I have written here before about the devastating impact of street harassment. Last time I pledged it wouldn’t be the last time I stood up to a street harasser. And I have followed through with my pledge – today when a man violated my personal space by pressing his body on mine, whispered in my ear, and attempted to follow me around to convince me to talk to him, going so far as to walk to every spot I walked to get away from him, I finally just told him to back the hell off. And he did. It doesn’t always work, and sometimes it’s too much of a dangerous situation to speak out. I did it in a crowd full of people and it effectively humiliated the hell out of him. For that fact, I am happy.
This article, however, won’t be so much about street harassment but about the trivializing attitudes that still exist towards it, as well as the questionable attitude towards what I’ll call “feminist rage,” even though I think it deserves to just be called justifiable rage towards patriarchal/misogynistic attitudes. Although I have written about street harassment before on social networking sites and received lot of validating responses, there will always be a few people who question the validity of my rage towards street harassers. I celebrate the people in my life who take street harassment, rape, sexual assault, and by extension the rape culture that surrounds us, seriously. I celebrate the people in my life who don’t wonder, “Did she provoke it?” or “Why is she so angry?” Because unfortunately, there are still people out there who ask the same questions when they hear about street harassment. These people are not necessarily men, but women themselves who have been harassed. This frightens, confuses and angers me, since these women personally have experienced similar violations, yet doubt others who dare to get angry about them.
A couple of people noticed my stories about street harassment and its frequency. And they wondered WHY did it always happen to me? Almost as if they were doubting my claims. I felt like I was under investigation, when in truth, I just happened to live in a neighborhood where street harassment was normalized to an extent where it happened on a daily basis. Not just to me, but to my sister, to my friends, to the whole female community. I didn’t know how to explain to them “why” it was me; I was even more confused as to why they CARED about the reason I was a target moreso than the fact that I was one. People who were closest to me asked me what “exactly” the harasser did, as if anything less than a black-and-white explanation could justify my anger.
This, of course, was beyond my comprehension. Why didn’t people take me seriously? Why is it that I had to explain each story, talk about how the harasser in question always came close to me, violated my personal space, and made me feel unsafe? Why was it that I was constantly bombarded by the philosophy that I should just “get over it” and let things go? While I understand that I shouldn’t give these harassers more power than they deserve, why were some of the people closest to me the ones who doubted the severity of the impact that incidents of street harassment had?
I will never know the answer, but I think it’s good to investigate why people are so against the idea of feminists just being, well, ANGRY. And rightfully so. Not angry for the sake of it, but angry because of valid reasons like rape culture, the pay gap, the restrictions on reproductive health, the sexual double standards that continue to be perpetuated.
I know there’s still the destructive trope of the “angry feminist” floating around, but I don’t see why we can’t interpret the rage of feminists as constructive rage, rage that may ignite change, create movements, create somewhat of a safer world, or at least keep one less street harasser out of our personal space. Let’s take that rage and keep expressing ourselves. Let’s use that rage to fuel constructive change in our communities. For those who tell us we are too angry, that we should let it go, let’s get angry at them too. I am tired of people telling me that I shouldn’t be angry, that these incidents are trifles I should let go of. I am also tired of DOUBT, the fact that there will always be a few who question why the victims are targets rather than wondering what the perpetrator had to do with it. Street harassment is part of the bigger problem of rape and rape culture, and it should not be obscured by people who dismiss the rage it should evoke.
4 Comments
I’ve had this happen as well, but mostly about racial harassment. I’ve had people tell me that I must be doing something wrong to have people yell racial slurs at me (the phrase “Well, you’re the common denominator” was used). I also once had my (white male) partner tell me that, after I was hit in the throat by a milkshake thrown by some w*nker in a car, they were probably aiming for him because he had a hat on. Though I accept we’ll never know, I find the latter situation far less likely.
I definitely think there’s a mentality for some people that when it comes to being verbally abused by someone else, either you must have provoked it or you took something the wrong way or it’s not as bad as you thought, and I think it’s there because people like to think we live in a progressive society where racism and sexism no longer exist. I wish.
Thanks for reading and your comment, Helen! I am sorry to hear that you have had to face this type of racial harassment and that the people close to you haven’t responded in a sensitive and compassionate way. I think you are right in saying that people want to believe that we live in a progressive society, and I think as a society we are encouraged to disregard feelings nowadays because we want to maintain the idea that all of those problems are in the past even though they still resonate in the present. Instead of validating our emotions, people want to shy away from them and pretend they don’t exist.
P.S. To Moderators – I accidentally hit the ‘report’ button rather than ‘reply.’ Please disregard!
My breakdown?
1)People are afraid of anger, or any strong emotion in general these days.
2)Many people are afraid of anger from anyone who they have been brought up to view as “Other” from themselves. This could be women, or people of a certain race or nationality, religion, sexual orientation etc. The default “mindset” in our country is still by and large a straight white male, as evidenced by most of our narratives, people in positions of wealth and power, etc. A lot of people get threatened when face with the idea that this arrangement isn’t working out for everybody.
3)Many people don’t like to look at how they personally may play into all this. They don’t like being told how stuff they think and never really questioned why comes across as discriminatory or offensive to someone else.
Thanks for your comment! I agree with your breakdown. What concerns me is that, in reference to #2, the people who have questioned me/other victims don’t all fall into the “straight, white male” category. There are also people who fall into the problematic “Other” category, have been harrassed themselves, and have simply learned to feed themselves the philosophy that one should simply let it go. They continue to enforce that philosophy on others by doubting the validity of the anger these incidents (rightfully) evoke. Unfortunately, I know there will always be people from a variety of backgrounds who question the legitimate threat of street harrassment and on a larger scale, that of rape and sexual assault. As an individual I can’t do much to change their minds besides raising awareness of these issues. Perhaps to some degree, it is better to simply ignore street harrassment while not necessarily forgetting it is an issue. But when it is so frequent and unavoidable I don’t see anything wrong with getting angry about it, venting about it, constructively confronting it, and letting others know that you won’t put up with it. Acting on that anger in a destructive way is a different issue, and I think you are right in saying people are afraid of strong emotions. They are afraid because they associate these emotions with harmful actions, when in fact these emotions could be channelled through productive outlets.