Good find

I am sick to death of straight white men telling me this isn't a problem.

I will say from a gay male perspective I didn't understand how common it was for a very long time.

I had a LOT of weird stuff happen when I came to Roch in my early twenties.

Ugh, too much to even go into. You weren't safe out on your own.

I bet if it were broken down to urban and rural, or somehow accounted for the anonymity expectations of the harasser, you'd find that when the expectation for anonymity is high, almost all women have been harassed. The subway effect. That's where the worst of it always happened to me, and it happened on an almost daily basis.

I used to work in center city Philadelphia -- I remember once, like 20 years ago, out on Market Street near the Liberty Bell, enjoying a cigarette break in the middle of my work day, all dressed up wearing a nice suit and heels... some important-acting dude in a suit walking by stopped to lecture me about how "A pretty young girl like you should know better than to be smoking!!! In this day and age!!!" and shook his head with disgust. Like I had ruined his whole day.

I didn't even react. I couldn't. I was just standing there thinking, "Excuse me... who the hell are you and who asked for your opinion?"

It was so very... odd.

That is just one incident that stuck out in my mind.

Some random dude thinks it's OK to lecture a stranger because "a pretty girl shouldn't smoke in 1995".

Sorry to bust up your fantasy, asshole. I wanted to grind out the butt in his face.

To this day, I regret not telling him off. And "young girl" my ass, I was 30 years old. And he was like, the same age. Asshole.

Very similar things happened to me during that time, Sansom was a rough and tumble area... Then El Vez opened and made everything better... Well their blood orange margarita helped at least!

Last edited Thu Jun 5, 2014, 08:19 AM - Edit history (1)

YOU ruined HIS day by not living up to his expectations. Because he thought he had a right to have those expectations met by a total stranger. There are a lot of feelings of ownership by men of "pretty young girls." It's the same impulse to a different degree as the Taliban beating strange women on the street whose clothing they don't approve of.

I was thinking of when I was taking a course at Brooklyn College years ago, and about once a week a guy would walk up and down the cars till he found me and then would flash me. The school was pretty far out on the subway line, so the cars were pretty empty. Every time, I'd get up and move to another car till one day I had an exam and was studying, so he comes into the car and I yell at him, "Take it out and I'll cut it off," and put my hand in my bag as if I was reaching for something. That day, HE moved to the other car.

and some controlling old man came into the area for whatever reason, he worked at the same place
but I didn't know him.

I don't remember exactly what he said, but he was scolding me for smoking. I regret not telling him off too.

In this small southern town it is cobsidered charming. 'Smile' is the most common one. I did have one very nasty experience but just one.

Ive always found it much worse in large or medium sized cities. However when I visited New York I never had any issues. Cause I was with a man the whole time.

an assumption of ownership to me. That might be the difference in character between less and more populated areas. Where you live, when it isn't "smile" does it generally take the form of requiring certain "ladylike" behaviors?

I also get told to "Smile!" at work by male coworkers, and that feels so much worse to me for some reason I can't quite put my finger on.

disrespectful thing to say to someone. Maybe if you answered, "Grovel!" whenever someone said it, they would get the message.

Thanks for the thread, Agschmid.

and in most cases -- many stories. I know I have at least a dozen that come to mind, and those are just the more egregious ones I remember.

Why do I think it's other men?

Grown men making kissing noises, whistling, and howling at little girls.

Almost the second a girl develops, she becomes a target.

I remember when I stopped going to the public swimming pool, because you couldn't swim without being groped.

I got groped (for the first time) in public when I was 12.

There's clearly a gender difference in lifetime incidence, but I still don't get how often it happens to people it happens to.

you know when they talk about their experiences of it.

Women: This happens to us X-Y times a week, in the exact following manner: thus, thus, and thusly.

Some man: If only we knew how often these things happen, and how! Then we could discuss it properly!

Women: You are using derailing tactics. Listen to what we say instead of ignoring it.

Some man: If you're going to be mean about it, I'm not going to support you. No wonder people hate feminists. :flounces away in a huff, or worse, engages in a long, drawn-out guerilla fight on forums to derail any discussion on women's issues because "women aren't interested in a fair discussion.:

"I'm not interested in anecdotals (even if they are of a pretty much universal experience.) You women think things happen to you that don't actually happen. You just don't understand what is REALLY happening to you. I want STUDIES!" (We must presume that those studies are preferably run by sensible men.)

OR: "When you say this happens, you are insulting ME! You're saying I'm a rapist or that I shouldn't hold doors! RADFEM!" (Which really, have you ever heard of a radfem except in a conversation with one of these loons?) "I'm now going to go to all corners of the intertubes to find ridiculous statements which I will then attribute them to you!"

my hometown, so we walked together on the route into town where I could count on honks or whatever. On the 4th or 5th honk, he lost it. He grabbed the bag out of my hands and threw it in the direction of the vehicle that had honked.

It was funny to see, but I was glad that he could feel -- in his gut -- why it had always bothered me. It's not a compliment.

Most men don't hear women talk about it unless they seek that conversation out. Men don't understand that just walking down the street--something they take for granted they can do without hassle--is a completely different experience for women. Men don't get that women get hassled every day just for being women.

It's not about if you've ever been hassled. We all have in some form or another. It's about how pervasive and constant the hassling is.

You're kind of proving my point. I could get that answer by asking the woman I know and listening (as opposed to not listening?) to their responses, but why not have the study do that instead, since it can sample a much greater number of woman, and disseminate that information to a lot more men?

Because the women you know aren't numerous enough to be valid. And because the information in the article doesn't tell enough men about what goes on in front of their faces.

You COULD get the answer by talking to the women you know and listening to their answers, but that just isn't valid enough for you.

And when you say "as opposed to not listening?" My answer is, yes. Exactly. As opposed to not listening.

Perhaps if you reread my posts, my point would come across better. Perhaps you need to listen better, too.

Perhaps if you read through this thread, you might get the reason why your insistence that you need a study to tell you how often this happens is met with anger. And by the way, your points come across loud and clear. You are not being misunderstood.

And PS: The post you see as hostile is simply me paraphrasing your comments.

Once again, I will say: ask the women you know and listen to their replies. Therein lies the answer to your original question. In this very thread is the answer to your question.

Many on this thread are lauding a study which I find somewhat limited because it only asks if such and such ever happened to you once in your lifetime. As the questions move down the line to the more serious infractions, the data does become more useful, IMO.

What the data does not show is precisely what many are talking about in this thread. That many women are harassed on a constant basis from age 12 and onward is the message that many are trying to convey. But the study people are responding to does not look at frequency at all.

I don't need a study to tell what you and other women are speaking about; I don't know why you keep saying that I am demanding a study. All I'm saying is that since people are doing studies like this one, a better parameter to convey the female experience is frequency, not that harassment happened once to a person, but that it happens constantly. These would be more powerful data.

I see your paraphrasing of my comments as inaccurate on a basic level. I think you're reading something into my comments that isn't there. And I still feel that your tone is condescending, something that I really don't think I have conveyed at all.

Mine didn't. He was a large, athletic man, used to feeling safe wherever he went. He was never concerned about his daughters going anywhere and gave some pretty stupid advice as a result. I remember when I was 12 or 13 and he told me that when walking around our town, I should smile and say hi to everyone I met, whether I knew them or not. No thanks! We weren't living in that world anymore, if that world ever existed.

I'll just say that the study is a nice start in having social science research underscore (for the clueless) what those of us who've experienced it know already. But at least in this synopsis, frequency/saturation isn't reported. So if a man is harassed once a year and a woman is harassed over 200 times a year, they're still considered the same equivalent data point.

Also, 51% verbal harassment of women seems too low . . . I guess i need to read the study directly, but were the other forms of abuse _within_ that 51% or in addition to it?

My experience personally of being harassed every time I left the house for years (and at my doorbell by strange men who had found my address), and of what girlfriends told and my daughters tell me, would suggest that 98% of females in this culture have been verbally harassed.

Frequency was definitely the worst, when I compare being 20 and in my 40s. I get harassed now but only occasionally, and it reminds me of how f-ing relentless it was 25 years ago, every time I tried to go anywhere in public, and how maddening it was that you couldn't vent about it without being blamed for it or called conceited (as if being harassed is something to brag about). It was like carrying a 40 pound stone. It's one thing about aging I really appreciate.

I was 11 the first time. It happened several times a week between the ages of 15 and 30, sometimes multiple times per day when I was traveling. The last time (so far), I was 50.

This continued all through high school, whether I was going to school in my jeans and shirt, or babysitting, or whatever. Three or four honks each way. The route I had to walk was through town, but on a road that trucks often used, so it was usually truckers, as I recall.

Old men with their windows down, honking or making sounds at me.

It wasn't flattering, it was threatening. And gross.

Well, at least the ones who aren't pigs.

I've never honked or called out, nor have I ever hung out with people like that. I've seen it in places rarely, but me and my friends just think those guys are dicks, and I tend to avoid that type of scene.

What men, I guess, don't get, and what you (but not this study) are saying, is that women can never really avoid that scene.

And that they might really be making noises at 12 year olds. Is that what they intend?

These are not normal or healthy people.

And I don't think most men realize that many women are hassled on a regular basis from age 12 onward. I don't get this information from this study in the OP, I've got it from people who have responded to me as if I should have known better.

Is telling us regardless what we say, he will continue to tell women to smile cause it makes him feel good.

About all women experience it from a very young age. Nothing complimentary to it. It is not about making the woman feel good. All about the man and control.

My initial response to the slate article was that it didn't really convey a sense of how most women walk through life under the specter of harassment. I would imagine most people have experienced some comment, catcall, whistle, car honk at some point in their lives. I have experienced that myself a dozen or so times, but I didn't even remember those moments when I first responded, but rather once I started to reflect, which tells me that I never felt threatened by it (I've only experienced red and blue). But this is not the same a a constant haranguing that is not really reflected in this study.

I don't know how to change attitudes that are so deeply ingrained in a certain proportion of men as it is certainly about control, as you say. If it doesn't apply to them, they don't have to read the thread. It is a form of control masquerading as harassment to criticize the frequency of such posts, unless they criticize every single subgroup for its recurrent thematic posts.

I used to cringe when my parents came to visit me at college because I was afraid someone would yell something at me and then having to bail my mother out of jail for kicking their asses. I have been with my mother when she has been harassed. I have been with other gay men and women (gay and straight) who have been harassed, and while it is usually men, there have been a number of times where women were the harassers.

headed back to my car. I had just filled out some job applications, so was wearing work-type clothes. As I passed a group of men on the busy sidewalk, one or two of them pulled my skirt up over my head, and the group ran off laughing. I chased them for quite a distance, joined as I crossed a park by a young woman walking her gsd. She turned her dog loose and the 3 of us chased them until they scattered.

And then another time, again in my 20s, on a quiet August Sunday morning in a small city in northern Mass, I had walked about a mile to a convenience store to pick up the Sunday paper, wearing sandals and a sun dress. I was headed home when I heard footsteps running up from behind. A hand reached under my dress, grabbed my crotch and squeezed. I chased the boy for a good mile before he ducked through the gate into a back yard surrounded by a privacy fence. I trapped him in there. He was about 12 years old or so. I beat him over the head with my newspaper while screaming at him.

And of course there are the uncountable instances of being instructed to "smile" by creepy old strange men in the street.

When I was 14 years old, we boarded our pony at a local barn that had been bought by some creepy men who were buying t-breds cheap off the track and letting various students re-train them to show. One of the men put his arm around me to cop a feel. I didn't dare tell my parents or they might have gotten rid of our pony. I started avoiding him and he had the effing balls to flirt with my mother and then complain about me. She apologized to him for my "behavior" and scolded me.

I was also treated inappropriately both by my father, from age 10 or so on up, and by a cousin. No safety in the home or on the streets. I've also be harassed and office-stalked in several jobs, in my 20s, my 30s, my 40s and even my late 50s. And in my home, not only growing up but also in my late 40s by a 20ish neighbor.

Now I live alone. Finally, a somewhat safe haven. One more year and I can retire.

I've come to the conclusion, based on the most recent incident, that it will not end until I'm dead. Even then I expect some necrophiliac will defile my poor old corpse.

I have to say, I am equally awed by you, and afraid for you as you tell about chasing these guys down. My response tended to be to get away as fast as I could.

I am saddest to hear about your family members. I am glad to hear that you have found a somewhat safe haven.

and apparently my face gets pretty scary looking when I'm that pissed off. All of these incidents were in the middle of the day and the gang of thugs was in a crowded area, so witnesses everywhere.

There was one incident when I was terrified and tried to get away, again in broad daylight, middle of the day with lots of traffic. I was again walking home from a convenience store less than 1/2 mile from home, this time in a small city in central Mass. Some guy yelled out to me from his van as he drove by. A minute or 2 later, he yelled again as he passed me in the other direction. And then a 3rd time. At this point I crossed a corner parking lot to reach the side street that led to my condo, another condo complex and an apartment complex. As I approached the point where the side street diverged and I had to either turn toward the apartments or the complex or continue straight toward my complex, he yelled at me from the parking lot, where he had pulled his van in. I was absolutely terrified because I knew now he would be able to follow me, see where I lived and come back later after dark. And then a switch turned in the back of my brain, and I decided if I was going down, it would be fighting, not cowering in my condo. I headed back toward him slowly with a "look" on my face. As I approached him I asked him, very slowly, clearly and steadily, "Was. There. Some. Thing. That. You. Wanted?" He turned purple, stammered something about thinking I was somebody else, and gunned it out of there. I think he left half his tires in the parking lot.

The thing is, I've been riding and training horses since I was a kid, so I am in a habit of making myself bigger and more important than whatever happens to be upsetting a thousand pound horse. As a result, I don't eff around, and that habit gets stronger under stress. If people are raging at me, I get paralyzed with fear due to my abusive childhood. But when creeps are stalking me, I just become very wary and very, very, very angry.

But be careful, always. I wish I had that skill dependably. It comes out with me infrequently, and I can't seem to control whether I will become a scary banshee or whether I will just run like hell. I have found it so satisfying, though when I have faced some jackass down. I love the reaction you got.

Be safe, magical thyme

verbal harassment, physical assaults, sexual battery, and workplace sexual harassment. But I will be the first to say that on average women face way, way, way more of this sort of thing than men do. I find it hard to imagine that these statistics don't underestimate the problem. Every woman I know has had to deal with this.