“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
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 les