blairmacg | Entries tagged with harassment

Over on my Wordpress blog, I can see the places others have clicked links to my site. I didn't recognize one of the referring pages that landed on a past post of mine (It's the Same Advice), so I clicked it to find out where it came from. That led me to a different LiveJournal were a person had linked to the above article as well as Where the Boundaries Drawn. That's cool.

Then, the comment right under it made me laugh:

The moment a woman describes a guy who came onto her as "creepy", she loses all my sympathy. "Creepy" means, precisely, "a man who is interested in me, but not good enough for me." All the woman is saying is, "This guy thought he was good enough for me! Isn't that awful?"

I couldn't help but leave a response:

That might be your precise definition, but it certainly is not mine. A creeper is someone who does not believe the object of his/her desire has the right to decline said desire. A creeper is someone who is certain the primary reason the desired object declines is either extreme arrogance or complete stupidity. A creeper is someone who believes the arrogance and stupidity can be corrected by the right amount of mockery, insults, ignoring of requests to be left alone, and/or force.

Are there men who aren't "good enough" for me? Why yes, there are. Men who think the best way to open a relationship is to place hands on private parts of my body, or back me into a corner, or refuse to take a polite "no thank you" as a valid response are, indeed, not good enough for me.

Every person has the right to choose the traits and behaviors they'd like in a partner, and it's rather odd to see that right couched as a dismissive comment.

I've taught women in martial arts for more than a decade now, and I've had the chance to watch women decide what sort of shit they no longer need to put up with. As a result, more than one of the boyfriends/spouses faced with changing abusive behavior or losing their significant other have decided I'm a "man-hater."

Nope. I'm an asshole-hater. There is a difference. Quite a big difference.

I've been blown away by the spread of, and positive response to, my last post. It freaked me out a little at first, seeing the views here and at BMB keep rising. My hope is the folks who read it will find not only something interesting, but reason to look ahead with positive hope.

As much as we (using "we" in the most general sense) like to believe we are empathetic creatures at heart, even the best of us have blind spots. It's difficult to understand how one person's experience feels on a visceral level unless we have a similar experience to which we can compare it.

By coincidence, researchers at UCLA recently released the results of their studies, "Bound to Lose: Physical Incapacitation Increases the Conceptualized Size of an Antagonist in Men." Researchers found men tied to a chair or standing on an unsteady surface (a balance board) overestimated the antagonist's size and underestimated their own size.

The results are utterly unsurprising, though I'm sure it's abstractly a good thing that science has now confirmed the experiences of anyone who has been on the lower end of a power disparity.

If nothing else, it's something to point as a means to explain why a person will read "threat" into a situation that, to an outsider, doesn't look threatening. Where an observer might think, "That nice guy was just talking to her over there," the woman in question might be thinking, "I can't get out of this corner because the Huge Man is blocking me."

Considering how balance affected perception, I'd be interested to see what would result from participants wearing stilettoes.

Also posted at Blair MacGregor Books

Many commenters on various forums have--predictably--stated how onerous it will be to monitor their own behavior toward women. How they simply can’t be expected to know the difference between flirtation and harassment, between friendliness and creepiness, between acceptable adult behavior and unacceptable juvenile conduct.

On another blog I read often, the discussion came up because a commenter wanted to know the best way to avoid being falsely accused. A very level-headed commenter answered with the following advice:

“Don’t put yourself into a situation where it’s just you and someone whose moral compass you aren’t sure of. Stay in a public or semi-public place. Maintain at least an arm’s length of distance when possible. Keep your hands away from the other person’s body — perhaps by holding a glass (at a party, say), a book, or a tablet. Be polite, but not intimate: don’t lean in to talk to them quietly, don’t go into personal topics.”

The next response deemed her advice “a large checklist,” and called it “overly sensitive.”

Questions: What part of that advice is particularly difficult? Is it a great burden to avoid touching another person? Is it unreasonable to avoid talking about intimate topics? Is avoiding being alone with a person of questionable character an extreme act?

Better questions: How many of you would have read the advice out of context and assumed it was standard advice given to women on how to avoid giving a man/woman the wrong signals? For heaven’s sake, how many of you know children who could follow those standards of behavior with ease?

As Elizabeth Bear wrote about the difference between harassment and flirtation: It’s not actually all that complicated.

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