“RAAAAAAOWWWWWRRRRRrrr….” tails off into the distance, pitch dropping in a neat demonstration of the Doppler effect. We’re walking down the northern end of Lygon Street, past the Melbourne General Cemetery, just to the north-east of Melbourne University. It’s a bit of a pedestrian dead zone (pardon the pun), so there’s no other people walking nearby. Just the steady stream of traffic.
My girlfriend startles quite easily in some contexts. But she’s had far too much practice at this – she expertly feigns nonchalance and stares laser beams directly down the footpath. I, less trained in such encounters, turn around to identify the source of the noise; a human voice, though the actual words are impossible to make out. The tone is unmistakable, though; it’s the tone of contempt, mixed in with a not insubstantial level of implied threat. And it’s coming from the open window of a car driving past, with the three other burly young blokes smiling as their hero yells at us.
The vehicle continues on its merry way and thus our encounter is over in an instant. But, as we continue towards the crowds of the Carlton restaurant strip, I start going over a number of recent similar incidents. Since my girlfriend and I have taken to walking places together, similar unpleasant incidents – blokes yelling abuse out of car windows at her – have been occurring on a regular basis.
I don’t get it. What are these guys trying to achieve by sticking their heads out of car windows and bellowing? I may have led a sheltered life, but there’s no way in the world you could take it as a compliment. There’s menace in those voices; it’s clearly about inducing discomfort, if not fear. The odds of them actually stopping and accosting us are small, but the presence of the backup morons in the car grinning away – and it’s always with a full car, never just one or two – clearly implies a physical threat which their war cry is drawing attention to. Even if the actual chances of such an encounter developing beyond the abuse is small, it’s anxiety-inducing. Anxiety that makes some female friends of mine loath the thought of walking home alone at night.
My girlfriend is bemused that I find such incidents in the least novel; it’s just part of her daily existence, disturbing but to be ignored if at all possible. About the only surprise was that my presence doesn’t seem to make a great deal of difference; she thought that this kind of thing was in response to her walking down the street by herself. But I’m pissed off. Don’t these guys have sisters and girlfriends? Don’t they want them to feel confident to be able to walk down the street unharassed and unmolested?
With regards to our recent discussion of moral panics, I’m certainly not claiming that this kind of thing is in any way new, getting worse, or suitable for any specific governmental response. But what it brings home to me is that in the most basic of ways – the right to walk around without fear – women are still fundamentally worse off than I am as a bloke because of the dickhead behaviour of some men. And it reminds me that any notion that feminism’s job is in any way close to being “over” and is thus unnecessary is complete and utter nonsense.
Good post, Rob.
Back in the day when we were students and didn’t have any money and used to walk everywhere, a friend of mine always asked me to walk on her left closer to the road. For the sorts of reasons you’ve just given.
Then there’s the charming phenomenon we discovered when we moved to New Farm whereby walking back along Brunswick street at night sees cars slow and blokes initiate conversations on the basis that they “believe” that a young woman by herself must be a sex worker.
Walked around the intersection of Sydney Rd and Bell St on Saturday nights?
There’s a lot more raowring going on, and it’s much more aggro. And there’s often carloads of young sheilas and well as young blokes involved.
In my experience, it’s mostly young Italian or Lebo blokes, and they’re trying to impress one another and, I believe, trying to pay a compliment to the woman in question. That is, they’re expressing an appreciation for her as a object of sexual attraction, which for them is the same as paying a compliment.
I was at a stop lights just north of Lygon St recently on bike with a female friend, who pointed out to a carload of young hoons that they had a green arrow. They’d been oblivious to our presence til then, but once their attention was drawn to said friend, it was wolf-whistles and howls all the way round the corner, with the appropriate screeching of tyres. I don’t believe any of them said ‘thankyou’.
I didn’t think it was threatening. But I can see how one non-threatening situation can lead to another not so non-threatening situation, especially for women walking the streets alone at night.
Also humbly submit that the northern end of Lygon Street is a nexus of two quite different nocturnal demos: the students/academics of East Brunswick/North Carlton, and the young wog and lebo hoons of Coburg/Pascoe Vale.
Women are constantly being interpellated for the purposes homosocial interaction between men in lots of different contexts, although this is one of the most public and obvious because of the implied threat of sexual violence. I don’t think this is felt to be threatening by the men involved, necessarily, but given that they are focussed on their interactions with their mates, it is by definition at the expense of women.
I think Mark’s example is interesting too. It reminds me of the unspoken ‘code’ supposedly used in taxis, where a solitary woman who sits in the front seat is seen to be sexually available. At one level it is up to men to utterly reject any of these kinds of assumptions when raised in company, but they seem to be fed by small groups of like minded men and I don’t know how many feminist-aware guys have access to those groups.
Your presence would help at all Robert. They’re telling her how tough they are, and how large their testicles and penises are, so the presence of her current mate is if anything fuel to the fire.
As long as they’re safe in their penis extension that is.
Yep, there’s the rub, Klaus!
My friend wasn’t bothered as much by the sex worker aficionados on a relatively crowded street with bars and shops open that you could retreat into if necessary than by walking along deserted suburban streets and having cars slow and follow her.
And taxis aren’t necessarily the answer either – the number of revolting stories I’ve heard over the years about sexual harrassment by cabbies could fill a book.
wouldn’t
“And taxis aren’t necessarily the answer either – the number of revolting stories I’ve heard over the years about sexual harrassment by cabbies could fill a book.”
Didn’t mean to imply that they were.
This is why, even at my age (and certainly when I was younger and foxier), I always explain cheerfully to the cabbie that if I sit in the back there’s a chance I’ll eventually throw up all over the back of his neck, especially if he drives the way most cabbies do. Works like a charm.
Robert, this is a terrific post. Won’t be any surprise to any of the women here. The first time I was accosted by a carload of young hoods in this fashion (none of them visibly ethnic), they slowed right down and kerb-crawled alongside, in broad daylight. Interestingly they did not address themselves to me but conversed among themselves, loudly enough for me to hear, discussing me in the third person and pointing out, in the kind of language you can imagine I’m sure, the good and bad points of my physical appearance and what they’d like to do to me. They did this for about a kilometre before they drove off, and there was nowhere for me to go, there in middle suburbia; I just had to keep walking. I’m glad I didn’t know then that it was only the first of numberless such encounters to come. I was fourteen.
Perhaps one way of looking at the behaviour of carloads of hoons is to see it as an expression of the underlying weakness and mediocrity of the men responsible. I recall reading a piece by Isaac Asimov in which he argued that for a certain kind of man, sexism confers the benefit of being able to believe that you’re still in the superior 49 per cent of the human species no matter how much of a loser you are on individual merit.
In my capacity as a cyclist I also occasionally experience bad behaviour by carloads of mediocre males. In discussions with other cyclists over the years I have formed the impression that such harassment seems to happen more often to female cyclists, and to older, smaller and/or less assertive male cyclists. Why does this not surprise me?
This sort of thing never ever happens in Japan, and in fact women walk around here at night in all manner of modes of undress with complete confidence. I once saw a woman in high heels and a miniskirt picking her way over homeless men in a railway tunnel at midnight. It’s not just that one never sees any open intimidation – one sees lots of evidence of women being completely naively ignorant of even the possibility of it.
If I could work out how that happens, and how to translate such manners to Australia, I think I could become a very rich and famous man. But I have one suggestion – cars. Usually when the men are yelling and screaming, they are doing so from a car in an environment where cars dominate, usually big main roads with huge streams of the things. I think cars uncivilise areas when they get beyond a certain critical mass, and make people behave poorly. Pedestrians scuttle and appear harried and afraid; cars don’t stop for them; the atmosphere is noisy and aggressive; everyone is rushed and there is no social interchange. These kinds of environments are not as common in Japan as in Australia, and as a consequence I think people still mostly feel as if they have a social responsibility to their fellow woman. They keep their opinions to themselves, and don’t think their own ego is so important, because they feel they’re in a shared space. Less cars, more pedestrians and more public transport is the key, I think.
(But why Australian taxi drivers are so rude, sleazy and dodgy I cannot fathom).
SG, I do believe you’re onto something.
“I think cars uncivilise areas when they get beyond a certain critical mass, and make people behave poorly.”
My mood dramatically worsens pretty much every time I get behind the wheel, so I’m with you on this one, at least at a personal level. I think cars give people a sense of detachment from the street and also a real sense of power to escape any unforeseen consequences of their actions. A bit like the internet, really.
I get this too and I’m a bloke. I walk quite a bit; usually it’s just a testosterone thing, as FDB says. In Newcastle occasionally, late at night, you get pelted with eggs. Women do it to. Some people like to make themselves noticed – I suppose it’s a similar instinct to graffiting your name on a toilet wall, or mooning out of a bus window, or whatever.
I noticed a bit of that when I was in Newcastle! Some of it appeared to the untrained eye to be yobs in cars not thinking “alternate” or goth kids had a right to be on the streets. But that’s not without its own resonances in terms of gender and performing masculinities.
This stuff happens even when there aren’t any cars. Building sites, any place where men can rev their egos to a max together produce the same effect eg Walking past an open pub window, a sports field etc etc. And then there are the guys that grope you on the bus or pretend that the lurching motion has flung them against you, or just openly grab some part of your anatomy without needing any pretext. I think the cars are somewhat beside the point. My car keeps me safe from this stuff.
Sometimes it just comes down to being weaker, being outnumbered, but that’s only part of it. I was often harrassed, and occasionally assaulted and robbed, as a teenage pedestrian, by groups of young men in cars or on foot.
I think the difference for women is that there is this ideological apparatus that justifies it, and is partly successful in making it ‘her fault’. To a lesser extent this applies to goths etc: ie conspicuous dress making legitimate targets.
Interestingly, I had this this very morning, on Broadway in Sydney. But from a kid who was probably about 14 and obviously just thought it was funny to try and fluster a bloke standing on a corner waiting for a cab.
Which he didn’t, but he did annoy me.
The other times I’ve had this happen, it was either people yelling at my girlfriend while I walked with her (in Campbelltown of course, yobsville central) or dickheads yelling at me when I’m on my bike (usually they’re in 4WDs…)
This happens to me on quite a regular basis (I live in Sydney’s inner west). There’s also the rarer, creepier version of a car load of young fools who will go around the block so they can pass you again and shout some more abuse. It’s pathetic enough, but even more so when you consider, as Robert rightly points out, that they’d never have the guts to do it on their own.
I ignore them completely, not even turning my head, as they’d doubtlessly see a reaction as some sort of victory or validation.
It’s interesting to think about if from a broader perspective. I did a uni degree, found a full-time job, lived in my own place, looked after myself, but often when I’d finish work of an evening, I’d be shouted at while waiting for the bus. So while I went to uni and work without reference to my being a woman, and rented a nice place without reference to my being a woman, I sometimes couldn’t get home without a comment!
I did kind of get my own back one night, though. The car had actually gone around the block a few times, morons inside calling things out, while I waited for my bus, which was late. Only person at the stop. So when they next came past, I made a show of noting the numberplate, and then, while they could still see me, kept watching the car as I pretended to call the cops. I saw one freaked-out look from the front passenger, the car sped off and didn’t come back. I loved my mobile phone that night!
“I think the cars are somewhat beside the point. My car keeps me safe from this stuff.”
I tend to think they exacerbate it, make it easier and more anonymous, but they aren’t fundamental to it.
Did any of them look like Corey Delaney?
Suburbia + boredom + cars = hoons. Seems to be a natural law.
Whaddya reckon folks – a bit of National Service to sort ‘em out, eh?
Cyclists cop it to an unimaginable degree, sometimes I’ve had it 4-5 times in a 2 kimolmetre strech. It’s probably alot less threatening than it is for female pedestrians, since there’s no undertone of sexual violence and it’s easier to get away on a bike.
Since much of the time the stuff yelled at cyclists is merely loud sudden noise, I think its meant to startle the rider so he falls off his bike (yes, he, this nexus is probably why there’s so few female cyclists). Luckily, these dickheads like to waste their petrol on uneccessary revs and acceleration, which means you can always hear when such a car is coming behind you.
Unfortunately, it also happens alot at night, which means they often don’t see the hand gesture that the RTA so generously gave to popular culture.
Of course, there are goth women too!
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/articles/2007/11/14/1194766745476.html
“and, I believe, trying to pay a compliment to the woman in question”
Nope, sorry I disagree. The purpose is NOT to pay a compliment. If it were they would not bother yelling out to obese/overweight 40+ year old women. Either that or a lot of young blokes in cars have a thing for women who remind them of their mother. Not something I have ever come across is such large numbers in any other context, otherwise I would have my choice of toy boys
From my experience they will yell at ANY woman and preferably one on their own, and the frequency of such events has not increased now I am a healthy weight. I think the purpose is to intimidate those women and show the others how ‘tough’ they are.
“I think cars uncivilise areas when they get beyond a certain critical mass, and make people behave poorly.”
Interesting thougt, SG and from experience of inner city living sounds about right.
“Of course, there are goth women too!”
Indeed: intersecting categories.
“Nope, sorry I disagree. The purpose is NOT to pay a compliment.”
Ditto.
Good post, and, as others have pointed out, something all women would’ve experienced. One generally greets such events with a nice little flip of the bird or by muttering something about boofheads and small things amusing small minds.
Of course, one shouldn’t have to experience it at all. Can’t say I’ve ever seen a woman do this, but I’ll take TimT’s word for it. There’s different levels of this behaviour, with PC’s experience indicating that the idiots in the car were trying to scare her and not just engage in mindless humour.
In Brisbane one time, I witnessed a brown Monaro pull up at the lights outside City Hall. It had (and I jest not) fluffy dice hanging from its mirror thing, and it was inhabited by a couple of boofy blokes. The blokes spotted a couple of well-dressed (read gay) young chaps and then one of the blokes stuck his middle finger way up in the air at chaps. The chaps went “what the hell was that?” And everyone had a bit of giggle. Off went boofy blokes back to boofhead land.
As for the compliment, thing, well, I guess some of these boofheads have that intent.
Oh, come ON you bunch of femmos! If a fit young lad indicates he and his mates are prepared to rape you, how is that not a compliment?
Ah yes, FDB, you remind me of a story my friend the high school teacher once told me about the frustrating afternoon she’d spent trying to explain to a class of 14-year-old boys that ‘have sex with’ and ‘rape’ were not synonymous.
Cleveland St sydney is the classic example. Nothing living moves in that tunnel of steel, and when you walk along it you can see frequently people screaming and yelling from inside their cars. It is anti-social to a shocking degree. A lot of houses are boarded up and closed (or brothels) so at night it is also desolate and extremely unsafe – because the people who work the street know that no-one is going to witness their activities, even though cars are pouring by.
Cleveland St used to be better before the Cross City Tunnel opened. It went downhill proportionately to its car density.
Interestingly, I never got harrassed on my bike even though I rode almost exclusively on the road. I think the reason might be that I didn’t wear biker-type gear (fancy helmet, bike shorts) and my bike was old and dodgy. My partner did get harassed, but she was a woman. I think women on bikes, and people who look like “cycle fascists”, are the ones who cop the abuse. This is funny, because here in Japan where society is meant to be so conformist you never, ever, ever get public abuse for being different.
In my experience, both men and women do engage in this kind of aggressive or unsettling behaviour in public spaces, but women who do so tend to do it in response to what they consider threatening behaviour or being made the object of scorn or disrespect. They will attack and/or verbally abuse others for taking ‘their’ car parks, being served first at the bar, or for just ‘looking’ at them. They have very low thresholds for perceiving malicious intent on the part of others.
Men, of course, do this too. However, I don’t think I’ve ever had an unfamiliar woman shout out of a car at me, persist in trying to make conversation with me when I’ve made it clear that I’m not interested, or try following me home.
“They have very low thresholds for perceiving malicious intent on the part of others.”
I of course meant this of the people who habitually engage in this kind of behaviour, not women (or men) in general.
In terms of an overtly political analysis of what this sort of behaviour says about the state of gender politics, I have for some years held the view that “backlash” and other anti-feminist discourses in the Culture Wars and in our culture generally would not significantly affect the long run trends either for younger women to opt for implicitly feminist life-choices at a personal level or for the public in general to adopt increasingly pro-feminist issues. However what I thought it could do was convince rising generations of young men that all of this stuff about equality of the sexes was a passing PC fad, that dealing respectfully with women as equals was not going to be a permanent part of their adult responsibilities, that when they reached or neared adulthood they could expect to find themselves in the same kind of gender relations and roles that they might have witnessed amongst their relatives of previous generations, and that when they discovered that women of their generation weren’t coming to the party as expected, their responses would be anomically misogynist. I wonder if what we’re discussing here bears out that conjecture.
Cars, testosterone, and social geography are merely amplifiiers of the underlying cause of this behaviour — Australianness.
Australianness is a result of the collision between fantasies of egalitarianism and the reality of hierarchy.
I don’t know the answer to this question, but wouldn’t similar behaviours be common in, say, NZ, the UK or Canada?
Sure, there’s a cultural inflection, but I’d be very surprised if such patterns aren’t found across the “Anglosphere” – where there’s a particular set of themes and practices around gender and sexuality that’s relatively invariant.
Happy to be corrected!
I’ve never lived in NZ, but I’ve never encountered this behaviour the UK, Canada or the US.
Well, I’ve been shouted at by yobs in cars in America.
Re: eggs.
A while back on a main road near where I live the local kids would yell and try and throw eggs from the street *into* the windows of moving buses, which shows that the same phenomenon can happen with a rapidly moving victim.
I’m not sure that the phenomenon Katz describes in 35 is exclusive to Australia either, but s/he definitely nails the three key components. I suspect Darlene may describe it more accurately as largely boofheadedness – although there will always be a percentage who act with malice. But I guess that’s why those who act without malice ARE boofheads – too dopey to understand that it’s not funny or complimentary to make jokes riffing off sexual violence.
‘Nope, sorry I disagree. The purpose is NOT to pay a compliment. If it were they would not bother yelling out to obese/overweight 40+ year old women.’
You could well be right. I only hang out with hot chicks.
‘If a fit young lad indicates he and his mates are prepared to rape you, how is that not a compliment?’
That’s pretty feeble humour, FDB. As you should know, the hoons of Carlton/Brunswick are not indicating that they are prepared to rape women when they shout at them. Most of them are just young punks. See Darlene and Katz’ contributions.
I get this reaction from hoons driving around Armidale about 3 times a year. I’m noticeably disabled in that I walk with a slight limp and hang my left arm limply because of cerebral palsy. Best thing is to ignore it. You never know, if you scream back at them, “Yer a pack of f…ing rural cretins!” (which is sometimes my response) whether they’ll stop, pile out of the car and bash you, especially if you’re walking in a relatively unpopulated part of town, which part of my route to town is. I also sometimes get it if I’m walking with a woman, especially an Aboriginal woman (which I’m wont to do sometimes.) I’ve also had a friend of mine bashed at night because he wouldn’t hand over his empty wallet to a couple of young Kooris. But that’s Armidale, sometimes. Been living here for years and I’m used to it.
Years ago, when I was living in Kings Cross, a lot of the women I knew who lived in the Cross (most of whom weren’t working girls) used to take being propositioned in William Street and along Darlinghurst road so lightly, they’d take bets on how many times it would happen in a stroll. Some of the strippers I knew would get harrased too, but that was unwise because the harrassers could find themselves being pursued by beefy bouncers some of whom had guns.
yes, all very unpleasant. And what’s with those truly demented tools without a muffler – who just like being REALLY LOUD on the street? I feel truly embarrassed on behalf of my gender when those halfwitted drongos hoon by; no doubt on their way to some road death – hopefully theirs, and not some innocent’s. Its like some drama exercise in which the actor must embody the most egregious species of bone-jarring stupidity.
Im sure Im not the only one who has fantasies of taking out their tyres with a handy RPG. Then ambling over to their broken vehicle, and whisper, among the tinkle of among falling glass: “shut. the. f*ck. up.”
On a slightly more humorous (and perhaps less borderline psychotic) note, when I was 22 yo stoner, back in the days of high graduate unemployment circa ‘90, me and my longhair mates would get crapped at Brisvegan public commentary on our milieu, and from my old Morris 1100, yell at suit-wearing passers-by
“GET A HOBBY!”
Katz wrote:
laura is right Katz, in fact it’s been document in song (”No Scrubs” – “on the passenger side, tryin’ to holler at me”).
There seems to be a big difference in the type of abuse that cyclists get and females get – I’ve been on the end of plenty of cyclist abuse myself and it normally takes the form of “get off the f*cking road, you just held me up by 3 seconds”, to which a gentle smile at the next set of lights and a request to discuss it *out* of the car normally results in silence. Of course, if I was a little bloke or a woman, I wouldn’t try it. Which I think is the rub – it’s a kind of masculinity test to abuse a cyclist. Group harrassment of females by young males, well, that doesn’t even require a car – although the car based version is especially gutless.
But Lefty E – I don’t own a quiet car sadly. All of them were “upgraded” by their previous owners and frankly I couldn’t be buggered putting quiet exhausts on them, because it costs money when they aren’t broken. So point the RPG elsewhere please.
High speed accompanying the noise is a generally reliable indicator of voluntary muffbusting, David, so you’re safe from my fantasy potshots for now.
SG, I don’t think any country is immune to the disrespect of women in public.
Very witty – reminds me how, as a 19 yo mailroom clerk on an award wage, wearing office clothes from the Salvos and with $3.67 to my name, I once had someone scream “F**king yuppie” at me as I walked down the street!
Yes, the spiritual home of ‘upskirting’, AW.
Now – I’m rather open minded when it comes to perversions, provided they’re consensual.
Obviously upskirting isn’t, but even on its own terms: what on earth is it about? What are those creepy weirdo getting out of it? And for that matter – ‘man-babies’ too. I wish to understand!
Lol, ‘man-babies’. I like to just utter the phrase because my partner is so perturbed by the whole phenomenon that it always gets a reaction. I am merely amused. I can understand, in a way, the sense of security or whatever that could come from being infantilised, but it’s the nappies that really get me. There is nothing sexy about nappies! Although, I suppose some people like to play with poo, also.
Dude you’re naive. Women will get heckled from cars but guys do too. In fact it happened to me the other night. Some kid yelled something, something…homosexual.
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Then the car had to stop at the lights
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So I walked up to the window and said: Wow I’m really impressed by your wit.
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Blank stare open mouth.
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Yeah, I continue, you must’ve stayed up all night drreamig that one up.
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Kid says: I thought you looked homosexual, I didn’t say there was something wrong with that.
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Well, I said there ain’t nothin’ particularly homosexual about the way I look. It’s just that you live somewhere where guys seldom wash more than once a week. Anyway why are you yelling it outta a window at someone you don’t know? I’m sorry, I dig women. But I’d be flattered if you weren’t such a greasy smear.
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There were girls in the car and they laughed at him.
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I don’t often get a chance to do this. But there’s guys that’ll yell at you for no reason at all. The underlying reason is that they’ve got heaps of testosterone and not much else. That’s how they get attention. Pathetic innit?
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Ignore ‘em that what they don’t want you to do.
Lefty E wrote:
I don’t. Ever. Everyone with kids looks forward to the last packet of nappies they will buy or have to inspect the contents of. I will be quite happy to live out my life without any insight, whatsoever, into the mind of a person that likes to sh*t themselves, play with it or deposit it onto someone elses body. Even dogs eat it with reluctance.
However, I (semi seriously) blame widespread depilation becoming sexualised for the infantilisation of sex. Really. The normal biological cues that indicate healthy sexual maturity have become screwed up.
Adrien, you’re a legend.
From what I can glean from the comments, many people have been subject to this crap – not the sort David is talking about – due to some perceived difference (gender, disability, gayness).
Really, I don’t think you get many old coots yelling out this stuff, so it appears to be mostly done by older teenagers/young 20-something blokes who’ve got a need to impress their mates (or who have a deluded belief that this kind of thing is a real turn-on). Of course, you also have that percentage of truly frightening f**kers.
It’s been identified that a lot of car accidents caused by young hoon behaviour comes from a similar desire (to impress one’s mates, that is).
Cart before horse?
FDB – maybe some kind of weird feedback loop wrt. depilation being sexualised. I dunno. I’m too crusty and old to work out what the point of waxing your chest and bollocks is, other than to mask characteristics of aging.
Cheers Darlene
It’s a primate thing. Adolescent primate males tend to band together and make royal nuisances of themsleves. Often ganging up on older males.
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I remember years ago in Marrackville these Monara dudes were at a zebra crossing my girlfriend and I were traversing. This gorilla sticks his head out (always the passenger side) and says to her: Hey you! Leave him. Get in here!
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And she didn’t do it! Funny that!
I didn’t assert that the phenomenon does not exist outside Australia. I merely asserted that I never encountered the phenomenon outside Australia, despite several years’ residence in the US and the UK and a briefer time in Canada.
This may have a number of causes:
1. I did less walking in public places, especially in the US.
2. Times may have changed. Since my time of residence in the US and the UK (1970s and 1980s) this behaviour may have sprung up.
3. There may indeed be more of this behaviour in Australia than in the UK and the US, and so I lucked out in not encountering it in those countries.
So it it just pssible that Laura and I are both correct.
David – some guys keep their bollockal zone tidy to *ahem* enhance the prominence of their appendage. There is also, I’m told, an appreciable difference in sensation under certain conditions.
Am I the luckiest or most blinkered person in Melbourne? Nothing like this has happened to me or my wife in years of walking around the inner city. And my wife (who I don’t think is unattractive) hasn’t faced raw unprovoked sexism on the street to the best of my knowledge at any time in the last nine years that I’ve known her. I can’t recall any anecdotes or stories from our moderately sized group of thirty-something acquaintances either. The worst thing in a similar vein is dickhead drivers abusing me while riding a bike, which maybe happens every few years. But that merely indicates their own inadequacies, doesn’t bother me, and I laugh and pull faces at them when they’re all stuck in traffic, so quid pro quo there.
A couple of goth friends of mine were bashed in the carlton gardens by bogans from Broadmeadows, but that was eleven years ago.
FDB wrote:
DO NOT WANT.
I do remember a particularly funny conversation around the christmas table some years ago after we observed one of my relatives incessantly scratching that bit of their anatomy and muttering something under his breath about being sweaty. After making much fun of this particular relative, he revealed to stunned silence that he was “bare down there” for a special treatment called “the care” which had some of the older family members blinking in silence. To this day, I don’t know what “the care” is, but if it involves shaving the boys, I don’t want to know.
And to slightly make this post on topic, I often observe cyclists with shaved legs but haven’t come across a decent explanation for it, other than some kind of reduction of gravel rash after some fool in a car pushes you off the road. I have precious little dignity left and I’d kind of like to retain it, so my legs are still hairy.
Okay David, that’s fine… you don’t like nether linguistics of that sort.
Or was it just hearing about it?
Prude!
I think the shaved legs is the same as for swimmers – aero/hydro-dynamics.
Perhaps “the care” is a euphemism for crabs?
It might have elements of prudishness FDB, but fercrissakes that’s a razor blade you’re waving around my nethers, so I’m happy to forego whatever upside might be involved if the downside is having one hand permanently engaged in scratching what itches you every time the thermometer rises over 25 degrees. Pocket billiards should not be a full time occupation.
I wouldn’t let a razor or hot wax in the vicinity either David.
I have virgins nibble each hair off a short distance from the skin.
I mean MY FRIEND does.
*phew*
Well, that would be a friendship sorely tested FDB. Is that what friends are for?
“sorely tested”
Best unintention pun EVAH!!!
(slaps forehead). Thus I have unintentionally ruined another thread. What was this one about again?
Anna Winter, I’m familiar with the groping issue on trains. The funny thing is, that one phenomenon is completely and utterly out of whack with all the other public behaviour of Japanese men. I have heard that it is also something of a thing of the past, since the Tokyo government ran a campaign against it and encouraged women to make a fuss. I suspect those women-only trains are about more than just groping – Japan remains a highly voluntarily sex-segregated society, and a lot of women here seem to find the company of men generally quite tiresome. On rush-hour trains here you pretty much get involuntarily groped anyway, and I suspect those carriages were introduced at least partly so that women and men didn’t have to be rubbing all over one another involuntarily.
I would be careful about believing too much of the english-language press about those trains, Japan reporting generally being so heavy on the “slightly perverted and overly conformist” story angles, and rather light on truth. For the same reason I view Lefty E’s “spiritual home of upskirting” comment pretty poorly, the old “upskirting” issue being something of an overblown myth in the West. Next we’ll be hearing about used-underwear vending machines…
Wilful: I dunno what to say.
I’ve seen and heard what I’ve discussed in the original post with my own eyes.
And, frankly, I don’t buy some of the more charitable interpretations of it being posted on here; while they may not intend to actually commit any violence, they’re using the implied threat of it.
I have heard that it is also something of a thing of the past.
Haha. Sexual harassment a thing of the past, says Japan correspondent. Maybe you don’t notice it because you aren’t subjected to it.
Wilful, the answer is yes, you have been very lucky.
There are some parallels here with the evidence that suggests actual rape is more about the exercise of power than it is about sex qua sex; the hoon behaviour as I have observed it hasn’t got all that much to do with being ‘attractive’ (which is in itself a subjective notion). It’s more about attention-seeking and intimidation, probably in roughly equal proportions. And when it’s a carload of hoons vs. a lone woman, it can quickly escalate into something worse. Anyone seen The Boys? I haven’t walked alone at night since I saw that movie (and being unable to walk alone safely at night, which was something I loved doing when I was young, is a bloody annoying infringement of my civil liberties apart from anything else.)
Can I just say that I do not give a rat’s arse whether these people are “only” “boofheads”; their behaviour feels just as threatening to the person on the receiving end as it would if they were something more sinister, not least because the victim is in no position to know whether or not what we have here is the Murphy brothers or just some harmless teenage wankers. Being on the receiving end of deliberately intimidating behaviour from some total stranger(s) whom you have done absolutely nothing to offend feels the same regardless of where it’s coming from.
As usual, I’m confused. Aren’t you all good orthodox Darwinists? (C. of D.?) Since human beings are descended from monkeys, that makes us all just great big primate mammals, right? So why are you surprised or offended or bothered, that great big primate mammals have mating calls and displays of aggression and so forth, and that the males compete for status in crude ways, etc etc etc? Haven’t any of you ever watched the Nature Channel? Blokes yelling loudly out of cars is positively Noel Coward compared to most species.
Science doesn’t care about your personal preferences; pressure of selection and so forth, I coulda almost swore that that Darwin chap had something to say about it.
Isn’t this just your own value system at work? If not, why not?
Yes slanderous. They’re slightly conformist and overly perverted.
nice try, su, but my partner lives here with me. She was mugged 2 years before we left Sydney, and ever since was quite anxious about public safety in that city. She lives the difference here, and as someone who respects the opinion of the woman I love, I tend to notice the difference. This is why I gave the little anecdote of the girl in the dark tunnel.
When I said I thought groping on trains (not “sexual harrassment” generally) was something in the past, I did so because I read an article in a Japanese newspaper about reduced incidence of the phenomenon after a couple of government campaigns. Perhaps you aren’t aware of this su, but most foreign coverage of Japan is racist and shallow, and sometimes being in a country can give one a remarkably different view of things presented as “facts” outside the country. I recommend trying it before mouthing off with uncharitable assertions.
Seems nothing has changed in Newcastle. Many here may be too young to remember The Newcastle Song by Bob Hudson (or its follow-up Rak Off Normie).
You can listen to it here.
My apologies, SG. In fairness, I should point out that Slovenia is the global stronghold of Man-Babyism.
You hoid it here foist.
My point remains; it will never be as noticeable to you SG and although guys often feel they can speak for 100% of the population just because they have girlfriends, I can assure you that you can’t.
Link.
There is quite a bit of research into widespread underreporting of sexual offenses in Japan.
That link should be:
Link
There are others, more recent if you care to look.
‘while they may not intend to actually commit any violence, they’re using the implied threat of it.’
…and hence Katz’ point about social geography. Enormous numbers of young men explore the use of aggression, intimidation, and force during their adolescence, early manhood, and – sadly – often on into adulthood. I don’t think anybody here is trying to excuse or condone it, I know I’m certainly not. Nonetheless, as the more (ahem) ‘academic’ demography spreads north from Carlton into Brunswick and beyond, they are going to clash with young second- and third-generation immigrant working-class blokes who are fascinated by intimidation – and for whom intimidation is a perfectly normal part of their lives. The world would probably be a better place if they didn’t indulge their testosterone-drive so often. But there you have it – they live in the area and they deal in intimidation, not dialogue and certainly not righteousness. Nobody has asked you to like it, but at the end of the day, their challenge stands as legitimately here as it does on the street: what are you going to do about it?
Likewise for PC, who appears to be arguing (please correct if wrong) that they cannot be excused for being ‘only boofheads’. Nobody is trying to excuse their behaviour on that grounds, just explain it. Most young men do dumb stuff because they are boofheads, not because they are real-life replicas of the psychos from ‘The Boys’. I understand that for the woman in the street the difference is negligible, but that doesn’t mean that there is no difference, and more to the point – what is the woman in the street going to do about it? The Pavlovian Cat in the street is going to make a beeline for home, get online, and decry this behaviour. Well, good work – but it’s not going to change their behaviour. I know plenty of young women who live in the inner north who walk the streets at night, young men – boofheads or rapists – be damned. Without wanting to jump into reclaiming the streets, them telling young hoons where to go may well have more effect than online lamentation.
I’m serious about this one, Robert: I don’t understand the purpose of your original post, and now I ask you to please put it to me concisely. Yes, there are a small number of men in the inner north who engage in sexual violence on the street. Yes, there are a much larger number of men in the inner north who engage in the threat of sexual violence on the street. So what? When was that ever not the case? And (picture me driving off in a lime green Torana with my head hanging out the window) what are you going to do about it?
Jikajika – you keep hammering on the point that you believe this is specific to mediterranean ethnicity.
You need to travel a bit more widely. Young men are the same all round Australia. Obnoxious when out in groups.
I believe you live in Melbourne, wbb? You have some familiarity with the inner north, or am I mistaken? If so, I hope you can perceive the boundaries of my argument..
The reason I confine myself to mediterraneans is because (IMHO) they comprise the bulk of the young hoons in the inner north, especially Coburg/Pascoe Vale and to a diminishing extent Brunswick, with the traditional rubber-burning strip of Lygon Street. My understanding is that this is the local that Robert spoke of.
I’m certainly not suggesting that sexual violence or the threat of sexual violence is inherent in specific ethnicities. Nor do I make here any claim for the motivation of hoonery anywhere beyond the inner north of Melbourne.
Otherwise, perhaps we agree – in the majority of cases, the motivation is obnoxiousness, not malice.
“if you care to look”: you mean you just googled it? Every country has underreporting of sexual offences, su, but we’re not talking about “sexual offences.” I gave a specific response to a specific case (groping), and a comment about what I have noticed about men yelling at women in public – it doesn’t happen. You can extend it to all forms of sexual harassment if you like, but look! I never said anything about the prevalence of sexual harassment.
As for the idea that this man notices these things less because they don’t happen to him – first of all su, public abuse did happen to me in Australia. And secondly, just because all the guys you know are ignorant pigs, doesn’t mean I’m one. I have many of my own reasons for looking out for these phenomena, so don’t bother me with the feminist analysis of my own experiences.
I see where you are coming from, jikajika.
I personally disdain to set foot anywhere west of the Rathdowne Village, so must plead ignorance and bow to yr superior knowledge of the jungles that lie beyond my more genteel province.
Come now, wbb. We’re all primates up here too.
I’m sure you’d be more than welcome – though perhaps we do have a preponderance of gorillas.
Possibly, but it’s more likely to get you beaten to death with a tire iron. ‘Talking back’ to aggressive blokes merely enrages them, as I know to my cost. Any woman who verbally takes on a carload of young, fit men is either off her face or too stupid to say anything effective.
I lived ten metres from the corner of Blyth St and Sydney Road (and worked a block from Lygon St) for eleven years so had plenty of time and opportunity to observe the street behaviour of Upper Brunswick. The mixed ethnicity of the population was reflected pretty faithfully in the hooting hoonery except for the notable absence of the Vietnamese.
As to the point of Robert’s post, I can speak only as a reader. But as I understood him, he was expressing a new and slightly horrified understanding of what the small humiliations of daily life are like for women, at the hands of men behaving badly. And I’m sure I’m not the only woman here who appreciates it.
I also don’t see it as “online lamentation” or its close companion “loud denunciation”. It’s a very useful exercise indeed to think about what appear to be individual narratives in terms of a social whole, because it does potentially give us some leverage for drawing broader conclusions about what better and less violent relations between genders look like, and trying to puzzle out how we might work towards them.
In other words, doing feminist and (pro)feminist thinking!
Lefty E would remember Men Against Sexual Assault and its various spinoff groups and publications which we both used to be involved in back in the day. It’s a very similar process of collectivising individual experiences and working through them.
Indeed Mark. Not much of that seemed to kick on past 96 though.
No, Lefty E, unfortunately probably a case of not successfully passing the reins on when the core group became too busy with other stuff to keep the momentum going. Not an uncommon story for unfunded groups within social movements.
Groping is a sexual offence, SG. Underreporting there is of such great concern that it has been the subject of quite a lot of study and a book by Catherine Burns, a resident of Japan and Griffith uni scholar.
Public abuse happens to everyone SG, but it happens more frequently to women, and what we are talking about here is abuse that carries a specific threat, the threat of sexual violence. And no, I don’t believe you do understand that experience otherwise you wouldn’t be so determined to minimize it. You can check with feminist organisations over there and see if they think Japan is as safe as you seem to.
I agree with Pavlov’s Cat – you never, ever engage with them unless absolutely necessary. As a man who’s been thumped a few times, I can say not even that’s going to protect you, but it’s a much better strategy…
I know groping is a sexual offence, su. I was speaking about a specific sexual offence in response to a specific article. I wasn’t responding to Anna Winter’s article about groping on trains with a comment that “I have read groping on trains is less common these days” in order to prove that there are no sexual offences in Japan. Is that clear?
I’m not “determined to minimize” the threat of sexual violence in Japan. I am merely pointing out that a particular type of threat is less common here, and that women in Japan seem to act differently in public as a result. Your argument is essentially “You are wrong because you’re a man” and I’m sorry, but it doesn’t cut it. I live here, I watch how men and women behave, I speak to men and women here about the issue and compare their experiences with those of men and women in Australia, and I speak to Japanese women who have lived in or holidayed in Australia, and the facts of the matter are clear. If you don’t like it fine, but don’t pretend I’m saying things I’m not, and don’t assume you know what I know.
As a cyclist with experience of hoon harassment I don’t recommend what my reaction was on one occasion in Sydney’s Surry Hills some years ago. I suffered, tried to ignore it but with the added threat to my physical safety took to fingering my solid lock-up chain and waited to catch up at the next set of lights.
The lasting memory I have of three front seat hoons trying to all occupy the passenger side door arm rest was delicious as I shattered their windscreen. I made off down lanes known only to me but can still hear their pursuit. Not recommended and I have resisted the ‘opportunity’ on subsequent occasions. But you never know … and neither should they.
‘it’s more likely to get you beaten to death with a tire iron.’
Well, I suppose we’re both dealing in hyperbole here, aren’t we? You are right – telling young hoons where to go increases the likelihood that they will simply be provoked. I doubt death by tire iron is a likely outcome, but certainly the chances of being sexually assaulted rise. Then again, said young hoons may just change their behaviour.
Perhaps you agree each woman has the right to choos her own response? Those who opt differently to you may not necessarily be drunk or stupid. Perhaps they are simply fed up, or perhaps they even genuinely believe they will change such behaviour by confronting them about it.
New understandings of small humiliations and envisioning better and less violent gender relations is useful, but at some point an understanding of young hoons and their motivations have to be involved. The kind of generalisations made about young hoons in the original post made me, at least, suspect that the it was an opportunity to lay the boot into young men as rapists-in-the-making as much as it was about understanding small humiliations and envisioning better and less violent gender relations. The former would be an understandable response to a traumatic episode, the latter a constructive one.
For what it’s worth, I think Robert’s post combined elements of both.
For what it’s worth, I sought to move the discussion past the obstacle of conceiving of young hoons as rapists-in-the-making or as pyschos from ‘The Boys’.
Su, when I was twenty-two years old I shared a house with two women who were about my age. At around that time there was a molester/public nuisance on the loose in another, distant, suburb.
I opined/expressed the view that one of the things that I rejoiced in as an Australian (male) was that I could walk down any street in Melbourne at any time of the day or night with perfect security, and so wondered what all the fuss was about.
They set me right. They discussed with me their experience as (Australian) women where they had, from their past experience, to take into account potential threats that I, as a male, would not have been aware of and would not ever have reason to give any thought to. They told me that if they went out unaccompanied after nightfall they would feel fear of a threat that could come at any time. I grew up a little on that night and learned to see the world as others experience it and not just from the privileged position that my gender placed me in.
So I agree with you and you have said something that has to be said.. SG should talk to some women about this, not as part of an argument but as part of understanding.
I am of two minds about this: on the one hand I think the effect is much more important than the intention; on the other I am interested in understanding the behaviour and finding ways to intervene. To me it is inextricably linked to homosocial bonding through a mediating third party. The problem with such bonding is it is potentially very dangerous to the mediating party because they are more or less reduced to a function of the process. The harm caused – psychological, physical etc – is thus eclipsed by the positive aspects of the process, and by mutual reinforcement. So understanding the intention (rather than using it to suggest it renders the behaviour essentially harmless) is very important, if not as important as the process of sharing and publicising the effects of these behaviours in order for them to no longer be thought of as merely individual experiences.
Also, I would like to be involved in an organisation like Men Against Sexual Assault: does anybody know of groups that are currently active?
the right to walk around without fear – women are still fundamentally worse off than I am as a bloke because of the dickhead behaviour of some men.
Strongly Disagree. Men are FAR more likely to be a victim of violence than women, and random street violence like this especially so.
Whether or not you are “afraid” of it is irrelevant, the fact is you should be.
Anyone who yells anything back to idiots trying to start a fight is stupider than the person who yelled in the first place.
Like this, you mean:
“and:
My argument is that you can’t speak for women, Australian or Japanese. I don’t confide in male friends here about these kinds of things and from what I have read one of the problems there with reporting of assault is that women do not believe it is polite to burden even their female friends with personal issues and yet you insist that all of your “speaking to people” gives you an accurate picture.
You claim not to be minimizing while dismissing stories of harassment on trains as racist reporting and saying that segregation is not only about preventing assault. You then characterize it as “in the past” on the basis on one single article. I call that minimizing. As far as I can see Japan’s harassment culture is just occurring in a different context; at work, on trains and in bars. So your theory that cars “uncivilize” us is based on a society where the harassment is rife but happens indoors. Cars are not the problem.
In that case, jikajika (and my, your choice of nom de blogue does intrigue) you have completely missed my point. Which was that any woman being harassed by a carload of testosterone doesn’t know how dangerous it may be but must consider the possibility that her fate will be that of Anita Cobby. If you don’t know the details of what happened to Anita Cobby, they can be found online, but I don’t recommend it if you want to sleep tonight.
I just relayed some of the Japan discussion to my wife, whom is a Japanese who has chosen to live in Australia for her own reasons. This was not to gauge her opinion, since I know what that would be, but merely to playfully irritate her.
Because the constant internet discussions between Japanophiles and Japanophobes is really creepy! Granted the country produces a huge volume of it’s own introspective literature, but what is it about Japan that produces such queer obsessions and passions (right back to when Twain quipped it was a mark of distinction not to have written a book on Japan).
and man, I imagine about coming accross endless material polarised between Australophiles and Australophobes, and facing a world primed to judge me as friendly or drunk or violent or corageous or tolerant or racist.
It’s kinda scary
There’s actually been a self-published PhD thesis about Brisbane MASA, Mark, by Linzi Murrie. He interviewed the founding members back in 2000 or so.
It was staggering how differently recalled the same episodes were by the key figures. I learnt a lot about history writing by participating in it.
Which uni, LE? I might take a look some time!
Also, Lefty E, do you know the answer to the question Klaus poses at the end of comment #96?
Very intersting Richard Green. Said’s Orientalism all over.
Also, while this was very diiferent, I was just re-reading Gassan Hages’s White Nation where he describes a graffiti wall at UWS where liberal anti racists and reactionary racists do battle over the national space, arguing over who should be allowed in, ordering it and speaking on behalf of the non european migrants. The fact that the two white opposites are assuming they are in control of that space goes unreflected. Your comment reminds me of it. White people doing battle over their Japanese representations (in order to support their ideological argument) and assuming an authority to speak definitively (both as outsiders) is very compelling argument for Said’s thesis.
Having said that, I do not believe that cars uncivilise and cause mysoginy and sexism and violence in general. People do. If that were true everyone who got behind the wheel would be barking mad, being uncivilised by the environment. Not all men do this. And not all women do it. So it cant be the cars really. Personalities formed in a culture which encourages then denies, indulges and minimises mysoginy, sexism, homophobia, and hatred of difference does this to people, not cars. I wonder when we will stop indulging and romanticising the mysoginistic impulse in particular by relegating such behavior to the category of boofheads, or even “boguns” or whatever and call it for what it is. Hatred of difference, hatred of women. There are no compliments in it. And if you are a woman and you believe that, you have been sucked in sister.
It was UQ, Mark, though he worked at Southern Cross – just finding the reference online. Have a hard copy somewhere, which was crazy to read as we all appeared under pseudonyms after being interviewed separately about the same things, giving widely divergent accounts. Each offering a consistency and coherence to the history of the group, which clearly aligned to their own life narratives. Where more than one agreed, Linzi tended to conclude it was so – even where it wasnt. Historians often forget the truth-regulating function of factional lines when interviewing primary sources.
Anyway, here it is: Linzi Murrie. “Feminism as Men’s Business: The Possibilities and Limitations of Profeminist Politics in MASA.” PhD Dissertation, UQ, 2002. Then self-published 2003 with some ugly mugs on the cover.
You’d really enjoy it, as there’s chapters on the QLD politcal context circa 1990-1, our relationships (or otherwise) with the West End Feminist community etc.
The answer to Klaus’s Q: despite being a co-founder of the Brisbane group, I just have no idea. So long ago. My guess is no. Klaus is welcome to email me, though, Mark, as I know who could tell him definitively.
“Having said that, I do not believe that cars uncivilise and cause mysoginy and sexism and violence in general.”
I think cars exacerbate other problems by altering perception and giving a sense of being able to act without repercussions, but they do not cause these problems. It is a matter of logistics as much as anything.
I do think there is a tendency to conflate a range of behaviours under the category of ‘hooning’ which is a mistake, and can lead us towards the idea that automobility is the fundamental problem.
Yep I definitely overstepped the mark, thanks for pointing that out.
While we’re on the topic of sexual harassment in public spaces, I’d like to plug the new Hollaback Australia blog, which is a space for women who have been harassed to share their experiences.
Thanks, Lefty E.
If Klaus wants your email to follow up the question, he can reach me at mbahnisch at gmail dot com.
Thanks for the story and the reference, too. Which department at UQ was it in?
I’d never want to suggest that what I cop is anything like the level women do, or that it has nearly as much effect, but I get quite a bit of this sort of thing when riding my bike round inner Melbourne. Much more rarely on foot.
Indeed on the very stretch Robert refers to I once had a car deliberately veer from the right hand lane, into the left, the empty parking spots and then the gutter before they veered off laughing. I’m doubt they really were trying to kill me (I jumped onto the footpath) but certainly the aim was to instill fear. Once I had a car follow me at riding pace for a while. I found a park and rode the bike into it, at which point one or more of them jumped out and ran after me for a while.
Once the offenders were women, which was the only time I felt safe enough to take them on. I caught them at the next lights and got pretty heavily in their faces, returning the abuse and letting them think I might go with pablo’s solution. It seemed to chasten them a bit, but I lack the courage to do it to a group of men. I have mixed feelings about what I did – its a form of discrimination that I’d fight back against women and not men. On the other hand they certainly deserved it (they were certainly trying to scare me, and could easily have seriously injured me) and I suspect they’ll be less likely to do it again.
Lefty E, thank you for the MASA reference! I get asked about whether there’s been any mens groups on these issues so much, and I knew about MASA but not where to find any info now.
Just says School of Social Science, Mark. I am happy to help Klaus out with contacts if he’s keen.
RObert Merkel says:
This is a conventional liberal sociological misreading of a fairly obvious feature of male anthropology. Car-hooning and street aggro is mainly about status-competition b.w aspiring Alpha-males, not “reinforcing patriarchy”.
Patriarchy is inevitable, so reinforcing it is just a waste of time from the pov of any male on the make. What is not inevitable is which males will fill the top slots. [bad pun]
Car hooning and street aggro is not about establishing dominance over women per se. It is about establishing dominance over other men. Women are just sport. So the most important target of the abuse is probably Robert.
The essentially political nature of primate gangsterism is brought out in Demonic Males. Male primatess to form gangs to intimidate other men in order to claim territory and associated resources (such as women and food).
Of course this kind of paeleolithic behaviour is atavistic and increasingly obsolete as a means of achieving status-dominance, as the condescending and disdainful tone of the comments on this post indicate. Nowadays there are few status brownie points for frightening solo women, thats too easy. So car hoons who pick on solo women merely confirm their own low social status.
But frightening other men is always a feather in your cap. Off the top of my head I would say that males are subject to more violence on the street by an order of magnitude (any stats on this?)
Paradoxically womens lib-feminism that is rescuing the majority of moderate males from their more militant peers. Female sexual choice is perhaps the most powerful anthrpological force driving modernity. It is no accident that England, the society where modernity first took off, was also the source of female romanticism ie Jane Austen.
The feminist saviours of mild-mannered men are apparent in Southern Eurasian-ish societies where male-on-male violence has almost exhausted itself (eg Algeria). Women are taking the social lead, and pushing these backward barbarians toward civilization.
Greater female sexual choice forces spiring Alpha-males to utilise creative, rather than destructive, paths towards social dominance. A true Alpha-male wins points against other men by conquering women by his social attainment, and consolidating the conquest through financial accomplishment.
Although I have noticed that more stylish car hooning in Chapel Street, complete with laser undercarriage and doof-doof speaker system, does occasionally reap sexual rewards. The female trade union is not as strong as it once was, and the “easier” sort of women is prepared to under-cut the going rate by scabbing.
Casey – Said is the gift that keeps on giving! And this deserves a thread on its own really.
But anyway
It’s also something that is depressing about much of the discourse on reconciliation as well, alot of whitefellahs arguing about blackfellahs.
On another oriental note, I remember once being at a party and overhearing a conversation between an Australian student and two Taiwanese students, with whom I’d previously been discussing baseball. The Australian was very interested in their opinions on their identity as Chinese, or as Taiwanese, or as both, and what they felt about independence etc.
This made them feel very awkward since, really, they didn’t really have any. The issue simply hadn’t been important in their life. It was almost in the same status as the culture wars here. The conversation about baseball had revealed so much more about their character since I wasn’t asking about them as part of a culture or national identity.
I later got into an extended debate in an honours seminar with a student whom was studying the Taiwan straits issue whilst conscienciously ignoring the domestics politics of both entities. My objections to this, particularly the application of the view of the noisy minority to the entirity of each side led her to claim that in a binary world of Sinophobes and Sinophiles, I was obviously in the latter camp, and was to be politely disregarded.
My point being that not only is this arguing about the character of other cultures arrogant and creepy, it also leads people to unduly box people into the binary roles of their own stupid discourse, and its hard to be heard as someone that sees a complex, diverse and nuanced society of individuals.
On a note relevant to the thread, I’ve found that as a cyclist that I have very rarely experienced this in the Ryde area, where I’m living now. This may be demographic, older drivers, less “yobbos” if such a class exists, and maybe because of more asians (who’s orientalist now?!).
But I think its because as a cyclist here, and in many places in the North of Sydney, a cyclist is simply invisible at all time, to pleasant drivers and bad.
And I find this far more unsettling than the minority of dickheads.
On the question of the role of cars in all this, of course it isn’t cars which are the cause of the problem – it’s sexism and reactionary masculinities. However cars, like guns, enable the louts to cause far more harm and intimidation than they would otherwise. To pursue the analogy, tighter gun control in the US would not, by itself, cure abusive men of their abusive propensities, but it would reduce the likelihood of the abuse turning lethal.
PC, I thought I acknowledged the point you mention at the end of my very first comment (#2 on this thread).
You clearly feel differently.
I’m afraid that ego has now become an obstacle to engagement, so I’ll bow out here.
All the best.
FYI re: jikajika.
I’m getting sick of it being implied that just because people try to explain behaviours that they somehow condone it or support it or are mooning people from car windows and telling them they’d be a good shag.
This sort of thing does happen elsewhere (Brisbane, for example).
As for Yobbo’s point; well yes that’s true: pissed-up blokes often beat up other pissed-up blokes or blokes who don’t fit in get beaten up by blokes trying to prove what big men they are. Really, the time for men to reflect on the way traditional conceptions of masculinity are destructive and damaging to them is way overdue.
While the Hollaback thing is probably well-intentioned, I hate the idea of online revenge. It often gets out of hand and, frankly, some fellows might take it as a badge of honour to be on such a site. I mean, there’s something not right about it. Sorry to the sisters for that analysis (I hated Anon Lefty’s recent venture into online vengeance as well).
And I have flipped the bird and told passing yobs to f**k off many times or just looked at them as if to say, “aren’t you a clever clogs”. I have to agree with jikajika on this one, but I too am intrigued by the choice of “name”. Wasn’t Jika Jika an infamous prison?
Jika Jika was the high-security wing of the Pentridge Prison, which is located within Coburg. I assume the wing was named after the parish of Jika Jika, which lay within Coburg long before the prison. Coburg was traditionally a working-class suburb with many immigrants, factories, and of course the families of prisoners.
The area is undergoing significant change now that the elderly immigrants are dying off, the factories are closing, and Pentridge, of course, has been turned into luxury apartments.
As the tertiary-educated young professionals filter north from Fitzroy and Carlton into Brunswick and Coburg, there is a natural clash of sensibilities between the working-class children and grandchildren of immigrants and prisoners, and said young professionals.
I think that is what Robert captured in his post.
As you mention, Darlene, to point out that the behaviour of the ‘old Coburgians’ is not always malicious is not to condone that behaviour.
Here is an historic snapshot of an unpleasant walk btw
http://www.orkinphoto.com/amergirl.html
Without fail, I am struck by the pleasure on the mens faces in this shot, generated by the fear (and tears) on the girl’s face. Orkin captured the menace and the power play lurking behind the stereotype of the Italian man and his admiration of women (depicted in popular culture as always harmless, always complimentary, always flattering) . Mostly this picture reveals to me that the same sorts of dynamics regarding power come into play here, in the sexual harrassemnt of woman, as they do in rape. Its not about sex. Its not harmless. Its about power. It seeks to discomfort. And threaten. And, that is a universal phenomenon.
Its not about sex. Its not harmless. Its about power.
Yes. And it’s about the young alpha (in their own minds) males owning the public space. And inasmuch as we adopt defensive behaviours like not walking alone at night, it reduces our freedom and opportunities – unless, of course, we can stay in that all-important car (with all the ramifications that that has for our environmental footprint.)
This topic is a rubik’s cube with many ramifications, I’ll stop before this becomes an essay.
Yobbo is correct to point to the prevalence of male-on-male violence.
I think we need to distinguish the motivations between male-on-male symbolic and actual violence and male-on-female symbolic and actual predation.
Male-male violence is about symbolic annihilation. It is conceived of by the perpetrator as a terminal act.
Male-female violence is about symbolic possession. It is conceived ofby the perpetrator as a serial act.
A few people here seem very intent on telling other people they can’t have an opinion about something – I can’t have an opinion on vocal street-yelling because I’m a man, su can’t have an opinion on my opinion of Japan because she’s not Japanese, and my opinion of Japan must be wrong because I’m a japanophile.
Apparently a Japanophile in Richard’s definition is someone who says something good about Japan. It’s a good tactic deployed by cynics to shut people up, but sadly it’s also the most pathetic cop out in the book. There are certain things that almost everyone who goes to Japan from Australia notices, and one of those is the lack of public shaming of the sort described by Robert Merkel. I came back to Australia for 2 weeks recently and my first experience of being yelled at in the street (”Who let the freaks out!?”) was in my first day. I had more inside that 2 weeks. Two years in Japan – nothing. Two days in Australia – abuse. It’s a real difference, and everyone who lives here will tell you about it. Richard wants to keep it silent, because apparently no-one who has been in Japan is allowed to bring back any good ideas from that country to their own, just wives. Keep it up Richard, that cynicism works real well to enhance cultural understanding.
Casey, how on God’s green earth is it Orientalism to say “I live in Japan, I don’t get yelled at, women don’t get yelled at in public either, I think the reason is…”? If that’s orientalism I think you ought to go reread some basic definitions. FFS!
Su, I did not claim that cars “uncivilise us”. I said they uncivilise areas where they get beyond a certain critical mass. I offered this as one possible explanation for why a particular form of public harassment is less prevalent in Japan. A particular sort, got that? I didn’t say anything about trains or bars or work. Got it? There is no content in this argument which says cars uncivilise trains. Or bars. Or all westerners.
And how on earth do you think men are going to change their behaviour if, as you believe, they aren’t capable of understanding it or noticing its effects? And why bother exhorting men to imagine that the strange woman might be their sister or girlfriend if men can’t understand their sisters or girlfriends? This kind of unproductive, fantastical feminist pseudo-theory leads us nowhere.
Oh Im well versed in Orientalism SG and the white production of orientalist culture for white consumers. I did not argue you could not have an opinion. I was actually responding to Richard Green whose partner suggests that all this arguing over what Japan is like and what it is not like (in order to back up one’s ideological position) is a white obsession which has nothing to do with the lived reality of a Japanese person. Sexual harrassment in Japan just might be far more complex than what either you or Su were arguing. Could we perhaps allow for that I wonder?
I think cars are completely beside the point. If I am followed by a group of guys on foot I am more, not less threatened because there is one less barrier between them and me. The critical factor is that there is a group and they are being deliberately threatening. It is a circular argument to say that cars are important in street harassment from within cars. I am saying that street harassment happens everywhere and that the critical issue is not the venue. By doing so I am actually focusing the attention on that behaviour because I do think it can change. But all of the posts from guys saying “I get abused on my bike” leads me to believe that they just aren’t getting the difference between sexual harassment and road rage or general abuse. And this post was about sexual harassment not cyclist abuse, or general verbal abuse or guys getting knocked down in pub brawls. How often does someone stare at your crotch, and tell you what they want to do to you in a public place. How often do you get felt up (in Australia) while you are standing in a queue or in a shop or at the library or just on the street? These are genuine questions. How often have you been sexually harassed? Now tell me again how I am just not ‘getting it.’
“Male-female violence is about symbolic possession. It is conceived of by the perpetrator as a serial act.”
I think this is an insightful account, and says a lot about the ways in which these scenarios play out and are perpetuated.
In spite of being occasionally wary of particular groups of people, or even individuals, as a pedestrian, most actual encounters I have had as a male adhere to Katz’ account and thus have not produced the same level of psychological harm. There is no element of seriality for perpetrators, and the consequence is that those experiences don’t impede my movements so much as they inform me of things to look for: expressions etc which suggest that the potential perpetrator is looking for a fight. This is perhaps different in the case of bullying, but that is usually framed by an institutional context.
“Richard wants to keep it silent, because apparently no-one who has been in Japan is allowed to bring back any good ideas from that country to their own, just wives.”
I have a problem with this. As I read it, upset with the turn the discussions took last night, you respond by evisioning Richard’s partner as an object of worth (Richard does not take good ideas from Japan, just wives) which has been “brought” to Australia by her partner. And where is the woman’s agency in this? You dont think that the objectification here is not in itself a sexist retreat on your part? Which is deeply ironic given the nature of discussions?
Geez SG.
You’re right Casey, it’s a cheap response to a cheap argument. Everyone who lives in Japan has a “lived reality”, as you might put it, and I am singularly uninterested in having someone who doesn’t know me decide that I am a japanophile. The comment is about Richard, not his wife, and it’s meant to imply something about Richard’s view of Japan and the Japanese.
Which, since I know nothing about it, I’m sorry Richard for being so rude. If you have read forums like gaijin pot or lived in Japan you will know what that throwaway comment is meant to mean, and it will seem a lot ruder to you than it does to Casey. Sorry for making uncharitable assumptions about you.
SG,
My wife lived and worked in Japan for over 10 years. She would be very surprised to hear that sexual harassment is minimal in Japan as her experience suggests it is worse there than here.
I think race plays a part in this. A woman from “inferior” Asian stock- such as my SE Asian wife- has a lower status in Japanese society than a white woman. If your female partner is white she will be afforded some protection from the worst excesses of the Japanese male.
su, it’s not a circular argument to say that cars make car abuse more prevalent in areas where they predominate. In comment 31 I make a point about crime in car-heavy areas. But even without that, it’s not circular to say that people are only willing to abuse you from within a car when they are surrounded by cars, and the street is empty of people. Cars occur in many different contexts, but street harassment of the sort described here does not.
And again, we are talking about a particular form of very visual, loud public harassment here, not sexual harassment in all its general and varied forms. We aren’t talking about the cashier who stares at your tits, but the guys who scream at you from cars. This happens to be the only form of loud, public sexual harassment which has a lot in common with the public abuse a lot of men cop, and some men here are therefore inclined to think it might have common roots. I don’t think anyone here is trying to say anything about harassment on a broader basis. And even the men who are interested in the common roots are interested mostly in why men feel safe with the particular form (yelling from cars), not whether the underlying reason for the abuse is the same between sexes. Experiences are being swapped to try and get at what the similarities and differences are. But your main interest seems to be in suggesting that men don’t cop this particular form of abuse, and that even if they did it’s not as bad, and that because it doesn’t have a sexual content it must, inevitably, be reinforced by different social causes.
With of course a good dose of the old canard that men cannot understand things they don’t experience directly. I don’t think we’re that dense, or that lacking in compassion. But if we are the cause is lost.
So in a post on street harassment of women, street harassment of women is outside of the terms of the debate?
What is really, really crucial however, is that someone called you a freak and guys get monstered while cycling.
But not experiences of actual street harassment because you have defined those as outside the terms of the debate. Only experiences that fit your notion of equivalence will be admitted. Having rejected out of hand the notion that there may be different dynamics involved in sexual harassment and public verbal abuse you contrive a set of terms that specifically exclude anything that might challenge that preconception.
‘jika jika’ (and Jagajaga, Jenny Macklin’s electorate) derive from the name of the representative of the Wurundjeri who signed John Batman’s 1835 land purchase document.
su, I didn’t write the post. I responded to the post with a particular comment about my experience of the particular thing described in the post.
A comment on street harassment of women is not outside the terms of the debate, but my particular contribution to this debate was to suggest that I think the design of cities can encourage or discourage certain sorts of bad behaviour. Since the overt expression of the bad behaviour is not limited to street harassment of women – indeed, the exact same behaviour is shown towards cyclists and goths, as many have commented – it seems that by swapping experiences outside of sexual harassment we may be able to identify whether these design elements exist.
Others have suggested that because this particular form of abuse occurs towards men as well as women (as opposed to the other forms of harassment you describe, or indeed groping on trains), perhaps this is not sexual harassment per se. I don’t agree with them but I do think that whatever it is that enables this yelling abuse to occur is not the same in every country (or even every context), and a cross-country comparison might tell us something. Accepting that Japan is also sexist and also has forms of sexual harassment seen in the west, we can ask why this one doesn’t occur there. Then we can ask if this is a phenomenon we can copy. Sure, it’s not a radical overthrow of the patriarchy but it might make a lot of us feel safer.
And no, I did not say that the really crucial thing was that someone called me a freak and guys get monstered while cycling. I pointed out that I don’t get monstered while cycling and my partner does, and that maybe men in cars in Australia feel they have a right to yell at people who stand out – and for men in Australia, women always stand out. This is not denying the particular dynamics of sexual harassment, it is trying to find a way to explain how this form of harassment isn’t always sexual, and to attack its common social enablers.
John, I agree about race in Japan and I suspect Japanese women are insulated from a lot of the abuse that South East Asian women experience. I did not, however, say that sexual harassment is minimal in Japan. I said this form of it is. My house is near a park with signs up warning about perverts, there are kiddy porn mags in my local newsagent. Japan has serious sexual harassment problems – my point was that this is not one of them, and I suspect that the reason is at least partially connected to urban design and use of public space.
SG says:
“And even the men who are interested in the common roots are interested mostly in why men feel safe with the particular form (yelling from cars) … ”
They do? I expect most men find it as menacing and humiliating as I do. Also one can’t help but feel that any form of retaliation – such as flipping the bird- may be construed as an invitation to fight. I suspect the young men who scream abuse at other men from cars are driven by the same base primal instincts and emotions that cause the patriarch of the gorilla troop to mount lesser males.
John, that sentence came across poorly – it should say “are interested mostly in why men in cars feel safe doing the particular form”.
I agree that most men find this behaviour humiliating and menacing. And the one time a guy near me tried to confront the yellers, they piled out of the car, and I had to cool the situation down before they went for him. Though they were posturing a lot, which lends support to the gorilla theory.
This is the premise that I have been arguing against from the beginning; the premise that the locus of control for this behaviour is partly external and that shaping the environment will make it go away (as opposed to forcing the behaviour to reappear at another location in society).
The most sophisticated manipulation of the environment will at best cause the behaviour to just erupt elsewhere because the source of the behaviour is in the fundamental, but frequently unaknowledged, contempt for those further down the hierarchy, not in the environment. If you don’t address this you will not address the behaviour. Intervention into street harassment involves confrontation of harassers with the meaning of their behaviour and prompting some self-examination on their part.
For what it’s worth, I meant this post as illustrative of one form of harassment of women, by men.
While moron motorists hassling male cyclists (and pedestrians) is indeed an issue, I would argue that such incidents are a qualitatively different phenomenon to what I was originally discussing.
Furthermore, I have to agree with su that looking at the problem as the fault of cars is kind of missing the point. The car may be an enabling factor, sure, but it doesn’t create the attitude, which does bob up in innumerable other contexts.
Finally, assuming the issue is the preserve of lebs/wogs/bogans/etc misses that forms of such harassment take place across virtually all socioeconomic strata.
Thanks for the reply, Robert. Will you leave no room for the possibility that you made generalisations about the harassers and overstated the degree of malice involved in these incidents as they occur in the inner north?
Forgive me for persisting – I must confess confusion that you place such emphasis on the influence of ‘attitude’ without appearing to really care about how ‘behaviour’ and ‘attitude’ interrelate, nor about the different permutations of attitudes which cause this behaviour, nor how we can go about understanding and changing either attitudes or behaviour. Again, it’s lacunae such as these which led me to suspect that you were venting in anger as much as composing on reflection.
At any rate, as nobody here said that sexual harassment by carloads of young men was the preserve of lebs/wogs/bogans/etc, you can at least rest easy on that count.
I wish you and your girlfriend better luck next time you stroll the byways of the inner north.
Slightly OT (it doesn’t involve a woman)
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/killer-loses-reduced-jail-term-bid/2008/04/10/1207420559600.html
Sometimes when you react the consequences are fatal.
Don’t worry, I can’t get insulted on that ground since I do take my views to heart! I never married a Japanese, I married a woman who happens to be Japanese, and I guess that was much of the point of my initial post.
To bring the argument back to the car abuse, it is true I wouldn’t believe I’d see this in Japan, and I’d proffer a few reasons.
a) Quite apart from the sexual aspect, the hooning on pedestrians and cyclists holds appeal because the hooners can speed away, and the human connection between the verbal abuser and the abused is severed before conscience can set in, or retalisation can occur. Calling these people cowards isn’t just a word.
Of course, it’s hard to speed away when all the suburban streets are clogged, narrow and 40 kph.
b) Also apart from the sexual element is the general lack of public abuse in general. If we’re to learn from Japan, it has far better application in the binge drinking issue. Nights in the cities of both countries are swarming with binge drinkers, drunkards staggering around and the pavements are completely covered with vomit. There is no aggro, nor even a hint of aggro in the Japanese case, which is probably why exise on alcohol can remain so cheap, liquor licensing free and easy and the grog vending machines to remain in place. I don’t care if someone destroys their liver (except that I might pay through medicare), as long as you don’t make anyone feel unsafe. I don’t know if the aggro element is an Anglo-Irish-Australian etc. thing of the lack of it is a Japanese thing, but i verge towards the former.
In the sexual element though, and here I probably will verge on orientalism, so bear with me
c) If we assume that assertion takes different forms in Japanese society, due to the general indirectness of their communcation etc. then the assertion made by Japanese women may be less direct, and therefore not provide a target for wounded patriachal feelings. I guess it’s hard to be aggressive towards a passive aggressive feminist threat…or something. Which could lead to finding other outlets for that pent up anger, which leads to
d)Cultural alternatives. Manga, anime, video games, hentai, etc. etc. etc. Maybe these are being consumed as an alternative to direct sexual aggressiveness, and act as a mitigation scheme for a flood of sexual frustration.
This may encourage sexlessness, or hikikomorisms, or whatever moral panic the Japanese press has going this week, and it may normalise their feelings, which may cause problems in the long run, but hey, the kids aren’t yelling on the street.
I haven’t been following this Japanese theme at all, but that last comment was a great read, RG.
As the person who introduced the issue of hoon motorists harassing cyclists, I have to acknowledge in hindsight that I would not have done so had I thought more carefully about the extent to which it could muddy (and has muddied) the waters.
That said, I think it’s helpful to consider to what extent the attitude which underpins the particular form of harassment Robert discussed can be thought of in terms of sexism and misogyny specifically, and to what extent it can be thought of in terms of a conception of masculinity which regards anti-social and bullying behaviour in general as a sign of “real” manhood. Of course the two are not mutually exclusive, and indeed are mutually reinforcing. Thus the unpleasant experience endured by Robert’s partner might be considered as a product of the coming together of the specific intentional sexism and the general intentional anti-sociality of anomic anti-social masculinity.
Thus the kind of misogynist mindset and behaviour evidenced in such cases may be different in important ways from the sexist attitudes and behaviour for which a generally decent man might be criticised by feminists, and which he would (hopefully) recognise as falling short of his own general standards of rational and ethical behaviour.
Look, this really has got bugger all to do with feminism. I regularly get stuff shouted at me by people passing by in cars and I am male and don’t look remotely like a girl. Usually, I can’t actually make out what they are saying- just like the case under discussion by the author of this piece. So what makes him think that this is a glaring example of misogyny or that this proves that feminism still has far to go? I enjoy many of the discussions at this site but honestly pretty much any of them that touch on feminism are complete crap.
jikajika #138
You really think that this sentence was somehow overstating “the degree of malice involved”?
That was all Robert said. I certainly have no problem agreeing that hoons yelling out of car windows are always aiming to induce discomfort in their targets, and that some of them do wish to induce actual fear. How can you argue that there is no intent to induce discomfort, when anyone who is not an actual moron knows that just interrupting someone’s train of thought with a loud noise is at the very least rude (and thus will cause them discomfort), let alone if the loud noise is a tirade of suggestive abuse?
as for
Your very first comment on this thread said that in your experience it was “mostly young Italian or Lebo blokes”. You also seem to have taken Robert describing one incident which happened to take place in the inner north as if he’s saying that’s the only place he has witnessed his girlfriend being street-harassed: why are you assuming that’s the only place they have been walking together and been harassed when Robert said no such thing?
Hi tigtog. I have been wondering for some time if my engagement with others on this thread was descending into farce, and suspect that now it has. I don’t think I can contribute much more in the way of constructive or critical commentary, so after this comment I’ll do with the thread as I did with PC, and bow out totally.
I have repeatedly said throughout this thread that I speak only of the inner north, and in the comment about ‘mostly young Italian and Lebo blokes’, I was referring to the intersection of Sydney Road and Bell Street. In truth, I have no idea if they are mostly young Italian and Lebo blokes – they look like it to me, but the parish of Jika Jika is such a blend of different ethnicities, it can be difficult to tell. I quickly learned on this thread that one needs to be as precise as possible lest one inaccurately convey one’s constructive or critical conceptions, or – god forbid – jokes.
I understand that sexual harassment from carloads of young hoons takes place everywhere, and that Robert has probably witnessed in places other than the inner north. Nonetheless, he began his post with a recollection from the inner north, and posed the question: ‘I don’t get it. What are these guys trying to achieve by sticking their heads out of car windows and bellowing?’
Perhaps that was a rhetorical flourish, but I took it seriously and tried to answer his question with the suggestion that a more sophisticated understanding of his neighbourhood may provide a more nuanced understanding of ‘what they are trying to achieve’, and what one can do in response.
I must say I feel as if my answer was not received very well, but as I too prowl the byways of the inner north and regularly tackle hoons, yobbos, wogs, lebos, bogans, and increasing numbers of femonazis, I have confidence in my survival skills.
Sure, it’s happened to me too. Very infrequently though compared to what women friends report. And the difference is in the level of implied and perceived threat.
Or perhaps you are failing a test that the discussions have set for you, rather than vice versa.
Oh, boom tish at last. God, it’s as good as a Masonic handshake, isn’t it.
Why didn’t you just use this expression to start with, so we all knew exactly where you were coming from straight away?
Shutting up about it because talking about it ‘only encourages them’ hasn’t been a very successful approach to sexual harassment so far.
There are a few reasons why it works for some women, and I’ve pointed to a summary of them in a post at the site. The idea of Hollaback is not to specifically name and shame individuals (no names are allowed – there’s no Googlebait). It is women talking amongst themselves and supporting each other in saying “This shit is not OK”., instead of going along with the societal norm of “Oh well, that stuff happens, boys will be boys, just ignore them and hope for the best. Perhaps you shouldn’t have worn that skirt, eh?”. Just one more drop in the swelling ocean of resistance.
As a child, when I was harassed on streets and public transport, I thought I was the only one. I thought it was my fault, I was mortified, and I felt far too embarrassed to tell anyone.
‘Why didn’t you just use this expression to start with, so we all knew exactly where you were coming from straight away?’
I was just jokin for a bit of sign-off bonhomie is all
And I overreacted and for that I beg your pardon. But oh dear, “femonazis” …
*Clutches pearls*
While many of the remarks here with respect to sexism etc. are doubtless right (and I’m not arguing against them), I do think the people who are talking about the nature of being-in-a-car as having a bearing on the issue, have an interesting point. When you’re a kid, cars make you feel fearless and indestructible: the speed, the enclosure and false sense of security, the illusion of control. It boosts confidence to the point that lots of people express this rush by yelling stupid things out the window. While I wouldn’t deny the sexism interpretations of many here, I’d add that there’s often an element of pure “Whoo-eee! Look, we’re in a fast car!” sort of thing going on. Certainly I’ve been yelled at on the street many times by driving kids, while I was walking alone, and often the kids yelling were girls. Usually it’s not venomous abuse but just a sort of loud, stupid shout. Which doesn’t disprove sexism as a motive, just means the phenomenon is somewhat broader than that.
As a piece of highly unhelpful and useless but amusing advice to those who get yelled at, my personal advice is: acquire a mean Brooklyn accent. Mine has stood me in good stead on many occasions, frightening non-New Yorkers in the most unlikely situations. One time I was in some crappy part of town in a city in the Southwest, wearing some article of clothing (I think it was a coat of some kind) that looked unusual in that locale. A gang of local punks traipsed along behind me as I walked. “Hey man,” one of them sneered, “why yew wearin’ that stupid thang?” I turned around and looked right at him, and said quietly, but in a sort of blunt DeNiro/Keitel/Chris Walken staccato: “So what’s this? Now I gotta answer questions from *you*?”
I was quite outnumbered, but they all shut the fuck up.
Richard, glad you have a thick skin. I agree with your comments there (except maybe d – my opinion on that issue is completely unformed), particularly as regards alcohol abuse which occurs so differently in Japan. Why these things are different I cannot understand, and my first desire is not to seek out blanket cultural reasons, but for alcohol I cannot think of any other. One thing I might suggest is that alcohol has a more religious purpose in Japan than elsewhere, so maybe getting drunk has a different social meaning. But how so many people in such a tight space can get drunk all at once with 0 fights completely escapes me.
Another amusing explanation I have heard for this is that disease cats have – toxoplasmosis? Which apparently has lower prevalence in Asian countries. Entertaining theory, but highly dubious.
I remembered reading this thread that I once at a party met two women, not goths, who had been hired to be extras in Queen of the Damned as goths in a crowd. Driving home from the set, still in their gothy get up, they saw two goths walking along the road and leaned out of their car to do what they always do – yell “get a haircut freaks!” or whatever they normally say. As they did it they realised they were yelling at themselves (as it were), and they recounted this sudden confusion to us with great amusement. Interestingly one of the people they were telling the story to was himself a goth, and they didn’t seem to notice it might cause him offence, nor did they have anything rude to say to him to his face. This strikes me as strong evidence that this behaviour is something which is protected by the social distance and the environment, and wouldn’t pop up elsewhere if we could find a way to ameliorate it. Those girls thought yelling at freaks from the safety of one’s car is a bit of fun, and didn’t think about what it feels like to receive that abuse every day, or that their abuse might be received by the stranger in an environment of constant threats. Reduce the social distance, force them to spend more time around people they don’t normally meet, maybe their attitudes would mellow.
But christ they were stupid and annoying.
Is there a hierarchy? Aren’t you confusing predation with hierarchy? Four dickheads in a car are not hierarchically superior to anyone. That’s their problem in the first place. I’d wager 96% of thusly harrased women would think them lower than pondscum and unworthy even of commentary. Boys will be
dickheads.Forgive my pessimism but by then it’s too late. They need to be brought up right. Yelling doofus stuff out the car isn’t necessarilly a mark of what used to be called ‘ill-breeeding’ but it evidences a lapse thereof. Sometimes you can confront ‘em. Mostly pay no mind. They want attention and haven’t better means to get it. They’re to be pitied.
JZB good to see ya back where ya bin huh?
Its normally about dynamics internal to the car. Ive never seen a bloke yell anything by himself.
Motorcycles must be different. I spend half my morning commute yelling at people.
137 Robert Merkel Apr 10th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Male-on-female street harassment is a minor problem relative of male-on-male harassment. (Although the former is more offensive to the chivalrous mind.) Its in the home where women are most in danger of harassment.
Thoughout the pre-modern period forming alliances amongst ones peers was the best way for aggressive young men to achieve status-ascendancy against the current top-dogs. That is what made life in pre-modern societies “nasty brutish and short”.
The the early modern medievals discovered a way out of this unpleasant social tendency by creaing chivalric traditions. They turned militant gangs into quasi-religous institutions, with knights notionally dedicated to protecting maidenly virtue.
But we post-moderns were cleverer than all that and dismantled traditional (WASP) civil authority structure, dissolving the legitimacy associated with Throne and Sceptre. A spell in the Army and regular attendance at Church put wayward males under the watchful eyes of NCOs and priests.
In modern Occidental societies male gangsterism always and everwhere gets worse when traditional patriarchal institutional authority wanes. The decline of the WASPs brings forth the Lord of the Flies. (At least until politicians like Howard cracked the whip, in response to the peoples desperate plea for peace and security.)
This was especially obvious in Occidental colonies. Look at New Guinea where patrol officers went out, raskols came in. Ditto remote indigenous communities.
So by the mid-nineties twe post-moderns had come full circle and returned to the pre-modern situation of demonic male gangs monstering life on the street.
I guess thats progress.
No, that would be the Strocchiverse.
158 Kim Apr 10th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
No that would be the real universe. Which my theories model with reasonable fidelity, at least going by occasionally confirmed psephological and anthropological predictions. Just rub your nose in the scoreboard, loser.
The facts in this issue are obvious. Males, especially young males minding their own business, are by far and away the most likely victims of violent street crime.
Young males are most likely to be victims of violent crime, usually perpetrated by other young males seeking a form of (illegitimate) status-dominance.
Here are the facts:
Elderly people are less likely to perpetrate or be victims of crime for obvious neuro-endocrinological reasons. They just dont have the fire in their belly. In addition, the elderly cohort were socialised by the WASP Establishment, who had better manners and were more civilised than later barbarians.
Male gangs and feral males do far to frequently monster women. But this verbal harassment usually stops short of physical violence. Of course women are subject to physical violence, but mostly in the home, by their “loved ones”.
These ideolgoically inconvenient facts are obvious to anyone with lyin’ eyes to believe. But shoved down a memory hole by Leftist double thingkers.
The thread, and the post, aren’t about “violent street crime”. Do you bother to read anything anymore before you launch into your comment?
160 Kim Apr 10th, 2008 at 11:26 pm
Wrong again. Car hoons are violent street gangsters in the making, just going through the motions for a bit of sport.
Robert’s post was referring to the identity of the ever present threat of violent street crime. Threat of violence is comparable in social effect to actual violence, at least so far as those who want to “reclaim the night” are concerned. Read below, for comprehension, just for a change.
Kim, do you ever bother to actually come to grips with hard facts, rather than just reflexively running off at the mouth like one of those string-pull dolls?
It’s an implied physical threat, but one that has ideological force more than the actual danger. It’s about the apprehension of possible danger, and it’s designed to police the streets and gender relations.
Not necessarily at all. That’s you smuggling your “OMG! Society falling apart because of the absence of strong patriarchal figures!” premise in by stealth.
Of course most car hooners will grow out of it, usually when the leader of the pack plucks up the courage to actually ask a proper girl out on his own. Then the rest all get paired off and continue the process of civil socialisation, started by their mothers.
The whole ungainly process of aggressive males growing up in public might have been made a lot quicker and cleaner with a stiff dose of patriarchal authority. Distant, stern father-figures, strict headmasters, old fashioned cops on the beat, burly NCOs, wrathful sermons,
But the Wets cannot bear the possibility of taking a traditional prescription for their self-inflicted wounds.
“Strocchiverse”. I like that Kim.
Thanks, SJ. I’ve been using it for some time!
Poor old Jack just likes the attention, I reckon. He left one of his lengthy diatribes earlier on the thread (which has been a really good one imho) and no one took any notice. I do like to play a subservient female role and allow his alpha male genetically correct ego to survive.
I think of it as an act of charity.
/irony
“Car hoons are violent street gangsters in the making, just going through the motions for a bit of sport.”
That is a massive overstatement. I’d say they’re more likely to be inarticulate, insecure, working class males who go on to lead very dull lives in places like Hoppers Crossing and Westmeadows.
Precisely. Unless you live in the paranoid Strocchiverse.
Dies illae!
Shorter Jack: hoons behaving badly is all the fault of teh left.
Shorter Jack.
“Let me birch them.”
And amusing how someone constantly extolling the values of classic western civilisation feels its attempts to lift us above the animal suddenly needs immense hairsplitting qualification when it comes to mouthy women poking fun and holes in the sails of his windy polemics.
It’s like watching one of those clacky perpetual-motion executive toy thingies.
Jacky thinks part of the solution is:
“Distant, stern father-figures, strict headmasters…”
No Jacky. It would be far better if dad took his son out every so often to pick a bunch of daffodils, listened to what the boy had to say, shed the odd compassionate tear and treated his mother as an equal human being.
That is a massive overstatement. I’d say they’re more likely to be inarticulate, insecure, working class males who go on to lead very dull lives in places like Hoppers Crossing and Westmeadows.
This is suburbanism, folks. He’s from the East, no doubt, othering the West. As if folk from Hoppers and Taylors Lakes were not proper human beings. As if Essendon was best known for being the background to Underbelly, and Bundoora was merely a place where excess Makedonians made baclava.
If only Edward Said were alive. He could have sorted out Melbourne’s suburbs.
Wrong THR. I’m Housing Commission stock- I’m simply not interested in denial or political correctness.
And funny how those who keeping crapping on about how from the sixties onwards, western culture was poisoned by hippies, commies and socially laissez-faire liberals never seem to note that that’s when the long boom stated too. And that today thriving G20 economies are driven by IP as much as anything else. A lot that is IP is technical patents but an awful lot is also multimedia, design, culture management and creative products.
EG: JK Rowling, who was basically an arty Uni humanties dropout and welfare bum for a big chunk of her life, has done far more for her country’s economy than any amount of striving MBAs, failed economists, think tank smurfs and excitable day traders that love to lecture the blogosphere on the absolute merits of blokes allowed to go wild in a community-neutral marketplace defined only by profits and biological determinism.
Personally, I think the Harry Potter books are crap, but I will defend to the death her right to make money out of them. And she’s doing it by very skillfully mining an immense and evocative English back story promulgated in no small part around the world by a government-funded broadcaster. The BBC’s back catalogue, goodwill and reputation, although somewhat degraded in recent years, is still probably the most respected and valuable long term brand name in this media saturated world’s media market. Like Rolls Royce, there’s nearly hundred years of excellent suspension and snob value to draw upon.
My thready little thesis breaks down a bit at this point when I try to pitch a Biggles TV series – set during his wilderness years in the 1930s.
“It’s like Indiana Jones – but with antique aircraft and strapping British lads sporting leather flying jackets in the Amazon…sharing hammocks slung under the wing of a Supermarine Walrus.”
Strangely Dreamworks SKG, Miramax, New Line and Sir Run Run Shaw have not yet got back to me about this.
“..when the long boom stated too”
yes, that should read “started’
Kids, let this be a warning to you. Don’t drink and comment. But if you have to, I certainly recommend the 2007 released 15 year old Bowmore. A mighty smooth and powerful drop that almost makes you forgive the Scots for being so scottish.
I’d watch that!
Yeah, I’d enjoy Biggles, too. I dated an RAAF guy for a while (and was even silly enough to let him take me up in a jet trainer once). He had the top level competition aerobatics rating and I’m pretty sure he was trying to make me lose the previous evening’s curry. Didn’t work, and I was walking like Bill & Ben the Flowerpot Men afterwards, but a bunch of fun.
Highlights from NSW Hansard:
The Hon. IAN MACDONALD: Biggles is a very positive person in history. He fought the Germans in World War I, he fought the Germans in World War II, and he even fought the Ruskies. There are more than 100 books on Biggles, one of the most positive characters in the multicultural history of the Western world.
The Hon. Duncan Gay: Point of order: Could I remind the Minister that Biggles is not a real person—just like his answer is not a real answer!
The Hon. IAN MACDONALD: What sort of a childhood has this guy had? Biggles was real!
The Hon. Michael Costa: Oh, it’s Ned Flanders! Is he real?
The Hon. John Ryan: Point of order: Biggles was not real. Neither was Santa Claus, or the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy.
Su, that could have come straight out of Monty Python!
Dear colleagues,
My google alert for “pro-feminist” found me the reference to Men Against Sexual Assault in Brisbane in the early 90s. I remember it too, as someone involved in MASA in Canberra. Anyway, if you want to see some useful resources on men’s roles in anti-violence work and pro-feminism, see:
Best wishes,
michael flood.
Men, Masculinities, and Gender: Key resources
Readings on men and gender issues
XYonline is a website on men and gender issues, at http://www.xyonline.net. It includes a substantial collection of over 100 accessible articles on men, gender, masculinity, and sexuality, here: http://www.xyonline.net/articles.shtml
See e.g. the articles on men’s work in helping to stop violence against women, here: http://www.xyonline.net/articles.shtml#Violence
And critiques of ‘fathers’ rights’ and ‘men’s rights’ claims about family law, violence, custody, etc., here:
http://www.xyonline.net/articles.shtml#Violence
And here: http://www.xyonline.net/articles.shtml#father
And general articles on men and gender issues, here:
http://www.xyonline.net/articles.shtml#Activism
Web sites on men and gender
XYonline also includes a substantial collection of links to other websites on men and masculinities, here: http://www.xyonline.net/links.shtml
See e.g. the collection of links on involving men in building gender equality, here:
http://www.xyonline.net/links.shtml#1
And the links on men’s anti-violence work, here:
http://www.xyonline.net/links.shtml#2
The Men’s Bibliography: academic scholarship
A comprehensive bibliography of academic writing on men, masculinities, gender, and sexualities, listing over 19,000 works. It is free at: http://mensbiblio.xyonline.net/
This includes for example;
The best reading on men and masculinities;
http://mensbiblio.xyonline.net/bestreading.html#Heading1
Compiled by Michael Flood in February 2007.
Nabakov wrote:
Once you pull out all the british imperialism, darkie hunting and general pre-war nastiness, you’ve got no stories left Nabs. I read those books when I was a kid and they are dreadful. On top of that, by that stage Biggles ought to have been 50 or so and isn’t up to being much of a hero at that age. Now, Indiana Jones… oh wait!
And don’t forget the lovable crims who positively enjoyed being caught:
“Fair cop Guv’nor. You got me bang to rights.”
A Sunday drive after chapel, a devonshire tea, a bracing game of cribbage, a nice hot cup of bovril, empty the po’, fill the hottie and into bed by nine.
Luvvlie…
Ta Michael F. We, of course, know each other, but I’m incognito!
That’s a reference to Michael’s excellent bibliographical work on men and masculinities research. He was also founder and editor of XY – and writer of the occasionally funny poem too, if I recall correctly, eg about being ‘politically erect’
Michael, if you return to this thread: Are you able to answer Klaus’s question – Do any MASA branches still exist?
ahem – that’s ‘occasional funny poem’. Not ‘occasionally funny’.
“The Hon. John Ryan: Point of order: Biggles was not real. Neither was Santa Claus, or the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy.”
Umm, beggin’ the Colonel’s pardon, but, Santa Claus was indeed real. His name was Saint Nicholas, he actually lived, albeit not at the North Pole, &c. &c.
Still funny, though.
And today it’s so different.
That and shithouse food, no sanitation, no modern medicine etcetera etcetera.
174 Nabakov <a href=”http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/04/09/lessons-in-feminism-an-unpleasant-walk/#comment-455739Apr 11th, 2008 at 1:40 am
Wrong. The Long Boom started in 1941, as the Anglo-oceanic economies revived and re-tooled their economies under a form of military Keynsianism (sort of democratic national socialism).
Also, wrong about the timing of the relation b.w Culture War and Class War. The post-war Long Boom ended in the early seventies, right about when the New Left “hippies, commies and socially laissez-faire liberals” were flexing their cultural muscles. Whilst the Old Left trade unions were applying the sting in their tail.
But cultural policy did not really go off the deep end until the early eighties, when the New Left started to form the New Class and pursue its bizarre cultural agenda. That is when politico-economic “overload” generated politico-cultural “backlash”.
Nabakov says:
Today’s “thriving G20 economies” was kicked off by Reagan-Gorbachev’s resolution of the Cold War, which created a massive peace dividend. It opened up cheap labour, brains and capital coming out of North East Eurasia. And released a glut of cheap energy that was, until recently, pouring out of South West Eurasia.
Undoubtedly the New Economy played a role in the economic convenience of the past decade. But this has not added all that much to overall economic growth rate. In fact much on-line activity tends to reduce measurable output ie producer profitability. Although it definitely increases consumer utility.
In any case, many of the New Economy’s key products were not converted into commercial IP eg Berners-Lee html and the Open Source movement. Excessive technical patenting may actually hinder economic progress, as they tend to create monopolistic market niches.
Nabakov also seems to have swallowed the Creative Class struggle ideology hook iine and sinker. A “multimedia, design, culture management and creative products” led recovery fostered by culturally sensitive, arty-farty, touchy-feely types. He is suffering from a bad case of “false consciousness”.
In reality the so-called Creative Class are much more a Parasitic Class. The Yartz tend to live off the wealth created by the nerds. http://entitledtoanopinion.wordpress.com/2007/11/06/steve-sailer-on-richard-florida/“>Steve Sailer stands the Creative Class warriors on their head, right-side up:
Jack…the “pocket protector boys” as you call them are PART of the creative class. You have got to be joking if you think the creative class is supposed to refer to just “arty farty types” and poofs.
Jeez Nabs, you set it off again.
I haven’t read Richard Florida’s books (though I did listen to his diavlog with Will Wilkinson). I think it’s a poorly defined concept. It’s basically a self-flattering category. He’s willing to include the pocket protector folks in it, but he’s angling for something more cool. Some posts at the Art of the Possible you might be interested in are here and here.
Regarding the main topic of this post, if you feel threatened get a gun. Hell, even you don’t, get a gun. If you don’t have one, you don’t know what you’re missing! Until then, Fugazi has a song.
Jack -
>
You’re quite the historian:
What is this New Class of which you speak. New Class? Created as a product of the New Left? Sorry to get all Marxian here but classes are consequences of the Economy sir. You can’t create a new class by ideological design, especially a disparate stew such as the New Left represented in the early 80s. Could you say what you mean and be a little less grand please.
The ‘Creative Class’ (if that’s the New Class the New Left had nothing to do with it) are a wider subset than the Yartz whatever you mean by that. Steve Jobs is part of the ‘Creative Class’ (Bill Gates isn’t). And this parasitism of which you speak is either patronage (private or public) or actually the selling of something.
>
Patronage is a deal one can debate its merits but it is not ‘parasitism’. The Patron expects something in return for the cash: Art. If they’re not getting what they’ve paid for they’re dopes certainly. It’s not parasitism, that’s unkind.
>
And if selling something is parasitism than the nerds and everyone else are parasite on primary industry. Do you actually know anything about artists Jack? And can you appreciate what they do? Methinks sometimes you’re down on the arts for the same reason St Paul was down on sex.
Male-on-female street harassment is a minor problem relative of male-on-male harassment. (Although the former is more offensive to the chivalrous mind.) Its in the home where women are most in danger of harassment.
I think you will find that women are more in danger of VIOLENCE at home and HARASSMENT in the street.
In regards to cars and their part, I do agree that it’s an issue of cars as tools (fast exist, barrier between yell-er and yell-ee, creation of inside-car-joke environment). I’d also like to suggest, though, that the reason you will so often notice this as a ‘young men’ issue is more to do with the fact that this is a common life stage for men to share transport together (while one may have to drive, the others want to drink and therefore share transport). I see it often with older men, frequently when on the way home from the football in the afternoon with their mates. Even more varied ages are represented when you look at men leering or commenting on (or should it be at?) women as they wander around city streets in small packs on a night out.
I do find it interesting that I find the phenomonon represented just as frequently when I pass by many of the italian men’s clubs in Carlton etc. I don’t think it’s the ethnicity by any means, it’s just that it’s a perfect example of a male-only culture with that particular age group. I feel just as uncomfortable when this occurs, even given the perceived level of danger is almost non-existant. It’s also why I disagree with the idea that it is an age related or developmental ’stage’ that links to testosterone. I think it’s ritual for men, where they flex their muscles to each other… I’m yet to find a developmental stage for men where that doesn’t exist.
As a late twenties woman, I was really frightened by my own attitudes when I caught a recent train of thought of my own. I found myself saying to someone that I was ‘lucky’ not to have suffered more sexual violence. Firstly… lucky??? How did I figure it was lucky? It’s sad that so many of us consider the ‘norm’ to have been sexually assaulted. Secondly, I’ve been felt up in public, threatened by strangers and ‘friends’ and propositioned in offensive ways ever since I was twelve. How is that not sexual violence?
I consider myself a strong, independent woman. I’m by no means a wallflower. But I do regret the level to which my environment has made me tense and uncertain when I’m alone. I realised recently that I’m never, and I mean never, totally relaxed outside my own home when I’m alone. I pulled into a local park to watch a thunderstorm a while back, and found myself feeling vulnerable as I sat outside my car. I retreated back into the locked car after that. When I walk down a street it’s second nature to be aware of people walking behind me or just in the corner of my eye beside me. In broad daylight. It’s sad that this is my natural state. Why can’t I just enjoy reading a book in the park without feeling wary when I hear someone walk behind me? I don’t think many men could honestly say that they feel this way every day, and I do think that this means they can’t understand the constant pressure and the mindset it puts you in.
I don’t like that my subconscious percieves me as a potential victim any time I am on my own. I really don’t like that I didn’t notice this conditioning taking place. It’s pervasive, constant and happens in instances so small you barely remember to share the anecdotes with your girlfriends.
Made in Melbourne. I do think your comment above is the best thing Ive read on this thread.
You have shown how apprehension grows from the violations of small moments and how the cumulative effect changes you permanently. You have shown how these behaviours end up controlling women spatially, as PC and Helen also revealed upthread. This why I have a problem with minimisations of this behaviour by locating it to youth, or race, or lads will be lads, or class, or boofheads. Its just another insidious way to erase female presence from the public space. Its also an aggressive and menacing variant of the male gaze, which objectifies women and strips away identity and subjectivitity. And it deforms women’s agency. All of a sudden it becomes an exercise of which streets woment will not walk down, which male dominated haunt women will not pass, how dark it is at night , how early it is in the morning, how isolated nature is. We are changed and we have no control over it.
Thank you for your comment.
By the way, here was my week navigating the public spaces of sydney:
I walk past a coffee shop in the inner west of Sydney. Men ogle as you walk past and ratings are given on female body parts.
I drive down busy Parramatta Road and am hunted down by a young guy in a van who doesnt like that I got in front of him. He drives up beside me and does the most graphic simulation of oral sex I have ever seen. I feel really bad for a few hours after that and for some reason I feel ashamed and its hard to shake.
I am at a bar where I have to squeeze past a group of men. I am holding my drink and my bag at chest level to try and economise the small space I have to move between them. One guy thinks its hilarious to have a feel as I pass. I am defenceless as my hands are full. I dont tell my male friend about it, when I reach our table. I dont want a fight. And I dont want to think about it cause Im ready to thump him myself.
I stopped walking at dusk this week. Daylight saving ended and I wont walk alone. Suburban streets just dont look the same at night. Call me a woos but I wont do it.
Casey and madeinmelbourne, excellent comments.
When my wife and I were first married (30 years ago on Tuesday) I asked her why she always dressed to de-emphasise her assets, as it were.
It dated back to a single experience at a boarding house where she lived as a student. Some workers were doing some repair work on the building. One of them wolf-whistled her and made some perhaps mildly offensive but unmistakable remark. While he was sternly dealt with by one of the other males around at the time, she realised that she was being routinely undressed in men’s heads and decided to minimise the chances of a repeat event.
Brian: a wise yet self-diminishing response. Because of course if we dress to, ahem, emphasise our assets, then we are deemed to be ‘asking for it’. (If not ‘begging for it’.) In this as in so many things, women find themselves in a lose-lose situation; if we choose one alternative, we’re in strife, and if we choose the other, why, we’re in strife again.
I’ve just been reading Sam de Brito’s The Lost Boys and have been struck by the number of times the young male narrator, who ages from 15 to 35 in the course of the story, says ‘He could bash me’ as a kind of conclusive remark about another bloke: he sees the male pecking order as very strictly to do with who could beat whom in a physical fight.
Is this one reason why men feel confident about harassing women? Because they know, consciously or subconsciously, that they could bash us? I know a bloke who is very big (both tall and wide) and strong, has been so since his teens, and says he has never once in his life felt physically threatened or in any danger. Other blokes take one look at him and roll over and stick their paws in the air.
Ahhh, I just purchased that book yesterday, PC.
Am a little tentative about reading it, but will get to it this week.
“Is this one reason why men feel confident about harassing women? Because they know, consciously or subconsciously, that they could bash us?” Maybe. Or maybe it’s the safety of numbers and the car. After all, what could happen to them. Zoom and they are off and they can all have a laugh.
In a moment of extreme and quite probably foolish bravado a few years ago I took on a car load of young blokes who had all called stuff out as they passed me cycling. They stopped at the next lights and I pulled up along side them and challenged them to get out of the car and say that to my face. They didn’t, and indeed looked quite sheepish and were silent. Lucky for me they didn’t – I’m small!
Despite the success of the strategy, I hope I never have that brain explosion again.
I’m glad my experience of a life changed came though, Casey. I understand why some men don’t like being told they “don’t understand”, but I think this is one of those areas where sympathising with someone and really understanding what the experience is like are worlds apart.
We nearly all experience some kind of discrimination in our lives, but these forms of everyday conditioning really can’t be understood when you get a taste of them every once in a while; that’s not the point. Many men understand what it’s like to experience violence, or even to be discriminated against. Most, however, feel these things in passing.
I believe this leaves a big gap of understanding in the part which is most damaging; the underlying unease that becomes inherant within you. It disgusts me, ashames me and makes me feel weak. It alters how I see my environment, but more sadly, myself. I feel as if I shouldn’t let a section of men dictate my behaviour, or that I should be stronger than that… but it just is. It’s ingrained in me through years of tiny experiences and I don’t know how to let it go.
It’s a cliche, but you should do a self-defence course or learn amartial art if you’re looking over your shoulder everywhere you go. Really, I think it does help.
I think this is a case of ethical incommensurability: for men it’s about recognising the irreducibly different element of this kind of experience. I’ve been thinking a bit about how we receive stories, and how an easy response is to trade a story for a story, but that it’s also easy for that to become about stressing equivalence, or diminishing the experience, rather than about empathy.
Wee hee! I see that once again Jack Strocchi is flogging a dead hobby horse with the wrong end of the stick.
Here’s a handy tip Jack – the blinders go on the nag not the jockey.
Another handy tip. IP stands for Intellectual Property. This means people pay you money for the right to use your ideas. Even though such a concept is quite alien to your personal experience Jack, I can assure it’s a rather big business around the world, encompassing shit like software and ICT hardware, biotech, pharmaceuticals, production processes, materials, commercial, industrial and urban design and engineering, media and entertainment, education and financial, technical professional services. For starters. It’s much much more than just that Dick Florida tech-yup boho schmear.
Between 50% to 80% of the overall market value in a Airbus 380, an Apple iPhone, a GMH HSV (or the Pontiac sports truck version about to be launched in the US in 2009), Australian Idol, a Bollywood movie, flu vaccines or a Wilson K Tour tennis racquet is in the IP (which includes concepts, tech and branding) not the labour and raw materials.
And hey, by all means reshape your definitions of the Long Boom to fit whatever half-arsed theory you’ve got going now that will keep nurturing your pathological hatred of some strawman that you can’t empirically prove can be found among your interlocutors here.
And why lookie here! A perfect example of you once again again utterly unable to differentiate between cause and correlation.
“Today’s “thriving G20 economies” was kicked off by Reagan-Gorbachev’s resolution of the Cold War,”
Nope. Gorbechev said “I surrender” because the G20 open source market-based economies were kicking a sclerotic and corrupt Soviet command economy right up the arse in an evolving globalised world.
But now the Russkies are getting the current last laugh. Their streamlined and ruthlessly capitalist resources-based economy is going gangbusters while the US wallows around like a large drunken whale hamstring by an increasingly greedy military-industrial complex, a fuckpot of corporate welfare and a media-entertainment complex who’s only competitive advantages are a few brand name faces. Even the CGI for Nick Cage’s hairline is now being outsourced to Mumbai and Melbourne. (Incidentally tomorrow around 2pm, one of Indian’s biggest ICT companies will announce they’ve run out of top-end ICT tech and R&D staff in India and now have to source them in Victoria. Globalistion is really spinning around faster then anyone thought they could imagine.)
Fuck me, I just wasted several hundred words on Scrotthi. Most of which will go in one ear and out the other – ‘cos there’s nothing in-between to interrupt the transit.
Hey Jack! Look over there! It’s another social scientist manqué with a website full of badly presented and dubiously sourced stats who wants other bitter middle-aged men to join him in some online male bonding group for blokes whose visions of their brains could achieve far exceeds the reality of their daily lives.
Q. How many Jack Strocchi’s does it take to change a light bulb?
A. Only one but you’ll never hear the end of it. Until someone else points out he just jammed a screw bulb into a bayonet plug. Then it’ll be all about centralised power distribution systems run by fucking lefty hippies.
You know what’s sad, Laura? I did kickboxing when I was young, then did a self defence course when I wsa in high school.
For me it’s not even a measure of whether I can defend myself if I’m attacked, it’s that I have to live with the constant underlying feeling of danger that I will be attacked.
I do take your point, though, and I agree that it’s one step closer to feeling that you have some power in the situation.
Klaus K, couldn’t agree with you more. It can be very empowering to hear other people’s stories but sometime we do forget to either give or receive them with the spirit of empathy rather than in an I’ll-show-you-mine manner.
Hmm…Jack,I and others have been clashing antlers here for no real good for this thread is really about. Sorry. I was issued with testicles from the start.
To take it back on topic, I offer the following observations.
Defending a lady’s safety, peace of mind and honour within the nefarious and pedestrian-unfriendly byways and highways of a big city is always the duty of any true gentleman.
However you may wish to doublecheck that it is a real dacoit or ruffian and not just a disgruntled boyfriend wishing to retrieve his car keys and deliver a parting line in an ongoing domestic before you sail in with your swordstick unsheathed. “Concealed edged weapon” my arse.
On a completely unrelated note, a lobster to the desk sergeant at Collingwood Police Station will seriously smooth the way to getting a pizza delivered to holding cell 2 at around 4am when the munchies kick in.
Observation the second. Only women should be legally allowed to carry concealed firearms. Admit it, that lateral move would seriously spin around some crime stats and awfully lot more of minds.
Have you ever seen Modesty Blaise shoot someone without thought or by accident?
More chicks with guns. Less blokes without. In bikinis!
Yeah well I was raised to be entertaining, not helpful. I feel I’m delivering on the original mission statement here.
My only potentially useful comment here is that once you get your dander and anger up, most bullies fold surprisingly fast. Unfortunately it does take a few less productive encounters first to work out what to do tactically.
Beyond the swift kick in the nuts thing, if you’re a woman dealing with a car full of blokes rumbling around you on a side street somewhere late at night, then that’s when my liberation gun nut instincts kick in, Shoot out their taillight and they won’t return. A 2″ barrel .357 wheel gun should do the trick.
Or a lookalike water pistol loaded with 1 part ammonia to 3 parts water – squirted at the eyes.
Interesting how over time, you can become inured to harassment, and then become vulnerable again, once you don’t experience it.
From my late teens until mid-twenties I lived in the X, Darlo & Surry Hills, and due to my late night ‘lifestyle’, I became so inured to general street harassment, and then consequently, so hardcore, that I used to turn around and confront blokes following me, rather than scurrying for safety (or more sensibly, changing my behaviour).
My ‘defence strategy’ was to scream and screech at them from a distance (never let them get within 20 metres etc) and generally appear as unhinged and aggressive as possible. And this wasn’t the boyfriends retrieving keys – more than x number of blocks in the middle of the night – staying on the same side as you – gaining metres etc. – you’re being followed.
Anyway, most turned around & walked in the other direction, some pretended they didn’t know what I was on about and looked shitty, and then wandered off, one bloke thought it was a game, and I had to do the ‘crazy lady’ act – 3 times before we finally hit Cleveland St. One night, I went ballistic walking through the Fitzroy Housing Commish flats in Melbourne, at three Koori blokes who were just about on top on me, as we were all walking through the deserted gardens – they actually looked scared, and kept saying ‘really sorry sister’ and then ran off ahead (I think those guys might have just been walking by).
I figured at the time, that this type of highly confrontational behaviour was disrupting their script, but it was a dangerous ploy, and I was very fortunate that I wasn’t attacked, nor was I ever followed by more than one bloke.
But when you are on your way to score, freaking perverts, rapists and robbers, are just obstacles in your path.
And although I was used to dealing with assorted denizens of the night, and wasn’t fazed by much, I still had to turn into one v. scary motherfcuker to walk around late at night, in the baddest parts of town.
“You looking at me?” De Niro in a dress.
Speaking of dress, I used to get around in leopard skin coats, negligees, high heels, big hair, heaps of make-up, and all the accoutrements of rock & roll junkie-dom, which made it even stupider. Of course, we’d take cabs 95% of the time, but if dollars were short, or for some reason, I was on my own, which wasn’t all that often, but more than enough times as per above – a girl had to do, etc.
I did consider carrying a weapon at different times, but having witnessed a couple of minor stabbings – I knew I wasn’t the stabbing type, and there are no guarantees it won’t get used against you. The gun fantasy, and it’s a goodie, was always that, and I’d very briefly handled a few handguns, and they are very, very weird and scary objects, imo. Instead, I’d buy a pint of milk to carry, in the old heavy glass bottles.
My general strategy was never let them get that close. And if in cars – look for a light and ring a doorbell, or push every buzzer on the block of flats etc. Wake everyone up.
My fall back strategy if they went for me, btw, which I thankfully never needed – was to run & scream ‘fire’, and smash the windscreens of parked cars, smash bottles (mine) or someone’s front window – causing everyone to wake up and hopefully the bloke(s) to flee.
In the following decades, especially once I traded that lifestyle (or deathstyle) for middle class worker, then middle class mummy, I’ve lost the extreme street bravado I once had, and I would shit myself if I had to walk around empty back streets late at night for any distance. I expect friends to walk me to my car etc.
But I reckon I could still freak out a carload of young cretins on the right day.
One of those minor stabbings I witnessed btw, was this very attractive, petite blonde femme at Frenchs in Darlinghurst stab this big overweight bikie in the guts, just once, with a penknife, right next to me. It didn’t penetrate beyond his fat layer. I was there with my crew – tex and co. (Dr Cat – I’ll tell you some stories some day). Anyway, the cops turned up, but the bikie didn’t want to press charges, and just took himself off to St Vinnies to have a few stitches, and being old school, the only person the cops pulled in for the night – was a mouthy young punk who called them pigs – and then we had to chip in to bail him out.
And even though I was never a sex worker, I saw enough over those years living around the X and Darlinghurst, to have more than an inkling of the on-going violence directed at them, and against homeless people also.
And while a tiny little bit of me, thinks some of the reactions to car hoons is just middle class preciousness, this is only because, I’ve been subject to worse abuse and survived, ie. so ‘harden the fuck up’, but this really isnt any sort of answer at all, but I’m just not sure what is, or rather i’m too tired right now to think of any.
Dead set right, I think, jo. That’s an astonishing set of experiences, but sobering to think that it represents a slice of reality in our land.
My wife, who is a teacher, told me recently of an experience related by one of her dads. He is ex army special forces, now a lawyer, but with the necessary skills to kill a man with his bare hands and realistically take on the average bunch of louts by himself.
One night waiting for a late bus outside the courts he had an experience that shook him to the core. I don’t remember the details, but his general advice was not to let your self-defense skills give you a false sense of safety, to learn to recognise a threat and to put distance between yourself and the threat.
As to answers, I think ultimately it has to lie in fixing the perpetrator. There are problems with the development of prosocial male personalities in our society.
Designing spaces is only a partial solution. Mark used to tell me that the Queen Street Mall changed character late on Friday nights from a festive atmosphere with lots of people to one that was somehow brooding, ‘dark’ (not literally) and threatening in the space of an hour.
On a lighter note.
I often walk with my dog (day or night), who’s a whippet.
I’m often confronted with carload of hoons yelling out ‘Whip it good’. I always behave as if I haven’t heard the joke before.
But seriously, I blame Devo for the Decay of Western Civilization. And I defy Jack Strochi to prove me wrong.
MASA as such doesn’t exist in Australia any more. However, a much more substantial anti-violence campaign addressing men’s positive roles in stopping violence against women is alive and well: the White Ribbon Campaign. Check out the links I listed before for the Australian campaign. It’d be easy enough to get involved in this, e.g. running local efforts.
Best wishes,
michael flood.
But it’s the only one. There’s just a limit to how much you can modify the behaviour of arseholes. That’s all there is. What can you do?
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Surry Hills has to have the highest concentration of dangerously perverse individuals in the country.
The assumption that you would only find street harassment difficult if you haven’t experienced worse is a false one. Having experienced worse can make you jump at shadows and footsteps let alone outright harassment.
Who says the limit has been reached Adrien? Who says that there has been much of an effort to change attitudes? My son was 10 when he first heard a boy threaten to rape a girl at school. Casual harassment of girls and remarks about their bodies probably began even earlier.
I didn’t say that a limit has been reached. I said there’s a limit to how far you can modify behaviour. I believe there are cycles to this kind of thing as well. From my observations there’s less respect for and more venal behaviour toward girls than there was a while ago. I do see signs that this is turning around however.
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Do I think something can and should be done about arsehole lads? I sure do. Do I think we can create a world free of such arseholes? Nope.
You must realise though Adrien that it’s a wee little skip from there to “we can’t fix it so let’s not bother trying”.
Look, see- we agree!
I don’t know how to change the behaviour of aresehole lads. All women experience it at some time and it’s horrible. I imagine it’s actually much more horrible for women who have been previously sexually assaulted.
But I would like to make the point that statistically, it’s long odds that women are going to be assaulted randomly by these jerks, Crime figures tell us it’s the guys we know at home who are the real threat.
I don’t want to trivialise these sorts of behaviours. But I also dislike the sort of discourse which emphasises the danger to women on the streets, when that danger is actually quite small. I hate the fear that it creates and the feeling it gives to so many women that they can’t go out alone.
It’s not about we can’t fix it so let’s not bother trying it’s more about being realistic as to what you can fix and how. There’s a limit to what you can do for various physical and psychological reasons I haven’t the space for. I’m pretty much unshockable but I’m appalled regularly by the behaviour of young guys right this minute. There’s a certain casual contempt and hatred for women I haven’t seen before.
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That doesn’t mean that there haven’t always been men like this. There have. But there are social limits as to what is acceptable and what is not. Let’s just say we reached a certain watershed in libertinage for jerks.
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But at the end of the day there are arseholes and will be for the time being. If I had a daughter I wouldn’t be bringing her up to be a shrinking violet who’d go into hiding at the sight of mean men. I’d want her to be able to stand up for herself. Like Jo.
Well see Casey’s point above about continuity; continuity between these ‘laddish’ behaviours and the behaviour of those same lads in a more private sphere and the continuity between their attitudes towards women and the attitudes of people who would never shout at someone on the street, but they will cop a feel in a crowded space and they will coerce women into having sex etc. etc.
I see the continuity. It’s called: not being brought up right. Unfortunately the courts seems to consider that a legitimate excuse.
Sorry, my previous comment was a response to Fine.
Adrien; standing up for oneself is great, even better is not having to deal with harassment to begin with; we can do one and still work towards the other.
I don’t know. Is there continuity? Is there more sexual harassment going on than there used to be? Is there more sexual assault going on than there used to be? Where’s a criminlologist when you need one?
As I said, I don’t trivialize any of this and I’ve experienced all manner of public harassment. But my understanding, is that the actual numbers of women being sexually assaulted by men they don’t know in public spaces is low. And it often tends to be exaggerated by the tabloid press to create fear in women so they won’t walk the street. And I know that isn’t what you’re doing, Su.
As to how we react to public harrassment, I think that’s a personal thing. I figure most of those guys are jerks and bullies who you don’t need to worry about too much. I find it doesn’t affect me emotionally much. (By that, I mean give rise to a high level of anxiety or concern). But I think it’s completely understandable if other women feel terribly upset and constrained by it.
But coming back to what you’ve said – what do we do to prevent it?
Reintroduce conscription and start a war?
I suspect that there is probably less harassment than there used to be but that we are talking about it more. The continuity I was talking about was the continuity of attitudes. I believe that there is a basic attitude that underlies all kinds of manifestations of patriarchal oppression. Which does not mean that I think that every man who harasses has the same responses to women as a sex offender, but rather that I think they share a foundation belief about what a ‘woman’ is.
I don’t think you can prevent harassment per ser, or at least preventing one symptom is kind of beside the point if the underlying attitude remains the same. It is pretty clear that these attitudes are inculcated at a very young age and so I think you have to begin work in primary school. I think that a lot of adults would be genuinely surprised if they were able to confront what they are doing, what the meaning of their behaviour is and why it is that they feel they have to do it. So much better to catch those attitudes when they are still being formed and before they become automatic.
In many ways I think that this kind of educational project is akin to projects that tackle racist beliefs and I don’t believe that anyone has a fix on the best way of doing those, except that categorization itself is probably not the problem, rather the beliefs and affective responses that we learn to associate with those categories from a very early age are the things that we need to target. (/waffle)
Ah yes Adrien; because the military and theatres of war are harassment-and-sexual- assault-free-zones? Or are you talking about *gasp* exporting some of the worst excesses of patriarchy to keep our home-grown womenz safe??!!!
Su please note what this –
means. Or perhaps you’d care to take advantage of this this offer
su said:
And talked about an “educational project”. Adrien said “It’s called: not being brought up right.” Emerging agreement here too, I think.
Primary school is a bit late to start. I’d begin at the pre-natal stage (I’m not joking).
I’ve been quite impressed with Matt Sanders when I’ve heard him on the radio. He has the Triple P Positive Parenting Program, the Parenting and Family Support Centre, a book and, indeed, Suncorp Queenslander of the Year for 2007. Appalled by the American Suopernanny TV program he made a series in Britain
Driving Mum and Dad Mad which was watched by 6 million people, and then did research on the audience.
Another guy I’ve been impressed with is the Canadian Fraser Mustard who spent time in Adelaide in 2006. An initiative alive at that time was the establishment of Child Development and Parenting Centres which would provide education and care services as well as advice and support to parents.
Here are some slides (pdf) giving some of his ideas. The CDP Centres come up at Slide 63.
In early childhood education and later for that matter attention needs to be paid to the primacy of the social/emotional domain instead of the traditional focus on the cognitive. Intervention needs to extend to the social setting rather than just the individual.
Tackling the ferals who escape attention during the education phase is another issue altogether.
Well not on this occasion at least.
So the humour was not visible to the naked eye. Is it ever?
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I know war is horrible. One of my earliest memories believe it or not was as a very temporary refugee from a war zone. I also last year wrote a short play about the Hellish experience of women in war. The research makes you want to exit the species.
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My crack above was an expression of my excaserbation of the behaviour of very young men at the minute which is famously bad. Not all young men just enough. I’m afraid I find those who advocate the perpetual countenance of profound and melancholy sobriety always with serious issues don’t understand for whatever reason that humour is most useful in exactly those kinds of black scenarios.
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And the young, stupid and testosterone-gorged yelling stupid shit from their cars is pretty fucking far from serious.