The streets belong to everyone

As a man, I haven’t been labeled a slut for having or enjoying sex.

As a man, I don’t have to worry about being viewed as sexually available based on my attire.

As a man, I’ve never had my masculinity called into question because I’m child-free.

As a man, I’ve never had to worry that I wouldn’t be promoted at a job due to my sex.

I haven’t had to deal with any of the above because I was born into a group for whom society has granted unearned benefits. To put it bluntly, there is a lot that I and other male-identified* people don’t have to deal with because we identify as men. That is the essence of Male Privilege. Many people-usually men, but sometimes women-have a difficult time understanding what Male Privilege is. Some folks think the term means that men haven’t faced difficulties in life. Others think the phrase is an insult meant to shame men for being men.

Neither is true.

Telling someone they have Male Privilege is not an insult and the use of the term does not mean that men live luxurious lives free from difficulties and obstacles**. It is an observation. An observation about the overall imbalance of power along sex or gender lines in society. That imbalance of power heavily favors men and disadvantages women, as the social phenomenon of street harassment illustrates.

The non-profit organization Stop Street Harassment (SSH) notes that at present, there is no standardized definition of street harassment. As of March 2015, their working definition is:

Gender-based street harassment is unwanted comments, gestures, and actions forced on a stranger in a public place without their consent and is directed at them because of their actual or perceived sex, gender, gender expression, or sexual orientation.

Street harassment includes unwanted whistling, leering, sexist, homophobic or transphobic slurs, persistent requests for someone’s name, number or destination after they’ve said no, sexual names, comments and demands, following, flashing, public masturbation, groping, sexual assault, and rape.

Street harassment directed at people who identify as women perfectly illustrates how men benefit from Male Privilege***. Street harassment is not something men have to deal with because they are men, whereas it is something people who identify as women have to deal with. On an everyday basis. Many people dismiss street harassment, claiming it’s not a big problem. These people are wrong. It’s a problem because women have spoken up and said it’s a problem-one they are tired of having to endure. Those who identify as women have shared their stories. They’ve expressed their disgust, revulsion, and horror at the harassment they face simply for having the audacity to exist in public.

Street harassment is a display of power by men. It is one way that men attempt to maintain their social dominance over women. At the core of street harassment is the idea that men are deserving of the time and attention of women. Male entitlement, in other words. This entitlement leads men to think that they deserve a response from women when they comment on their appearance in public, or that women are obligated to stop and chat with them, or that they [men] have the right to sexually assault women.

Unfortunately, for all that women do not owe men their time, attention, or affection, street harassment is an ongoing problem-one not limited by geographic boundaries. In Mexico, for instance, street harassment is a massive problem. Last year, the online multi-media company Fusion partnered with artist Tatyana Fazlalizadeh on a project to amplify the voices of women in Mexico City fighting against street harassment.

Fazlalizadeh is the creator of the street art project Stop Telling Women To Smile, which addresses gender based street harassment. Her street art project consists of a series of portraits of women whom the artist has spoken with about their experiences with street harassment.

Together with Fusion editor Anna Holmes, Fazlalizadeh interviewed many of the women who are fighting against a culture that turns a blind eye to harassment and violence against women:

Fazlalizadeh and Fusion editor Anna Holmes settled on Mexico City because they wanted to amplify the voices of Mexican women who are challenging the ways in which their communities turn a blind eye to harassment and violence against women. “I wanted to find out, what do women in Mexico City go through?” says the NYC-based Fazlalizadeh. “What are their experiences? What are their stories? How’s what they experience different from what I experience? How can I reflect those differences in these pieces?”

Street harassment, also known as “acoso en las calles,” is an enormous problem in Mexico City and the country as a whole, where rates of sexual violence against women are some of the highest in the world. In Mexico, as elsewhere, says Laura Martinez, director of the Association for the Integral Development of Raped Persons, female bodies are seen as objects, as “something a man can have access to, even if the woman doesn’t want”; a United Nations report in 2010 ranked Mexico number one globally in sexual violence against women, estimating that 44% of females have suffered some sort of sexual violence, from groping to rape. The situation is so bad that Mexico City offers female-only cars on the city’s subways and, in 2008, introduced female-only buses, painted the color pink.

The title of this interactive comes from commentary by Gabriela Duhart Herrera, Director of Atrévete DF, the Mexico City chapter of Hollaback!, an organization founded in 2005 to protest the verbal and sexual abuse of women in public spaces. The interactive tells both the story of Tatyana’s trip and the experiences of the dozens of Mexico City women – students, mothers, politicians, even a police officer – who shared their stories with her. There are also a number of male perspectives on display. (“Here, all the men do it,” said one young man about street harassment.)

Projects like this aim to raise public awareness about the problem of street harassment. No one who identifies as a woman should be forced to endure taunts, leering, stalking, harassment, whistles, slurs, or any other form of street harassment. Male-identified individuals must come to recognize that they do not own public spaces and are not entitled to attention from women, nor their time or affections. Those who identify as girls or women have the same right to participate in public life as men–without being made to endure street harassment. Sadly, many otherwise empathetic and compassionate men are ignorant of street harassment. I know I used to be. Like other men, I was blinded-by my privilege. Yes, thanks to Male Privilege, I’ve never had to worry about being harassed on the street because of my sex. Since I never had to worry about street harassment, I never had to acknowledge it was a problem. Out-of-sight, out-of-mind, so to speak. But once I had the wool pulled away from my eyes-once I acknowledged that I do have Male Privilege-I saw the crap women put up with. I realized I could no longer close my eyes to injustices like street harassment (nor would I even if I could). All people who identify as women are human beings, deserving of the same rights and freedoms as male-identified people. Hopefully more men will come to realize their privilege and work with social justice advocates to help build a better-a world with no male privilege, no street harassment, and no male entitlement. I’m not naive enough to think that’s going to happen in my lifetime or, really, anytime in the next few hundred years, but that’s not going to stop me from trying. What kind of Humanist would I be if I didn’t do my part in the fight to make the world a better place?  A better world-I think that’s a goal well worth fighting for, no matter how long it takes. Don’t you?


*My use of phrases like ‘male-identified’ or ‘people who identify as women’ (and the various permutations throughout this post) stems from a desire to ensure my language is inclusive of trans people.

**Indeed, men can and do face obstacles in life. For instance, bisexual men, atheist men, or African-American men are socially disadvantaged. This is where an understanding of the concept of intersectionality is helpful. Bisexual men are underprivileged because the balance of power in society favors heterosexual men. Similarly, atheist men or African-American men lack the unearned benefits society grants men who are religious or part of the dominant racial/ethnic group of a given country (in the U.S. white people are the dominant racial group). The disadvantages faced by men as a result of being bisexual, atheist, or African-American is due to their membership in those groups. It is not a result of them being men.

***It is important to remember that discussions of Male Privilege are not about individuals, but male-identified persons as a group. While some individuals who identify as men may experience street harassment because of their actual or perceived sex or gender, on the whole men are not the victims of gender-based street harassment.

The streets belong to everyone
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Feminist Link Round Up 12.11.14

If catcalling is harmless, why did this man get stabbed 9 times defending his girlfriend from street harassment?

“It barely missed my spinal cord in the back by just a few inches, so luckily this wheelchair is not permanent, thank God,” he said. “I punctured my right lung from behind.”

Schwartz was stabbed nine times Saturday morning walking home from a friend’s house, with his girlfriend. They were near Larkin and Ellis streets when he said a man started catcalling and making obscene comments.

“At first we tried to just ignore it, just kind of walk away and make our way home, cross the street and try to take a different path,” he said.

But the man started following them and Schwartz braced for a fight.

“It turned violent very quickly, punches thrown,” he said. “Next thing I know, I kinda had a knife in the back of my neck.”

The suspect was picked up in a silver sedan and got away. Between witnesses and police Schwartz got help and was taken to the hospital. His mother came in from Tucson, Ariz. as fast as she could.

“It’s a terrifying experience for a parent or probably anybody who hears about it,” Schwartz’s mother Claire Schuren said.

If catcalling and street harassment are harmless, why did any violence occur at all? This is why the advice to ignore the problem doesn’t always work.  Sometimes ignoring the problem results in violence. Sometimes it doesn’t. There’s no way of knowing what will happen in a given situation. Instead of telling women how to handle street harassment, efforts need to be made to teach people not to harass women on the street.

* * * *

A court in the UK ruled that drinking while pregnant is not a crime.

The case was brought by a local authority applying to the government’s criminal compensation authority for damages on behalf of a seven-year-old girl in its care who has severe disabilities after her mother drank heavily while pregnant.

“We have held that a mother who is pregnant and who drinks to excess… is not guilty of a criminal offense under our law if her child is subsequently born damaged as a result,” the ruling said.

The local authority’s lawyers had argued that the mother was “reckless” in her behavior by drinking up to half a bottle of vodka and eight cans of strong lager a day while she was pregnant.

While they do not suggest the damage was deliberate, they say she discussed her drinking with professionals and “went on to take the risk.”

The ruling centered on whether a fetus can be considered a person under English law.

Thankfully the court found that a fetus cannot be considered a person.  Which really isn’t that hard a conclusion to reach if you base your conclusions on evidence.  A fetus does not possess agency, nor self-awareness.  A fetus has no sense of the passage of time and exhibits no behavioral control.  There may not be a comprehensive list of agreed upon characteristics that defines what a person is, but there are many qualities associated with personhood.  Aside from being biologically human or having the possibility of becoming a person, no fetus possesses any of the qualities necessary to be deemed a person. As such, it has no rights (and for the abortion argument, it still wouldn’t matter if the fetus was a person with rights; no human being has the right to use another’s body without their consent).

* * * *

Large study confirms that abortion is extremely safe

After analyzing data from nearly 55,000 women who received abortion care under California’s Medicaid program, researchers at UC San Francisco concluded that hardly any of them had serious complications within six weeks of their procedure. Just 126 cases necessitated follow-up care for surgery, a blood transfusion, or other conditions that require hospital admission.

Other studies, including data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have also confirmed abortion’s safety. We already had some evidence, for instance, that giving birth is about 14 times riskier than having an abortion. But the new UCSF study goes a bit further than previous research by tracking the complete data on all of the health care used by women who have received abortions. Since many women have to travel long distances to end a pregnancy, the UCSF researchers also examined women’s follow-up care at facilities closer to where they live.

Despite the mounting evidence in this area, the notion that abortion may be dangerous for women is a pervasive assumption that has bolstered the passage of dozens of state laws tightening restrictions on clinics and doctors. In a press release announcing their findings, the study authors indicated that they hope the new study “will contribute to the national debate over abortion safety.”

“Abortion is very safe as currently performed, which calls into question the need for additional regulations that purportedly aim to improve safety,” said Ushma Upadhyay, an assistant professor at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH), a leading research program based at UCSF.

Leading reproductive rights groups echoed that sentiment, pointing out that anti-abortion lawmakers are making decisions that don’t align with reality.

“The science says abortion is safe, but time and time again elected officials are ignoring the facts and jamming through abortion restrictions under a false guise of ‘safety’ when they actually endanger women,” Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood, said in a statement.

Sadly this won’t stop anti-abortion proponents from pushing for further abortion restrictions.  These are people who pay no heed to the evidence.  All they care about is shaming and controlling women.

* * * *

Uber offers $31 to woman after driver asks her if she likes blow jobs

A woman in London said she was sexually harassed by an Uber driver who asked if she liked blow jobs and offered to pull down a side street and perform “sucky sucky” on her during her route.

The unidentified woman, who shared emails of her exchange with Uber about the incident with Newsweek, described the March encounter as scary. According to Newsweek, she first contacted Uber after the hellish ride telling the company “Driver was very forward and quite creepy. Asked me if I wanted him to go down on me. Not cool.”

A marketing manager who responded to her complaint via email apologized, referring to the incident with the driver as an “intrusive experience.” The marketing manager then told her the company was “already investigating this with [the driver] and I can assure you that the necessary actions will be taken to avoid a similar incident in future.” The email she received from the company concluded with a thank you to her from bringing the issue to their attention. “[While] painful to hear, it’s the best way for us to address any incidents like this,” it stated.

Dissatisfied with the company’s lukewarm response, she wrote a longer description of what occurred:

She described how, having initially got in the back of the cab the driver invited her to sit in the front, which she agreed to do, feeling car sick. He then started asking about her relationship status before using increasingly inappropriate language:

“Towards the end of the journey he was asking if I liked blow jobs, saying that he was very good at going down on girls or giving “sucky sucky” to girls and did I want him to do it to me. He even suggested that he could pull over into a side street and do it now if I wanted, which was I think the scariest part of the drive.”

She detailed how, as a woman alone in the car, she felt very uncomfortable and if she hadn’t trusted the Uber name she would have got out the car. She concluded the email:

“I am aware that this kind of thing becomes very much a he-said, she-said kind of deal, but I did want to make you aware of it as I feel that people really trust the Uber name (as I do) and my trust was completely violated. I am pretty relaxed and outgoing and I feel that I can take care of myself, and if I felt so uncomfortable I dread to think how a more timid girl would have felt. I won’t be taking this any further but I do implore you to take this quite seriously as I worry for other women who could find themselves in a similar situation.”

She then received another response from a different Uber representative, which said the company was “shocked” to learn about her experience. According to Newsweek, the email stated “while things like this should definitely not happen in the first place, in the unlikely event that they do occur we have the full details of the driver, trip and rider on our systems so that we can immediately investigate any concerns raised.”

The company then offered her a £20 ($31) credit, signing the email “Sorry again for such an un-Uber experience.”

Such a response is what I’d expect if a driver didn’t arrive on time or damaged someone’s luggage, not following a driver sexually harassing a passenger.

* * * *

Chris Rock:  Don’t Forget, Ben Roethlisberger Was Accused of Rape, Too

Chris Rock called out Ben Roethlisberger on Tuesday night, reminding the media and the public that Bill Cosby isn’t the only celebrity whose history of rape allegations was swept under the rug.

During a media screening for his new film, Top Five, Rock called Roethlisberger “the original Cosby,” alluding to the quarterback’s history of rape allegations. Immediately after the comment, Rock realized his comment would probably catch some heat. “That’s horrible,” he said. “That’s gonna go everywhere.” (You can watch a clip of Rock’s comment at TMZ.)

Feminist Link Round Up 12.11.14

The creator of Dilbert is an oblivious d00d

(Hat tip to Tauriq Moosa at The Indelible Stamp)

Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, shares his thoughts on the recent catcalling video that highlighted the problem of street harassment.  Spoiler: he’s an entitled, oblivious, privileged twit.

As regular readers know, I am a big fan of the feminist movement through history. A lot of brave people sacrificed and worked hard to move society toward greater equality. That was all good stuff. And the problem of sexism was so large a few decades ago that you really did need to approach it with a sledgehammer and not a scalpel.

But in 2014, sexism is not so much the “can’t vote” type of problem it once was. It’s more of the “Someone is making me uncomfortable” or “I think my gender played a role in a decision” or “I can’t tell if this is a business meeting or a date” sort of thing.

Right off the bat, we see how ignorant he is of the problem of sexism.  He thinks all the big stuff is out of the way and sexism is relatively minor. Uh-huh. Mmm-hmmRight. Ok. Sure.  <—-All those links? First page of a Google search for “examples of sexism in the United States”. They weren’t hard to find.  I just had to take about 10 seconds to search and BAM!  Adams really ought to do the same thing.

So today we have pockets of sexism as opposed to universal sexism, at least in the United States. That is still bad, obviously, but the point is that in 2014 feminists need to use a scalpel instead of a sledgehammer. And to use a scalpel you need some feedback on how the cutting is going. I am here to help

“Pockets of sexism”?

WTF?! Google. Search. Not. Hard. Go. Now.

One of the huge obstacles to successful feminism today is that there is no useful feedback on how their message is doing with men. Men have been trained to keep their heads down when this topic comes up. And that is a great disservice to women who need to know whether they are being heard on this topic, and whether the message is effective.

The hell is this?! I don’t even…

If men have been trained to keep their heads down on the topic of feminism or sexism, then they have failed. Utterly. So bad that they don’t get just an ‘F’. They get a ‘F’-squared. Men most certainly do not keep their thoughts to themselves.  Every single article about sexism or feminism I’ve read online has men who chime in with their thoughts and a great many of those comments are from men demonstrating why feminism is still necessary.

My first reaction is that editing ten hours down to two minutes is so overtly manipulative of the viewer that I had a bad reaction to it. I understand why they had to edit; no one watches ten hour videos. But while the video clearly states it is edited, the human brain still processes it as if it is in real time. My emotional reaction to the video is a reaction to a woman being harassed every five seconds, and that is not what happened.

I don’t understand why this is a problem. The focus of the video was on how men harass women on the street. The video showed examples of this. You don’t need to see all 10 hours of the video to understand this. Does he think there’s some wider context that he needs to better understand the problem? Or does he think that some greater context will explain the actions of the men and make them acceptable? If so, he is quite mistaken. There’s no context that makes sexism acceptable.

My emotional reaction to the video was not dissimilar to Adams. While I didn’t literally think “a woman is being harassed every 5 seconds”, I did come away thinking “this is shit women deal with every day, everywhere”.  Adams didn’t get this message.

Here’s my actual reaction: “MOVE SOMEWHERE BETTER, YOU IDIOT!”

Here we see how blind he is to the extent of sexism. He thinks there is somewhere that women can move to that they wouldn’t have to deal with street harassment.

Apparently Mr. Adams did not get the memo that Wonder Woman’s birthplace is fictional.

In addition, he thinks that women can just up and move somewhere to avoid street harassment. He gives no thought to how difficult it is to just “up n move” somewhere. He gives no thought to trying to find a job or a home. He gives no thought to women who are in relationships that they don’t want to give up. He gives no thought to women who are married or have children who they would have to consider when trying to move. He seems to think women have the ability to just uproot themselves and go elsewhere (to a place that is magically free of street harassment). Then there’s the biggest problem with his proposed solution:  it shouldn’t be on the shoulders of women to move. They aren’t doing anything wrong. The men who are harassing women? They are the ones doing something wrong. They are the ones who need to stop. They are the ones who need to alter their behavior. But Adams doesn’t think so. At no point does he criticize the men. At no point does he ask men to quit being sexist shitspigots. He never criticizes men.  That’s glaring.

If you can’t see how problematic it is to tell victims of sexism to move, how about if the video documented racism? Would Adams then tell African-American or Hispanic-Americans that they should move to avoid being called racial slurs? What about LGBT people? We face a lot of street harassment too. Where can we move to that street harassment won’t be a problem for us?  Why should we move? Why can’t our harassers stops being assholes and amend their behavior? Why can’t they become better people?

Adams ends his “Feedback for Feminists” with further calls for the victims of street harassment to “Move! Move! Move!” showing that he really doesn’t understand how pervasive the problem is, that he doesn’t think men are doing anything wrong (or that they need to change their behavior), and that women are the ones who should change their lives to avoid being harassed (and he offers no place where they could go or any proof that their harassment would end).

My response to that bullshit?

Hey Scott Adams:

The creator of Dilbert is an oblivious d00d

Guys, stop behaving badly

Tauriq Moosa did a thing. In a Daily Beast article titled “Hey, Creeps, ‘Compliments’ Are Harassment, Too”, he called out the bad behavior of men, whether online or on the street. He criticizes the excuses–“boys will be boys”, “it’s just a compliment”, “but they’re asking for it”–used to justify that bad behavior, and also tells men that we need to step up and do better.

He’s right; men need to do better. The vast majority of the time, harassment directed at women online or in meatspace comes from men. It’s not something women ask for–hell, they’ve been asking men to stop. It’s not something caused by clothing. Like rape, harassment doesn’t just happen. Someone has to make the choice to harass for harassment to happen. That person can control themselves.  And because people can control themselves, the argument that “it’s just how men are” doesn’t fly. For one thing, not all men are like that. For another, men can change. They can adapt. They can be compassionate. They can listen to women when they say this shit pisses them off or frightens them. They can and they should stop acting so horribly.

Not content to stop discussing this issue, Moosa took to Twitter where he and others turned the discussion to GamerGate. That’s when something interesting happened.

This began the #ReaderGate hashtag, which started when one intrepid Twitter user wondered to Moosa, Hey, what if literary criticism never took into account a novel’s political and social context and themes, instead just relying on the very basics of what’s written. Well, as we’ve been learning for the past few hours on social media, it would be a weird, weird place.

#ReaderGate hashtag users have adopted the four most common arguments from GamerGate supporters — such as anti-GamerGate advocates are just professional victims, the real GamerGate platform is about ethics in video game journalism, and those against the movement are just ”social justice warriors” trying to push politics where there isn’t any — and co-opted them, pretending to build a case for readers taking on gamers’ GamerGate concerns.

The results? They were hilarious, yes, but then you have to remember that the arguments behind them are all too real for some people, and that’s just scary.

Here are a few of the bitingly satirical Tweets:

I wonder if the GamerGaters understand satire…

Guys, stop behaving badly

Steve Santagati mansplains catcalling

You’ve heard of the catcalling video* “10 hours of walking in NYC as a woman” featuring actress Shoshana B. Roberts** and produced by Hollaback right?  If not, here:

The video highlights the problem of street harassment which women face daily. Street harassment is defined as:

Street harassment is any action or comment between strangers in public places that is disrespectful, unwelcome, threatening and/or harassing and is motivated by gender or sexual orientation or gender expression.

Just trying to go about their daily lives-walking, riding a bicycle, jogging, driving-women are inundated with men encroaching on their space and demanding their attention. They offer up unsolicited, disrespectful opinions about women, commenting on everything from their clothing and hair, to their smile and breasts. You can see this on display multiple times in the video (which showcases 100 incidents of street harassment in one day). Street harassment both lowers the comfort level of women in public and limits their access to public spaces. Stopstreetharassment.org took a survey of 811 women in 2008. Here are some of the results:

Behavior that could be categorized as staying “on guard” was the most common. At least monthly women:

Constantly assess their surroundings – 80% (62% said always)

Avoid making eye contact – 69% (32% said they always do this)

Purposely wear clothes to attract less attention – 37% (10% always)

Talk or pretend to talk on a cell phone – 42% (10% always)

Next, behavior that limits access to public spaces was most common. At least monthly women:

Cross street/take other route – 50% (16% said always)

Avoid being out at night/after dark – 45% (11% always)

Avoid being out alone – 40% (8% always)

Pay to exercise at a gym instead of outside – 24% (11% always)

Most alarming was how street harassment prompted some women to make a significant life decision:

Moved neighborhoods (at least once) because of harassers in the area – 19%

Changed jobs (at least once) because of harassers along the commute – 9%

(Read SSH Founder’s Forbes.com article about why employers should care about street harassment and what they can do about it)

From anecdotes and women’s stories, it’s clear that street harassment also impacts women’s:

Hobbies and career choices;

Decision to go to evening networking events, night classes, political forums, and go on business trips;

Ability to go to restaurants or movie theaters alone;

Finances when women “choose” to pay for taxis rather than walk or take public transportation, drive their car short distances, pay to exercise at a gym rather than outside,  pay for a more expensive hotel in a city center while traveling, pay for room service rather than go out to eat when on a business trip;

Ability to go places without a male escort who often can help keep harassers at bay by showing a woman is “owned” or “spoken for”;

Desire to be nice to strangers because they never know which one will turn into a harasser.

Individually, any one of these strategies and restrictions may not seem like a big deal. Collectively, however, the long list of ways women tend to change their lives is extensive.

Here’s the thing though: women shouldn’t have to change anything. They should be able to go about their daily lives without being harassed. Without receiving derogatory comments about their genitals. Without being threatened. Without people telling them they need to smile more (really, if a woman wants to smile, she’ll smile; if she doesn’t want to, she won’t; contrary to what many men seem to think, women do not exist for their pleasure, and are not required to smile on command).  Men are the ones who need to alter their behavior.  They need to stop bossing women around. They need to stop expecting women to be open to their advances. They need to stop critiquing women’s bodies. And they need to stop thinking of street harassment as compliments.

Steve Santagati (author of The MANual: A True Bad Boy Explains How Men Think, Date, and Mate) is one of many men who don’t think what women experience is street harassment. He thinks the comments of men on the street are nothing more than compliments that “every woman” wants.  David Ferguson of Raw Story reports on CNN Newsroom’s recent discussion hosted by Fredricka Whitfield featuring Santagati and stand-up comedian Amanda Seales:

“Women are expected, from the minute we leave the house, to be smiling and available for whatever men want to say to us,” said Seales. “And don’t get me wrong, ‘Hello’ is fine.”

“Oh, come on,” said Santagati.

“I see you shaking your head,” Seales said to him, “but you are not an expert in this because you are not a woman walking in the street, so you don’t know.”

“No, no,” Santagati protested. “I’m more of an expert than you and I’ll tell you why. Cos I’m a guy and I know how we think, more than you guys will ever know. I can’t get in a woman’s head any more than just like, uh, thinking about it.”

“The bottom line is this, ladies,” he went on, “you would not care if all these guys were hot. They would be bolstering your self-esteem, bolstering your ego. There is nothing more that a woman loves to hear than how pretty she is.”

Whitfield and Seales wore almost identically bewildered, dubious expressions as Santagati continued, “Now, this particular video speaks for itself. These guys obviously don’t have a lot of class, but I’m also very suspicious. This video was put together by an ad agency to go viral. How do we know some of those guys weren’t planted?”

Santagati is not the expert he thinks he is. He has no clue what the problem is. It’s not the attractiveness of the men. It has nothing to do with the class of the men. It has everything to do with what they’re saying.  The men in that video harassed Roberts. Period. She did not welcome their comments. She did not want their comments. Some of them clearly ignored the fact that she wasn’t responding, and in so doing became creepy harassing assholes (seriously, that one guy follows her for 5 fucking minutes).  Why can’t she walk along the street without people commenting? Why can’t people keep their comments to themselves? Why do they think they have to share their thoughts with her? Why should she be expected to smile and say ‘thank you’ if she doesn’t feel like it? The men were sending a message:  you’re in our space, so follow our rules. Fuck that noise.

But Santagati doesn’t get any of that. All he sees are the “wrong type of men” and women who really just want to be complimented. How did he reach this conclusion? He doesn’t explain, but for a guy who wrote a book about what men think, how they date, and how they mate, it’s no stretch to think he’s got some biases and prejudices about women rumbling around his brain (did I mention his comment was sexist).

Women are not a monolith. It’s not cool to characterize all women as wanting the same thing. They don’t all respond to the same things in the same way. They don’t all love to hear how beautiful they are. They don’t all love to hear ego-boosts from guys. And even those women that like both may only like them in the proper context, such as a dinner date or during sex. But on the street? When they’re walking to work or school? When they’re exercising or jogging in a park? That’s not the time. It’s not the place. And it’s harassment.  Santagati would know that if he would actually listen to what women say (starting with the two women who were on the show with him). But noooo, he’s too busy mansplaining to women what street harassment really is. Trust me buddy, this is a good time to STFU and listen.

*although the video does point out a real, and problematic, phenomenon, it is not without problems. It has been criticized for presenting (perhaps unintentionally) street harassment as something only black and latino men of a particular socio-economic background engage in.  Santagati’s comments even reflect this. He thinks the men-black and brown men, remember-were the wrong kind of men. In his mind, Roberts would have been grateful if she were approached by the “right kind of man” i.e. a white guy with money.  You can read criticisms of the video here, here, and here.

**Roberts has received threats of violence in the wake of this video.  ::Sigh:: And people think feminism isn’t needed any longer.

Steve Santagati mansplains catcalling

Why don't male celebrities fear leaked nudes?

Amy McCarthy asked this question in a recent article for Bustle. It’s not a difficult question to answer.

Here are two hints:

  1. In our culture, women experience an alarming level of street harassment. Street harassment is defined as:

“Unwelcome words and actions by unknown persons in public places which are motivated by gender and invade a person’s physical and emotional space in a disrespectful, creepy, startling, scary, or insulting way.”

Examples of street harassment include sexually explicit comments, sexist remarks, homophobic slurs, groping, leering, stalking, flashing, and assault. In a 2014 survey commissioned by Stop Street Harassment, it was found that 65% of all women had experienced street harassment.  The report reveals that 20% of all women had been followed, 23% had been sexually touched, and 9% were forced to do something sexual.

If you or someone you know is tired of dealing with street harassment, Stop Street Harassment has resources available that may be of assistance.

  1. We live in a Rape Culture. No, that doesn’t mean that we live in a culture where people love to rape.  Rape Culture is more insidious than that.  What is Rape Culture?

In a rape culture, people are surrounded with images, language, laws, and other everyday phenomena that validate and perpetuate, rape. Rape culture includes jokes, TV, music, advertising, legal jargon, laws, words and imagery, that make violence against women and sexual coercion seem so normal that people believe that rape is inevitable. Rather than viewing the culture of rape as a problem to change, people in a rape culture think about the persistence of rape as “just the way things are.”

Rape is non-consensual sex.  If you engage in sexual activity with someone without their consent, that is rape.  If you engage in sexual activity without consent, you are imposing your will onto another person with no regard for their rights or wishes. You are denying their very humanity. Rape is a form of sexual assault that affects 1 in 6 women and 1 in 33 men in the United States (source).  Roughly 98% of the time, female rape victims were sexually assaulted by male perpetrators and 93% of the time, male rape victims were sexually assaulted by male perpetrators (source).

Yes, men are raped too.  Yes, men experience street harassment.  Women however, experience both at far greater rates.

The answer to the question posed by McCarthy?

We live in a culture where people feel entitled to women’s bodies.

****

For more information on men’s entitlement to women’s bodies, see here, here, and here,

Why don't male celebrities fear leaked nudes?

Why don’t male celebrities fear leaked nudes?

Amy McCarthy asked this question in a recent article for Bustle. It’s not a difficult question to answer.

Here are two hints:

  1. In our culture, women experience an alarming level of street harassment. Street harassment is defined as:

“Unwelcome words and actions by unknown persons in public places which are motivated by gender and invade a person’s physical and emotional space in a disrespectful, creepy, startling, scary, or insulting way.”

Examples of street harassment include sexually explicit comments, sexist remarks, homophobic slurs, groping, leering, stalking, flashing, and assault. In a 2014 survey commissioned by Stop Street Harassment, it was found that 65% of all women had experienced street harassment.  The report reveals that 20% of all women had been followed, 23% had been sexually touched, and 9% were forced to do something sexual.

If you or someone you know is tired of dealing with street harassment, Stop Street Harassment has resources available that may be of assistance.

  1. We live in a Rape Culture. No, that doesn’t mean that we live in a culture where people love to rape.  Rape Culture is more insidious than that.  What is Rape Culture?

In a rape culture, people are surrounded with images, language, laws, and other everyday phenomena that validate and perpetuate, rape. Rape culture includes jokes, TV, music, advertising, legal jargon, laws, words and imagery, that make violence against women and sexual coercion seem so normal that people believe that rape is inevitable. Rather than viewing the culture of rape as a problem to change, people in a rape culture think about the persistence of rape as “just the way things are.”

Rape is non-consensual sex.  If you engage in sexual activity with someone without their consent, that is rape.  If you engage in sexual activity without consent, you are imposing your will onto another person with no regard for their rights or wishes. You are denying their very humanity. Rape is a form of sexual assault that affects 1 in 6 women and 1 in 33 men in the United States (source).  Roughly 98% of the time, female rape victims were sexually assaulted by male perpetrators and 93% of the time, male rape victims were sexually assaulted by male perpetrators (source).

Yes, men are raped too.  Yes, men experience street harassment.  Women however, experience both at far greater rates.

The answer to the question posed by McCarthy?

We live in a culture where people feel entitled to women’s bodies.

****

For more information on men’s entitlement to women’s bodies, see here, here, and here,

Why don’t male celebrities fear leaked nudes?