On the threat of being wanted (Trigger warnings for discussion of rape, sexual harassment)

(Cartoon by Barry Deutsch @ Ampersand)

Last week, I wrote a slightly whingey whiny post about how, as a man, I don't get to be desired, and that it is my society-ordained role to be the one doing the desiring. As an aside, I pulled out an analogy I've had knocking around in my head for some time now, and mentioned that it was "a topic for another post". This is that post.

I believe that men who say "if some woman whistled at me..." have it wrong - in terms of the power dynamic, for men to understand what it feels like for a woman we would do better to imagine, "If some big, muscled, stronger-than-me guy whistled at me..."

It's not a perfect thought-experiment, of course, because it focusses on just one dimension, and that one isn't perfect either. I'll get onto those objections later.

The point of this idea is that, although there is considerable overlap of the bell curves of physical characteristics of height, strength and weight, for the majority of women, the majority of men will have them beat on at least one of those variables. It is worth adding that street harassment, while not limited to any body shape or size, tends to be directed more often at women who are perceived as conventionally attractive, which means lower weight, probably lower height and usually lower strength because obviously developed musculature is often regarded as unattractive (even where it's simply a sign of keeping in good physical shape.

In other words, there's a higher probability that when a man calls a sexually suggestive remark at a woman that she is smaller than he is, and therefore physically vulnerable. Either that, or he is doing it from a position of protection (e.g. he is encased in the metal body of a car, or else has the benefit of distance and/or height, such as when a builder calls down from his work). The woman, on the other hand, is in a position of relative vulnerability, being out in the open.

So when we (as men) imagine a woman calling out to us "Oi, nice lunchbox!" or "Damn, boy, you got a cute arse!" we are typically imagining someone less physically powerful than ourselves doing so.

All of which would be meaningless if we lived in a society that did not privilege male sexual desire over women's sexual agency (and don't say it doesn't, because it does). We live in a world where it is still seen by a sizeable minority of the population that "wearing sexy clothes" makes a woman at least partially responsible for a man's choosing to rape her. It is seen as "natural" that men have an uncontrollable (or at least, difficult to control) sexual urge.

The expression of attraction and of desire therefore is an implicit threat to act upon that desire in some way. Last week, Brigid @ O, Pioneers wrote about "being watched" and the concern on implicitly revealing that she lived locally, that the men who expressed a desire for her might take some form of action. Even where this is not a consciously-recognised threat, I think that somewhere in the deeper animal brain (the amygdalae, perhaps? I'm not that big on my neurology) the threatening situation is recognised and the mood shifts accordingly. It is an uncomfortable feeling to be targeted in this way!

So for a man to get a hint of the simple physical threat, imagine the following:

You're walking down the street on the way to the shops, minding your own business, when a masculine voice calls out, "Damn, boy, you got a fine arse!" or "I'd like to get some of that!"

You turn, and see a man or group of men something like these:

(Image found here - ironically, it's a blog objectifying the men whom I'm using to portray objectifiers...)

And they are looking at you with obvious desire.

Compliment? Or, just possibly, slightly threatening?

Now imagine that one or other of those dudes pulls up beside you in a car and says confidently, "hey, doll, give me your number?" (Bear in mind that "doll" is only a gendered term in this instance because it is almost always used this way about women, but the term itself is not gendered - if the objection is "but he's feminising me" then think about why calling someone a doll instead of a person is "feminising" when Ken dolls exist just as much as Barbie dolls do. As we'll see later on, in this context "feminising" means "treating as a lower class of person...)

Now, at this point I am sure the apologists will turn around and argue:

"Ah, yes, but I'm not gay so it's different".

To which there are two related answers. The first runs as follows: we note that Brigid whose post I linked above, identifies as queer and is married to another woman. We then note that the men who expressed an interest in her as she walked to and from the shop did not appear to care about this possibility - they automatically assumed that she would be interested in them. Given that "it's different if I'm not interested in men" (that is, a man says "it's different because I'm not gay") and also as an aside, that there exists the phenomenon of "corrective rape" which is supposed to turn queer women straight, does the apologist then accept that, at least where queer women are concerned, street harassment is not acceptable?

The second argument is more of a general case of the first argument: In the imagined scenario where a bigger and stronger man expresses sexual desire in you, The person calling out either a) assumes that the target of his desire is of the same sexual orientation as himself, or else b) doesn't care. That is, he doesn't care whether or not you're gay. In more general terms, he automatically assumes that you would be interested in him purely because he expresses an interest in you(r body). The threat comes not from the sexuality, but from the assumption of your desire and the implicit possibility (however slim) that they might act on their own desire for you.

If anyone then says "Ah, but anal sex is worse than vaginal sex" (for any interpretation of "worse than") then they've just implied that it's okay to rape a woman as long as you don't anally rape her. They might want to think about the implications of that and, if they're okay with those implications, they might want to think about whether they're the sort of person any woman would want to share a planet with, let alone a conversation or anything more intimate.

As I noted on my earlier post, "street harassment is usually less about actual pursuing than it is about reinforcing hierarchical power status (and/or performing masculinity for the benefit of other men)". It is a way of putting someone in their place in the pecking order by informing them of their relative powerlessness and the relative accessibility of their bodies. A large amount of street harassment is targeted at women who are literally or figuratively out of reach for the men doing it. The objective is to remind those women that they exist for their viewing pleasure even if not their sexual pleasure.

Look again at the scenario I asked men to imagine: when viewed in terms of reinforcing power relationships, the big, burly, strong men who called out at you are not expressing a genuine desire to have sex with you, but they are reminding you that they have the power to do so if they choose. If we put them a couple of storeys up on a building site, they are still informing you that you are a lower class citizen than themselves, that you exist for their viewing pleasure and that your desires are not as important as theirs. I noted earlier that in this context, calling a man "doll" is only "feminising" them in that it is part and parcel of signifying them as not fully human, that is, of being a lower class of person. It is feminising him because it applies to a man those values that are routinely applied to women, to the point that in a sexist society it seems natural and invisible. When street harassers (or apologists for them) complain that "they are only being friendly" or "only giving compliments", they genuinely believe that this is an acceptable mode of communicating such compliments because this imbalance of personhood is so deeply ingrained in culture and society.

I have never been to prison, and I haven't made any serious attempt to learn about prison culture. However, it is a common trope that in prison the powerful men make weaker men their "bitches" and that the rape of men by other men is commonplace. In the context of those stories, we see men facing the real fears that are the implied threats to women in wider society. Because in the gender-segregated world of the prison system there are no women, some men must be turned into "women" so that the power structure remains intact. Whether it is the implied threat of rape (the first structure I discussed) or the implied threat of being lower down the hierarchy than most other people (the second scenario) we see the structure replicated. This is another way in which men might possibly understand what the significance is of street harassment.

Now, at the beginning I said that the thought experiment was weak because it focussed only on physical power. The reason for this is that it is not true that women are only targeted by men who are bigger, stronger and heavier than they are. For example, male teenagers, even relatively young ones, will often target adult women with sexual comments about their appearance. The implied physical threat is much less in these situations. What is constant, however, is the sense of entitlement being shown by such displays. The teenagers are still using the sexualised nature of their remarks to remind a woman that she is primarily a source of male pleasure and not a person entitled to her own desires independent of others' desire for her.

So the other dimension is social gendered power. I mentioned that street harassment is often performative masculinity for the benefit of other males watching, and I discussed above the idea that the purpose of street harassment is to reinforce gendered power imbalance. Further to this idea is that the experience of street harassment is influenced by the pre-existing fact of the gender power imbalance. This can be seen by the fact that when women complain about street harassment, it is dismissed (for example, as in the cartoon at the top). However, if a man were the victim of the street harassment described in my thought experiment I think it would be pretty likely that the responses would be "OMG how dare they!?" (with the exception of a few rampant homophobes who immediately assign pseudo-feminine status to the victim by calling him "gay" and suggesting he brought it on himself, at least partly out of fear that it might happen to them). There might also be a few women who turn around and say "Now you know what it feels like, buddy!" The strength of the street harasser's position is not only from the relatively out-of-reach physical position (with friends, or in his car, or from a high window or platform) but also from the socially unassailable position that tells him (and his target) that it is "only natural" and he should be allowed to "be a man" (although honestly, I don't think I would want to be a man if that's what it has to involve). The astute reader will notice that these are also the factors that are sufficiently prevalent in society that it is very hard to get a rape conviction - yes, there is a sliding scale from street harassment to rape and they have the same underlying causes (clue: it's NOT to do with what she was wearing).

Which leads us back to where we started, with the implicit (even if not actual) threat when a man directs an expression of interest at a woman, that he might end up raping her.

Sometimes, being desired can be scary.