An open letter to men concerning a minor but recurring grievance
Dear men,
I know that you are not all responsible for this behavior, but bear with me and take a moment to reconsider some common assumptions of your kind. Maybe you can help a friend!
1. Following is creepy. If I wanted to talk to you, I would stop walking so fast.
I understand that it takes some amount of courage to chase down and chat up an unknown woman. Let me take a moment to respect your bravery. Okay, done. Now, I am a woman walking alone. You might not know what that’s like, but it freaks me the fuck out when someone tails me just a few blocks from my front door. I want to get home, but I don’t want you to know where I live.
2. Conversations, like other types of intercourse, ought to have some sort of etiquette concerning consent. Consider eye contact, for example. If I am purposefully looking away from you, I am not agreeing to interact with you.
Here’s the trick: eye contact isn’t guaranteed consent either. If we lock eyes for a minute, it might have been an accident. But if I seem not to see you at all, stranger, be assured that is intentional.
3. I will almost certainly lie to you to make life easier for me, particularly where other men in my life are concerned. The reason for this is that men respect men more than they respect women. For example, the young man who followed me from T bar asked what I was doing this evening, and I told him that I was on my way to have dinner with my boyfriend. “Oh, there’s always a boyfriend!” he sighed, and disappeared like magic. If I had told him the truth, “I’m going home to sip fizzy lemonade and think about what to have for dinner alone, because I like being by myself and I don’t know you,” experience suggests that I would not have lost him so quickly.
I have noticed a similar pattern among even apparently respectful and sensitive men. Since I started an open relationship, I have repeatedly been astonished by how compliantly men will back down from certain behaviors because they might not be okay with my boyfriend. In my single life, such situations were usually met with persuasion, alternate reasoning, argument, and occasionally insult. It is clear to me from this history that another man’s boundaries are more worthy of respect than my own.
This is not okay. Keep trying, New Age Men.
Signed,
Try to tangle with this!
Oh my… I know it’s not my place to apologize for all men everywhere, but, well, I’d like to apologize for most men in most places, even if it’s silly or useless… But I’m also inclined to try to respond with something halfway intelligent to your insightful inkling that men have more respect for other men’s territory than they do for women… I can’t necessarily argue with the logic, although I’ll posit an armchair theory or a counterpoint; would telling them you were gay evoke the same reaction? I think it might… This doesn’t exactly falsify your point, because I think there’s a great deal of truth in it, and to be fair, claiming homosexuality might not evoke quite the same reaction, or at least not from all overly-persistent suitors… perhaps some would suspect the lie, perhaps others would take the segue to a subject of such a personal and sexual nature as a kind of encouragement or a challenge or something…
I can’t really explain this kind of behavior completely, because I tend to go too far in the opposite direction myself as a rule, but perhaps some of it has to do with learned experience by some men with other women “playing hard to get” and/or putting up a hard veneer of attitude that takes persistence to penetrate… That feels like a cultural or class characteristic, as I find myself picturing various stereotypes and media images of various black and hispanic women behaving this way despite other signs of interest etc, but the point is I suppose that all behavior is learned behavior, and while I agree 100% there should be an etiquette for most all types of intercourse as you say, the real trouble is that there isn’t one etiquette but many, maybe as many as there are people, but certainly subtle shades and variations across different populations, however one wishes to define them… So, again, I’m sorry you were harassed so untowardly, but try not to be so hard on ALL of us men
Everything you say is true. (And I’m sorry that some jackass went and polluted Tbar for you.)
But.
I think that it would be valuable to address, here or elswhere perhaps, what would be an appropriate way for a strange man to appropriate a woman respectfully.
Wow. Too much thinking and too little rereading had me write “appropriate” the second time, where I really meant “approach”.
I love love love the letter!
to Brian, what a lovley reply, you sound very sweet, but to answer your question “would telling them you were gay evoke the same reaction? “, you thought wrong, lol, this most certainly is viewed as an invitation for a threesome today.
I dunno, Gr, an appropriate way to appropriate a woman would be useful to know sometimes.
You have some good points. It seems to me that I am occasionally inadvertently guilty of ‘following’ someone. I can tell this by noting that sometimes when I’m walking by the shortest path to were I want to go to and see a woman ahead of me going the same direction that the woman will often make bizarre turns to avoid me. I can tell that the turns are bizarre (in some cases) because I will then see the woman about where I was going — often her turns end up with me closer to her than farther away and so they seem to me to have been counterproductive. As it happens, I don’t really like the feeling that my mere presence causes someone to be scared but what can I do about that?
Here is a short anecdote that may amuse (and disgust) you. My sweetie and I and another couple went to a bar. Parking near the bar was impossible. Our choice was to drop the two women off to find seats while the two men parked the car. The women found seats and while the men were parking some other men hit on the women. The following response wasn’t enough to get them to lighten up: “Fuck off”. Not only was it not enough, the follow up response “Are you an idiot? Wasn’t ‘fuck off’ direct enough?” was also not enough to get rid of them. The appearance of husbands was.
I think that the best value that I can add to this discussion for me to do is provide a sort of counter-attack. I wear a wedding ring. When I go to a social gathering without my sweetie, I find that women figure out that she isn’t there pretty quickly and then decide that I’m much more interesting than they would have decided had she been there. What’s with that? I’d like to have thought that the whole point of the ring was to send a signal when she isn’t present.
SormGirl_blue: You’re totally right. Telling an idiot man that you’re gay won’t work at all: he’ll assume your bi.
The reason for this is that men respect men more than they respect women.
I have been pondering (thus far, ineffectually) how to increase my formidability.
It annoys me that when I walk over and tell someone they can’t park in a spot with a ‘No Parking’ poster, or can’t buy from farmers while they’re setting up, some people ignore the cute little girl who don’t ignore the burly, tanned farmer who tells them the same thing.
Storm Girl: Right on both counts: Brian is very sweet, and he’s also wrong about the homosexual defense, although I thank him for bringing it up for the sake of conversation. Welcome to the site, btw.
Brian: In my experience, it’s much less effective to claim lesbianinity (heheh) than it is to claim a boyfriend. Possibly this is partly due to the whole “men respect men more than women” aspect. “I’m not interested in men” is taken about the same as “I’m not interested in you,” which is to say that the aggressor assumes either condition is completely reversible. “I’m with her” seems to be interpreted as an invitation to party. I have not, however, glared at a man and said “I’m a dyke” or tried any number of other possible dramatic lines, so perhaps I shouldn’t discount it completely. ; )
I think you may also be right that it’s commonly assumed that women will play hard to get, and say no when they mean yes, etc. But – and I know you already know this – that’s not an excuse. Not least of all because saying no when you mean yes is a sort of bullshit game, and if there are any women left on the planet who still play it, perhaps they’d stop if men generally took them at their word.
. . . I feel compelled to add, at this point, that I’m not man-bashing. I rather like men, or at least I like a significant number of the men I currently know. I do encounter a great many clueless ones that require open letters, though.
Gr: You’re right, that might be a great discussion to have, and I think I might be the wrong woman to start it. I think it’s almost never okay for strangers to approach (or appropriate, but that mostly happens on Bourbon St) me without some sort of active consent or invitation on my part. I mean, I don’t mind when strangers call out friendly things on the street, like “nice day isn’t it?” or “you look peaceful!” (that one still cracks me up). But if I keep walking, conversation’s over. In bars, I’ll do the approaching myself. You know? I could write about what sorts of behaviors imply consent and invitation, but shyer women might have a better sense of approachment propriety than I do.
Beau Nidle: Pbbbbt!
Bongo Mirror: The inadvertent following you describe might have frightened the woman, but she probably eventually figured out that you weren’t chasing her. However, that’s not at all what happened to me, and what happens on a fairly regular basis if you (like me) are female and get around by foot in a large city. In this instance, the young man passed me and turned around to catch up with me and chat, and dogged my steps for the length of time it took for us to work out that my boyfriend (let alone myself) wasn’t interested. Granted, it’s a great deal more direct and less scary than imagining someone was quietly following me, but that guy had every signal that his advances were unwelcome.
I haven’t got much to add to the wedding ring situation… I confess that I don’t count wedding rings for much since I know a handful of couples with open marriages and relationships, but I don’t think I’ve actively flirted with a man just because his SO wasn’t around. I tell you what though… I think people in general tend to pay less attention to couples at parties. They can talk to each other, right? ; )
Joanna, you snuck in there while I was typing. I think you’ll acquire the authority and confidence to do that in time… tour guiding (i.e. directing a crowd of thirty drunkards around the French Quarter and making them listen to me) taught me that authority is largely a mental state. But your mental state does affect your bearing, and I recommend standing taller and pitching your voice a little deeper, and sounding friendly (not peevish) but firm (no uptalking). It’s stupid, but it works.
Possibly you do all of these things already, in which case ignore me. : )
You are of course all correct on the whole about the “lesbian defense”, it occurred to me as a possibility in my coverage of the idea above, but I suppose I just thought it would be a moderate subset of the stubborn bastards that would take it as encouragement, forgetting that the social (or perhaps more accurately civil) cluelessness required to persist up to the point such drastic measures are employed might bias the sample a bit… I guess I brought it up more as an attempt to construct a plausible alternative to men in general having so little respect for women’s boundaries and preferences… similarly with the “hard to get” bit, it’s just me playing devil’s advocate, trying to give benefit of the doubt, etc… I wonder, for instance, in the opposite direction, how often indicating a boyfriend would do nothing to discourage the stubborn bastard, or conversely, say, a sufficiently meek looking boyfriend who was in fact present? There are a great many jokes and or comic situations in movies and TV etc involving the sleazeball hitting on a woman, and then having the big burly guy show up , that it may have more to do with fear than respect, or at least the prospect of some physical challenge discouraging them to look for easier prey… it sounds creepy or scary to put it in such predatory terms, but many guys seem to think of it like that….
As a final comic note, its rediculous what the recent comments section looks like with so many comments on such a long titled post… and I’m sorry this post is drawing comments away from the literature one, so as soon as I have a chance I want to go find something to comment on there….
I feel like I should add to my response to Joanna, lest it appears that I missed her point: yes, what you describe is definitely an instance of some men having less respect for women than for men. That’s what the whole taller and deeper thing is about. ; )
Brian: I’ve pondered the fear factor too… I don’t want to discount it, because I think physical threat might be a factor for some people (particular those who are actually interested in physically overpowering a woman, which blessedly I have not confronted head on). But I lean more toward the deeply-ingrained-assumptions theory than any conscious decision. I think this because I experience the opposite end of it: my directness and bitchiness is an adopted attitude that I consciously choose, but when taken by surprise or overwhelmed, my instinct is to be nice or submissive.
Example: a couple months ago, again walking just a few blocks from my apartment, a young man stopped me on the street with a questioning tone that sounded like he needed directions, so I stopped walking to be helpful. Instead, he complimented me. I said that’s very nice, but I’m embarrassed and would like to be on my way. (I just couldn’t bring myself to be rude.) He said, “I didn’t mean to embarrass you, let’s make up!” and presented his cheek to be kissed. Stunned, I kissed it. Then we parted ways and I felt FURIOUS… partly because he felt that interacting with me on his terms was his right, no matter whether it made me uncomfortable or late for an appointment or anything, and partly because I was so compliant. I clearly could have changed that situation, but I was so startled that it didn’t even occur to me. We were both acting on unconscious principles there: he on his male privilege, me on some virtue of feminine passivity that I usually reject. Ew.
I like to make examples of instances like this because although no one got hurt (just seriously annoyed), I think the same often unacknowledged principles influence more dangerous behavior. Like sex, which was the topic of an excellent article we recently discussed on the Sex Calumny open thread this week.
as someone who is not often approached by random street-walking men, i guess my perspective is unusal. mostly if i continue walking and appearing quite furious at them they just go away.
also to note: i seem almost exclusively to be found attractive by a certain kind of man–to be blunt, in order to make my next point, 30’s – 50’s african american. a somewhat frequent (and stunning) response to my ‘get the hell away from me right now’ glare has been to accuse me of racism. to which i have no idea what to say… worth repeating because it was both nasty and absurd, and required me to think for a second in order to be offended, my least favorite philly pick up line was ‘those pigtails would make nice handles’
my advice to joanna–i’ve found it very useful when dealing with difficult men at work to use direct and sustained eye contact as an intimidation tool. it makes me feel annoyed that i have to resort to tactics, but ususally helps out a lot. makes them nervous…
I have to think a bit more before I say more on this topic. Leaving this comment here will put this back near the top of my ‘comments’ page so that when I have thought, I’ll also find this place easily.
hmmmm… have you been reading the section of mcsweeney’s called open letters? i know it is an idea that exists far beyond the range of one mag, but it reminded me. if you haven’t, you might like. take out the apostrophe and add a dot net. link at the bottom to the open letters section.
wait. now i have tremendous deja vu. even if i am operating with a sieve-brain and we’ve talked about this before, maybe others haven’t been reading…
sieve!
It took some time but I’ve managed to summon up a vague image of what it was to be a fourteen year old boy. My recollection is that at that time, I suddenly became aware that half of my friends had sprouted bumps on their chests and even stranger, their bums were no longer a silly thing that was the source of fart noises but were ‘cute’. Sometimes awareness is one of those sorts of things that can be in the back of your mind. It wasn’t that sort of awareness. It was all consuming and made me completely clueless. My working theory is that this cluelessness persists in most males and so while your letter makes perfect sense, it simply can’t work.
The only possible cure is a vast amount of psychedelics that regresses the male back to before the age of fourteen and pure luck in encountering a female who happens to be not a nutjob and in the mood for dealing with a being with pre-teen maturity.
Ecentipede: Yes, ignoring often works… and sometimes, too, there are people that just want to call out something pleasant, to which I call back and keep walking. But since I walk a lot to get to places I need to go, I’m just out in the world more often for the followers and miscellaneous creepy people to catch up with me.
That pigtail line was really awful. I think the only verbal counter I have to that is the man who stood in front of me and yelled “I SAID I want me some yum-yum!” That was in NOLA, though.
Oh and yais, I have seen the McSweeny’s site, but through another source: passive-aggressive notes.com. Both of those places can be pretty funny. : D
Bongo Mirror: So it’s a woman’s job to teach men how to behave while they themselves are still learning? Great idea. : P
I know you probably meant to be facetious, but that just sounds like so much other rhetoric in the news-and-blogosphere I’ve read lately. Apparently women and girls are also solely responsible for keeping themselves from unwanted pregnancy (comment section), keeping themselves from being raped, and keeping themselves from being killed.
I’m all for accountability, but placing the responsibility on the victim instead of the perp is a pretty pernicious trend.
Since it appears that I accidentally irritated you I will (attempt to) avoid a facetious response.
You are completely correct that I was intending to be silly. That said, that doesn’t mean that my ‘joke’ was actually funny. I am genuinely sorry that your day was such that the joke didn’t work for you. I think that it is worth checking whether such a joke would never work or it was just that today. I think that the idiots who think victims are ‘asking for it’ are typically conservative. My first paragraph echoes that notion. But, my suggested cure (gobbling big batches of LSD and getting laid) strikes me as the opposite of the sort of things that conservatives typically advocate. The juxtaposition of conservative and non-conservative struck me as funny.
About half the time, my style of humour tends to work that way: I say something that is pretty much the opposite of what I think and inject something that I think is clearly completely wrong as a sign that I’m saying the opposite of what think. (Yeah, I know it isn’t ideal because the other half the time I say exactly what I mean and inject absurd things just as they pop into my mind. In speech this works fine since tone of voice can act as a signal).
What I wrote in my previous comment follows the pattern fairly closely. The part that I do believe is that luck plays a significant part in having things work well. Being reasonable just gives a chance for things not to get messed up. Not being reasonable ensures that they will be messed up.
Thanks for providing the links. I decided not to follow them — I just moused over them and looked at the ’snapshots’. If I did follow them I would probably become quite angry and attempt to write a parody which in turn would be misinterpreted by someone (not you since I’ve just gone on this rant but nearly every parody I’ve written is misinterpreted by someone that I essentially agree with).
So, if it is your opinion that such things will never or only rarely strike you as funny, it will probably be best if I just go away. (I’d leave thinking that you’re reasonable and don’t share my sense of humour — and I think that’s fine state for the world to be in).
Finally, I’d like to say that it is my opinion that there are a pair of things that are deeply wrong with the way things are. The first is that there is a fair bit of creepy behavior in the world. The second is that a fair bit of that creepy behavior is rationalized (as I’m sure is found following your links) as OK by the perpetrators using some idiotic version of what males and and females are separately responsible for. My feeling is that the reasoning is yet another example of the naturalistic fallacy: the fallacious claim is that since women are the ones who do endure the consequences, they should be the ones who endure said consequences.
Bongo, I’m not irritated. I could plainly see that you meant to be funny, and I plainly explained why I think that the humor fails (in general, not on this particular day because of my mood – how silly). But I don’t see why you should take that as a personal attack.
I read a little about the naturalistic fallacy… that’s a very useful idea. It’s an idea that my classmates and I have often discussed but didn’t have a name for.
I didn’t take it as a personal attack. I took it that my style of humour and yours don’t match. There was no reason to expect that they would.
To me, this indicates that the most polite thing for me to do is to refrain from making jokes here. I like making jokes and thus I probably shouldn’t comment here.
There’s nothing at all wrong with two people having different senses of humour and going their own mostly separate ways. I say ‘mostly’ because you do write interesting stuff. I can still read it without saying anything.
Good post. I’d like to join in on Brian’s apology.
Paul
Thanks Paul, that’s kind. You know what’d be really useful, though: if you and the other guys would carry some of these ideas around in the back of your mind, and try them out on men (or women, really) you encounter that seem to have absorbed some of culture’s quieter teachings, such as “men deserve more respect than women.” Even if you and others don’t quite agree, it’s still productive to think about it.