Aw, damn. I opened this post in a new window and clicked a different blog in my feedreader before I had a chance to “keep as new.” But this is a good read anyway, so posting it here.
Schrodinger’s Rapist, or A Guy’s Guide to Approaching Strange Women Without Being Maced
This post links up to several discussions that have taken placed on this blog about catcallin’ or being approached by strangers: The Open Letter, which remains one of the most-visited pages here; most recently the cat-in-a-sink guy; a few others in between. I like to revive the topic of street harassment now and then because (a) hey, still happening! and (b) it’s such a clear-cut case of male privilege in action. Or perhaps entitlement is the better word. While there are certainly women who catcall and men who do not, the big pattern of men hollering at women is bolstered by a sense of specifically male entitlement to not just look, but to interrupt, to penetrate with one’s look, to impose one’s presence on a woman who ought to be flattered or at least passive rather than peeved. One of the things I like about the Schroedinger’s Rapist post is that it spells out the implications of that imposition: if a woman is sending the nonverbal cues to leave her alone (walking quickly, not looking, body turned away, etc.) and a dude overlooks these to press his case, then it just highlights how unimportant he considers her desires compared to his, and raises the chance that she will be angry or afraid. That really articulated why I felt so unsettled about the Cat in a Sink guy, enough to post about him… I mean, he was harmless, right? Just a funny line, right? Even I wasn’t sure, but he did steamroll right over my first few decline-to-accepts, and that did ruffle me.
It’s worth mentioning that not all women live day to day in the kind of fear and preparation that the author describes. Not because they shouldn’t – don’t we get messages everywhere, all the time, that it’s up to us to keep ourselves from attracting unwanted attention? – but because not everyone wants to. Or even wants to think about it that much. I like to think of myself as a competent person and a good judge of character; I prefer to trust than to fear. And I’ve gotten myself into some real scrapes that way. What I’m saying is, it takes a lot of energy to be afraid all the time, and not everyone’s going to be up for it. But that’s addressed beautifully in the “risk tolerance” section of that post. Just. . . read it.
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