As I think about potentially leaving Brooklyn and moving back into car country, the one advantage that sticks in my mind is an end to sexual harassment in the street. It’s hard to get through a day in this city without multiple men of varying ages saying or doing something to offend me and disturb my peace. So when I found this post over at the Crunk Feminist Collective, I practically jumped for joy (it’s by J.Neensy, whose website is called “Brooklyn Magic“!). I wish men (and women) would understand that sexual harassment—like other forms of sexual assault—is NOT about beauty, or desire, or “showing appreciation.” It’s about POWER, and it’s meant to be invasive and disempowering for women. I SHOULD be able to go to the park and work out without worrying about some a**hole talking about my body or calling me a bitch b/c I don’t want to engage with his stupidity. I know I’ve quoted this way too many times, but as the brilliant June Jordan wrote in “Poem About My Rights,”
…I can’t
go out without changing my clothes my shoes
my body posture my gender identity my age
my status as a woman alone in the evening/
alone on the streets/alone not being the point/
the point being that I can’t do what I want
to do with my own body because I am the wrong
sex the wrong age the wrong skin and
suppose it was not here in the city but down on the beach/
or far into the woods and I wanted to go
there by myself thinking about God/or thinking
about children or thinking about the world/all of it
disclosed by the stars and the silence:
I could not go and I could not think and I could not
stay there
alone
as I need to be
alone because I can’t do what I want to do with my own
body and
who in the hell set things up
like this…
I’m still working out the connection between feminism and forgiveness, b/c what I REALLY want is CHANGE and accountability and a walk through my beloved borough that doesn’t leave me seething with rage…
Speaking of June Jordan, there’s a three-part tribute to her over at Reading in Color, The Rejectionist, and Neesha Meminger’s blog—check it out!
Tarie over at Asia in the Heart has a great interview with Uma Krishnaswami, and Hunger Mountain has an interview with NY Times best-selling author Cynthia Leitich Smith (thanks to Debbie for the link)! And you can learn more about A Place Where Hurricanes Happen by checking out Doret’s interview with Renee Watson and Shadra Strickland…
Lastly, don’t forget to stop by Chasing Ray for the latest installment of What a Girl Wants—some of the original panel members have said goodbye (including me) but there are lots of new voices you won’t want to miss…
I hear you…but I do live in the country, and I would love to go and walk and sit in the woods alone. I can’t. It’s just not safe. There are wierdos out there who would hurt you no matter your age or what you look like. It’s profoundly sad and infuriating. Makes me wish force fields were real. And phasers set on stun.🙂
You’re right, Nicole…there really is no safe space for women–not at home if there’s domestic violence, not at work if there’s on the job harassment, not in public, not in a forest or a wide open field; if I move to the country, will I confront gun-toting psychos who lock women in woodsheds?…I was thinking of my car as a safe, private space–kind of like a metal bubble that keeps male harassment at bay. When I commuted between Brooklyn and MA, I was always struck by the shift from car to public transit–where, of course, I was harassed by drunk men on their way into the city for a Yankees game or whatever…
Thanks for posting up that link from the Crunk Feminist Collective. I really needed to hear that bit about how asking a woman to smile invades her space and how the interaction can quickly go south. That might happen to me maybe five and upwards times should I go to a club (or a pub that isn’t my local), or sometimes to a shop. My mouth is naturally down turned and a non-smiling woman must be corrected, so… And it just kills your mood flat, especially as it’s usually followed by a put down and a ‘just a joke darlin” type comment. I swear they can be described as the nicest guy in the world by others, but if your behaviour suggests that you’re rejecting a guy even a little bit, even if he wants to talk to you rather than pull you and they turn. And men wonder why girls tend to go everywhere in pairs! Cuts down on your hassle 50%.
Rare is the man who can just get that you’re not interested in making conversation and that makes them feel valuable and us grateful for what should be a basic right to have space. I know there was a blog post a while back about a girl who thanked a guy for backing off when she asked without making a big deal and then felt totally awful for doing it, because he didn’t do her a favour and she should have expected him to do what was right.
I get what you mean about forgiveness and feminism. I’d love to hear what you come up with, because I want change too, but I don’t want to have to stop being angry because it will make it easier for men to understand why they should care about what I want.
Unfortunately, my effort to start a dialogue about forgiveness didn’t go over so well in class…we were reading articles about domestic violence, and one scholar suggested using a “truth & reconciliation” model for dealing with abuse–involve the community, have a public hearing where victims can speak out and wrong-doers can admit their crimes. Now, in post-apartheid South Africa, that might have been cathartic. But it did nothing to correct or prevent systemic inequalities–esp. poverty–that continue to enable different kinds of violence, esp against women. I don’t want more black men put behind bars, but I do need to know that the law protects the people I love. So perhaps forgiveness works on the personal level, but in terms of preserving the social network, there have GOT to be penalties in place. I think of the billboards around NYC for catching cop killers–huge ad, huge reward–b/c *those* particular bodies MATTER. Imagine if there was a $10,000 reward for anyone who turned in a rapist? I struggle with a deepening well of hatred for the behavior of men–those who assault women in various ways, and those who stand by and do NOTHING to change the culture that permits such abuse. And I work with kids, I see how free boys are up until a certain age, and then other kids start to terrorize them until they lose their softness and kindness and creativity. They become hard to protect themselves, and then they lash out at those around them who seem to still be free. I look at some men in the street and I see how desperate they are for attention–it’s so childlike even as it’s so vicious–“Look at me! here I am! you *have to* look at me!” And they will use whatever they’ve got to force you to reckon with them–smile for me, talk to me, look at me, change your path, change your posture, know that I can leer and stare and spit at you and NO ONE will stop me…sigh. It’s hard. I don’t have any real solutions, Jodie. Except to be aware of how power works, and know that you DO have the right to demand respect. I think only men can convince men to change their ways…and what incentive do they have to do that?
Your discussion sounds interesting even if it didn’t develop as you’d hoped. I’m not sure how such a model would even work when gender is involved and involving the community means asking a woman to voice painful experiences and unpopular views to a group that includes men who might become hostile and will filter things through profoundly non-feminist experience. It kind of sounds like what should come after systems have been fixed to prevent things happening, rather than a first measure.
There’s a crazy culture built up around forgiveness and crimes against women anyway because on the one hand we are supposed to be the caring and forgiving gender, yet on the other it’s constantly reinforced that women will never get over being attacked, almost that women never can get over being attacked. So women are supposed to forgive, but they’re told they’ll never get over what happened and the community around them will never forgive because they’re sure they know women will never get truely get over what happened. By loudly never forgiving in turn they’ll never let women forget what happened, or deal with it at their own pace, which makes it much harder for women to forgive, or heal.
There are male allies out there who want things to change because they want to be free of the constraints traditional masculinity puts on them, but I don’t know how much they can really do on a wider scale because they don’t tend to be the guys in power. They can live their own lives on a different basis, which means one less guy jostling into women’s space, but is that really enough to produce the widespread change that women need to see? And like you say is there any real incentive for men to work on living their lives differently? Is it easier for them to occassionally annoy a woman and not take a lot of hassle from their friends? And does their concept of change really match up with any of the things women need to change?
I’ve always thought that women need to spearhead feminism and if men want their own campaign to change the face of masculinity then they need to get going. We can be each others allies, but we can’t do the main body of work for each other. But for feminists to succeed we need to change the face of masculinity, because the way male society is now makes it harder for us to reshape the way the world works for women. So aren’t we really forced to fight for men to be allowed out of their tight, traditional roles, before we even get started on helping women? It seems almost counter-intuitive for women to once again put the men first, even as it would hopefully make society easier for us to navigate (and also it would be good if those boys you see grew up happy).
Ah questions they will be the death of me.
It’s utterly unfair–asking victims to take care of their oppressors…but it’s entirely a matter of self-interest. There are some male allies, and when I developed my course on black masculinities, I was really glad that I had enough readings to assign! part of me wants to look at feminism as a question of healing–b/c “hurt people hurt people,” we won’t stop violence against women until we heal wounded men. But most men can’t see their own damage…we need members of the majority to stand with us–that’s how slavery ended, how we won civil rights in this country. Some will change b/c it’s the right thing to do, but most will have to be dragged into it…and I can’t do that heavy lifting. I can teach anyone who registers for my classes, I can hope to reach anyone who reads my books…but I don’t honestly think misogynists will listen to women. What if the NBA and NFL–what if FIFA made it a point to launch an anti-violence campaign during the World Cup? we need powerful male-dominated institutions to step up and speak out–even against their own members who too often exemplify the behavior we’re trying to change.
That domestic violence article was specifically trying to find alternatives for black women who under-report abuse b/c of different cultural definitions of violence (a punch? yes; a shove or slap? no) and a reluctance to bring the state into their homes and/or implicate black men in a racist criminal justice system. One proposed alternative was integrative shaming, whereby you expose the abuser (as with drunk driving billboards) so he’s publicly shamed, but NOT removed from the community…the argument being that incarceration as it’s currently structured doesn’t provide any kind of therapy to stop the abuse. So keep the abuser within the community, coerce him into some kind of rehabilitation program, allow him to repair his relationships and continue to contribute to the community…I wasn’t convinced.
It would be nice if the NFL, NBA, FIFA, did that, they really shoud but they won’t.
The Steelers QB was Ben Roethlisberger, was charged with rape, in 09. It was he said she said so he got off.
But the NFL suspended him for 6 games. That is a lot of games, the season is not that long.
That and the fact that judge read Roethlisberger the riot act, telling him he was very lucky to be getting off and to grow leads to believe he’s gulity. But of course nothing will happen to him.
And sadly, when a player is good everyone is so ready to over look any violence against woman. It makes me sick.
Kirby Puckett is a baseball Hall of Famer, he died a fews years back. He had a history of sexual violence against woman. Many wanted to forget about that and focus on what he did on the field.
I hate to think of how many top tier male athletes think NO is for someones eles because the pros always get off.
You’re right, Doret–by the time male athletes reach the professional level, it’s hard to make them change their ways, which are often driven by a strong sense of entitlement…but the NHL made a bold move last year when it suspended the guy who called a woman his “sloppy seconds”–remember that? I was really surprised, but also impressed…we need pros to be publicly penalized at that top level, but we also need sports programs to start these conversations EARLY…like, in elementary school. It’s a culture, and we can only change the culture if we intervene early and often…