Cartoon: Street Harassment
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Transcript:
(Each of the first nine panels shows a black-haired woman walking in a public place at different times and in different outfits. In each outfit, a different stranger on the street is making a comment to her. She looks very unhappy with the comments. Panel 1 starts showing her from fairly far away, but each panel gets closer up on her face until panel 9.)
Panel 1
Man in doorway: Damn, beautiful!
Panel 2 (woman is waiting at bus stop)
Guy sitting on stoop: You got a number?
Panel 3
Man grabbing woman’s arm: Suck my cock!
Panel 4
Grinning older man: Smile! You’re so pretty!
Panel 5 (Woman is carrying groceries)
Man in car: Hey! I’m talking to you! Fuck you then!
Panel 6 (Woman is riding bike)
Man: DAMN, sexy, you’ve got a fat ass.
Panel 7 (Close up on woman’s almost wincing face).
Off-panel voice: Just stop and talk. I just want to talk to you.
Panel 8 (Closer up on her face, which is turned away from the viewer.)
Off-panel voice: What’s your name? C’mon, tell me your
Panel 9 (Very far shot of woman, walking hunched over with her hands in her jacket pockets).
Off-panel voice: I’d fuck the SHIT out of that.
Panel 10 (Woman at home, in her bedroom. A cheerful man in the background, wearing pajamas and sitting on a bed, talks to her; she has her back to him and looks miserable.)
Man: If women on the street said I look nice, it’d make my day!
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When I was researching this cartoon, I came across several different women reporting they get harassed more often when they’re on a bicycle. So I decided that in one panel the woman should be riding a bike. But it turned out I was lousy at drawing a bike, so I actually had to use photo reference, and redraw it several times. So I probably worked harder on that one panel than any other in the cartoon.
Then, when I finalized the cartoon’s layout, I ended up cropping 90% of the bike out of that panel. Oh well.
53 Comments
OMG you are so spot on! Hope it’s okay if I post it on my blog and link back
Thanks, Holly! Please feel free to post this on your blog, with a link.
Love it! We will be posting and linking up to you on our blog tomorrow!
There is vastly more to being generally desired than the drawbacks of it. This cartoon is unbelievably, glass-1%-empty tendentious.
Gee, how odd for a political cartoon to express a point of view. Clearly that is a flaw with my work; from now on I’ll try to avoid that in my political cartooning.
Street harassment is not about being desired or desirable. It’s a show of power, and far more about making the target feel uncomfortable than it is about sex. I am not mainstream attractive, not “generally desired,” but I am a constant target of street harassers.
Ampersand:
Cool and dandy up to the line between “expressing a point of view” and misrepresenting reality.
Of the men talking to the woman in the street in your comic, not ONE says something unambiguously nice; even the first one prepends “damn”. I don’t believe this is the everyday experience of a desirable woman: only harassment and no compliments, no smiles, no positive reinforcement, no reflexive acts of helpfulness, none whatsoever of what the guy in the bottom panel thinks about when he says what he says. All that supposedly only exists in the imagination of Male Assholes Who Just Don’t Get It(TM).
PNC:
Wrong. It is about sex. It is about desire. It is about sexual frustration. It is about the feeling of attraction fused (perhaps even neurologically) with the pain of rejection to such extent that the former automatically triggers the latter. It is about misdirected, reflexive retaliation for this pain. Retaliation indeed is an act of power that aims to make the target feel uncomfortable, but that would be an extremely superficial assessment of the whole problem.
To use RPG terms, the +100 desirability bonus for being female works independently of the “mainstream attractiveness” stat.
Basta, I’m curious why you think you know so much about this. Amp did mention that he did some “research”, which I presume means that he asked several women what they think. And several women on this forum and the other one have agreed that this is a fair depiction. Your POV – that the everyday experience of most women is primarily pleasant, nonthreatening expressions of sexual desire from well-meaning (if sexually frustrated? You seem to have a couple of arguments going) men – is in the minority.
I’ll throw my two cents in. I’m a pedestrian – don’t even own a bike – and I’m conventionally attractive (blonde, hourglass, etc.). Since I’m in public and highly visible, I receive comments on the street every day. For the last five years since I moved to the current metro (count how many days that must be!) I can describe exactly two of these incidents that were pleasant and non-threatening* from my perspective. And I have no compunction about stating that it is my perspective that matters here. I am the one whose space, sense of safety, and self-esteem** is being accosted by street harassers. In a just society, my right to walk unmolested ought to trump any dude’s right to express what he thinks of my body, wardrobe, or manner of walk.
I think you should try listening for a little while longer before you try to tell us all how it is.
*I’m sure a few of the speakers I found threatening were indeed just expressing a little libidinous admiration. But the point of this cartoon is that those incidents are not experienced in isolation – they are experienced as a barrage.
**You may be surprised to know that my self-esteem is actually not bolstered from having a legion of strangers remind me that my body is presumed on display, available for comment, and (in some cases) available for access!
Cool and dandy up to the line between “expressing a point of view” and misrepresenting reality.
Given how many people, in this post and in the main post, are saying “Wow, nice work”, I wonder what reality it is you’re referring to.
Thank you for saying this! This is one of the primary things I wanted the cartoon to communicate, so it’s nice to read this.
In the context of a culture of street harassment, I think it’s nearly impossible for any catcall to be unambiguously nice. That said, I think that if you asked the guys in panels 1, 2, 4, 7 & 8, they’d all say they were just being nice.
I don’t think there is a +100 desirability bonus for being female. Conventionally desirable men are, as far as I can tell, frequently treated in ways that advantage them. Either men or women can get the “desirable” bonus. And both women who aren’t conventionally pretty, and those who are, report having problems with street harassment. So I don’t think it’s useful or accurate to frame this as “the +100 desirability bonus for being female.”
I agree with much (not all) of this, although I’d add it’s also about masculinity. However, I disagree with you that seeing it as about power is “superficial.” It’s just whether you’re centering the male or the female experience. From the perspective of the woman or girl being harassed, the deep motives of the man harassing her is less important and relevant than the fact that he has the power to harass her. From her perspective, what he does to her is more important than why he’s doing it. OTOH, from your male-centric perspective, why he’s doing it matters more than what he’s doing.
A just society does not involve freedom of speech?
Yes – at least conceptually. My speech is not costless; it may hurt you. In a perfectly just society, people would compensate each other — instantly and without transaction costs — for hurts (and perhaps for benefits).
But the First Amendment basically declares that courts have thrown in the towel on enforcing that kind of compensation. This amendment basically reflects an acknowledgement that we don’t have, and will never have, a just society; the most we can hope for is to create the least unjust society we can. And the prevailing view in the US is that a society in which people could demand compensation from each other for most kinds of speech would be a less just society than the one we have now.
This is not a universally held view. Both the Critical Legal Studies movement and the Feminist Legal Theorists oppose free speech purists; they tend to favor “speech codes” on campuses, for example. But pretty much every place else in the world has less expansive free speech laws than the US, yet seem to get along ok, mostly. (Admittedly, some places have no functioning governments, so perhaps you could say they have perfectly expansive free speech laws.)
Related to that, I previously invited people to nominate places that exhibit better gender dynamics than the US; I renew that invitation.
Wow. That’s some good bloggin’ there. We covered some similar ground in the discussion here, but I don’t think ever got to quite such a succinct summary.
As I’ve warmed to (aspects of) evolutionary psych theory, I’ve warmed to the idea that men and women will systemically tend to different perspectives. This greatly complicates the ability of men to empathize with women’s circumstances and vice versa. Even the gold standard of behavior — Do Unto Others and You Would Have Them Do Unto You — leads to some predictably bad outcomes.
For what it’s worth, I don’t find a lot of benefit from characterizing one perspective as important and another as superficial. Perspectives differ. Accepting the difference of perspective helps me gain insight into the perceiver.
Tanglethis:
I think that most of those women belong to either of these two categories:
- women whose goal is to consciously generate the “men are nuisance” discourse as a weapon in the gender war they are fighting
- women who perpetuate said discourse in good faith, their interpretation of their own experiences already influenced by it
Tanglethis (but attn Ampersand):
“Well-meaning” and “frustrated” are orthogonal continua. A strong superego may keep you (resultant you) well-meaning even if you are extremely frustrated. Some guys in the comic are probably well-meaning (depending on the tone with which “damn” is uttered), some others’ superegos wish they could be well-meaning but their hurt emotions and frustrated desires make it impossible, some demand things from a person they’re seeing for the first time, and then some are outright hostile. This is actually a sequence of attitude changes that ends with a particular type of bitter misogyny (see, I can use the word without choking), and I maintain that this development, this erosion, is completely driven by sexual frustration sensu largo, i.e. including feelings of inadequacy caused by cultural expectations of sexual success (that is what Amp calls “masculinity” in accordance with the long-standing feminist tradition of using the term to mean “problems with men”).
How does a construction worker whistling at you from the third floor of scaffolding invade your space?
How does he, by any reasonable standard, threaten your sense of safety?
What is your self-esteem attached to? If you are homo sapiens, then it is probably attached to how easily you can obtain whatever is socially presumed difficult for you to obtain. For men, that would often be sexual success. What is it for you?
The way I understand “molested”, I fail to see a conflict of rights here.
I can certainly agree that “culture of street harassment” is a framing that makes it nearly impossible for any catcall to be interpreted as unambiguously nice.
I didn’t mean bonus for desirability. I meant bonus to desirability, for being female.
That’s what they call “superficial” (meaning 4).
Oh, and Barry:
1. What Tanglethis said. This cartoon really conveys the substance of a lot of comments I’ve been reading, helping people (men) understand other (women’s) points of view. Literature in ten panels, guy. Some version of this should find publication.
2. I can see two points to this cartoon. The first point, which I don’t think anyone would miss, is the idea that the husband (?) doesn’t understand the wife’s (?) perspective. The second, iffier point, is that the wife finds that the lack of empathy she receives from all the men she encounters to be similarly alienating. This second idea — that the husband’s blithe incomprehension cuts like a caustic remark shouted on a street corner — punches a lot deeper.
Now, you don’t need to clarify whether or not you intended that second interpretation; generally I like works that lend themselves to various interpretations. However….
I really like the use of cursive text and sketchy word balloon for the outdoor text — but not in the final panel. The cursive text/sketchy balloon suggest a kind of wispy, echoy, fleeting quality to me; I hear it in my head. Because an indoor voice would have a more conventional quality, I expect the text/balloon to have a more conventional look. (What can I say? I’m an sound-oriented guy.)
But if you’re using cursive to emphasize the uniformity of her experience with men’s lack of understanding, rather than the sound quality of the words, then I can see the advantage of using a uniform script. In short, I can see an advantage to using a different script for the last panel — but doing so would require you to de-emphasize my second interpretation discussed above.
(Cartoons: complicated stuff.)
nobody.really:
Printed, framed (our posts collided).
nobody.really, I think it’s interesting that you assume a marriage relationship for the characters in the last panel.
That was exactly my intention — and as you suspected, that’s why I gave him the same lettering style as the other men. (And also the same colors.)
To me, that assumption makes the punch line punchier. It juxtaposes an assumption of intimacy with an experience of alienation.
I’m surprised no one else has called you out on this yet. Your stance is essentially that women (at least, all these women here) are engaging with this topic in bad faith – that they do not in fact experience street harassment as alienating and damaging, they just think they do or they find it a useful argumentative tool. Despite all the testimony otherwise. It’s not my job to teach you why your stance is dripping with privilege and not conducive to productive conversation, and I have the impression that you’re not going to be receptive to the lesson anyway, but here’s the 101 when you’re ready for it.
http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2008/02/feminism-101-feminists-look-for-stuff.html
I find the rest of your theories about the inner life of others to be pretty flimsy, and in any case I’m more interested in the perspective of the female character of this cartoon, so I’ll focus on the points here that are more relevant to discussing why street harassment is (rationally) experienced as hostility:
This is an odd example to choose – not one I would have chosen, since it doesn’t happen to me all that often. But I could see it as part of a continuum of invasive street harassment. I would place it at the low end of invasiveness, with an encounter where the harasser actually touches me (or gets close enough to) at the high end of invasiveness. In between: men who follow me, men who drive pass slowly in a car, men who are stationary but call out from doorways and alleys – more or less in that order from most to least invasive. While only encounters at the extreme end of the spectrum actually accost me, ALL of these encounters put me in the position of object to the harassers’ gaze. Most if not all of them also suggest the potential for violence – the following especially, but men in a car and men near a recess (doorway, alley) have a spatial advantage if they were to lay hands on me. And I don’t have a way of knowing whether a street call will escalate to an assault until it’s happening. So these forms of harassment remind me that the space I’m in is never a safe space, never a space in which I get to walk as a human being. That’s pretty damn invasive.
Uh, no. Who’s your psych teacher? Again, I’m not going to derail this thread with my preferred theories of subjectivity, but I do recommend branching out into some ethical philosophy. They’re not primarily ethicists, but I like Lyotard and Trinh Minh-ha for a more generous conceptualization of what it means to be human.
This is definitely something I need to explain better; I saw it threw off nobody.really too.
I’d clarify by adding that my right to walk unmolested trumps another person’s right to express his opinion of my body TO ME.
I’d say that freedom of speech covers his right to express this opinion to his friends, on his blog, in print, whatever. But when he expresses it to me, particularly when his spatial relation to me is threatening or carries the potential for threat, it is invasive in the way I described above. I usually hate comparing oppressions, but try it this way: he has changed the space I walk in as surely as if he had used a pejorative racial epithet for a racial group I identify with. We understand that that shouting “Hey, boy” at a black man on the street is a moral wrong even if it isn’t a legal wrong; it reminds the man that the space is not his in some tenuous way, that he is not considered fully entitled to be there.
The man shouting “Can I get a number?” at the woman in that cartoon is doing essentially the same thing.
Metafilter had a huge discussion about street harrasment in 2009. Basta!, if you are interested in acquiringing some understanding into how many women feel about this subject, go read it all the way. Many of your points come up as the discussion progresses and many men expressed how helpful and enlightening this thread had been for them.
http://www.metafilter.com/85667/Hi-Whatcha-reading
People weren’t done when the thread was closed, and the follow up is worth a read as well:
http://metatalk.metafilter.com/18426/Watcha-reading-Well-this-thread-for-one-thing
For those that already do get it, both threads are a wonderful (albeit painful at times)read. If you want to get your hopes up that understanding on a general (i.e. not particularly feminist and with a majority of male posters) discussion site can actually be achieved, it’s worth the huge time investment.
(Sorry for the awkward phrasing, English is not my first language)
Thanks for the great comment, TangleThis!
Tanglethis:
I said “most” not “all”, did not use the phrase “bad faith”, did use the phrase “good faith”, and made no guesses as to the bad/good faith ratio.
If they think they do, that’s good faith in my book.
That piece hyperlinks the words “being told to smile” to an anecdote where the guy actually starts with “Hey, why you gotta look so mean?”.
Continuum fallacy.
No. The encounters at the benign end of the spectrum do not put you in the position of object to the harassers’ gaze because the guys in the encounters at the benign end of the spectrum are not being harassers.
That sounds much like what kynophobic people say about dogs. They perceive all dog behaviors as potentially threatening. They cannot tell friendly bark-bark from evil growl. They think that a sleeping dog watches them with half-closed eyes. They are petrified with fear when a dog sniffs at their groceries. When they see someone nearby walking a dog on a leash, they eye the length of the leash and adjust their pace to stay out of range.
If you’ve been attacked by a dog, or know of many people who have been attacked by dogs, then being afraid of uncontrolled dogs isn’t irrational.
But at least where I live, I rarely encounter an uncontrolled dog. Nearly all the dogs I see are leashed or fenced; the few exceptions are nearly always with, and controlled by, their owners. The one unleashed, without-an-owner dog I see regularly is a thing that lives down the block which is barely four inches tall.
That said, if I walked past a 100-300 pound unleashed, uncontrolled dog, and it was barking or growling at me, I’d be frightened.
Men are not leashed or confined. And men attacking women — in particular, men attacking women they have a sexual interest in — happens to a lot of women in our society. It’s not irrational for women to feel intimidated or threatened by hostile comments from strange men.
Another huge difference: dogs are not moral agents. Men are. You, me, and all other men can just choose not to act like assholes. There’s no reason we need to wolf-whistle or to “hey baby” strangers on the street.
* * *
That said, I don’t really want to talk about this as if objections to street harassment are only justified insofar as they are connected to a potential physical threat.
When I was a kid, I was bullied a lot. Sometimes the bullying took physical form — being hit, things being stolen from me, etc.. More often, though, the bullying took place through constant verbal belittlement. Both were damaging to me. The verbal belittlement wasn’t reasonable or fair behavior; it was, in fact, unfair that I had to go through life constantly being reminded that the dominant kids around me considered me worthless. It had a big impact on my self-image and sense of self-worth (and, sadly, does to this day).
There are ways that the parallel doesn’t work — adult women, obviously, have more agency than a ten year old kid does — but my point is, physical harm is not the only kind of harm that is objectionable. A constant campaign of harassment and verbal belittlement in public spaces takes its toll. And men who contribute to that campaign are being assholes.
[Unproductive bit deleted by Amp]
That’s personal experience and observational experience, respectively (according to Rachman), but another way of acquiring fears is informational experience, and in the case of “catcallophobia” that would be the exposure to quite some demonizing propaganda that (t)here is.
All that now remains to complete the argument that all male initiative is unethical is to posit that all such comments are hostile, which is what your comic does. Got it.
Which way does the above argue? Hint: insert “and often do” after “can”. Doesn’t work with dogs.
Depending on the definitions of harassment and verbal belittlement, this campaign does or does not take place on the planet Earth. By my definitions it does not; both behaviors of course exist, but not with a prevalence that would justify conceptualizing them as “constant campaign”.
Additionally, certain sentiments expressed in this thread and in similar discussions lead me to believe that if catcalls suddenly ceased, advocates would start complaining that men slight women by daring to look at them. Catcalls thus actually carve out space for the acceptance of unproblematic male behaviors. If not for the former being there to attract fire and brimstone, some ethicists of unspecified ideological affiliation would probably find a dozen ways to argue that the latter are so very assholish and morally wrong.
Everytime a random stranger guy has yelled a comment about my body/appearance AT me (eg. at my back) instead of to me I experience it as sexual harrassment. When guys know us girls will be offended by their comments, they’ll be cowardly and say their comments to our backs.
If a stranger guy treats me as a human being and makes a comment TO me about my appearance, then I wouldn’t usually call that harrassment. This has happened to me once – a few months ago an old man walked by me as I waited for the bus. He made eye contact with me, smiled at me, and said “you have lovely hair.” I felt treated as a human being rather than objectified and reduced. I felt like he was saying, “You are a human being, and I value you as one”, as well as commenting on my body/appearance.
The majority of comments-by-strange-men-on-my-body have been directed AT me (as if I’m primarily just a body and not a human being) and usually to my back – just one has been directed TO me, and in a way that left me feeling treated with respect as a human being.
Of the men who have sexually harrassed me, I know none of them would have done it in front of my Dad (eg. if my Dad brought them over to our house as his ‘work colleagues’ or friends). Why is it okay in their minds to sexually harass a young teenage girl, but only in certain situations, while treating her as a human being in other situations? The difference between commenting on a girls body AT her and TO her (while treating her as a human being) is apparant here. These men could still comment on my appearance in front of my Dad, but they’d need to do it in a respectful way (rather than to my back), like that man did at the bus stop.
Basta! seems to be saying that catcalls are a natural and common part of male life because they serve a purpose (trying to get the guy laid). I disagree. Most guys consider catcalling to be rude and unacceptable. I think only a small proportion of guys ever verbally sexually harrass women/girls who are strangers to them (at least where I live in New Zealand). I know that my male relatives, my brothers, and most of my brothers friends would never catcall strangers. My four brothers (none of whom are feminists) would be quick to label any guy who did a douche.
‘Free speech’ is a legal right, but we don’t just base our actions on what is legal or not – morality comes into it, too. If most women experience most catcalls as unwanted ‘harassment’, then guys should just not do it. Harassment is usually at least a bit intimidating or scary (in most situations the guy could decide to follow us, or try to touch us – we have no way of knowing if we will be truly safe from him or not).
Hi, Ampersand + commenters. This is my first time commenting anywhere on a large, mainstream feminist blog, and I’m more than a little nervous — despite the fact that the existence of TADA seems especially designed to minimize such nervousness.
I guess this hesitance can be attributed to two basic factors. First of all, I’ve spent a lot of time reading and commenting at Feminist Critics, which, it may surprise you to learn, has been the crucial factor in turning me into what passes for a mainstream feminist. I couldn’t stomach didactic, “don’t challenge this” sort of 101, but the conversation there often goes right to the root of feminist arguments and challenges them as hard as they can — and when a lot of them turned out to hold up, in my judgment, I was intrigued. (And some of this has happened pretty recently; I don’t even agree anymore with at least one post on my own blog.) But they do have a tendency to concentrate on feminist excesses there; and the set of all outbound links from there to amptoons.com naturally appears to paint a much worse picture of you than your place as a whole does. Second, I’m a transwoman (not yet presenting female but taking steps) — so feminism has two strong meanings for me that it may not have for others. It’s a movement that is now, as a whole, much more trans-inclusive than mainstream culture, and that helped connect me with the experiences of actual transwomen and taught me I wasn’t alone. But it’s also a movement that was convinced, for decades, that people like me were horrible abominations who ought to be eliminated. It’s a movement that is still the source of much of the triggering anti-trans hate speech I read, and that still praises “pioneers” who hated transfolk. Because of that, I doubt I’ll ever be able to accept an idea merely because feminism has agreed on it; and I doubt I’ll ever feel totally safe in feminism space.
So. I like the comic, overall, and I really like the art. I cannot really object to the portrayal of street harassment against women in the comic, which seems to correspond well to many stories I’ve heard. I haven’t observed much of this phenomenon even from a third person perspective, but I wouldn’t expect to, because I don’t live in a large city, and due to my disability I tend to avoid the street in any case. I think BASTA!’s campaign against the accuracy of this portrayal seems to miss the point, particularly in comment #15. In particular, I see nothing productive in the context of this conversation about his suggestion that some women exaggerate street harassment for political purposes. Amp said that he relied on the accounts of actual women to construct his cartoon. And Tanglethis gave her own account of harassment in comment #9. Accounts by people about their own lives deserve to be taken seriously rather than explained away; I don’t want to participate in any such dismissal.
But that’s exactly why I find the last panel — described accurately by nobody.really (#20) as the “punch line” — so problematic. You’ve drawn in a fellow who is saying “If women on the street said I look nice, it’d make my day,” and he’s grinning like a maniac. As if to say — ha ha, this man is telling a joke. Clearly he hasn’t experienced real isolation and pain. He’s misunderstood how damaging street harassment is, and he’s wrong to do that, and that’s the end of his importance to this comic.
I know, though, that many of the men who say or write this sort of thing do so from a grim and depressed place. Perhaps not all, but many. That because they aren’t at the top of the heap they haven’t received any sort of attention to their appearance from women in years, or ever — much less are they in a relationship, like the fellow in the comic. That they can’t even talk about this to their male friends, because men are supposed to be stoic and not even have emotions; and that if they did talk about it they might well lose their male friends too. That, because most straight men, unlike most women, are culturally impelled to keep their distance from one another, that many of these men go days or weeks at a time without even touching another human being, and that this is driving them completely round the bend, because contact is a fundamental psychological need. (I know ballgame wrote a very good post about this, but I can’t find it at the moment.) That some of these men are so isolated that they legitimately might prefer even the alienating and dehumanizing sort of attention women get to what they get, which is no attention at all, ever.
I’ve heard a lot of these stories in my time at FC. Since I’ve lived 21 years presenting male and as a PWD, I’ve experienced a lot of what they’ve experienced, too. (And I have literally wondered whether I would prefer street harassment as a woman to being entirely ignored as a man. I can’t say I know the answer yet, but it’s a hell of a thing to have to weigh! No one deserves either.) So I really can’t read your comic without all of this tumbling out in my mind. Sure, it sucks that some of the people telling these stories are trying to get attention for them by denying the validity or importance of women’s stories. I’m not interested in doing that, or in excusing it, for a second. I just feel that using isolated men as a punchline is a problematic thing for feminists to do. Their stories speak to things that feminists are already concerned about — toxic gender policing and a messed-up heterosexual dating scene. It just makes sense that feminism should try to find some way to include these men. So a comic that suggests that these men are not really being serious when they discuss their feelings of worthlessness and isolation, and that (#19) even saying these things is equivalent to street harassment, well, it seems like a counterproductive thing to do.
@ Skyborne – What makes you assume that guy in the last panel is meant to be one of the isolated men you’re talking about? I mean, just going on what little context the comic gives us, he appears to be in a live-in relationship with the woman who appears throughout the comic. So surely he’s not in the situation that you’re describing?
I kind of think that what you’re describing is something that needs a comic of it’s own. It doesn’t really belong in the context of this specific comic, and attempting to shoehorn it in there would just have made for a big confusing mess, or a much longer comic.
Well, yeah, the man and a woman appear to be in a relationship. And, upon reflection, that seems like an even more bizarre artistic choice than having the fellow smile. Why would a man who’s actually in a relationship crave the validation of random women on the street? Doesn’t he already get validation? (OK, maybe he doesn’t, and the relationship is unhealthy, but that’s not implied, either.) This just makes the man even further removed from the kinds of men I actually have encountered who sincerely crave validation so much that they start to wish they got harassed in the street.
I did not mean to suggest that Amp should have made the entire cartoon about isolated men. That obviously would not have been coherent. It is, as Amp noted (#12), a comic focused on a/the female experience. What I was really trying to say — and this may have gotten lost in the ramble — was that the comic seems to make fun of men who say they wish they experienced some sort of validation that they have bodies*, by suggesting that they’re making this statement with full trollface on and it isn’t serious, or else that they are serious but that they’re somehow happy about it (which makes even less sense to me). This strikes me as pretty unfair.
*To clarify, street harassment is a pretty terrible way to get that sort of validation, and I don’t think anyone could enjoy the type depicted in the comic for very long. I do think there’s some tendency to wishful thinking here, I just don’t think it’s the only factor.
I think you’re totally misunderstanding the point of the comic. Amp, feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but as I understand it the point of that panel is that the guy isn’t really expressing a deep seated desire for validation, he’s just sort of thoughtlessly dismissing the woman’s complaints because he’s unable to see things from her point of view, which is something that women experience from partners/male family members/male friends all the time. His words are meant (I assume) to be a response to her complaints about being harrassed. What you’re projecting onto it seems like a totally different issue that the comic didn’t intend to tackle because it’s not relevant.
You’re seeing mockery where none was intended, basically.
No, I mean, I agree with your assessment of what Amp was trying to do with the comic, totally, 100%. All I was saying that Amp’s choice for the dude’s line of dialogue was bizarre, and additionally that its use in this context came across as trivializing a real problem that I take seriously. I wasn’t saying any of that was Amp’s intent, which I don’t know. I also wasn’t saying that the problems of male isolation I talk about are directly relevant to street harassment, or to anything except the one line of dialogue that I was calling into question. I apologize if I didn’t make any of that clear.
The thing is, I really can’t conceive of a man who says “if women on the street said I look nice, that’d make my day” who isn’t in some way “expressing a deep seated desire for validation.” But maybe I just don’t know the same men Amp does.
You don’t know some of the men I do either, then, because I’ve seen that phrase used as a dismissive putdown on multiple occasions.
I’m also not sure if women should be expected to care if there were deeper reasons behind it, honestly. If someone is doing something that harms me it’s really not my responsibility to analyse their reasons, I just want them to stop doing it. But in general I think you’re giving most of the people who say things like that far too much credit – some of them may be expressing deep seated angst, but most of them just seem to be trying to get women to stop complaining for all kinds of sexist reasons.
Also I think this back and forth sort of illustrates why the comic is necessary – it seems like in general men who’re decent people often aren’t aware of just how common this sort of behavior from men who’re not such nice people is, and so the usual reaction when it’s pointed out to them is initially disbelief. Of course if you’re not the kind of guy who would respond to a woman’s complaints about how she feels harrassed and frightened with an attempt to shut her up because she’s bumming you out it seems incomprehensible that other men would do that. That doesn’t mean that they don’t, though, it just means that you aren’t around to see it happen when they do.
OK, I’m glad we finally got to down to what our actual differences were. And I think I understand where you’re coming from, now, so thanks. I can accept chalking this up to a difference of experience.
I mean, this tends to be my first reaction, too. But I think the best way to actually stop certain kinds of behavior is to figure out the underlying reasons behind it and try to deal with those reasons. I think that’s true in a lot of areas, and that the question, at least, usually ought to be broached. I guess I have to be agnostic in this specific issue, though, because the experiences you’re talking about are not the same as mine, so I’m rather far from understanding the motivations behind the men you’re talking about.
I’m not sure whether you were intending a wholly generic “you” in #34. I suppose it couldn’t hurt to reiterate that I am not and never have been a man. The fact that I was mistakenly treated as a man for most of my life gives me, I think, some limited insight into the issues I raised, but my experience has been atypical in other ways, too. I don’t pretend that my own internal reactions and thoughts are the same as those of cis men. I intended to speak primarily on behalf of other men that I’ve known, rather than for myself. I’ve already gone as far as I can in doing that, I think.
@Skyborne – Yep, I meant generic you, people who would never do this so don’t understand why other people do and/or who’ve never experienced it so are shocked that it happens, sorry if that was unclear.
I see what you’re saying but I really don’t think the sense of loneliness you’re describing is what motivates the harrassing behavior, in most cases. I notice that whenever this subject is discussed a lot of men chime in with their personal experience of feeling that loneliness, but they’re also very clear that they don’t harrass, in fact they’re more likely to be the men who’re afraid to talk to women even in appropriate circumstances where the woman is indicating interest. So I don’t think it’s them doing the harrassing. The few times I’ve seen guys chime in who make it clear that they do harrass women, it seems to be coming from anger, entitlement, and a sense of women as less than, not shyness/social awkwardness/lack of self confidence. So I think we’re talking about two very different sets of men with very different issues. But I think the shy/awkward men sometimes feel like they’re being targeted, and I’m not sure why, since they’re not the ones doing the harrassing according to their self-reported behavior (and this would match up with my personal experience).
Yeah, I agree. It’s BASTA! upthread who was trying to plumb the motivations of street harassers themselves, not me.
Yeah, this is true. The men who harass women on the street don’t generally care what women think about it, and they’re not listening to feminist critiques of their behavior. The shy/awkward/isolated men generally are listening to women as hard as they can. They end up receiving messages meant for more aggressive men and taking them to heart, which can have a paralytic effect, up to and including a deep-seated fear of ever approaching women under any circumstances.
HughRistik wrote this post about what he calls “feminist guilt” among men, which admirably covers the subject, a few years back. I somewhat doubt whether “feminist guilt” is a productive coinage, and I don’t think Hugh’s post is 100% fair to feminism. Some of this dynamic was in place before feminism really came along, and certain currents within feminism (e.g. anyone concerned about a healthy het dating scene) are actively working against it. But I do think Hugh describes a real, observable and frequent phenomenon when he says:
I’d disagree with Hugh in the sense that, OK, so some men may overcompensate. Why is that such a horrible outcome? Their possible overcompensation is a lot less damaging than if they weren’t listening at all.
I’ve met men doing that overcompensation thing. They’ve generally been nice people who come across as shy and anxious, but who overall have excellent relationships with women, because women feel safe and comfortable around them. So again, not seeing why this is a disastrous outcome.
(I mean, I know why Hugh thinks it’s a disastrous outcome, but I don’t agree with him. I see feminist guilt in men as being rather akin to the guilt white people feel about racism – sure, the individual white person may not have done anything wrong, but we do benefit from the system by which others are oppressed, and a sense of guilt seems like an entirely logical response to that realisation. As long as you then use that sense of guilt to improve your own behavior rather than just wallowing in it I don’t see it as a bad thing.)
As I understood it, Hugh’s argument was that most of the men who are listening to these messages (about how you must be super-careful in approaching women, etc.) would be unlikely to do much “damage” to women in the first place. As a group, shy men are not the most likely to approach women in horribly inappropriate ways, and they’re not the most likely to force anything on women. Besides the psychological pain that overcompensating causes, inability to act when action is necessary can cause serious harm to others and to oneself. (I think I’m going to do a blog post about Scott Pilgrim soon; one of the things that struck me was how the protagonist’s crippling indecisiveness ended up causing harm to women in his life. SP is a problematic and unrealistic example of a shy dude but he is one, and it’s good to see that in the media somewhere.)
Ultimately, I think men and women ought both to be comfortable around each other. Which is in everyone’s interest, because there’s lots of men and lots of women around, and besides that 90%+ of people are het, so they’re going to want to spend time together. And, anyway, I humbly submit that women would probably be fairly comfortable around shy, considerate men who were not overcompensating to the point of utter neurosis. Additionally, it seems to me — but I’m mostly looking from the outside in, and relying on others’ voices — that the het dating scene generally disprivileges shyness or sincere consideration for men, so if that’s true I’m not sure how much women really want men to be Shinji Ikari from Evangelion.*
Well, no, I don’t think guilt is usually a productive emotion. It tends to be either paralytic or, as in the case of “white guilt,” self-important. Anyway, I don’t know to what extent shy men share in male privilege, which, in most of its social manifestations, I understand as something awarded by both men and women to men capable of behaving in a masculine-coded way. (There are other types of male privilege which aren’t manifested socially, e.g. institutional, but I’m not sure how these other types would make overcompensating in the social realm a rational response.) Shy men tend to be coded feminine by both genders, they’re in a vulnerable place homosocially, and they tend to have limited or no access to the threats of direct or proxy violence. In most social settings, they’re unable to take advantage of male privilege. (There are some weird subcultural exceptions, e.g. certain pockets of geek culture, where socially outcast men remain the overwhelming majority. Even then, I don’t really think the dynamics are the same, and the social institutions clearly aren’t of comparable importance. That’s a subject I ought to look into more, though.)
If this guilt could somehow lead to healthier relationships for shy men, I’d be all for it. I don’t think it does, though. Shy men are, I think, already at a disadvantage in that any het man who wants advice about interpersonal relationships from his peer group is not likely to get it, and certainly knows he’s at greater risk of being coded female and ostracized if he asks. (Generalized advice exists, but is far and away less helpful than personalized advice.) They’re also at a disadvantage in that men are, in most Western milieux, expected to initiate (especially het romantic) relationships, and shy men are bad at that. So, the problem isn’t just that there’s some force telling them to be cautious about interacting with women; that’s only a problem because — for gendered reasons — are less likely to have people in their lives who can tell them how they should be acting, on a personal level. So — in the experiences I’m familiar with — shy men aren’t “wallowing” in guilt because of some character flaw, but because they don’t know what to do.
*An adolescent character who most likely represents director Anno Hideaki’s own guilt about a lifetime of being socially awkward. Shinji’s reaction to any criticism is to apologize; and he’s criticized for that, too. As far as I can tell, every major social message propounded by Evangelion is essentially negative. But that’s not in itself a criticism.
I’m sorry, I couldn’t get past this totally ridiculous statement.
“Anyway, I don’t know to what extent shy men share in male privilege, which, in most of its social manifestations, I understand as something awarded by both men and women to men capable of behaving in a masculine-coded way.”
Well, at least now I know where your argument is going totally off the rails.
All men have male privilege, just like all white people have white privilege, no matter how nice/considerate/well meaning they are. Choosing not to abuse your privilege doesn’t mean you don’t still have it. Shy men are not some separate species of people, and until you recognise that they’re still part of the system, none of your arguments on this are going to make any sense.
Also, I have to say, attempting to turn a discussion about women’s experiences of harrassment into a discussion about how much life sucks for shy men is a. a derail, b. disrespectful towards women and the harrassment they have to deal with, and c. a perfect example of how society privileges men’s feelings over women’s feelings. From a starting point of “women are often harrassed, and this is bad” you’ve somehow managed to steer the conversation to “but what we really need to talk about is shy men and how bad things are for them”.
CassandraSays, before I say anything else, I want to express my puzzlement at the accusation of “derailing.” I mean, look upthread! This thread was moribund when I showed up, and we’ve been the only ones talking on it since. So what exactly is getting derailed? There is no “discussion of women’s experiences” that people are currently trying to have in this thread from which my posts constitute a distraction. And no, I didn’t misunderstand the comic intentionally solely for the purpose of getting into a discussion about men. Hell, I’ve posted too much for my taste about men on my blog already and am looking for other things to post about. I’m still here because a) I think everyone’s experiences are important to feminism and deserve to be discussed and b) I thought we were having a fairly productive conversation and learning from each other.
Anyway, post #40: I don’t think I’m saying what you’re accusing me of saying about male privilege. You quoted a sentence out of context, and gave it an interpretation at odds with things I said later in the same paragraph. I think we still disagree, but I won’t defend a straw man.
I definitely didn’t say socially isolated men (I’ll resume using that term, it’s less ambiguous than “shy”) had no male privilege. They have many male privileges, if you run down the checklist. But you were arguing, I thought, that it made sense for socially isolated men in interpersonal relationships to try to compensate for male privilege, because it helped women feel safer and more comfortable. I don’t see how you can meaningfully “compensate” in the social realm for anything besides a privilege exercised in the social realm. And Hugh’s post was, furthermore, about compensating in the social realm. So that’s what I was focusing on. And yeah, if you take that set of privileges, my experience was that socially isolated men are largely barred from exercising them. My justification, which you ignored, was:
Again, eliding “shy” and “socially isolated” was sloppy on my part. Crippling shyness can be one factor that leads to social isolation. Lots of other things can too: being gay, being physically weak, being fat, having a disability (in particular a social disability such as an autism spectrum condition), having strongly non-masculine interests, and a million other things I’m sure. Socially isolated men are either rejected or in constant and immediate danger of being rejected by most other men that they know.
Social rejection by men involves not helping the man in any way, to begin with, and can extend to active attempts at harm, very often including assault. It certainly involves a lack of respect and leeway. Although each gender mostly polices its own, my experience has been that members of each gender most often recognize and accept the other gender’s internal hierarchies. Male social privileges are granted by both men and women, and my experience has been that socially rejected people aren’t seen as men in most contexts, by either men or women. They don’t get granted passive respect or leeway. The attempts of socially isolated men to bluster, to take charge of situations, to get what they want, and to threaten force are at best laughed at, and at worst punished with violence. Yeah, most of them would be uncomfortable with any active exercise of male privilege anyway, but your suggestion that they could exercise it if they wanted to just doesn’t ring true to my experience. I don’t see how it could be the case, and you haven’t explained how it could be.
I freely acknowledge that my perspective is not neutral. After all, I’m a transwoman, and I hated living as a man and relying on men for social validation. But when I did hang out with men, my experiences seemed to be largely torpedoed by my social disability and secondarily by having some non-masculine interests, not by the sheer fact of being closeted trans. I’ve talked to a number of cis men with similar issues, one of whom has been a close friend for ten years, and who has made much more concentrated efforts to participate in the social scene than I have, with marginal success. And I’ve talked to a number of transwomen who didn’t have the same sort of crippling social issues. So I’ve heard this stuff from enough directions that I feel comfortable saying it happens, and happens regularly, and in more or less this way, in many places.
If you have alternate interpretations of what I’m saying, if you disagree with my analysis, OK, fine. But if all you’re going to do is angrily accuse me of saying things I didn’t say, or mount weird ad hominem attacks suggesting that I, a woman, disprivilege women’s feelings because I dared to bring up how some men feel on an otherwise-dead thread … well, there may not be much point in a dialogue, in that case.
Cassandra
That’s pure ideology, Cassandra. The statement cannot possibly be the result of your actually checking to see if it’s true, it is the result of a decision to categorize men as privileged. It’s precisely as though I were to categorize women as people who wore high-heeled shoes, and then concluded that, because a given individual is a woman, that individual must be wearing high-heeled shoes.
I will have to unequivocally agree with women who find street harassment threatening. For somewhere between 10 and 15 years I was subjected to it by men who assumed I was a prostitute. That’s how I learned what, “Do you party?” means. Once you’ve had a guy trail you and not go away no matter what you said or did, anybody who does that becomes threatening.
Denying that street harassment is threatening can only come from somebody who has never been subjected to it and who refuses to believe the experiences of others.
Tom, that statement is just about as ridiculous as the last statement you made. I’m not even going to bother engaging with you any further, you’re too disconnected from reality for it to be worth the effort.
Skyborne, I really think you’re trying to generalise from your own experiences, which were the product of a very specific context, in a way that just doesn’t work. I mean, clearly you hated being seen as a man/having to operate as one socially. But it seems logical that you’d have felt that way given that you’re not actually a man – of course being expected to live like one felt awful to you. That doesn’t necessarily mean anything in particular about how cis men experience the world. Also, I’ve seen shy, geeky men exercise male privilege. I worked in the tech industry in the past, with many such men, some of whom had various levels of autism, and yet all of them still had male privilege, and most of them still exercised it. The fact that they may not have been aware that they were doing so is besides the point.
Also I have to point out that you haven’t offered any actual evidence for your “socially awkard/unattractive/otherwise non alpha men don’t have male privilege” argument other than “well it feels that way to me”. Which isn’t actually evidence of anything other than your personal feelings.
CassandraSays, actually, if you had asked about the tech industry, I would have said that socially isolated men have definitely got male privilege there. I mentioned in post #39 that where “geeky” men are the overwhelming majority, they’re much more likely to have access to privilege. The tech industry is an excellent example. I did say that I wasn’t sure if the dynamics were the same as in the wider culture, but that wasn’t me trying to sneak something in, just admitting I don’t know about the details. In most social situations, though, socially isolated men are not the overwhelming majority, and that has to be kept in mind.
Actually, it seems to me that we’re both relying on the same kinds of evidence: discussing our own experiences and the experiences of people we know, and trying to undergird them with an analysis that makes sense to us. I’ve drawn from a number of different sources, most of whom are feminist, to form my understanding of male privilege — from R. W. Connell’s mainstream feminist analysis of masculinity to this comment by that infamous MRA sympathizer Ampersand.
I’m still learning, and probably always will be. I’m eager to incorporate others’ experiences into my analysis. Indeed, I brought up specific experiences of people besides me in both #37 (Hugh) and #42 (my close friend who keeps trying to socially connect and can’t figure it out.) And when you bring up your own stories, I don’t ignore them — I try to figure out if and how they fit in with my ideas. It seems to me that they do, but that your seeming “one-size-fits-all” model of male privilege doesn’t fit the stories of the cis men I’ve talked about, even if I exclude myself.
Also, you keep saying that I’m arguing
and I’m just manifestly not arguing that. At. All. I’m arguing that they can’t exercise male privilege in many common social situations, including the het dating scene, which is all Hugh was originally talking about. Maybe something in my original few posts sounded like I would have denied something like privilege in tech. But I mean, I wrote this in post #42:
I’ll be honest, though — I’m getting a bit weary of this train of thought. No, I don’t consider myself entirely barred from speaking about my male friends’ experiences or about those my own experiences that seem relevant. Nor are you barred. But I am aware that we’ve hit 17 posts of two women talking to each other about men, and I’m beginning to wonder just how much more there is to say.
” I’m arguing that they can’t exercise male privilege in many common social situations, including the het dating scene, which is all Hugh was originally talking about.”
But I’ve seen them do so. They may feel lacking in privilege in comparison to other men, in fact I’m sure they probably do, but if they claim to feel lacking in male privilege in dealing with women (and I’ve seen this claim made by Nice Guys often enough), they just aren’t understanding what male privilege is. What’s inhibiting them/creating social problems for them is social awkwardness, which has nothing to do with systemic privilege of various demographic groups. To use an analogy – one of my best friends is a middle class white woman with Asperger’s Syndrome. She freezes up and panics when strangers try to talk to her, and she did just that recently when she was lost in Harlem late at night and a bunch of guys who happened to be black were harrassing her. Her panicky Aspie response and inability to control the situation and respond in a confident manner doesn’t erase the fact that she has white privilege, and still had it in that situation.
The argument you’re making just doesn’t make any sense, and it’s making me wonder if you actually understand what’s meant by the term male privilege. It’s something someone just automatically has as a result of the way society is structured. Individual personality has no effect on whether a person has it or not – it’s built into the social structure.
Cassandra
Yes, I supposed that that’s how you would feel.
But would any one else like to have a shy at justifying Cassandra’s – in my view ideologically driven and definitionally derived – statement? – that
with its implication that no matter how appalling a man’s life is he has male privilege: a man on a desert island enjoys male privelege; a man subjected to daily rape in prison enjoys male privilege; a three year old boy abused by his parents enjoys male privilege etc. Because they must do, because they’re men!
Or is it the case that every one but Cassandra herself (who doesn’t wish to defend her position, for whatever reason) thinks as I do that the statement is indefensible?
I do understand what you mean by the term, and I have been arguing that your definition is too simplistic. The fact that we disagree doesn’t mean I don’t understand you!
The analogies you’re arguing by are not valid. Male privilege and white privilege are not the same and don’t work the same way.
My position on male privilege has changed in the past and most likely will change in the future, but this conversation isn’t going to make that happen. It’s going nowhere, and I don’t see the point in continuing to argue in circles.
Oh, look, now we’ve moved on to hilarious hyperbole. You’re from Feminist Critics or whatever that silly little blog calls itself, aren’t you?
Thank you! This strikes a chord with me for two reasons. First, before I really dealt with my depression/anxiety/co-dependence, my behavior may have affected my family and friends. Whereas healthy loved ones are wrong if taking advantage of my illness for their own gain, it is not the obligation of other people to put up with the symptoms. These women aren’t “doing” anything to these men. They’re just walking.
Second, many “disagreements” come down to a gendered expectations of women, which is that it is our job to put our feelings and needs aside to “take care” of men or we’re anti-male. It’s basically an extension of calling a woman selfish. It’s why I’m done with Feminist Critics; its content is significantly the old call for women to put their needs and preferences on the backburner but for a new generation of men (and women) that don’t like the expectations set on men.
The bottom line is that 1) men don’t have a monopoly on having gendered mental and emotionally issues as the FC crowd puts forth, and 2) women shouldn’t have to explain or defend why we don’t like cat-calling. Particularly in a society where we’d be blamed for “leading him on” if something were to happen.
I’m opposed to the gender oppression of both men and women, and I believe this is true of FC co-bloggers Daran and Hugh as well. Also, we have never claimed that men “have a monopoly on having gendered mental and emotionally issues.”
Colette:
Second, many “disagreements” come down to a gendered expectations of women, which is that it is our job to put our feelings and needs aside to “take care” of men or we’re anti-male. It’s basically an extension of calling a woman selfish. It’s why I’m done with Feminist Critics; its content is significantly the old call for women to put their needs and preferences on the backburner but for a new generation of men (and women) that don’t like the expectations set on men.
Really? Pointing out the fact that feminists seem to have that exact same expectation of men, expecting them to put there stuff on the back burner for women, is why you left FC? Not the first time men have been expected to act like nothing is wrong and put women first (I think it was called chivalry the first time around).
The bottom line is that 1) men don’t have a monopoly on having gendered mental and emotionally issues as the FC crowd puts forth,…
Well considering that the FC doesn’t put that idea forth I’m not sure where you got that from.
Cassandra:
To use an analogy – one of my best friends is a middle class white woman with Asperger’s Syndrome. She freezes up and panics when strangers try to talk to her, and she did just that recently when she was lost in Harlem late at night and a bunch of guys who happened to be black were harrassing her. Her panicky Aspie response and inability to control the situation and respond in a confident manner doesn’t erase the fact that she has white privilege, and still had it in that situation.
And exactly what affect did her race have on the situation? Hell depending on the mindset of the people harassing her her being white (since you pointed out that they happen to be black) might have actually been working against her. Any given characteristic of a person can be a plus, 0 (meaning no effect), or minus depending on the situation. It looks like you could have left her race out of this and it wouldn’t have mattered to your story.
They may feel lacking in privilege in comparison to other men, in fact I’m sure they probably do, but if they claim to feel lacking in male privilege in dealing with women (and I’ve seen this claim made by Nice Guys often enough), they just aren’t understanding what male privilege is.
In other words no need to actually show that its there we should just assume in all cases it is there and if someone disagrees it can only be because they don’t understand it?
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