Side note: For whom is it nice?
I had a bit of an unpleasant interaction on FB yesterday night. Someone I know online but not personally had posted a link to that Hollaback video of the woman walking around NYC. A bunch of women were chiming in that yeah, that echoes their experiences pretty closely. A few people from regions of the country where saying 'hi' to strangers is a genuine thing were perplexed. And then there as this one ass. You know the type. Every thread has at least one.
He interjected that women are cute. He said, "I'm too shy to catcall and whistle at you lovely ladies. But rest assured, my thoughts are filthy and I'm a sexual tyrannosaurus Rex." (Uuh, does that mean he uses too much teeth and is bad with his hands? IDEK.) He wished his girlfriend had hair like mine. And I responded by telling him that he was using a thread in which women were discussing how unasked for commentary on our appearance often makes us feel unsafe and uncomfortable as a way to make commentary on our appearance. Which is really crap. I told him to stop.
Unsurprisingly, he responded with a string of insults and shut ups, and I blocked him. Apparently the insults continued, but you can't see anything someone you've blocked has posted, thankfully. (Isn't it funny how quickly compliments turn to nastiness when the women don't act flattered?)
Still, something was niggling at me. I slept on it, and then thought about it some more before making my last post on the thread. Here is what I posted:
He interjected that women are cute. He said, "I'm too shy to catcall and whistle at you lovely ladies. But rest assured, my thoughts are filthy and I'm a sexual tyrannosaurus Rex." (Uuh, does that mean he uses too much teeth and is bad with his hands? IDEK.) He wished his girlfriend had hair like mine. And I responded by telling him that he was using a thread in which women were discussing how unasked for commentary on our appearance often makes us feel unsafe and uncomfortable as a way to make commentary on our appearance. Which is really crap. I told him to stop.
Unsurprisingly, he responded with a string of insults and shut ups, and I blocked him. Apparently the insults continued, but you can't see anything someone you've blocked has posted, thankfully. (Isn't it funny how quickly compliments turn to nastiness when the women don't act flattered?)
Still, something was niggling at me. I slept on it, and then thought about it some more before making my last post on the thread. Here is what I posted:
So, I've already sent Eva a message about the fact that I'm going to be withdrawing from her page for a bit-- it's not personal or a slight against her. It's mostly about helping me manage my impulse to argue with people who are not worth arguing with. That includes people whose impulse is to insult and silence when told they're crossing a line. I blocked Ethan after the first insult-- life's just too short to engage with people who behave that way. If he's continuing to insult, he might as well be shouting into the void.
But I did have one thread of something I wanted to tie up before I left entirely. In response to this video, I have heard a LOT of "saying hello is good manners" and "how is calling someone beautiful harassment?" And it's because of intent. While it's undoubtedly true that in other areas, a hi is just a hi, in many places it's not. Which sucks for those people being genuine with their greeting, but the plain fact is that in a lot of cities, women are so wary of running the gamut of street harassment that any kind of unsolicited contact is unwelcome. We know that hi usually doesn't mean hi. It means "I deserve some of your attention, and if you don't give it to me, I will yell at you all the way down the street." I have had two separate men try to follow me home because I declined to return their hello as I was walking home from work.
The thing is-- if a woman has said, "this makes me feel unsafe/uncomfortable" and you argue as to why you do it / will keep doing it / it's not a big deal, what you're telling her is that her feelings are not as important as your sense of entitlement. (I am not talking about regions where "hello" from strangers is seen as ok.) If it's so "nice" to say hello to strangers-- and by strangers, I mean ONLY female strangers unaccompanied by men-- and you hear that it doesn't feel so nice to those strangers, then is it really so nice? Is it REALLY about being nice to her? No. It's about your (universal 'you,' no one specific) desire for a piece of her attention.
And the thing is-- in our culture, we are SO USED to burying womens' feelings about what makes them feel uncomfortable that this gets glossed over time and time again. "Niceness" is raised as a defense, when really it's about entitlement-- and overwhelmingly male entitlement. Which is the same impulse that leads someone to make an unsolicited comment about a stranger woman's appearance in a thread about how those types of compliments from strangers are often discomfiting. In another thread, it might be "hmm, that's odd, but he meant well, maybe." In this thread, it was commentary and pushback. It was a deliberate testing of boundaries. It was just another guy deciding that his input was more important than women being heard. That is the exact opposite of good manners. And when a boundary was pointed out, he turned to insults. Which, to me, means it's a day ending in Y. It's a symptom of the big problem.
So I guess what I'm saying is that the next time the impulse to defend a behavior that someone has told you makes them feel uncomfortable comes up, maybe ask yourself: "if this is so nice, for WHOM is it nice?"