Stuff What Boys Can Do
The other night, my bear asked if he could discuss with me this post, where I talk about (among other things) the victim-blaming ramifications of telling a woman to change her behavior to avoid rape. He was conflicted. On the one hand, he totally agreed with me. It is not a woman’s fault if she’s raped, regardless of whether or not she is wearing a miniskirt and a beer hat and holding a sign that says she likes sex: all that indicates is that she is a beer + miniskirt + sex enthusiast. On the other hand, my bear is awfully fond of the ladies in his life, and is horrified at the idea of them going out in a miniskirt and beer hat with a sex sign and possibly coming home raped because some rapist viewed her as a free pass.
This is not an unreasonable or uncommon conflict. Victims do not ask to be raped, or want to be raped, or try to get raped; any of those actions would make it, you know, not rape; consent and sexual assault are mutually goddamn exclusive, is the thing. And yet there are a whole bevy of actions women can take that lead rapists to calculate that they can get a rape pass. Not taking those actions is absolutely no assurance that a woman won’t be raped, but there is some psychological reassurance in accepting (unreasonably restrictive, infantilizing, humiliating) restrictions if they yield even the smallest of protection.
As the bear and I were discussing it, I was trying to find a way to verbalize minimization of risk in a way that isn’t victim-blaming. The bear and I both live in a state that has a crosswalk law stating that whenever a pedestrian crosses the street, that place automatically becomes a crosswalk, and drivers are required to treat it as such. Drivers, as a whole, routinely ignore this law, to the point where a driver that does slow down when they see you on the curb creates a mess of traffic and pedestrian confusion. So I said it was like looking both ways before you cross the street here. The drivers should yield to you, but the consequences if they don’t are so huge that you have to take that extra precaution that you should not legally have to take. On the other hand, that’s not a decent metaphor at all, because looking both ways and crossing the street carefully really gives you a pretty good assurance of not being hit by a car, while wearing a burlap sack and never going outside without a male escort doesn’t really diminish your lifelong risk of rape all that much.
My bear and I both spent some time in a different Midwestern college town, where pedestrians frequently swarmed the street at the slightest fancy, and it could take cars 10 minutes to go one block. Drivers didn’t like it, sure, but they didn’t start mowing folk down, either. My bear also remembered having lived in Oakland many years ago, where they had a similar crosswalk law that was actually significantly enforced. Pedestrians behaved similarly, crossing the street wherever they liked, and drivers would stop in their tracks if they saw a pedestrian anywhere near a curb.
Taking all this, my bear modified the traffic metaphor. He said it’s like looking both ways before you cross the street because you don’t want to get hit by a car, except you live in a Mad Max world where drivers are specifically trying to run over pedestrians, and will make special trips out of their way to do so. Also, there are other pedestrians on the sidewalk pointing at you and yelling, trying to get the driver’s attention so he has an easier job of hitting you. And also there is a cop standing nearby who just kind of watches. And when you do get hit by a car, the other bystanders are quick to point out that you didn’t run fast enough to avoid the car intentionally barreling down on you with the purpose of killing you.
In Oakland, as well as that other Midwestern town, there was a culture that, for whatever reasons, decided this particular traffic law was worth enforcing. Because there was enforcement, there was eventually a widespread and general expectation that the majority of people would obey this law. There was enough of an expectation that pedestrians only needed to look both ways before crossing the street; they did not need to find a light, hit the pedestrian button, look both ways, and then bolt for their goddamn lives while dodging traffic like Frogger. They only had to take a minimal precaution, because the responsibility for enforcement of behavior had been diffused among governing institutions and others in power.
This is the biggest problem with using modification of a victim’s behavior as the primary and front lines of prevention. It’s placing all the responsibility at the very end of the crime, upon the person who has the least influence and position and power and general foresight to prevent the crime. I have a major ideological problem with ever giving in to victim-blaming and, say, changing my clothes before I go out because I am afraid of being groped if I wear my favorite Lolita shirt. But survival trumps ideology, so I change my shirt and seethe about it. I have done the tiniest thing, and it probably only reduces my personal risk of sexual harassment by the tiniest amount. That’s all the ability I have access to, that’s all I can do. And yet even if I do all the right things and still get raped or harassed or groped, it will still be my fault for not doing more. We do not have a general cultural expectation that anybody but me (and maybe sometimes my rapist) should be taking responsibility for my rape.
This led to a discussion about responsibility for prevention. Discussions about women wearing short skirts and the like usually get into the bad metaphor zone because it becomes an argument about whether or not it’s wrong to expect somebody to take minimal precautions to avoid becoming the victim of a crime. It’s not wrong to expect people to take some minimal precautions, but it is wrong to place all the responsibility for preventing a crime upon the completion of these minimal precautions. Before a rapist commits a rape, there are thousands of little points along the way where other individuals or institutions could come in and take some responsibility for prevention. And, of course, at the source of all that is the rapist, who is the first point where responsibility can be taken. When all these points are passed, and every individual or institution abdicates responsibility, the very last point becomes the victim. Which leads to a culture that engages in absurd magical thinking, believing that rape can be prevented by BYOB or wearing turtlenecks.
Thinking about it, I realized this is part of what personally pisses me off the most about the “tips” given to women about avoiding rape. I can follow all those tips, and make the tiniest reduction in my lifelong risk of rape, but it’s like fighting off an attacker with a paper sword. If I get attacked, believe me, it’s not because I suck with a paper sword. It’s because paper cuts don’t deter attackers. I want other people to take responsibility for prevention. I want there to be something more than my Lolita shirt between me and a life-altering, life-threatening grotesque attack.
My bear recounted a story from a few years back. He had been in a bar with a couple of friends, and they were all pleasantly wobbly and drunk. On the way out of the bar, my bear saw a man and a woman having an altercation in the parking lot. The man had the woman in a headlock. It could have been a friendly tussle, and it seemed like all the other witnesses were treating it as such, but it gave my bear a bad feeling in his tummy. He wasn’t sure what to do, and all his friends were wheedling at him to just leave it alone, get in the car, let’s go – which I think is further confirmation that something more than a friendly tussle was happening.
Instead, my bear just stood in the parking lot, and made it very obvious that he was watching. The guy noticed him, let go of the girl, and started a very basic aggressive monkey dance. If you’ve ever watched documentaries of monkeys establishing territory and dominance while trying to avoid actual physical fights, this entire interaction will be very familiar to you. The guy started thrusting out his chest, making vague grunting noises. My bear just stood there, staring. The guy started making general stomps in the direction of my bear, but my bear just stood there (all the while, his friends were whining that he should leave it alone and let’s just go, bear, seriously). Finally, the guy did a classic pant-hoot and headed across the parking lot for a confrontation. My bear has some defensive martial arts training, and he was pretty confident he could diffuse a physical altercation, so he held his ground. The dude approached, pant-hooted some more, than poked my bear, in the forehead, with his forefinger. My bear just kinda stared at him like, “Seriously?” Dude deflated some, then grunted his way back across the parking lot. By then, the girl was had headed back into the bar.
Who knows what was really going on in that altercation. I doubt, considering the monkey screeching that followed, it was all purely in fun. Maybe the girl appreciated my bear intervening. Maybe she didn’t. But that’s not the point. My bear took some responsibility to prevent what could have been an escalating crime. He illustrated to the monkey-dude that his behaviors were not invisible, that bystanders noticed him and didn’t approve. Maybe that only had an effect on that one incident. Maybe that is something monkey-dude will remember in the future, thus limiting the physical spaces in which he will attempt whatever the hell he was attempting. One thing my bear most assuredly did was illustrate to all the bystanders there – some of whom knew him personally – that he was the kind of person who would step into a physical altercation where a woman is possibly being attacked. His friends that night – who are, by the way, no longer his friends – didn’t appreciate that he would do this. Probably plenty of other bystanders didn’t, either. But likely there were a few that could file that info away, and realize that this is a person who will not allow them to be attacked in his presence, if he can help it. Instead of a paper sword being all that’s between you and a rape, it’s now a paper sword and a bear.
Anyway, this story and the conversation made me decide to put up a new page on my blog, the “Stuff What Boys Can Do” page. This is going to be a place specifically to leave anecdotes and examples of things men can do to actively ally themselves against misogyny. The examples don’t have to be successful; I mean, chances are, monkey-dude just went in the bar and abused his girlfriend in there. But that doesn’t negate the fact that my bear intentionally and voluntarily put himself in a vulnerable position in order to defend a woman from an attack. That had an effect on him as a person, and it had an effect on the people around him. It sent a message. The examples also do not have to be Really Big Deals. If, during a sexist conversation, one dude put out there, “I disagree,” that’s good enough. That’s still a thing what a boy can do.
I was reading this post on PunkAssBlog the other day. It’s about how asking men to be allies isn’t really a cut and dry case. Privilege is its own kind of oppression; to maintain privilege, one must maintain a very specific and strict mode of behavior. Stepping out of that behavior strips you of your privilege, and leaves you vulnerable for a pretty significant degree of attack. There are times when an ally can pull an Afterschool Special, and there are times where even deigning to disagree could get a guy beat to within an inch of his life. I’d like to see, and hear, more ways that men can be allies in all the different contexts they find themselves in.
“This led to a discussion about responsibility for prevention. Discussions about women wearing short skirts and the like usually get into the bad metaphor zone because it becomes an argument about whether or not it’s wrong to expect somebody to take minimal precautions to avoid becoming the victim of a crime. It’s not wrong to expect people to take some minimal precautions, but it is wrong to place all the responsibility for preventing a crime upon the completion of these minimal precautions. Before a rapist commits a rape, there are thousands of little points along the way where other individuals or institutions could come in and take some responsibility for prevention. And, of course, at the source of all that is the rapist, who is the first point where responsibility can be taken. When all these points are passed, and every individual or institution abdicates responsibility, the very last point becomes the victim.”
This whole paragraph is brilliant and needs to be thrust at policy makers somehow.
I have always felt uncomfortable tension between my absolute conviction that when rape is committed, the single solitary bearer of responsibility for that rape is the rapist, AND my equally absolute, empirical knowledge that certain kinds of clothing and behaviours will make harrassment, assault and rape more likely. But I could never articulate why it was that even if a woman takes risks with her clothes, mental state and location, IT IS NOT HER FUCKING FAULT for getting assaulted.
The other point I’d add is that all that revealing clothing (and “revealing” is often in the mind of the beholder), being inebriated and being alone in a vulnerable place is make it EASIER for men who wish to commit assault, not “make it possible whereas before it was impossible”. Those behaviours do not switch the woman’s target status from “off” to ON, because a woman’s target status is always on.
Risk reduction behaviours do not make assault impossible. Therefore, they are not a means of prevention at all. Camouflage clothing, being in a place with other people and always being sober are behaviours that simply do not have the power to render sexual assault an impossibility. If anything, they are a form of risk in that the potential victim will have a sense of security that is completely false.
The most recent sexual assault I experienced happened on a brightly lit street, in front of a residential home, with heavy car traffic going by. I was wearing pants. It was 9 in the morning.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
Okay, this ( ) was linked on Shapely Prose today, and I loved it. I want every college in the US to hand this around to all freshmen, male and female, during orientation, stapled IN FRONT of the “Reduce Your Risk of Being A Victim” sheet. It’s a great way to emphasize that the real way to prevent rape is to address the problem of rapists, not the problem of women walking around being vulnerable.
I hope that link works. It is so worth reading.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
I’m pretty sure I defused some upcoming aggro just by looking once. I rounded a corner on a large dodgy looking guy in a very aggressive stance leaning over a young woman. If I’d thought about it, I’d have lowered my head and sped up, to decrease my risk of getting hurt by this man, but I didn’t; I felt sort of protected that day and did a bit of staring. He let go of her and I sort of felt that nature around me took a breath of relief. I think they walked on together afterwards, but it clearly made him rethink his posish on violence in public. I’m not an intimidating presence at all so there must have been something in my mien.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
Rebecca_J, your comment has been deleted here and moved to the Stuff What Boys Can Do list. This isn’t ’cause your comment sucks or anything, but because I think it belonged on the list and I want to avoid repetition. Let me know if you’d rather not have it on the list.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
There was a post this week on Socialogical images about Scottish rape prevention ads. http://contexts.org/socimages/2009/09/17/scottish-anti-rape-campaign-effective-or-sensationalist/
One of the comments was that it might not stop rapists, but if it helps someone confront someone in a dodgy situation, like your bear did, or even to say after a rape has happened ‘it wasn’t your fault for wearing a short skirt/being drunk/walking home alone, then it’s a success, of a sort.
I am personally terrible at confrontation, I hate it in any form and I hate feeling like I don’t know what the rules are – what if they’re into BDSM or something? I know that I can be completely chicken shit, but maybe I’ll keep in mind that I can at least provide an audience. And build my way up from there.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
Sure, no prob.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
Harriet, I think your “Stuff What Boys Can Do” page is an outstanding idea. I love it.
The positive contributions from my own experience that immediately spring to mind, though, are unfortunately mitigated by my own complicity with the Patriarchy in other ways.
An example: I was out with a group of much higher-level male executives at the company I work for. Except for the sole woman there, who was an attractive young temp worker basically invited along for the executives to all try to hit on, I and one co-worker are the lowest-ranking guys there. So, I could brag on myself about how, when my manager starts making blow-job jokes and looking pointedly at the only woman there (to the laughter of the other men), I point out that it might make her feel uncomfortable. I could brag on this, but I didn’t do it very forcefully– my manager rolled his eyes at me, the girl unhelpfully said she doesn’t mind even though she quite clearly did, and the joking continued. I stayed quiet on the subject after that.
And let’s not even go into the fact that, simply by being there and keeping a friendly face on through it all, I was essentially timidly allowing myself to become a willing cube on the bottom of a mini-patriarchal pyramid.
My point here is not about beating myself up. It’s this: Your “Stuff What Boys Can Do” page seems to have a very positive orientation, and that’s great. You want concrete examples of positive actions men have taken to fight misogyny in their midst. I guess it would probably muddy things too much if some of the contributions were less than positive? As in, “This is what I did, but it’s far from ideal, so what do y’all think I should have done?”
Yeah, probably, but just thought I’d ask to make sure.
Like or Dislike:
0 
1
Normally I’d just transport this over to the page, but I wanted to answer your questions first, so you can make a decision about whether or not you want it there, and how.
This list is supposed to be a very positive thing, and that’s why I included a list of rules that I thought would help keep it positive. It seems like, in the past few days, my bear has ended up in multiple situations where he could speak up about sexism. In most of them, he has been speaking up. But in all of them, he has gotten no positive response. And so, after each of them, he comes home feeling dejected and depressed that nothing has gotten better, whether or not he spoke up.
But you can’t take responsibility for other people; if other people don’t change, that’s their bag. You can take responsibility for yourself, and I wanted a place to applaud the men who have taken responsibility for themselves, regardless of how other people chose to react. While not as likely to produce a positive response in the specific situation, these actions have a cumulative good effect. But when the specific situations don’t end well, it can be hard to get up and try again and again. So I wanted a place where people could see the positive more clearly, divorced from the outcomes, which we have no control over. I wanted to read about men I can respect and feel safe with, men I can speak with, men I can trust. And I want other men to read about those men, so that those who are unsure where to begin have concrete role models. I want people to see what respect for women actually looks like.
If somebody wants to share the outcome, whether positive or negative, they can. If they don’t want to share the outcome, they don’t have to. I don’t want anybody to feel like a positive outcome is a requirement, because if that was our standard, nobody would be speaking up. I don’t think any of us will be surprised that sexism doesn’t end just ’cause one guy said, “Hey, that’s not cool.” But that shouldn’t overshadow the fact that one guy was willing to make himself vulnerable enough to say, “Not cool.” All these actions are worth something, independent of outcome. The fact that these actions exist, and that (I’m quite sure) there will be enough for a list, are already indications that the world is changing as a whole, even if it didn’t change in any given specific example.
If anybody wants feedback on what they could have done differently or better, they can request it when they post something to the list. I’m not allowing comments about what guys should have done differently or better unless the poster specifically requests that feedback. That can be valuable and helpful information, but it can also be depressing and overwhelming. If you just took your first really big really hard step, and somebody chimes in with, “Not good enough!”, that can knock you down pretty quick. But if you have taken multiple steps and you feel there’s something you’re missing, having the option for that feedback can be really helpful.
Like or Dislike:
1 
0
That’s a really fair way of looking at it. It may be that I don’t remember the really successful moments nearly so well as the ones where I feel like I failed in some way, because though I took a stand, it was by only rising as tall as was safe for me and no taller.
I’d be quite happy to continue to share them (though probably anonymously), except that it doesn’t feel right to share them without the misgivings that naturally go along with them in my mind. And, I agree with you that your page should have a more positive bent to it. I think angsty pleas of “what could I have done better” with the attendant back-and-forth commentary would probably kill the buzz you’re going for.
So, don’t worry about transferring my story over to the other page– due to the regretful tone in which I wrote it, I don’t think it’s quite appropriate. And if it should somehow turn out that you have hordes of men wishing to share regretful stories rather than purely positive ones, well, I’d be happy to create a site at my place for you to shunt them to, called “Stuff What Boys Could Do Slightly Better”, or something like that.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
My first paragraph there didn’t make much sense, did it. I just meant, often it’s easier to remember failures than successes, because you mull them over for longer.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
Thanks for doing this, Harriet. I’m not very good at standing up for what I believe when it’s socially difficult, and it’s helpful to see some concrete examples.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
Gavin de Becker’s stuff is pretty amazing for this – he talks about recognizing predatory behaviors, and how they shade over into what is considered appropriate behavior by men towards women, without ever suggesting that anyone who fails to spot and avoid predators is to blame for it.
And Quin, I think that you probably had more effect than you’re giving yourself credit for. The fact that one person was willing to say “Not cool” breaks the idea that this is some kind of appropriate, social norm that everybody except her thought was totally cool, and if she didn’t like it she was clearly the freak in the room.
The only thing you might consider doing is taking the manager aside and telling him you were worried that somebody might file a sexual harassment complaint. It’s been my experience that the worst assholes are the ones who are overparanoid and convinced that if they merely rise an eyebrow at a woman, HR will fire them, burn their house to the ground and salt the ashes.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
Too late! He already got fired for sexual harassment! No joke.
The sad thing about it is not that he got fired for sexual harassment– which he totally had coming, though I won’t go into the gory details– but that it was, in reality, just a pretext for getting rid of him after, one night out, he drunkenly wouldn’t back down in some trivia argument with the company president. Upper management had willingly turned a blind eye to his sexual harassment for some time (even though he was poisoning the working environment for some of the women on staff). They only suddenly cared after he made the unwise move of provoking the top dog.
But such is the way of patriarchy.
Thanks, though, Mythago, it probably would have been a good tactic to use, and I wish I’d thought of it. I’ll keep it in mind if I’m ever in a similar situation.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
Amazing post.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
Very useful post, thank you for it.
Your modified street-crossing metaphor was lacking one element. We also have to imagine a community where there is enormous pressure for you to cross the road without looking. Where crossing the road without looking is the only way to mark yourself as valuable, and if you don’t you will be mocked, or at best ignored. What, you don’t cross the street without looking?? No wonder you don’t have a boyfriend/never get listened to/are going to die alone surrounded by cats who will eat you.
Like or Dislike:
1 
0
“Gavin de Becker’s stuff is pretty amazing for this – he talks about recognizing predatory behaviors, and how they shade over into what is considered appropriate behavior by men towards women, without ever suggesting that anyone who fails to spot and avoid predators is to blame for it.”
Yeah, I was just going to come here to comment that maybe one way to convey useful information about risks (and minimize the victim blaming) is by framing it as “You should know that these are the kinds of tricks rapists use.”
I think the man advantage to this approach is that it doesn’t vanish the rapists — it’s not about silly women getting themselves all raped by being out alone at night. De Becker does a very similar thing, by acknowledging that abusers and violent criminals know perfectly well what they’re doing, but also pointing out that being aware of certain patterns can help women to perhaps protect themselves better even maybe one time.
(And he doesn’t minimize the systematic nature of violence against women, either, and his call for society as a larger entity to step up and start taking it seriously is another reason why he doesn’t come across as victim-blaming.)
Like or Dislike:
0 
0