when i was up north a few weeks back visiting my sister and these old bearded guys would come out of nowhere and be like hello and then you’d be like hi and they’d be like HELLO GAWJUSS HHGNNRRGHHH LEER LEER and you’ll be like FUCK FOILED AGAIN, I CAN’T BELIEVE I FELL FOR THAT OLD “HELLO” CHESTNUT A-FREAKING-GAIN
also: another wolf-whistle
also: white van men
Here’s another great link that I never got to post about street harassment etc.
http://rookiemag.com/2012/05/it-happens-all-the-time/
what makes me so sad is that a lot of the girls in the comments are only young teenagers, and the perpetrators are schoolkids as well.
the really horrifying stuff that is so common in the comments is not a big feature in my little blog here, which is mostly catcalling from the street / cars etc. have a read.
here’s a little compendium of dudes i have answered back
January ‘12 - I was on my way (alone) to a club night in London Bridge and some bloke walking in a group of people said to me as I went by, “You’ll catch your death dressed like that!” i kept walking, before deciding not to let it slide and turned around and said, “do you REALLY think it’s appropriate to go up to a woman you don’t know and comment on the clothes she’s wearing? DO YOU REALLY THINK THAT’S APPROPRIATE?” ALAS THEY HAD ALREADY GONE AWAY
the other week, Kings’ Cross, 3-something am, I am on my way to the bus stop when some bloke comes up to me and is all like yo what’s your name yo let me talk to you you’re pretty or whatever. i just go: “mate. look. it’s like 4 am. what are you doing going up to girls in the street at 4am? do you not think women might find it intimidating? come on for god’s sake” he’s all THROW MY HANDS UP IN THE AIR WUT WUT WUT IDK WHAT YOU MEAN yeah whatever
1 this morning i spent several times longer than i should have trying to decide what to wear, with the creepy dude in the room next door and the thousands of creepy dudes outside in the back of my mind.
the problem is i have a very small amount of clothes here with me in london, and only one of them is suitable for BLISTERING FUCKING HEAT (ok like 27 degrees whatever). so i went out in my short shorts ostensibly to join a protest. oh, i also left my headphones at home so i could actually, y’know, hear people and their nasty ass comments.
i live about 2 minutes from the tube station. within those two minutes, you’d think, was a very small window of opportunity for some asshole to be an asshole. but there you go. creepy comment made.
it wasn’t so much the fact of the creepy comment, because hey it’s not like i was assaulted or it was long drawn out abuse or even the worst thing that has even happened to me, so much as the fact that i was worried about THAT EXACT thing happening and then THAT EXACT THING HAPPENED.
i was nearly in tears ffs. it was bad. i took a detour from my original intention to go and buy like… longer shorts or some shit (THEY’RE NOT EVEN THAT SHORT). i sat on the tube semi-paralysed with fear the whole time that another ASSHOLE would be an ASSHOLE. then when I got to Oxford Circus i noticed many other people in short shorts and thought that hey, maybe it wasn’t my fault for wearing short shorts after all because it’s 27 degrees and TOTALLY NORMAL.
nothing much else happened while i was in central london, but when i got back some dude tried to speak to me in the street but i SAID NOTHING. fortunately he didn’t call me any names. and then some people in a car shouted out of their car at me. which also happened the other day. oh my god men just leave me alone fuck
Just have a look as I’m having a down day and CBA to write a description.
It’s sort of a compendium of shared experiences, some of which are on the pretty shocking side hence the warning.
Very interesting and good to see more of these organisations / campaigns around. The sheer number of these crimes is actually shocking even me.
Peace out.
tw: abuse, rape, domestic violence
A few weeks ago my mom stapled pages of a story in one of her women’s magazines together and handed it to me. She gave it to me pretty much with the tag lines “for your feminist blog” and “something new to consider.” Indeed it was; she knows me well.
The story is titled “I was forced to be pregnant.” With a title like that, reading it was actually not on the top of my to read list. I thought it was about women not exercising their right to choice. I was very, very wrong on that one.
Have you ever heard of Reproductive coercion? It is a term that was quite recently coined by the advocates against domestic violence to describe a certain type of abuse some women face. It occurs when a man pressures their partner to have kids and/or impregnates them against their will. Reproductive coercion comes in three different types:
1. Emotional pressure that turns into verbal and physical abuse.
2. Sabotaging birth control
3. Marital rape
Over 75% of women 19-49 who reported once experiencing domestic violence also endured some type of reproductive control by men. It’s all about control and domination over a woman’s body.The first story in the magazine is about a woman who got married around 36 years of age. After a few months of dating her boyfriend talked excitedly about having children. After he proposed he began calling her “The Babymaker.” She then confided with him that one of her fallopian tubes was blocked. He in return insisted she see a fertility doctor. She recounts, “I had finally met a great guy who was eager to start a family with me. What woman wouldn’t fall for that?” Soon after her honeymoon he persisted on in an obsessive manner, but his efforts had to be temporarily halted as she had to get emergency back surgery. Alas, 6 months into recovery he was back to pressuring her again. She was in much pain at the time due to her back, but she agreed to In Vitro Fertilization. She then became pregnant, but soon miscarried. In response, her husband grabbed her by the neck, choking her. He apologized, blaming his outburst on his grief and had her sign up for another round of IVF. And then a third round. She tried to put him off with the excuse that she needed to weigh more before she could take treatments, her husband forced her to get on the scale often and filled the fridge with fattening foods. “It hurt that all I was good for was getting pregnant.” She recounts. At the end, he screamed at her, threatening to replace her with a maid if she couldn’t get pregnant and she told him she no longer wanted to have his child. He destroyed bedroom furniture, pushed her down the stairs and threatened her with a gun. She fled to a domestic violence shelter.
The second story was about a woman who faced marital rape. This woman was 40, had a then boyfriend and two children from a previous marriage. After telling her boyfriend she did not want any more children, her boyfriend refused to wear a condom and began to rape her. She then became pregnant with her third child. Birth control was never an option for her because she couldn’t hide pills anywhere for he went through all of her belongings. Three months after giving birth, he raped her again, impregnating her with twins. She lost the twins in a physical fight with him, but soon became pregnant again. During her recovery she begged her obstetrician to remove her ovaries and devise a lie to tell him; that she had cancer. After a decade of sexual abuse and violence she was able to get a job that kept her out of the house and often times traveling.
One in four callers to the National Domestic Abuse hotline said that their partners had tried to force them to become pregnant. Why? As one woman stated, “Its like he wants to own me from the inside out.” Having a baby is the perfect tie that binds. These type of abusers want to create a circumstance in which their partner is dependent on him.
WHAT’S THAT HAVE TO DO WITH PLANNED PARENTHOOD?
Many voters never consider how defunding these clinics could hurt victims of domestic violence who turn to them for counseling as well as pregnancy prevention. Abused women will turn to health care providers long before they will turn to domestic abuse hotlines and organizations. Many women in abusive relationships rely on life saving, affordable care programs such as Title X. It is critical that such places are open and operation when women and children need them so desperately.
holy fuck im crying.
I know I’ve told this story before, but my abusive ex refused to let me take birth control. I was on the pill until he found them in my purse.
I went to the Student Health Center—they were completely unhelpful, choosing to lecture me about the importance of safe sex (recommending condoms) instead of actually listening to my problem.
Then I went to Planned Parenthood. The Nurse Practitioner took one look at my fading bruises and stopped the exam. She called in the doctor. The doctor came in and simply asked me: “Are you ready to leave him?” When I denied that I was being abused, she didn’t argue with me. She just asked me what I needed. I said I need a birth control method that my boyfriend couldn’t detect. She recommended a few options and we decided on Depo.
When I told her that my boyfriend read my emails and listened to my phone messages and was known to follow me, she suggested to do the Depo injections at off hours when the clinic was normally closed. She made a note in my chart and instructed the front desk never to leave messages for me—instead, she programmed her personal cell phone number into my phone under the name “Nora”. She told me she would call me to schedule my appointments; she wouldn’t leave a message, but I should call her back when I was able to.
And that was it. No judgment. No lecture. She walked me to the door and told me to call her day or night if I needed anything. That she lived 5 blocks from campus and would come get me. That I wasn’t alone. That she just wanted me to be safe.
I never called her to come to my rescue. But I have no doubt that she would have come if I had called. She kept me on Depo for a year, giving me those monthly injections in secret, helping me prevent a desperately unwanted pregnancy.
I cannot thank Planned Parenthood enough for the work they do.
SUCH an important consideration. Many people don’t understand how you can be FORCED to carry a child. It’s very real and it’s very possible. And thankfully it is nothing that ever happened in my relationship, but who knows what the future could have held (especially because the main drive behind me finally getting out was fear for any potential future children).
I don’t have anything to add because I think it’s all been said, but this is some REAL shit that needs to be reblogged as much as possible.
Signal boost. Please continue to tell me that the medieval way of wanting to own women doesn’t exist anymore.
Please continue to tell me we are more civilized than third world nations in that respect.
Please continue to allow people like Santorum and Romney and countless other male fucktards even stand a chance at being elected in what is supposed to be a free country.
(via culturalmarxist)
october 2011: walking along sadovaya ulitsa towards nevsky prospekt, a gaggle of maybe 4 or 5 guys approaches in the other direction. a couple block my path and one gets right up in my face, and makes a rude gesture with his fingers and his tongue (y’know, that gesture). i look resolutely down and attempt to bypass them, to no avail. they guffaw and then continue past.
pffft.
being “hot”, in these situations, does not magically decreepify street harassment. for a start that assumes that women, as a rule, decide whether they are attracted to a guy pretty much on sight or at least extremely quickly, and independent of context. i’m uncertain of the truth of this generalisation, and crucially, so are you. personally, i find that attraction is extremely context-dependent and one of the contexts that will tend to put you off a guy is unwanted and unsolicited catcalls &c.
just for future reference, k?
the last reblog is fairly appropriate to a recent happening in Liverpool.
as i was walking aimlessly along the cobbles, i became aware that a fairly stout oldish man with a deep purple pustule of a bruise under his eye had begun walking beside me. he grinned. and asked me a question: “Are you English?”
“Er. Yeah.”
“Have you ever done any modelling?”
“Er. No.”
“blah blah I’m a photographer blah blah hundred quid an hour blah blah mobile number blah blah”
Okay. So. This situation throws up a lot of difficulties for me. It’s a little bit off topic for this blog but those issues are very relevant to the dynamics of street approaches and harassment as a whole. When this particular set-up happens, you become at a complete loss for a strategy as to how to react - mainly I’m worried about how any reaction might be judged by those hostile judgment-fairies lurking and watching any interaction I might have with a man. (Yes, I’m a little paranoid. However, it’s also the case that the dim awareness of these factors is playing on my mind when the uncomfortable event happens. OBVIOUSLY after the fact you have the space to develop them into entire paragraphs. OH GOD PLEASE DON’T JUDGE ME.)
First: Is the guy talking out of his ass? For a start you’ve heard so much straight up bullshit from men that you’re pretty much disposed to believe that he is. That disposal is in itself something it’s OBVIOUSLY your fault for having as opposed to the fault of the men who come up to you with some harebrained scheme to get you to speak to them before THE BIG REVEAL of their true, sexy intentions.
Second: The fact that it’s a strategy that is meant to appeal to your own vanity makes you doubly averse, as well as throwing up an entire lifetime’s worth of modesty-anxiety lest an army of Twitter users Samantha Brick you into submission. That’s not to say I think I’m amazing but pretend I don’t to avoid a backlash, more that you are always painfully aware that with regard to street harassment, a salient section of your critics believe that the reason you don’t like it is because you’re arrogant, or that countless approaches and compliments from men have made you into a haughty golddigging bitch-queen (etc), which is OBVIOUSLY the reason you didn’t give them your number.
Third: At the same time, it’s at least *theoretically* possible that it could be true, or at least it was until the obvious fumble over contact details. So again, you don’t want to be rude and risk fulfilling that role of haughty golddigging bitch-queen, because haughty bitch-queens basically need a good taking down a peg and etc and anything they complain about is a function of their own inflated woman-egos and etc and blah blah fucking blah.
It makes me sad that I have to structure these blogs in such an apologetic fashion purely to make the pretty simple point that actually a bloke coming up to you in the street in this way is CREEPY purely because you have to be VIGILANT. It’s the guy’s disregard for that fact, for the fact that as a woman there are dangers you have to be aware of and situations that are pretty awkward for you, which results in your perception of the guy as a creep.
CONSTANT VIGILANCE! not only against rapists but against the army of people behind rapists waiting to judge you negatively for your actions, or inactions, or behaviours or attitudes no matter how irrelevant or innocuous that could be construed as evidence. Of anything.
3 Men who want to flirt with women have to realize: Women live in a state of continual vigilance about sexual safety. It’s like having a mild case of hay fever that never goes away. It’s not debilitating. You’re not weak. You’re not afraid. You just suck it up and get on with your life. It’s nothing that’s going to stop you from making discoveries, or climbing mountains, or falling in love. Sometimes you can almost forget about it. It doesn’t mean it’s not there, subtly sucking your energy. You learn to avoid situations that make it worse and seek out conditions that make it better.
If a female stranger is wary around you, it is not because she suspects you are a rapist, or that all men are rapists. It’s because a general level of circumspection is what vigilance requires. Don’t take it personally.
If this frustrates you, try to remember that women are blamed for lapsed vigilance. If a woman does get raped, everyone rushes to see where she let her guard down. Was she drinking? Was she alone? Was she wearing a short skirt? Did she go to a strange man’s room for coffee at 4am?
A woman must be seen to be vigilant as well as be vigilant. If she is deemed insufficiently vigilant, she will be at least partly blamed for any sexual violence that befalls her. If she’s regarded as downright reckless, that “evidence” can be used to completely exonerate her rapist. If it comes down to a he said/she said dispute over whether sex was consensual, as so many rape cases do, the dispute becomes a referendum on whether the woman seems like the sort of reckless person who would have sex with a stranger.
If a woman does go back to a strange man’s hotel room at 4am, even if she only wants a coffee and conversation, she’s more or less given him the power to rape her. No jury is going to believe she went up there for anything but sex. So, don’t be surprised if a stranger reacts badly to that suggestion.
Attention, Space Cadets: Do Not Proposition Women in the Elevator (via petitefeministe)
(via ohfuckitsoprah)
