By David Futrelle
If you spend a lot of time on Twitter, you probably know about The Ratio, the closest thing we have to an objective measure of the Extreme Badness of any particular tweet. If someone gets many times as many comments on a tweet than retweets and likes, chances are good that most of those comments are telling them that they’re full of crap. The higher the ratio of responses to retweets/likes, the worse the tweet.
Yesterday I ran across the most extremely ratioed tweet I’ve ever seen, posted by a Chicago radio personality — John Willians of WGN — doubting a story of street harassment tweeted out by Amy Guth, also a radio host on the same station. By the time I saw it, the tweet had gotten more than a thousand responses — and only 2 retweets. Reading it, I think you’ll see why.
https://twitter.com/wgnkingjohn/status/1006715276057030656
It probably didn’t hurt that Guth tweeted out a bit of a challenge to her Twitter followers:
Women of internet: my colleague keeps insisting I can’t possibly be telling the truth re instances of street harassment and other comments from strangers. Pls feel free to @ him as many stories of street harassment or commentary from strangers as you’d like to share. Thanks! https://t.co/jV6siaOpR8
— Amy Güth (@amyguth) June 13, 2018
The two evidently discussed the matter on his show yesterday, which I unfortunately missed. I’m sure he learned a thing or two.
And he could learn a lot more from the hundreds of women (and a smaller percentage of men) who responded to his tweet with pointed critiques — and stories of the street harassment. I’ve collected some of the responses that stood out the most to me; you can also plunge straight into the giant thread yourself here.
The critiques were appropriately blunt.
And then there were the stories — story after story, weird and horrible and utterly believable. (I’ve blacked out the names for all the story tweets because, you know, this is the internet.)
An appalling — if not surprising — number of respondents said they started getting creepy come-ons and other varieties of sexeual harassment when they were still children.
Horrifying. And there are so, so many more in the thread itself.
Dudes, if at this point — after #metoo, after Trump’s “pussy grabbing” tape, after countless public revelations — you still doubt that street harassment happens, it’s because of one or more of these things 1) you’re not talking to women, 2) you’re not listening to women, or 3) you give off such a creepy, Men’s Rightsy vibe that no woman feels comfortable telling you about the harassment she’s had to deal with. Fix yourself. Start by reading this whole thread on twitter.
@Bina,
Destroy the Joint’s Counting Dead Women is heartbreaking but essential work. We may not have a gun problem here, but we sure as hell have DV epidemic.
I was heartened to see the premier of Victoria (the state where Eurydice Dixon was killed), tweet earlier today that [paraphrased] “Women, our advice to you is to do whatever you were planning to, on your terms. Women don’t need to change. Men do.”
But then the very first response was “Do I need to change? I’m a good husband, a good son …stop demonising men!”
And then “It’s not a male violence problem, it’s a mental illness problem.”
To distract myself I am remembering that yesterday, when I went up to the Criminology department to collect exams for marking, they were celebrating Pirate’s Day. Everyone in the office was wearing bandanas and fake hook hands and yelling “Aaaaarrrggghhh!”
(please, no-one do the “well actually, real pirates didn’t…”)
When I was maybe 13 or 14, my then 7 or 8 year old cousin pulled my bathing suit down to try to look at my vagina. I yelled at him and it never happened again. Thinking about it now, it’s weird how I just sorta… let that go.
The point of catcalling/street harassment isn’t to try to attract or pick up women. It’s meant to be a display of dominance, to show that they are powerful and masculine and they can sexualize/harass/threaten this woman and there’s nothing that can be done to stop them. It’s why, in my experience, the more vulnerable you appear (smaller, younger, with a cast, looking lost, etc.), the more likely they are to target you. The greater the perceived power imbalance, the stronger they feel.
Usually it’s either a form of ‘bonding’ between awful men, to show off how ballsy they are, and the woman is nothing more than a convenient prop, or it’s about a man purposefully trying to provoke reactions from women to ‘put them in their place’. Either way, the goal is the performative nature of the dehumanization, not an overture to a potential romance.
When I was 13/14, my then 8/9 year old male cousin pulled down my bathing suit bottom to look at my ass. I yelled at him and it never happened again, but thinking about it now it’s weird I kinda just… let it go. Other than that and a small incident with an ex-friend, I’ve been lucky not to be sexually harassed much, though that’s probably due to my being mostly a homebody and having a very intimidating resting bitch face.
Re: “why do men find it hard to believe”…
In addition to the points that have already been made, I think some of it boils down to whether or not the man in question really, deep down, at a subconscious level, thinks that women are people.
Because if women aren’t quite fully people, then you feel kinship with a hypothetical man—some dude in a story who surely isn’t REALLY a creeper, or didn’t mean it like that, or surely would never say something like that totally out of the blue, because *I* would never— and you sympathize with him, more so than any woman, even one you already have some rapport with. Because she’s not fully a people like you and Hearsay Dudebro are, so how could you side against your own folk?
The first instance I remember of catcalling was an older guy (about 50ish) who pulled up on his bike and said “Hey, you look nice today.” (I was 11 or so, walking home from school in my school uniform). He had this really weird smile on his face, and of course I had already been sexually assaulted, so I was terrified and just ran. It was quite a long street. When I looked back after a moment, he was still standing there with his bike, still smiling, watching me run.
Other than that, I’ve had four or five guys expose themselves to me, god knows how many comments yelled out of cars (about an even split between sexual invitation and fat-shaming), had five or six attempts to follow me home or around town (bonus points for actually walking beside me saying “Why don’t you come back to my place? Okay, where’s your place? Shall we go there?”). I’ve been sexually harassed at work a couple of times, been proposed to and asked out by customers when I was a supermarket cashier (I was asked out by four or five guys in the two years I worked there and most of them were fine – I don’t mind guys asking me out while I’m at work, if they do it respectfully (which means not when I am serving 15 other customers, wait till I’m not mad busy and at least make sure I’ve seen you and had a chat before) but the one who handled rejection by repeatedly coming through my checkout and mumbling abuse at me until I had to change my shift pattern to avoid him was another matter).
As for drunk guys groping me/trying to pull me/occasionally telling me I was ugly in bars, that happened every time I went out in my 20s. Every. Single. Time. In my 30s, it dropped off (I think mostly because I stopped going to bars and clubs) and now in my 40s it still happens occasionally but not often. Thank God.
I’ve never understood why MRAs think we get upset about “hitting the wall”. I can go out for a nice drink now and while less men talk to me, the ones who do are usually both polite and actually the kind of guys I’d be interested in. Thank you The Wall.
All this and in all honesty I am chubby and quite average looking. I had a friend once who was stunning (she was a Kate Moss type and even had a modelling contract) and she could not do anything. Not even buy a coffee. Not even go down Tesco in her hoodie to buy chocolate milk when she had a hangover. The moment she stepped foot outside the door a skeevy dude would appear as if by magic and start hassling her for her phone number. I decided then I would never want to be beautiful.
Sorry for the OT, but you seen this?
https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/1007376361101582336
Privilege is being able to act like your comfort and convenience is more important than someone else’s safety. “How dare you suggest I implicitly support rape culture! I’m a nice guy! Is rape culture even real?”
Which links back to the police response to the raped/murdered woman: isn’t it so much easier to tell women to make more of an effort (on top of the constant analysing that we already do) than to have to admit that authorities are woefully letting the side down on helping to keep rapists off the streets? And then having to actually do something about it?
No wonder victim blaming is so rampant around cases of harassment/assault. God forbid that men have to do any potentially painful introspection, or pledge to stand up to their creepy mates, right?
One incident from my teenaged years stands out. I was 15 years old, but probably looked a couple of years younger. I was walking to the school bus stop on a very cold day in January. While walking past an apartment complex several stories high, I saw a man standing at a big window in one of the enclosed stairwells. He’s masturbating, and watching me at the same time.
Like some commenters have mentioned, often this sort of behavior is driven by these guys getting off on shocking and/or frightening their victims. I’m willing to bet this stairwell stroker knew there’d be young girls walking to that bus stop.
I was startled, but not shocked or even frightened. I knew what exhibitionists were; I was 15, not 11. I was sort of hoping he’d get frostbite, actually?
So, many instances of ludicrous street harassment aside, here are my two cents regarding tiny misogynists in training.
I was once babysitting a pair of kids when their parents’ friends decided to dump their kids on me as well while they all cut out to some lunch, so there I was with about a dozen children in a playground.
One of these, an angelic looking eight-year-old boy decided to spend his time chasing down little girls and grabbing them inappropriately. When I told him to stop, he proceeded to laugh and grab my ass.
And then he suddenly found himself dangling helplessly upside down as I held him by the ankles a few feet off the ground. I told him that I did not care what he told his parents or what his parents had taught him, he was going to revise his worldview or at least his behavior right then and there or I was going to drop him on his head and he would break his neck and that would be the end of that. After considering this for about five seconds he came to his senses and I flipped him back to rights so he could go apologize personally to everyone else.
Moral of story is that this is probably not the best parenting technique; however, I found that if kids are startled out of their bad behavior by a relative stranger and they find no recourse in other adults or parents at that time, they fully grok and internalize the idea that in the real world shoddy behavior can have swift and drastic repercussions that are not cushioned for you by someone in authority, that just happen to you, like an earthquake.
Later I met his parents. His father was the most unabashedly dissolute man I had ever seen. That kid had just about the worst role model ever. Nor was his mother a positive influence. I do not live in her head, so I obviously could not tell you her real thoughts, but her actions were in accord with her husband’s behavior. I remember thinking, that poor kid, life’s going to dangle him by his ankles someday and he’s not even going to know what all happened.
Not about sexism, but relevant about bad behavior from kids. I wanted to post this yesterday after it happened but second guessed myself then.
At lunch yesterday, I couldn’t help but overhear older man and his grandson (less than 10, I’m not good at ages) at the table across the aisle. Wasn’t really following the conversation but at one point the child began excitedly explaining that you couldn’t follow your heart, “because the Devil might tell you to marry a black person.” Definitely threw a pall over my afternoon.
@sunnysombrera
Paging ArmouredSkeptic.
In all seriousness though, this, a thousand times this. In fact, it’s more than just comfort and convenience, it’s your personal sense of innocence about the world. I was listening to one of my political podcasts (The Bob Cesca Show for those interested) and the host was interviewing Roy Sekoff, the guy who got him his first writing gig and Sekoff was describing how linearly his teenage daughter’s friends thought about their life path, as in “get into this school, get this degree, get this job, then live happily ever after.” Nooope, doesn’t work like that. I found out the hard way in the 2008 crash.
I would have loved to have just gone on my way, doing the fun stuff I like, treating politics like you would baseball and just pretending that people are basically decent. But then you start to look up to people and they continue to disappoint you time and again and all the people from history you’re told are great are terrible too. So you’re faced with new knowledge that challenges all the romantic ideals you have: what do you do? Either you adapt to this new information and modify your views accordingly or you spend the rest of your life trying to construct reassuring lies through conspiracy theories. “How dare you say I have privilege?! I’m lower-middle class! Why are you singling out my whiteness? Are you blaming me for stuff I didn’t do?!” No, we’re just saying that you occupy a position in society where you’re free to ignore a lot of injustice around you, but once you know about it, it says something about your moral character to just stuff your hands in your pockets, turn around whistling nonchalantly as if there isn’t grave problems that need to be rectified.
And a lot of people are having a hard time coming to grips with the size of the injustice.
RE: Children’s questionable behavoir. A few years ago, I was walking near my house for the exercise. I noticed there were a couple of men walking, along with perhaps an 8 year old boy on a bike, maybe 25 yards behind me. I heard the boy call out, “Look at that woman!”. One of the men then told him to be quiet.
I wonder what would have been next out of the boy’s mouth, and why one of the men found it necessary to tell him to be quiet. I suppose I should give this man credit for at least quieting this kid.
Another time I was out walking, and I walked past several kids playing on a trampoline. One of them saw me, and called out, “Are you Mexican?”. ” No, I’m not, ” I responded. I told my spouse when I returned home. We chuckled about it. I guess my dark hair, dark eyes, and high cheekbones meant “Mexican” to this kid.
I was just a run-of-the-mill white person when I lived in New England. In rural Pennsylvania, I’m ethnic.
My dad is the type of person who talks to absolutely everyone. By the end of lunch, he knows the waiter’s life story. Grocery shopping is a total social outing for him. We were at the grocery store together when he was in his mid 60’s, and he saw a highschool-age employee putting pineapples through the machine that cores them and takes the skin off, and because he’s got a mind for gadgets and loves talking to people, he tried to strike up a conversation with her about it, but quickly left when he realized she was uncomfortable. He was a bit hurt that her reaction was telling him she thought he was making a pass, and I tried to explain to him that from her perspective, that was probably what it looked like, and he gave me this incredulous look, and said, “I was clearly not hitting on her. I’m a senior citizen, and she’s what, 16? 17?”
I felt kinda bad I had to break it to him gently that, yeah, that’s what life is like for women. Especially women in the service industry. We have to have our guard up all the time, and sometimes, when we’ve had to put up with just too much, even innocuous banter can seem like it’s trying to open up an opportunity, and so yeah, our reaction is going to be, “ugh, not this again. Go away.”
I personally have horror stories about senior citizens (60+; could be my grandfather) creeping on me when I was 16-17 (the most memorable almost followed me home; thank gods I managed to scare him off the bus some stops before mine).
I know it’s off topic, but did y’all here that Paul Manafort’s been arrested?
I wish it was socially acceptable (and effective) to scare off creeps the same way we’re to scare off bears, or geese.
@Chris O YES!!!! *happy dance*
@sunnysombrera Like, say, bear spray? 😉
Hello; I don’t come here often (sometimes I leave when things get too pessimistic) but I thought I’d like to share some words of encouragement concerning this subject….
http://16days.thepixelproject.net/16-memorable-ways-of-dealing-with-street-harassment/
http://www.oneequalworld.com/2014/07/22/cards-harassment-empowers-women-fight-back-street-harassers/
https://live.washingtonpost.com/holla-back-dc-public-harassment.html
https://hrdailyadvisor.blr.com/2011/10/23/how-to-respond-to-a-harasser-10-things-to-say/
Here’s an organization working on stopping street harassment….
http://www.stopstreetharassment.org/
Anyhoo; I thought I’d add a bit of positivity to this thread. It’s easy to feel bummed when you focus on the problem but not the solution.
Concerning Eurydice Dixon. I hope that crummy response from the Fuzz spawns a big protest from women, girls and men & boys who aren’t slimeballs and something is done. Sometimes it takes a tragedy to awaken positive social change.
[quote]Chris O
June 15, 2018 at 11:57 am
I know it’s off topic, but did y’all here that Paul Manafort’s been arrested?[/quote]
YES!
Hopefully the arrests start now….Get Dotard Chump and all the others! THIS IA GREAT!
I forgot how to write a quote. Is the word “blockquote”?
@Fishy Goat *virtual high five*
The Real Cie
@therealcie
now
Replying to @wgnkingjohn
BTW, I was also sexually assaulted twice during my adult years and was molested by an adult as a child. But I suppose you don’t think that “stuff” really happens either.
0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
The Real Cie
@therealcie
now
Replying to @wgnkingjohn
Many more instances of this shit during my many years on this planet. I only get some reprieve now because I’m in my 50’s and for sexist pigs, women who look like me don’t exist. I’m thankful for that, TBH. I don’t want to exist for them.
0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
The Real Cie
@therealcie
now
Replying to @wgnkingjohn
Walking along the street minding my business, was 19 years old. A bunch of guys at a garage whistle & say suggestive shit. Then this guy starts following me, whistling like I’m a dog. Says “at least look at me!” I whip around and snarl “don’t you EVER call me like a dog!”
0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
The Real Cie
@therealcie
now
Replying to @wgnkingjohn
At fourteen years old, walking along the street, minding my business. On any given day, grown-ass men were whistling and catcalling me.
0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
The Real Cie
@therealcie
now
Replying to @wgnkingjohn
Leaving at night after an inventory job in downtown Denver, a guy starts following me saying “hey, Bitch, do you have the time? Hey, I’m talking to you! That’s right, you slut, I’m talking to you!” I ducked into a bar to get away from him. Scared me shitless.
@dashapants I’m pretty sure there was a better way to handle that situation then physically threatening a child
Well, that’s something about Twitter I learned.
Also I’ve got second-hand callousness because all the women describing the catcalling they’ve been subjected to just seem so RESIGNED to it.
@SpukiKitty
So the solution to street harassment is for women to fix it. Lovely.
@Violet:
Well… I kind of have a problem with The Wall. I’m 41 now, probably counts as, um, good for my age, but yeah, I’m clearly treated differently now compared to when I was 21 (or 31 for that matter). I used to have guys hitting on me all the time. Not just stuff that you’d obviously put in the harassment box but also guys honestly asking me out.
And yeah it was weird and problematic in some ways. Like I always felt bad turning guys down, and I had several acquaintances and friends who fell in love with me and I felt bad for disappointing them. And obviously getting straight-out harassed is no fun.
But I do miss all the attention and validation of my looks. I know it’s stupid, but I do. I mean I grow up in this culture, FFS, where women are taught from we’re babies that being beautiful and desirable is the most important thing in the world! So yeah I’ve obviously internalized this, and I’m a bit ashamed that I did, but I did, I can’t deny that. And I can’t be the only woman ever to feel this way, right?