At age 45 I'm still discovering things about women

[andrewducker]

I can't tell if women assume that the things that happen universally around them also happen around men, or if they know that men aren't aware of them and think that it's pointless to mention them.

Because it was many years into my life that I heard about some of the awful things that women have to put up when walking around. Because nobody has ever yelled sexist things at a woman when I've been standing next to her. Nobody has ever followed a woman I'm with down the street for fifty feet asking her on a date until she has to go into a shop to hide from them. Nobody has ever exposed themselves to a woman I've been standing with. (To pick a few examples of things that have happened to women I know.)

And I didn't tend to find out about these kinds because women actively told me. I heard about them through being there when a woman was telling another woman.

Today's one was hearing from a female friend that since she changed her profile picture three days ago (to a really lovely portrait) that she's had six friends requests from guys she's never met, and has no friends in common with. And then having her friends chime in with defense methods (not allowing friends requests from people they have nobody in common with, setting their photo to be something other than their face), and to mention how often this happens to them too.

Which makes me wonder what other things are happening to women that I have absolutely no idea about.

And, going back to my opening line, I've had both reactions from women. Sometimes amazement that "How can men not know?" and sometimes "There's no point telling a man, he won't be supportive." I suspect we're going to need several more #MeToo moments to get more of this out in the open.

Comments

[cmcmck]

Well, you're aware that these things happen and that's a start.

And fwiw, all the things you mention have happened to me apart from the website one and that's only because I'm f-locked as you know.

[dewline]

Several hundreds of additional #MeToo moments, I expect.

[lilysea]

& sometimes a man can be perfectly lovely and mostly supportive,

but STILL not realise what it's like.

I know a man who is very in favour of pro-choice, women's equality, writes great female characters, etc etc

who still told me it sounded as though I was overreacting by feeling threatened by a dodgy-seeming guy getting too close to me and acting dodgy on the street at night.

I'm a short, fat woman in a power wheelchair.

The guy who told me I was overreacting said I was overreacting because *he* wouldn't have felt threatened by dodgy-guy.

I said, "yeah, but you're a 176cm tall man who can walk very fast and doesn't have a wheelchair.

The risks you face, and the degree to which someone sees you as a target, are very different to the risks I face, and the degree to which someone sees me as a target."

In the end I had to give up, because I couldn't convince him - I think because he couldn't cope with the idea of me having been in danger, so he had to convince himself that there was no danger.

[rmc28]

Oh yeah, being told you're "overreacting" is my least-favourite response to describing shitty things happening. Or "overthinking" is another one (that one comes up more when talking about microaggressions).

[azurelunatic]

"But you wouldn't have felt threatened if he was attractive."

Look buddy, 95% of "attractive" in a dude is behavioral. Enough conventionally handsome men have been creeps that it's no longer a look that helps a guy's cause.

[rmc28]

Completely agreed!

Also, I'm married! I'm distinctly Unavailable to anyone other than my spouse, thanks, and I like to think I'm pretty good at signalling that behaviourally, as well as wearing the ring. Doesn't matter how pretty someone is, they rapidly stop being attractive if they push my boundaries.

[azurelunatic]

I was describing my fear about a security guard at old-work displaying interest in me, and my (otherwise excellent) friend asked whether I was more or less fearful than other women. I am generally less. He was incredulous, and we started talking about our background level of fear/sense of safety in any given situation. He was so blown away by the idea that women in general have a strong feeling of unsafeness in so many common situations where he would feel safe.

Hilariously, he has himself experienced street harassment as a woman, just the once. He has very long and beautiful hair, and someone yelled after his back, clearly seeing the back of a woman. He made the calculation that he would be in danger if he turned around, so he got out of there quickly. I don't think he had applied this more generally, though...

[fyre]

"Overreacting" needs to die in a fire. It's as bad as "not all men". Yeah, not all men, but enough men. Sufficient unidentified men. Sometimes more than average because they're drunk men.

Overreacting and hysterical seem to be the go-to words to try and stop women from expressing distress and it makes me want to stamp on people :(

[lilysea]

One of my online friends had to catch taxis everywhere as a teenage girl for a while because of a broken bone (leg/ankle) and crutches.

She got sexually harassed by so many taxi drivers, that it left her with a permanent fear of taxi drivers - she says she feels safer walking down the street alone at night than she does getting into a taxi.

She's now an adult, and she caught a taxi recently due to pain. She got out several blocks away from her destination, even though walking the rest of the way caused her severe pain, because the taxi driver was harassing her so badly.

[lilysea]

When I was a teenage girl - 13? 14? 15? - I was walking down the street IN SCHOOL UNIFORM in a well-to-do suburb around 3pm and a middle-aged respectably-dressed man yelled something that I didn't hear at me.

I thought maybe I had dropped my wallet or something like that, so I turned around and said "What?"

And he yelled "Fancy a fuck?" at me in tone of voice that made me feel very unsafe.

[franklanguage]

Problem is, a school uniform is a fetish for a lot of guys.

[lilysea]

Not an excuse for approaching someone who was under the age of consent and saying that!

[haggis]

I have a whole suite of fetishes, some of which occur in everyday life.

I still manage not to loudly sexually proposition strangers. It's not a lot to ask.

[nickys]

As a rule of thumb, if a guy responds to something a woman is telling him by saying that she is over-reacting then he has failed to understand the situation.

I recently had to deal with a guy saying it was "a bit excessive" that the creepy guy who was following women around an event had got chucked out *before* he actually touched anyone.
I was really pleased that venue security understood that a guy behaving that way is building up to an assault and got him out without anyone actually becoming a physical victim (although several women were mentally stressed by him).
But #notallmen apparently have a while to go before they get the idea.

[mme_n_b]

Sometimes women don't tell men because this is the normal state of things, they know how to deal with it because they do deal with it on a regular basis so they don't need support, and comforting the shocked and upset man is just another damn thing.

[hilarita]

Or because the man may get aggressive and shouty, and they *really* don't want to deal with that, or they may gaslight you, etc etc
All of which means they may not want to tell you about it, unless they know you really well.
You can seek out twitter threads/blog posts on these things now. This is actually how I find out about a lot of these things, because although AFAB, I have not encountered a lot of these things, (or if I have, I haven't noticed, because I'm probably autistic and you have to hit me over the head very hard before I'll notice some social things).

[coth]

Some men are the ones whose activities are the problem. You can't expect us to tell those men anything.

[angelofthenorth]

I found microaggressions.com to be an eye opener in this regard.

[symbioid]

The first shattering of naivete I had was when my friend gave a coworker (well same building, not direct coworker) a good bye hug in a bar and he groped her. I just... My brain couldn't comprehend, and I've got a ... well... "Scottish temper" cuz of my heritage (I can blame it on that, no?)

Anyways, to prevent something bad from happening I stormed out, hoping she'd charge after me.

When we talked about it afterwards, she said "This happens all the time to women" and it blew my mind.

[agoodwinsmith]

Women don't tell men because all women have been surprised by shitty behavior from men they've trusted, and the men who haven't yet displayed shitty behaviour are the ones who sneer and belittle.

Your expression of surprise (almost incredulity) above is less supportive than you think. I understand the bit about fish not noticing the water, but it doesn't reassure women that "nice guys" think this "water" is normal/natural/unremarkable.

Yes, I'm angry.

[ashfae]

Honestly it didn't occur to me to think of it as unusual, for all that I was posting about it; I was amused that the number had gone up so quickly, but the fact that it happens at all is so common to all women I know it didn't occur to me men might not be aware it happens. Fielding incidents like this (and this one was super mild, obviously) is so commonplace a thing that it takes no thought, it's like scratching an itch or scrubbing a counter, you do it so often it's instinct. Or my automatically taking a hairtie out of my hair (too easy to grab in a ponytail) and not wearing headphones when I'm walking down my street alone after dark, or crossing to the other side if there are men walking on the same street. It's as habitual as breathing.

And, of course, it shouldn't have to be. But yeah, we think about this stuff all the time, it's ingrained. And that would be why when the more clueless types try to insist rape culture isn't a thing, we go bang our heads against walls. And I have it *so* easy, I've never been really assaulted (....And I've just qualified that with 'really' and realised it's debateable, huh), I don't get shouted out on the street, frankly I'm a lot more likely to get insulted about my weight then propositioned. Which is partly why I was weirdly *flattered* by suddenly having all these friend requests, based solely on a picture of my face, even though it's a really pretty weird thing to do.

....in short: patriarchy, man. It's​ a stinker.

[movingfinger]

If you have never been on the same street as a woman being catcalled, you have led a blessed existence in a pure and fine place.

[buddleia]

Bitter experience learned hard and early on pattern set dude

[ninetydegrees]

I can't tell if women assume that the things that happen universally around them also happen around men, or if they know that men aren't aware of them and think that it's pointless to mention them.

Well, things that happen universally around them also do happen around men. It happens in the street, in the subway, in shops all the time. Not just when there's only one man around or when they're not with another man! That's just ridiculous. I can definitely tell you that if you've ever been on a very crowded subway a woman has been touched inappropriately while you were there. Men just don't notice because unless it's something you're actively concerned about or unless it happens to someone very close to you you generally don't pay attention. Or they just don't care, think it's normal, nothing to make a fuss about, just for fun or a joke, something women should actually be grateful about ("why aren't you flattered that men are interested in you?") or actually enjoy what's happening.

As for the second one, women have been told for centuries by fathers, brothers, husbands, male friends that they're hysterical. They exaggerate. They're too sensitive. They have no sense of humor. They see evil when there is none. And most of all that they should be quiet. Why would we suddenly trust men to listen, have some empathy and support? When most of them are alreay too afraid to speak up when they notice inappropriate behavior and usually tolerate bad behavior from their male friends.

I've been living my whole life never counting on any male stranger to help me if I'm in trouble. Worse, you never know what a man's gonna do.

[snippy]

What is it like to live a life of privilege? Seriously?

[redbird]

Women know that those things are less likely to happen if they have a male friend/relative/other companion present, because they experience the difference.

Women who say "there's no point telling a man, he won't be supportive" are probably saying that because they've tried, and had their experiences dismissed as "overreaction," or been told that how they felt was less important than what their male friend imagined the harasser must have been thinking.

[redbird]

Try reframing that as "at age 45 I'm still discovering things about male behavior" or "at age 45 I'm still discovering things about the patriarchy." Those things you've labeled as "about women" are primarily about male behavior, and about ways some women deal with some of the things men do—yes how women respond is important, but sexual harassment, unlike earthquakes or influenza, is a thing that people (most of them male) choose to do.

[aldabra]

That "I heard about them through being there when a woman was telling another woman" resonated strongly; I hadn't noticed that, but I've done it. There was a building site near work, and we all went out for coffee one afternoon, and I mentioned the builder on the site who stopped pedestrians while lorries went to and fro, and for women stopped them by putting his hand in their face, over their eyes, so they couldn't see where they were going.

And my female co-workers said *yes*, isn't it *awful*, I *get off my bus at a different stop* so I don't have to walk past him. And the men said no, that never happens, are you sure, I walk past there every day and I've never seen that.

And then the klaxon went off and a lorry turned up and he came out to stop the pedestrians and we watched and he did it. My tall young male junior co-worker looked at me with his mouth opened. It. Actually. Happened. Just. Like. You. Said.

Yeah, dude. It happens all the time.

Those "yes! me too!" conversations are affirming. The "you're imagining it, don't be silly!" ones aren't. It was quite striking to have them both at the same time, and then have reality turn up to referee.