Just been mildly hit on by some sleazy old man ...

[ButThereAgain]

... which is a ridiculous and stupid thing to happen to a middle-aged woman out walking her dog in the woods, but which gave me this huge dual-carriageway of memory to the sorts of things that used to happen to me (as to almost every young women) when I was very young, when men would seize on my timid politeness as a way of wheedling at me and blaming me for the situations their insistence created.

At the time I was naive and like a million other young women I would blame myself for whatever awkward situation arose. But now, with the perspective of maturity, I can see much more clearly how it works -- how they engineer things so that you start to see their pressuring of you as something you have yourself created.

I'm not talking of anything remotely close to sexual assault -- just a kind of insistent, "flattering" attention. If you are like me, you start off being very polite and kind, and once you realise how pressing and inappropriately demanding they are being, the necessary rudeness (to make them fuck off) seems likes such a reversal that you feel guilty, almost buying in to their perception of you as having somehow "led them on" and then rebuffed them.

And all the "compliments" are structured to try and make you think that your alleged loveliness (I'm not remotely lovely, just an old hag in a muddy waterproof coat) takes agency away from them and makes you yourself to blame.

Even as a mature woman I couldn't bring myself to tell him explicitly to get lost. When I think back to my young self, and to all the current young women, just being polite and suffering the consequences, it makes me furious.

This was just unwelcome pressuring conversation, not assault. Just the ordinary low-level stuff that you forget about when you are old but which is routine when you are a young woman.

Just getting it off my chest, really. I actually do feel guilty about rebuffing this old man so that he doesn't get what he wants from me (namely, I think, the opportunity to talk "flatteringly" to me for ages while he thinks his lecherous thoughts).

[rosabud]

I think Thistledew's post which analyses Biggedy's reasons for not accepting the response of quite a few women on here (because they are not the response that society expects from women) and his desire to keep asking a wider range of women until he gets the response he expects (and needs if he is going to be able to continue thinking with male privilege and not have to challenge his own views) is fascinating and spot on. I also think that since one man (Dervel) arrived and supported the views of the women that Biggedy didn't want to accept - he has gone from being very prolific on the the thread to silence.

Is that because one man's view is worth listening to (where those of 10 or so women are not) and so he has gone off to think about it all more seriously? Or is it that, although he clearly feels very comfortable challenging and manipulating the direction of the conversation of women, he feels less able to do that to another man? Or has he just gone away for the weekend with all his friends who have never ever made a woman feel uncomfortable by their behaviour and all their wives who have, luckily, never been in situations where men have made them feel uncomfortable? Interesting.

[TheSmallClanger]

I've also been in similar situations in petrol stations. I drive quite a distinctive performance car that gets a lot of (mostly) male attention. Some of the men are irritating and insist on assuming that it's DH's car, or my Dad's, but some really do just want to ask about it. Again, we have a safe thing to talk about, and an excuse to end the conversation if needs be.

[TheSmallClanger]

Basil's responses are a fairly normal safety measure.

My own usual response is to pretend I can't hear. This is often counter-productive, as it seems to encourage the pest to be more persistent, or to start raising his voice. This is fine in situations where I can walk away, but not in others, such as in train carriages.

Someone mentioned up-thread about chat between dog walkers - I have also found this to be true. Dog people often chat quite freely, as their shared point of reference gives them something safe to start with, and also a ready-made excuse to move off if necessary. I have no doubt that relationships have started due to dog chat.

[TheDoctrineOfWho]

Yeah, I wasn't sure which phrases were being included in the point scoring class, Basil.

[BasilBabyEater]

"We have moved from discussion to point scoring and trying to get one over with every single post. Never a good sign."

It's interesting that men see women trying to make their point in the face of continuous failure to hear that point, as "point-scoring". It's not. It's trying to explain what someone is determined not to understand.

This thing of accusing feminists of judging other women, is just a very old silencing technique. Men are always willing to cheer-lead women who respond to them they way they feel comfortable with, but are conspicuously silent on the responses which make them feel uncomfortable.

I've lost count of the number of times I've conducted pleasant, friendly, "interested" conversations with men who I would really rather not have had any engagement with but felt I couldn't tell to please leave me alone to get on with reading my book. To an outsider looking on it would be a case of "well she didn't seem to object to being spoken to, she was answering and chatting away to him".

But the reason I was chatting away pleasantly, was because it's a survival response. Fight, flight, freeze, flop or friend. I converse animatedly while waiting for my station and hoping he's not getting off at the same place.

[Beachcomber]

I X posted with you, ButThereAgain.

My post was in reaction to dadwashere's comment about feminists somehow judging other women, when what we are doing is, as you say, self-examination.

And yes, to your post Thistledew - of course it is ridiculous that feminist analysis and exploration of our lived female experience of socialization is somehow seen as disrespecting fellow women's sexual agency.

But of course it suits a lot of men to dismiss feminist thinking in this way - it is just a form of 'but women do/like it too'.

[grimbletart]

Interesting how people generally accept the notion that "it's just how things are" and any attempt to explore why things just are is met with responses varying from bafflement to disbelief or even hostility.
I guess we are just not supposed to question society (sarcasm alert).

[Thistledew]

Respects ions = expectations

[Thistledew]

Nice bit of selective quoting DadWasHere to make your point. I mentioned that some women might genuinely enjoy the attention.

I do wonder at this view that the idea of women (and men as well) being influenced by or investing in behaviour that is promoted by a patriarchal society is nothing more than a feminist conspiracy.

Isn't it something that just about every young person does as they grow up and explore their sexuality - look around them, take in the messages that they see, model their behaviour on what other people are doing? I know I did when I was younger. I know that in an effort to fit in, to be accepted, I did somethings socially and sexually that I was not wholly comfortable with. I learnt to squash down that little voice of objection because I got more 'reward' for ignoring it and 'fitting in' than I did from listening to what it was telling me. I am fortunate that as I have grown up I have found a way for myself that has allowed me to give more space to those feelings of discomfort and to question why I have been suppressing them. I now feel that I have a sexuality that is far more authentically my own. I think most women will do this to a greater or lesser expense, but there will still be many for whom the reward of 'fitting in' (whether with the respects ions of society, their group of friends, or their male partner) will be the overpowering consideration. That's all that is meant by 'investing', and I think it applies more or less equally to men as well.

[ButThereAgain]

Yes beachcomber, agree with all that. It is depressing (but nothing new) how a solidarity based on self-exploration can be so readily misperceived.

[Beachcomber]

And we know that men who trample on our boundaries are men to be careful of.

So we smile and nod whilst planning how to get away from him.

[Beachcomber]

But we women know very well that often women's reactions are a consequence of being invested in the status quo. And the reason we know it is because we all do it to some degree.

It isn't about judging or patronising other women - it is about political class analysis of women as a group, a group to which we belong, and therefore we know what it feels like to be in the situations that present class challenges.

Feminists talk about this as doing what you have to to get by in patriarchy.

Reacting positively to some entitled male stranger encroaching on your boundaries, in a very public way, is something a lot of us could imagine doing IMO. We would probably do it as the best way to handle an uncomfortable situation with the least fuss/fall out possible.

Women are very used to "jokey" boundary encroaching turning nasty when we don't indulge the behaviour (humourless bitch, can't take a joke, stuck up cow, a good seeing to would sort you out, think you're better than me do you, etc.)

So we suck it up, at personal cost to ourselves, and the world makes sense again....

And of course we are socialised to find male attention flattering. Even if we don't want it and even if it takes an invasive form. Rejecting male attention makes a woman a stuck up bitch who thinks she is better than him. And of course she can't be better than him because she is a women so who the fuck does this uppity cow think she is? She obviously needs taking down a peg or two. She doesn't indulge male entitlement!! Oh no, a woman who doesn't know her place!!

[ButThereAgain]

I don't think that a feminist perspective needs to make any judgement at all, dadwashere, about whether any woman enjoys this kind of stuff, or about whether her enjoyment of it is 'enlightened'. The fact remains that lots and lots of women don't enjoy it but are sujected to it anyway, and are aware that they themselves feel kind of implicated in tolerating it, thanks to some internalised norms of behaviour.

The feminism in this thread has centered around women describing themselves as feeling inhibited from frankly expressing their discomfort and contempt to the men who pressure them with unwanted attention. Your focus instead on what feminists might think about other women seems to project into the center of the discussion something which is peripheral to it, or absent from it -- that old chestnut of feminism judging the choices of other women, as undermining women rather that being engaged in the solidarity of shared self-examination.

[DadWasHere]

There is also context of place Thistledew. A DJ at a wedding doing something like that would get an entirety different reaction from males and females. At a nightclub/disco its a different societal 'norm' again. Could be, at the time, people may have felt his wife was equally entitled to either 'lap it up' or get annoyed and show the DJ her middle finger.

I would extend the possibility for either response to be valid and enlightened, but your key turn of phrase:

you would get others who wouldn't see it as a problem because they are far more invested in accepting behaviour from men that society tells them they should be accepting

indicate you do not. Its that kind of view that caused my earlier cynical response. Apparently Biggedys wife is entitled and enlightened if she was offended but if she actually did enjoy such a thing- it only confirms for you that her personal agency/authority/behaviour is devalued- warped by patriarchal bias in society.

I think you should get over this view and accept both possible responses as equally valid/reasonable/intelligent/enlightened or whatever. The denial of the individual sexual agency of women in how they feel about male attention has haunted feminism for decades.

[LuisGarcia]

I am a man.

I think the dj was a cretin.

I'm confused and I don't know how to express this well, but... What can I do to help fix this?

[Thistledew]

I have been thinking today about Biggedy's reactions last night to all the comments telling him that many women would feel uncomfortable being picked on by a DJ in the way he described.

It is interesting that his response, and probably one that he thought was quite fair-minded, was to propose a survey on other parts of this forum to see what the general MN consensus was on this issue. Presumably, given that he was not prepared to accept the word of the women that replied on this thread, he felt it likely that a survey of a greater number of women on threads other than FWR would produce a different response; one that matched his own opinion that his was not something that would upset many women.

He may be right. It may be the case that if you asked a wider range of women you would get a far more mixed response. You would get some women who would genuinely be pleased to receive such attention, and you would get others who wouldn't see it as a problem because they are far more invested in accepting behaviour from men that society tells them they should be accepting. Biggedy was seeking a consensus view - a view of what 'society' as a whole says.

It was telling that when faced with the reactions of individual women that differed with how society says that women should react Biggedy's response was not to say "Why is society telling me that women will react differently from how these women are reacting?" but to say "Why are these women not reacting in the way society says they will?". There is a clear implication that when women express views that differ from what is expected by society, they must be doing so because of having some sort of agenda, or for other nefarious reasons. Again, the problem is seen to be with the women, not with society's expectations of them.

I'm sure that Biggedy didn't even realise that he was doing this. It is so ingrained that it has become a normal pattern of thinking, even for people who consider themselves to engage critically with these issues.

The other question that came into my mind was whether Biggedy has ever actually asked his wife if she was happy to be picked on by the DJ, or whether that was an assumption that he made based on what he observed of her reactions. I do wonder whether his wife was genuinely delighted to receive an offer of marriage from a complete stranger or whether her thought process was far more along the lines of "WTF? I can't believe he just said that! Great, how do I get out of this with the minimum of fuss so that I and my friends can move on with our evening without spoiling the mood?". What do you think the chances are that she plastered a smile on her face, gave a bit of a whoop, and maybe some play acting to signal that she was bowled over by Mr DJ. All the while thinking to herself "what a prick".

[MooncupGoddess]

And indeed why should they avoid unnecessary journeys, like coming back from choir/sports practice, dinner with friends, or getting utterly caned with their local feminist group?

[TheDoctrineOfWho]

I'm not being a smart arse. Women who are out alone are often going to work, family, whatever - necessary journeys. Why should they avoid these journeys?

[bluebayou]

You know full well what I meant , doctrine , don"t be a smart arse

[slug]

If it's not been linked to already.... Schrodinger's Rapist is always worth reading

[TheDoctrineOfWho]

Well, that's me fucked then, since I have to travel to work every day.

[bluebayou]

I think it is a very , very sad fact of life these days but women have to be very careful where they they venture alone. There are sometimes odd people around . Call me silly .

[TheDoctrineOfWho]

It is alarming how often women's boundaries are dismissed

Exactly. If, when someone talks to you, they first show you that they will be totally fine if you don't want to talk back, then there is much less chance of a threat being felt.

With the dropped phone - "excuse me, you dropped your phone. I'll put it on this wall here for you." - and walk away shows that you are returning the phone and want nothing else.

[bluebayou]

You seem to be in a bit of a tizzy about this Derval , four posts in a row .
leave well alone I say .

[Dervel]

Maybe the glove analogy is a simple awareness, maybe rather than an "oi love..." Shouted out, an "excuse me I think you dropped your glove/phone", and maybe even cross the road so you yourself can retrieve said item, and that's the sum total of the encounter.