Handling unwanted advances
August 30th, 2008
In high school, college, and beyond, I’ve had many conversations with female friends about street harassment, and the conversations have almost always been disheartening. It usually goes something like this:
- Woman is minding her own business on the street, on the bus, in a coffee shop, in a store.
- Random man makes a lewd sexual remark or gesture or begins talking to her when she clearly does not want to talk with him, and then he begins staring at her cleavage or otherwise making her physically uncomfortable.
- Woman’s only instinct is to be polite even though she really does not want to deal with this man. She wants to say something clever to get him to piss off but she freezes up in the moment.
- Woman is pissed the rest of the day that that guy intruded on her space and she had no foolproof way of dealing with it.
I don’t really know what exactly can be done about this. Of course, sometimes it happens that you think up a witty retort that evening or the next day, but by then it’s too late, and you can’t really know if it would have worked to drive the guy away or if it would have just provoked him more (perhaps someone like him, who is not able to pick up on basic social cues, may take your ingenious way of shooing him away as some kind of twisted flirtation?).
What’s the solution? If you try to ignore the guy, you appear rude and/or you still feel violated. If you try to tell the guy to go away, he may feel egged on anyway.
I’m not a woman, so it’s easy for me to say this, but I think in this situation it’s best to avoid wit or politeness and just say something firm and, well, “bitchy”:
“I don’t want to talk to you. Quit staring at my breasts or face the consequences.” If that doesn’t shut up him, yell loudly, “I said ‘Leave me alone,’ asshole!” so that others nearby can hear you. If he still doesn’t, kick him in the nuts—hard.
I guess you could argue the guy was just in a pathetic way looking for attention, so that would just feed into his game. Can a woman in this situation win? Any strategies to share?
August 31st, 2008 at 1:56 am
I’m not sure threats like “…or face the consequences,” are a good idea. Loudly pointing the rude behavior out sounds like a good idea, but vague threats and actual violence like “kick him in the nuts,” seem like a good way to get into legal trouble.
This is of course based on the statement that the woman in question is in a public area with other people around. If she’s alone and feels threatened, then I would not have a problem with her using violence to defend herself. It just seems like the use of violence or the threat of violence for rude behavior is going a bit overboard.
September 2nd, 2008 at 6:27 am
The construct recognized as “woman” represents the dominant social order’s successful attempt to otherize an entire class of people for the purpose of oppressing them.
The unwanted attention is the way that “not-woman” reinforces their dominance over the “woman” class.
Because feminisation is among the first steps taken to socialize children, and because it is so readily accepted, deeply internalized, and staunchly defended by women, it is just about the most difficult thing to do to prevent the dominant class members from acting out their role as oppressor.
The woman herself is the only and the best judge of how to deal with this kind of dominance display.
If the woman returns any behaviour that can be interpreted as aggression by a member of the dominant class, he can feel priveleged enough to return the lack of appeasement with escalated violence.
This behaviour can be as little as a ‘please don’t do that’ - or even a move away from the oppressive actions.
The concept of woman extends to the full set of unique behaviors performed by the sex class to appease its oppressor, where failure to appease can have repercussions from a a snarky glance to a knife in the gut.
Becoming a woman entails taking a thousand petty dominance acts by the dominant class on the chin and replying with a suite of appeasement acts that will preserve that inequality.
Some women have privilege enough to repudiate their membership of the “woman” oppressed class without suffering life-threatening consequences. These women are very rare.
I suggest that a first step towards changing the behaviour of these aggressive men is for other men to intervene as a normal behaviour.
I have no hopes that this will happen soon.
NM
September 2nd, 2008 at 7:02 am
That’ll teach me to not proof a post.
What I meant by the woman being the best judge of how to deal with these unwanted behaviours is that each single act in each single situation carries a whole lot of nuance that only the woman in that **particular** place and time can accurately parse for what next steps to take - - any recipe or general strategy for one situation could be disastrous in any other.
NM
September 17th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
What is the matter with just saying FUCK OFF? I don’t feel any need to be “polite” to some asshole who is in my face. It isn’t about attraction anyway, it is about power.
September 17th, 2008 at 11:11 pm
Who said anything about attraction?
In your experience does saying FUCK OFF actually work in terms of making the guy go away? Or does he just consider you feisty and then want to make more advances and lewd remarks?
November 20th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
[i]Woman’s only instinct is to be polite even though she really does not want to deal with this man. She wants to say something clever to get him to piss off but she freezes up in the moment.[/i]
This is perfect. I’ve had this happen too many times before. And, you know, what… it makes me mad that I have to feel like I need something witty to say. Go away asshole, should be more than enough. But it often doesn’t.
I wish we had some kind of cure for each individual situation, but often times even a witty response or strong kick only provokes a guy further. I think what really needs to change is the culture that teaches a lot of guys that it’s okay to treat women in this way.
November 21st, 2008 at 12:42 pm
I think what really needs to change is the culture that teaches a lot of guys that it’s okay to treat women in this way.
Oh, I totally agree, but how do we do that?
I mean, that’s like saying the best way to deal with muggings, instead of self-defense and being aware of your surroundings, is to teach muggers not to mug. That’d be great in theory, but I’m hard-pressed to think of any practical strategies.
November 21st, 2008 at 5:01 pm
It’s a monumental task, undoubtedly, and I think because cultures (our culture in particular) are designed to resist change it’ll be a long time before we can say we’re at a good place. I can’t think of any practical strategies, aside from designing our stuff so that it tasers muggers specifically upon contact. Oh, man, I totally want my stuff to be taser-ready now…
November 21st, 2008 at 6:30 pm
I think just getting people to recognize there is a problem is a good start. You can’t even begin to work on a problem people don’t acknowledge exists.