand what it is like to deal with the pressures of being a woman. I never really worry about walking around on my own at any time of even though I have lived in some fairly dangerous places, so the idea that you would try and minimise travel time for safety just seems odd to me.
I also jog as a hobby so naturally spend a lot of time outside, which is one of the few things in my life I truly enjoy doing so the idea of nervous to go outside is particularly bothersome.
I did realise my original comment might be seen duplicitous but I really don’t have any ulterior motives, although I understand if you are still suspicious of me as I don’t think I have explained myself particularly well.
RE: Lex-Man
I guess I wanted to make sure it wasn’t a daily occurrence, not that people should ever have to deal with that stuff at all.
It depends. I would bet my left arm that some women who work in certain industries get it on a daily basis. If hookergal shows up, she probably has some horror stories.
the idea that you would try and minimise travel time for safety just seems odd to me.
The thing is, because you’re a guy, you’re able to think it sounds “odd.” While it’s actually very serious business to other people. I know I’ve curtailed my activities due to my little stalkers; I avoid the places I’ve seen them, but since one of them hovers outside my apartment complex, it’s fucking hard to get away. I’ve actually canceled my morning exercise because I saw him hovering outside my apartment complex door. IT REALLY FUCKING SUCKED.
the idea of nervous to go outside is particularly bothersome.
Exactly. Now imagine doing that ALL THE FUCKING TIME. Because sure, it may only happen once a week or month, but YOU NEVER KNOW WHEN. And also, no matter what you do, people will blame you for what the harasser says or does to you.
Pretty horrifying, don’t you think? How many times do you think it’d happen to you before you started getting paranoid?
Also, Lex-Man, here is some food for thought.
It’s only BECAUSE you’re a guy that your ignorance about a common affliction of over half the population is considered so ordinary. That you’re allowed to QUESTION women and ask them, “But how often does it happen to you REALLY?”
I don’t think you’re being duplicitous, and I don’t think you’re here in bad faith. But imagine you were in the Army and civilians kept coming up to you and going, “But it’s not really that hard or anything, right? You didn’t REALLY have to go through anything tough?”
You’d be a little annoyed, don’t you think? Only there are way less soldiers in our country than there are women. And male incredulity to how bad it REALLY is is the whole reason #YesAllWomen and such exists in the first place.
So, cracked.com did a pretty good article about the “men’s rights movement” the other day. The only thing is that half of the comment section was MRAs and sympathizers swooping in to defend their “positon”.
Funnily enough, the go-to criticism for anyone criticizing MRAs has become sort of “oh, but you only read manboobz/we hunted the mammoth” without any evidence that this site has been used as a source. I mean, the author actually visited actual forums for it, and looked into what the “mainstream” MRAs have been saving, but unless he brings up the FeMRAs, he’s just “stirring up hatred”.
The other half, or maybe even 75% were pretty sensible, though.
Hey, so here is a open question: My probable next project has a main character who’s a sex worker. Since they are not very well represented in fiction, what sorts of traits would you like to see in a sex worker character? And what traits do you think it is important to avoid? I’m thinking of flaws especially.
Katz,
Maybe good traits to avoid would be a history of sexual abuse and drug addiction. Since both those things are stereotyped as present in all sex workers. You probably came up with that on your own though.
Inara from Firefly and Chataya from A Song Of Ice And Fire are two examples of non-stereotypical sex workers I can think of. It’s telling that one character is from sci-fi and the other from fantasy and there aren’t examples of real world characters like that.
I think it’d be interesting to not see either the abuse stereotypes WWTH mentioned, or the “cool het dude who’s an expensive *cough* escort *cough*” stereotype (the only male sex workers who ever get intereviewed in the paper, sheesh).
Lex-Man: Thank you for answering my question. I really do appreciate that.
Please don’t take it personally that I asked. Especially with the hostility surrounding women’s issues, currently, never know who’s asking or why. I fully expect some site out there will copy and paste our posts and mock them, but I don’t want to see it or know about it, I guess. I don’t want to willingly contribute to that. I hope I am wrong.
It wasn’t that I assumed you were here for some bad reason. I just couldn’t help fearing that you were.
Anyway, moving on.
I suppose part of the surprise on my part was I can’t remember ever being asked by a man what it is like.
I actually left out the worse experiences and the darker stuff. Part of that is just it’s too personal and I don’t want to depress anyone. Part of that is just that I wasn’t sure you would believe me. So I just posted a few things that came to mind as I typed.
Trying really hard to stick to the question too and not digress. Lol
You expressed curiosity or surprise that it would be that bad. Actually I think a lot of us are going easy. I know I was.
Quick illustration: I once had lunch with a group of women. We began talking about a song someone wrote about rape. (Tori Amos.) As the lunch wore on, and since we were in a room empty except our table (since it was a group we were seated in the back), we opened up to each other a bit. Every single woman at that table had been raped. One was held down by her friends, in high school. Another was abducted at gunpoint, raped and freed afterward. She was 13 at the time. Every single woman at the table had a story.
I’ve seen MRAs scoff and say “then how would those basket cases live their lives if they are afraid to go out?” They don’t understand. We don’t have a choice. It’s always there, and we are always trying to be safe. Sometimes you say “heck with it” and go out late or walk at night or whatever. You kind of have to or you live like a prisoner. And then if something DOES happen, an MRA jumps at that, blaming the victim.
Back to harassment stories. Someone in the other topic wanted to know about “intersection” (I’m not really sure what that term means) or how race factors into it. I don’t know. I can only answer their more direct question: Which races have harassed me? White men and black men and men who looked “mixed.” I can only remember one man who looked “Latino” as some here put it. I was walking for exercise along a road. I was on vacation. A car pulled up alongside me. “Want a ride?” he said. When I said no he kept going. So I dunno. Was that his way of flirting? There was no one else around so that was scary. After that I didn’t assume I’m safe just because I’m on vacation and the scenery is so nice.
I have purposely left out ‘being hit on’ stories. There were lots of times a guy wouldn’t take no for an answer, kept talking to me, tried to prevent me leaving, followed me. Unless it was more like being chased down I just chalk all that up to being female. The stories I told about last time, the guys were literally chasing me down. There are many more stories I could include if I weren’t trying to list the ones that MRAs would be less likely to dismiss as “oh he was just flirting with you how dare you turn him down or creep shame him.” And for what it is worth I never insulted any of these guys.
And I don’t know why I am apologizing when I did nothing wrong. 🙂
Two more stories: 18 years old and browsing a book store. Guy grabs my butt. I turn around and it’s a nebbishy R Crumb type of guy. He didn’t say anything, he looked very nervous. I just turned back around and ignored him, although I felt afraid. Because he looked nervous I wasn’t sure what he’d do if I yelled or something. So I played it off like I thought it was some mistake or no big deal.
Parking garage: aside from guys following me “I just want to talk to you!” and stuff like that, or trying to stand between me and my car door, I remember a group of guys on the next tier up, looking down at me. I felt afraid because I had high heels on, and because I hadn’t noticed them. I was looking straight ahead. I heard them hooting and looked up and they were all hooting, grinning and looking at me and pointing and laughing to each other. Again I just tried to ignore it and kept walking. I hoped they were just showing off for each other and weren’t serious.
That reminded me of another story. Walking to my car after grocery shopping. It was dark out. I remember thinking I hadn’t planned very well because here it was late and not many people around. Sure enough a guy shouts from his car, and won’t take no. I finally say “I have to get up in the morning!” because it seemed he was getting angry. For some reason I thought maybe, if he perceived it wasn’t about rejecting HIM but just that I had to be somewhere, he’d “let me go” and he finally did. Until that moment when I could see him thinking and he finally nodded and stopped yelling stuff, I was afraid he’d follow me home.
I was stalked by two exes, one more threateningly than the other (he threatened to kill me), and a lot else, but, none of this is uncommon. These are just the ones that come to mind right now. There’s lots of little stuff too but I’m not even counting the type of stuff MRAs mock, like being ogled or hit on aggressively, just because those are too easy for some to dismiss.
Sorry this was longer than I had intended. And I’m still leaving so much out.
(trigger warning for nasty harassing behaviour and misogynistic gendered slurs)
I have entered the “invisible woman” stage of life now, but when I was in my twenties the cops were continually forcing sex workers to move around, and for a few months the residential area I had moved into became the main locus of the sex trade in the city.
No matter what time of day, how I looked (usually makeupless, in baggy pants, clutching a pile of books), what my manner or response was I had men in cars hooting at me, following me, and yelling at me. You’d think they would know that in a residential area some of the women they would encounter lived there, but they didn’t act like they had given it any consideration. Perhaps they thought “decent women” would remain prisoners in their homes in my situation.
One carload of guys, 3 or 4 of them, followed me for blocks because they didn’t like my responses. A guy rolled down the window and yelled “50 bucks for a blowjob”. I kept on walking, shaking my head no. “Hey you stupid cunt, I’m speaking to you, 50 bucks for a blowjob!” I gave them the finger. “You stupid fucking cunt, you’re not worth 20 bucks, get over here right now, you stupid bitch.” The rest of them roared with laughter and jeers. Finally they sped off elsewhere.
By the time I got home I was thinking “Wow, maybe I DO hate men.”
There were other occasions where guys parked and started following me on foot. It was important to me to keep up a brazen fearless exterior, but that scared me. Truthfully, some of the jeers frightened me too, and the sheer frequency of approaches was wearing on my nerves. When I went to pick up some milk. When I returned books to the library.
I wasn’t a sex worker. If people treated me like this, how badly did they treat actual sex workers?
Ugh. I just remembered that when I was 15 and my friend was 13 we were standing on the corner of our middle class residential street talking and an adult man drove by and shouted “how much!?” from his car window. Who the fuck would say to that to kids? I was not one of those 15 year olds who could be mistaken for a college age woman either. I was obviously under age. And my friend was only 13! Although she did look slightly older, she in no way looked like an adult 13.
@katz some other sex worker trope are having gang associations, or hating men, or hating sex. I would love to see those types of tropes avoided.
RE: Harassment
I talk about my experiences of harassment a lot here, but I want to explain them again to highlight the problem of transmisogynistic sexual harassment.
I present as male, and my standard attire consists of baggy t-shirts, loose track pants, and over-sized hoodies. My appearance is partly intended to be an attempt to blend in with the background and repel people who otherwise may want to interact with me.
Yet despite my appearance, I have always navigated the world with a female subjectivity by virtue of identifying as female. My upbringing instilled in me a heightened fear of male violence and hostility, I have always felt that I am violable and vulnerable, I have experienced the same old pro-male dismissive attitude towards my opinions, and I have had countless experiences with compulsory heterosexuality and maleness that can wear me down to nothing on occasion.
All of these experiences have cumulatively shaped my own personality, and therefore my social behavior in general. And this is something that no cis man ever has to experience, so naturally a lot of people can pick up the cues and see that I’m not really like those “other guys”. That leads folks to treat me like I’m an object of amusement and bullying. I have run into a lot of men who have deliberately exploited my own fears of sexual assault for their own amusement, laughing at me for “screaming like a girl”, “being such a girl”, etc. Each and every one of the victimization I have faced from these men has been inherently misogynistic – and also transmisogynystic and lesbophobic.
So the take home point is that trans women, no matter how they present or how well they pass as male, female, etc., are likely to be harassed by virtue of being trans women and consequently being oppressed by transmisogyny. It’s a great example of why the notion that we trans women have privilege is complete nonsense.
I want add that the internalizations of misogyny I experience as a result of my female subjectivity have directly stemmed from acknowledgements (conscious or otherwise) that I’m a girl. For instance, my heightened fear of sexual assault has been due to my understanding that I’m a girl, and therefore a target for men and boys.
Oh yeah, all the “broken bird sex worker” tropes are definitely out (“sold into sex slavery” is another one).
Equal and opposite to hating sex, there’s the total nympho/really really kinky person. Again, nothing wrong with being like that, but often shows up as a male fantasy about sex workers.
Ally, one more sad thing – relatively minor – that came to mind when you mentioned dressing down to try and blend in/repel invasive people is that it’s such an illustration of how that doesn’t work. Dressing modestly? Wearing baggy men’s clothes? Wearing a burqa, ffs? None of it stops harassers harassing. Makes me want to shout “Wear what you like! At least you’ll get some pleasure from your clothing!” to people copping this shit. I’m lucky, having cis privilege and having had remarkably little harassment overall, so I know it’s very different for trans women, but oh, I long for the day when you, Ally, in particular, can wear as many colours and nice things as you want, whatever their style, whatever your presentation, and not feel the need for camouflage.
Maybe a sex worker for whom it’s a job – some days/customers are good, some aren’t?
In breaking news, Fribbie is standing making a racket. I suspect she’s protesting about the lacka laps around this place.
@katz, yeah the whole “sex workers are broken, because no normal person would ever do that job” is a horrible horrible trope that others sex workers. Funny how there’s no equivalent negative for the clients.
What about if the sex worker came from a loving family, and had pets and did charity work, and one or more university qualifications in hard subjects, or something along those lines which says “this sex worker is awesome” rather than more like “this sex worker is normal” (for whatever definition of normal people want to work with).
I’d be really interested in reading your story, even if none of my suggestions are helpful. 🙂
@kitteh
Sometimes I wonder if my clothing style will change when/if I learn to overcome my strongest fears of confrontation and interaction with strangers. But I think that my current style (if one can even call it that, given its extreme blandness) is here to stay. What matters to me the most about my appearance are whether it suits my identity and whether people recognize it as female. So I would be perfectly content wearing dull colors, hoodies, and track pants for the rest of my life if I could also have a femme body I’m comfortable with and feel authentic and at peace with myself. It actually fits nicely with my identity because I identify as a lesbian and because I have always wanted to be “tomboyish” (as I used to say). I guess the best way to describe my ideal overall appearance is femme-tomboyish, if that makes sense. A femme physical appearance with butch or gender-neutral clothing.
I guess you could also say that my clothing style is a reflection of my contempt for formal dress codes. I’ll obey them and deal with them whenever I have no choice, but I haaaate being made to wear men’s suits, men’s polo shirts, etc. I can buy clothes from the men’s isle and not feel dysphoric so long as I don’t pick anything that is distinctly masculine. This is all due to me being sensitive about false presentation. It hurts to present as something or someone I am not because I’m already used to hiding parts of myself from everyone, so dress codes just irritate me and I prefer to just wear clothes that are dull in color and have no intent of style or appeal to them.
(Anyway, enough blabbering from me. =P)
@Ally S, dress how you feel comfortable. 🙂 Your clothing style is neither threatening nor offensive. You should feel comfortable in what you wear.