I agree with Carol Lloyd-–while the idea of the female-only trains and buses that have been built in Mexico City and Japan in response to the amount of harassment women get on the integrated trains frustrates my non-segregationist heart, it would be hard to pass up the female-only bus if given a choice in an atmosphere where I know that groping is on the way. It’s interesting and not just a little bit disturbing that the fear of being accused of hating all men puts a lot of women in a situation where they feel they have to be sexually assaulted in order to prove they don’t. But it’s not “all men” that’s the issue here—a few bad apples will ruin the bunch in closed quarters. The men who don’t grope are only as guilty as the women who allow it to happen in front of them.
I trust that the cities that have instituted this policy are doing so in reaction to a real problem. I’ve never been harassed on a crowded bus or train, but then again, I don’t ride them daily. But I have generally noticed that cities I’ve traveled to where there’s a lot of public transit (and therefore a lot more people on the sidewalk) are places where I don’t get hollered at on the street as much, either. You could probably make a formula up—the less people on the street around me, the likelihood someone will yell something from a moving vehicle. Harassers like to have the semblance of privacy before they act, to make the abuse seem unwitnessed in a world where men’s word is taken above women’s as a matter of routine.
Nonetheless, I’ve been to a lot of rock concerts and know that there’s a point where crowdedness creates the sense of witness-less that encourages some men to grope. At which point the likelihood that it happens to you is entirely dependent on whether or not the groper thinks you’ll fight back or be believed if you complain. I’ve seen what happens to rock concert gropers in Austin enough to see why it doesn’t happen often. But in other cities, it’s more of an issue. I can see that if women don’t have much recourse in Tokyo or Mexico City that groping would get really out of control.
Thoughts? It’s obvious that female-only trains in cities where groping is a massive problem are a “Band-Aid solution”, but that sure doesn’t mean we should let women suffer on a daily basis until there’s a complete cultural overhaul that gets men to stop harassing of their own accord. The letters at Salon were mostly hostile ones from men who probably resent any intrusion on their “right” to engage in acts of minor acts of sexual assault, but one letter writer makes the good point that women-only trains might make such men justify groping women on integrated trains.
what if you choose not to ride the women’s only cars?
will that be interpreted as “wow, she must be asking for a groping?”
this is why I’m leery of segregation. part of why.
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Amanda, because you brighten my life and I like you I will give you this advice: never read the letters at Salon. You’ll live longer. (The one exception is the letters in response to Cary Tennis, which are so much entertainingly better than Tennis’s actual “advice” they’re worth it.)
I am so fascinated by it all, though. What drives men to just hang out at Broadsheet all day and gorge on their hatred of women? When a guy grabs your ass or yells “Cunt!” at you on the street, it’s hard not to wonder what kind of fucked up things he’s thinking. Then he goes to Broadsheet and tells you! Sure, it’s like studying roaches, but someone has to study roaches.
I’ve learned a lot, actually. It appears that the majority of the crazy haters are stuck in a feedback loop. They hate women because women don’t choose them. But the more they radiate hatred of women, the more they don’t get chosen. Which causes them to hate women even more. They go to Broadsheet, it seems, because they want to have interactions with women, but all those reactions are hostile because they’re so repulsive. Which just makes them even angrier and resentful. If you want to know why misogynist porn is a big industry, there’s your answer.
Women’s only buses and rail carriages are familiar things in India. These enlarge rather than reduce women’s freedom to travel. In India the kind of sexual harassment inflicted on women in public is called “eve-teasing”.
As India continues to urbanize and society atomizes, the problem is only growing worse. Typical Bollywood movies glamorize eve-teasing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eve_teasing
http://www.hindu.com/op/2004/04/13/stories/2004041300121800.htm
From Jan 2008
http://www.blogher.com/mumbais-new-year-shame-attack-women-throws-spotlight-widespread-problem
http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/story.aspx?id=NEWEN20080037485
and links therefrom.
http://www.newindpress.com/NewsItems.asp?ID=IEH20080102085802
Incidentally, Bollywood movies also glamorize the response (thrashing of the miscreants by the hero).
Of course the existence of women-only trains will mean that any woman on an integrated train is “asking for it”. I’m sure that this will cause incedents on integrated trains to get worse. I’m also sure that the availible routes for women’s trains will not be equal, causing women to be forced to use integrated routes, where the harassment will be worse, because, hey, you are on a pro-grope train, you consented to groping or worse! Who cares if the assult-free train dosen’t go where you you work or live?
I’m glad you mentioned what happens to gropers at concerts in Austin, because if this sort of thing is going to stop, that’s what I think has to happen. We men have to face down the groping men and refuse to allow it to happen, not because of some archaic sense of chivalry or the sense that women need protecting because they’re too weak to handle it on their own, but simply because the gropers are making the gender look bad.
I live in Tokyo. I have yet to ride a women-only car because the ones I’ve seen only run at very early hours when I’m hardly ever even awake. Maybe from 6:30-8:30 or so. I think there might be some that run late-late at night. I don’t think I’ve seen any, but I think they exist.
They aren’t an around-the-clock thing, and it’s maybe one or two cars at most. I certainly don’t think that not riding one of these means you’re asking for it, but it does leave you open to the risk. Groping is fairly rampant here. But I’ve only been touched once. So far.
I would only ride one if it was a late night train, because drunk Japanese men get very, very bold (kind of a 180 from their usual state of verrry passive leering), and while it’s easy to ignore them on the street or in the station or wherever (where I can just walk faster), it’s harder to ignore them on the train. I’ve had a lot of creepy experiences that involved trains–mostly being followed off of trains, propositioned on trains, etc.–and this didn’t matter if I was alone or with a friend.
The groping thing involves a lot of cultural factors for the gropers and victims. Japanese men of the older set have a lot of … sexual issues, and for the victims, there’s a fear of drawing attention that is kind of common among Japanese. I feel like with the younger populations and women more likely to say something while men are less likely to be so … er … sexually maladjusted, groping will decrease over time. It won’t go away completely–packed conditions and a quick getaway will always lead to some cases of groping–but I think it will decrease. We’ll see.
I don’t know about Mexico or elsewhere in Japan, but in Tokyo the women-only cars I’ve seen are on fairly popular and crowded train lines. Particularly ones that come out from the suburbs where you might have to travel a long way into the city. And really, all the trains are “integrated.” I’m not sure it’s fair to call a 10-15 car train with 1 women-only car from 6:30-8:30 AM a “segregated” train.
I dunno. I get annoyed, at least with Tokyo discussions of women-only cars and how unfair they are, because I hadn’t even seen one for the longest time, and when I finally did, and saw the service hours and whatnot, I really started thinking, “THIS is what people are complaining about??? One car for two hours early in the morning??”
I’ve traveled through India, where the “ladies’ carriage” concept originated, and FWIW, I never heard anything to the effect of “she’s asking for it” aimed at female riders of the integrated trains. Neither from locals nor fellow travelers.
Segregation creeps me out, too. But we shouldn’t rush to condemn this Band-Aid because of unfounded speculation about how it could be misused. I wouldn’t be shocked if what critics foresee DID happen: the desire of misogynists to get away with misogyny is infinite. But for now, we have a halfway decent Band-Aid.
At 62, I have never been groped, even though I have ridden NY subways since I was 12. Possibly because I have 5 younger brothers, I have a look that threatens to turn men into stone. I would fight back; I would never just take it.
When my second daughter was 4, her father took her and her older sister downtown on the subway. Her dad was trying to discourage Michelle from running around the subway pole. She screamed at the top of her lungs: “get your hands off me.” Chris said it was the single most embarrassing moment of his life. I was proud that at 4, she knew exactly how to handle any unwelcome touches.
unree,
The sources from which we would expect to see the “she’s asking for it” effect are responding police officers and the courts.
Imagine the sexual battery trial where the defense lawyer says “The ladies-only cart was literally seven feet away. The short-skirted *air quotes* victim SURELY would have taken the short walk if she didn’t want to be vaginally fisted by a complete stranger!”
I was just on a jury involving a rape (civil trial against a bar for negligent security practices), and this sort of argument would have had serious appeal to several of my fellow jurors. I had to threaten to hang the jury indefinitely to get her anything, and the only choice they could latch onto in order to blame her was her choice to go to the bar (on ladies night!) in the first place.
Jesus, Dennis. Few things make me hate people more than the victim-blaming bullshit after a rape. It’s so transparent.
Way to blame the victim! Since you’ve not actually ever been in the situation, maybe you should withhold judgment. I was groped on the subway once during rush hour. It was not because I am weak, or didn’t have the right expression on my face. It was because I had the misfortune to stand next to a groper.
I get harassed a lot when I’m walking (guys yelling, mostly, some trailing on occasion). I don’t think it’s that I’m insufficiently fuck you about it—I am kind of alarmingly brave about throwing the finger—but because I walk on a lot of under-crowded sidewalks and seem available for being harassed. I’ve ridden the subways in NYC and other places like it, and it seems that there’s usually the right amount of people to stop the groping. A groper needs to be either completely alone with your or in conditions so crowded that everyone’s heads are up and they don’t see it happen. Rush hour can be bad for crowds, but mostly it seems that there’s enough people to bear witness but not so many that they can’t see it happen.
However, I’m aware the NYC has a flashing problem. Which makes sense—flashing is what you do if you can’t get close enough to grope someone. Flashers tend to target very young women, because the younger the woman, the more likely you’ll get the deer in headlights response.
I tip my hat to whoever invented the cameraphone. Oppression in a democracy works undercover. From cops harassing kids to men sexually assaulting women, a great deal of oppression functions by having the incident happen outside of the realm of supervision with the knowledge that the person of higher social status will be believed. But if the victim has a cameraphone….well, things change. As we’ve seen with the taser exposings and flashers getting their pictures taken on the subway.
“The men who don’t grope are only as guilty as the women who allow it to happen in front of them.”
I disagree. Because of the uneven, gender-based arrangement of power, men are more guilty if they witness a groping and do nothing about it than if a woman does. Women has realistic fears of the unwanted attention being turned on her that men don’t have. Men also have more of a chance of influencing the gendered behavior of other men than women do.
Men have realistic fears of that, too. What do you think happens to a man that interferes with sexist behavior? His manhood is called into question and, if the men he is calling out have a physical or numerical advantage, he is in as much physical danger as a woman who resists.
I live in Cairo, and street harassment and groping are a huge problem. It’s not only directed at western or foreign women, but can be directed at any woman who is not with her husband or male relative (ie a whore to some men here). It’s not so prevalent in touristy and ex-pat areas, and I’ve hardly dealt with this even though I ride the metro daily. But some friends of mine have.
One friend told me that when she walks home (she doesn’t live in an expat area), inevitably a man will follow her calling her “whore” and “slut” and lots of other terrible things in Arabic. Another friend told me that when she was in school and broke a few years ago, she had to take the public bus, and men would slide their hands between the gap between the seat and the backrest to grope her. Some men will touch women anywhere they can. Another woman I know just moved back to the US from here because she said she felt like she could never leave her apartment without getting groped.
If you hit someone or move their hand, you might get hit back too.
The metro here does have women’s only cars. That’s where I ride. Usually I only go into the integrated cars with my husband, but a few times I picked the wrong car. There are women without husbands on those cars and it doesn’t seem to be an issue. One time the train was packed and I was one of the only women in the entire car, and the men were respectful and gave me room. I still ride the women’s car, though. I get tired of all the stares. I get them on the women’s car too, but I don’t mind women staring at me as much.
The irony, though, is that street crime is really low here. And there are very few strangers rapes. A woman might get harassed as she walks down the street, but she won’t get mugged or raped. Small consolation.
I’ve heard this about Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the like, but I have a very hard time believing it. Can victims report crimes without retaliation or shaming? Does the government have any incentive to underreport statistics?
I share Mustella’s and Dennis’s concerns. I suppose the only problem with a Band-Aid is if people in power decide that its presence means that nothing needs to be done about the underlying problem. They can consider it a “cure”, that is, if the problem, to them, is women “trespassing” in “men’s” territory. If they are consistently reminded that the problem is sexism, and that women’s-only buses are a stop-gap to reduce harm while everyone tackles sexism itself, it looks like a reasonable idea to me.
Well, that’s all well and good to say if it’s never actually happened to you. I used to think I’d fight back, but then I had a frotteur sidle up to me and start grinding his crotch into my side. I didn’t even realize what he was doing at first, since I was standing there reading. Once I did realize, it took me by surprise, because I had been standing there minding my own business. Instead of putting up some huge fight, I just stepped away.
And putting up a big fight wouldn’t have helped me the next time I was targeted by a harasser on the subway, since the guy ignored my getting up and moving and telling him to get the fuck away from me. He even got off at my stop and followed me home, staying right on my shoulder even as I tried to lose him. It was late at night, and I had to walk through some very isolated places to get to my apartment because one of the entrances was closed. Should I have hit him? Because had I done that, and he had gotten pissed off, he could have beaten my ass out in the middle of nowhere, and nobody would have heard me calling for help. As it was, I waited until I was in my vestibule before shoving him as hard as I could and getting a locked door between us.
To the extent I’ve had other problems on the subway or in stations, it’s been when there’s nobody else around except for me and some guy who wants to show me his cock, or tell me about his cock. But this has subsided since I’ve gotten older. Plus, I try not to be alone on the subway late at night, and I avoid packed rush-hour trains just because I hate that level of crowdedness.
Seems to me the ideal solution is a mens-only car. If they can’t behave like civilized creatures, then lock THEM into a small box and leave them there until they can.
Somehow, there tend to be a fair number of crazy people on public transportation, although for some reason the main forms of easily publicly noticed crazy I’ve seen have been racism.
Once, it was an obese white guy yelling at a black guy. I only heard a bit of it for a few seconds before the train got to stop and they both left the train, but he was saying something like “I don’t know you, but I know your kind: lazy, uneducated, uncultured…”
On a bus, there was a black guy who was verbally harassing another black guy for… dressing too black, it seemed like? He was attacking him in rather racial terms, I’ll say.
On another train, there was a black guy who was just sort of ranting. He covered a variety of issues (he seemed to be a chess aficionado), but there were some parts where he was talking about white people as devils or somesuch. He might have said a bit about Jews too, but I can’t remember exactly.
Of course, groping is much harder for a third party to notice than crazy ranting.
Grammar said, “I’ve heard this about Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the like, but I have a very hard time believing it. Can victims report crimes without retaliation or shaming? Does the government have any incentive to underreport statistics?”
I think the government probably does underreport statistics (for example, according to them, no one in Egypt is HIV+). However, this is also common knowledge amongst people who live here. I am around Egyptians and expats daily, the kind of folks who would be targeted for muggings and the like, and it just doesn’t really happen.
There is some gang violence, which is in part due to large numbers of Sudanese refugees whom the Egyptians won’t allow in local schools (even though they’re supposed to because of an agreement with Sudan). But again, this is stuff I’ve read about happening, but I haven’t actually talked to anyone who has experienced it. Unlike the street harassment.
By the way, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia is much the same way (this is not an Arabic/Muslim phenomenon): very little street crime.
I traveled recently to London from Cairo, and I found myself remembering that I needed to have my city instincts on in London, whereas in Cairo, it’s pretty safe, even at night.
Perhaps it’s simply more profitable to fleece tourists than to mug them.
We men have to face down the groping men and refuse to allow it to happen, not because of some archaic sense of chivalry or the sense that women need protecting because they’re too weak to handle it on their own, but simply because the gropers are making the gender look bad.
Wow. What a weird false trichotomy. What’s your understanding of why women face down men who grope other women, then? Sure doesn’t fit into any of those categories.
If you see a woman punch a strange woman in the face, will you leave the situation alone, because hey, she’s not making your gender look bad? This is a terrible rationale for acting like a brave, decent citizen, which is an obligation for all of us. Decency responsibility, and compassion have nothing to do with chivalry. Stand up for women being harassed for the same reason we women do it; not for weird gender-specific reasons of your own, to protect Manhood’s reputation. That’s every bit as bad as chivalry and just as self-interested.
From the related discussion over at feministing:
mathgoddess pointed out segregation might not be an appropriate term to be using here. “To me, segregation implies that women’s choices are restricted. Now, it seems their options have expanded: they can choose to ride coed buses and risk being harassed, or they can choose the ladies-only buses.”
Peacenik reframed the but-it’s-unfairly-stereotyping-teh-menz argument: “In this program there is still a bus that men can ride free from worry of assualt, and now there is a bus that women can also use and have a similar sense of security. Ideally that would be the same bus, but clearly that wasn’t working.”
leah then suggested posting (female) security officers on all buses as an alternative. This would be a clear public acknowledgement that groping is a crime (misdemeanor sexual assault, in fact.) It would also serve as a deterrent, and put the power back into the hands of women.
As long as men have disproportionate power (as they always do under patriarchy) and insist on terrorizing women, “good” men will have to step up to the plate and speak out against perps when they witness an assault. Why should this be expected of “good” men and not of women? Because of the power differential. The assholes that assault women don’t see us as human, and will take every opportunity to wield their male privilege and power (physical and social) as a weapon against us. If another woman stands up for the victim, the perp is likely to escalate the violence, because he has to teach us to fear him in order to maintain his power over us. If another man stands up to the perp, the power situation is different. The perp will experience a challenge to his power, but it’s not coming from a dehumanized potential victim - it’s coming from another person. That’s the difference.
It is time we start calling this epidemic of sexual harassment and assault what it is: male terrorism. Men have created this hostile environment for us, and it is their responsibility to remedy that.
From the related discussion over at feministing:
mathgoddess pointed out segregation might not be an appropriate term to be using here. “To me, segregation implies that women’s choices are restricted. Now, it seems their options have expanded: they can choose to ride coed buses and risk being harassed, or they can choose the ladies-only buses.”
Peacenik reframed the but-it’s-unfairly-stereotyping-teh-menz argument: “In this program there is still a bus that men can ride free from worry of assualt, and now there is a bus that women can also use and have a similar sense of security. Ideally that would be the same bus, but clearly that wasn’t working.”
leah then suggested posting (female) security officers on all buses as an alternative. This would be a clear public acknowledgement that groping is a crime (misdemeanor sexual assault, in fact.) It would also serve as a deterrent, and put the power back into the hands of women.
As long as men have disproportionate power (as they always do under patriarchy) and insist on terrorizing women, “good” men will have to step up to the plate and speak out against perps when they witness an assault. Why should this be expected of “good” men and not of women? Because of the power differential. The assholes that assault women don’t see us as human, and will take every opportunity to wield their male privilege and power (physical and social) as a weapon against us. If another woman stands up for the victim, the perp is likely to escalate the violence, because he has to teach us to fear him in order to maintain his power over us. If another man stands up to the perp, the power situation is different. The perp will experience a challenge to his power, but it’s not coming from a dehumanized potential victim - it’s coming from another person. That’s the difference.
It is time we start calling this epidemic of sexual harassment and assault what it is: male terrorism. Men have created this hostile environment for us, and it is their responsibility to remedy that.
How much of a self-absorbed asshole does one have to be to cry foul about this because it “unfairly lumps them in with harassers?”
This is not about teh menz. This is about protecting women. What do some of these whiners want women to do? Oh that’s right. Either don’t travel around the city or deal with the harassment and sexual assault so self-described “good guys” don’t feel uncomfortable.
Say what?!
These men don’t want to stand up to the harassers but don’t want women to have separate, safe busses. How convenient. If you are unwilling or afraid to stand up to harassing or groping men, then DO NOT complain when women want to get the fuck away from abuse. If you were truly upset about being “lumped in” with misogynist assholes, you’d take THEM to task, not the women who actually have to put up with routine violations.
I live in The Netherlands. A man groped a couple of women on a train recently. The incident made the national news. Guess that means gropers aren’t welcome here!
Ms. Four: I was an ex-pat in S America for ten years, and I can tell you that ex-pats often get a very unrealistic view of how much crime there is. Where I lived official crime stats were very low, and ex pats and wealthy nationals weren’t targeted. Conversations with a principle of a poor public high school and a rural doctor opened my eyes. There was a whole population of people whose daily struggle with violent and non-violent crime was being ignored. Once a woman dissapeared: the police said she must have run off with a man becasue she had been at a disco tech until the early hours and “liked men”. The fact that there was a police report at all was probably due to the fact that she was white. The same year a poor Indian woman’s bound and gagged body was found in the river and it was ruled a suicide. My point: ex-pats usually live in a rarfied circle, protected by their status, and may not have a good feel for what the normal women face in their host country.
I have never lived in Cairo, or Saudi Arabia or anywhere else but here in the US and in a small poorish country in S America, but I am cynical enough to think that a country where a men regularly follow women alone whispering “whore” is a country where a woman better watch out. Rich and foreign women actually are probably given a pass when there are plenty of poor women or even female relatives with no power who will make better victims.
Word, SarahMC.
@ Amanda “What do you think happens to a man that interferes with sexist behavior? His manhood is called into question and, if the men he is calling out have a physical or numerical advantage, he is in as much physical danger as a woman who resists.”
Men have a choice to incur that risk; women do not. Men created this hostile environment to maintain male power, and they are the only ones who have the power to change that arrangement. Sure, it’s safer and more convenient for a man to say nothing when they witness a sexual assault - individually, and in the short term, that is. But that course of action serves to support the status quo, where male terrorism keeps women living in fear, and “good” men do nothing to stop it.
Men, follow your conscience.
@sophonisba “If you see a woman punch a strange woman in the face, will you leave the situation alone, because hey, she’s not making your gender look bad?”
Female-on-female assault does not serve to keep women living in fear and subservience to other women. It’s not a hate crime like “groping” is. What we are talking about is a system of oppression that is upheld each and every time a man sexually assaults a women and is allowed to get away with it. Men who look the other way are tacitly condoning male terrorism, a system which bestows privilege and power upon them and benefits them whether or not they “feel bad” when they see such an assault occur. It is mens’ responsibility to use that power to oppose male terrorism whenever they see it (within reason - I expect people to use their judgment in individual situations.)
How much of a self-absorbed asshole does one have to be to cry foul about this because it “unfairly lumps them in with harassers?”
I suspect men who don’t harass don’t whine about this because they’re not concerned about it in any realistic way. Which is to say, a guy who says he’s being lumped in with the harassers is grabbing for straws to defend a situation that makes it easy for him to grope if he chooses. I mean, someone has to be doing it. The likelihood that the men who make a point of making the internets uncomfortable for women are probably the same dudes who make the subway uncomfortable for women.
Women has realistic fears of the unwanted attention being turned on her that men don’t have.
That seems doubtful - confronted with a public exposure, the groper is going to switch to denial rather than harrass someone else in public. The fear of a loud fuss is going to deter these people.
Weird - I’ve just realised I’ve been travelling on public transport most of my life, and I’ve never witnessed a groping. I suspect Kiwi women would have no problem making a public fuss about it, but I’ve never raised it with my female friends.
Some of them it will deter, others it will spur to violence because, in their minds, they are victims of aggression by the woman who has failed to recognize their god-given right to cop a feel. And the person making a fuss can never know whether the rest of the people watching the act will react with support or with ostracism. To plenty of outsiders, everything was going along fine until that loud screaming person disturbed everyone by making a fuss.
Derrp, I reject the idea that men actively chose the patriarchy. Men are human beings, individuals, and were born and die like the rest of us. They inherited the system as surely as we did. If we refuse to be realistic about the pressures on men to conform, then we won’t get very far in creating solutions.
Some of them it will deter, others it will spur to violence because, in their minds, they are victims of aggression by the woman who has failed to recognize their god-given right to cop a feel.
Okay, I suspect that we’re dealing with my limited cultural experience here.
PR, for reasons of sexism and of the public peace, a woman who makes a fuss tends to be treated as more of a problem to be solved by shaming than a man who quietly gropes. You may not have seen it because it’s uncommon where you live (I’ve never been groped in public transportation, unlike restaurants and bars), but it’s also worth noting that gropers try to do it where they won’t be seen. To make it very clear, harassers work mainly by trying to create the sense that the interaction was unwitnessed and intimate—some seem like they’re almost acting like it’s his and his victim’s little secret—in part because the unwitnessed disturbance is not going to get the hostile stares unlike the witnessed one (a woman flailing to get the man off her or yelling).
I haven’t been groped in a long time, but I remember that when it would happen, the guys would often wink or giggle at the private joke. What can you do? A tree falls in the forest, etc. There’s a reason that rape apologists focus on the notion that the victim’s testimony is not reasonable evidence.
Derrp, I reject the idea that men actively chose the patriarchy. Men are human beings, individuals, and were born and die like the rest of us. They inherited the system as surely as we did. If we refuse to be realistic about the pressures on men to conform, then we won’t get very far in creating solutions.
But if we go around telling men that patriarchy isn’t their fault and it oppresses men too and we understand how it’s just so hard and dangerous to not go along with it, we won’t get very far either. And given that men have a vested interest in shirking responsibility for doing anything, I’d rather err on the side of assigning too much blame.
(Also, I’d like to recognize this as an important day: it’s the first time I’ve gotten the captcha to let my comment through on the first try.)
To make it very clear, harassers work mainly by trying to create the sense that the interaction was unwitnessed and intimate—some seem like they’re almost acting like it’s his and his victim’s little secret—in part because the unwitnessed disturbance is not going to get the hostile stares unlike the witnessed one (a woman flailing to get the man off her or yelling).
Of course. It’s the same dynamic as child molesting - you can put it down to a combination of wanting to exercise power, or to some twisted belief in a “wanted” intimacy, or both (*), but in either case a confrontation with public exposure would quickly put the lie to the fantasy.
(I’ve never been groped in public transportation, unlike restaurants and bars),
Point. I don’t spend too much time in bars. I might have to bring it up with some friends tonight and see what their experience is.
PR, for reasons of sexism and of the public peace, a woman who makes a fuss tends to be treated as more of a problem to be solved by shaming than a man who quietly gropes.
The comments on this thread so far suggest this differs by culture, which, of course, makes it a suitable topic for feminist action. Some impressions from women who have spent time in Europe might be useful here.
(*) You haven’t seen fucked up until you’ve read stuff from pedophiles justifying themselves without interruption.
Bon Appetit already posted about the Tokyo metro rail systems, so I won’t go into describing the rarity of the cars again (for 2 hours in morning rush hour, one car out of 15!). I live in the Tokyo region as well but haven’t used the cars, for the aforementioned reasons.
However, I was recently in Osaka and when I took the subway there, I realized that I was standing to wait for the women-only car and that it was not limited to rush-hour. Finally! I was curious to see what it would be like to ride in that car, so my mom and I used it.
My first observation was that there was a single man in the car, apparently not paying attention to the PINK CAR with WOMEN ONLY written on it and signs all over the place. But there he was text messaging away and ignoring others. The women in the car gave him dirty looks but otherwise ignored him too.
My reaction to being in that car was really culturally bound to where I am from, which is the US. When I am in the US, I live in a city area and usually walk and bus everywhere. I get harrassed verbally over 50% of the time that I walk out of my house, by men of all ages and races. I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I moved back to Japan in September of 2007 because it meant a break from this constant tension, crossing the street when I saw a dude coming, not out of fear but out of knowing the odds that he was going to get in my face in some way.
Street harrassment is not a problem here, although we have other problems (groping being only one). There are different cultural ways in which harrassment of women in public is acceptable, but hollering at them isn’t one.
Even though that is the case, and I haven’t had to put up with a dude yelling something at me in a long time, what I felt in the women only car was this: relief. I suddenly felt like maybe I could let my guard down, like I could relax. I didn’t expect to feel this palpable relief and comfort that washed over me, in broad daylight, even though there are no hollering guys to sequester myself away from here. I wonder how long it would take for that automatic feeling of total relief to go away when in a women-only space, even if from today onward I was never harrassed on the street again? I wonder if I could die without carrying around the tension I need in order to feel relief in the woman-only section of the train?
I can understand the reaction that says that women-only spaces in public are not really helping to fix the larger problem. I agree with that. But the larger problem is not just groping, it’s not just street harrassment - it’s the system that tells men that they can, or even that they should or have to, consider women to be available to them, that they are entitled to women in public. (or private for that matter) In the meantime I wouldn’t begrudge any woman the psychological comfort that I felt in that space.
Female-on-female assault does not serve to keep women living in fear and subservience to other women…What we are talking about is
“We” are talking about more than one thing, in fact. The person I was responding to did not say that he felt personally obliged to do something when he saw male-on-female groping occur because it’s a hate crime as well as a personal assault. That wouldn’t be a problem.
He said, rather, that men should be particularly responsive, not because men are generally the perpetrators and the passive enablers of such acts, but because the high rate of these acts makes other men look bad. This is a an unpleasant position, and the logical conclusion of it is that the victimization of a woman doesn’t matter unless men’s images are also at stake. I quite agree that male-on-female assault often fits the definition of a hate crime. This doesn’t have much of anything to do with what your reaction should be, in the moment, to seeing someone attacked and humiliated. You don’t calculate whether or not people will think badly of you as a member of the oppressor class as a factor in whether or not you help out. At least, you shouldn’t.
The equation of ordinary human compassion, such as women show to other women every day, with “chivalry” to be rejected, was pretty nasty as well.
Mali,
Thanks for the detailed account of the pink cars in Japan. Is there any effort that you can see to stop (or at least acknowledge the problem of) harassment and groping on regular trains, or do you think that the attitude is more that the “band-aid” is addressing the underlying problem? Are there any calls to increase the number or frequency of pink cars?
If segregated b uses are going to work, they should be all the time and they should inconvenience men.
Seriously. If men have to wait for the next train or two and see their commute time increase b/c some assholes can’t keep their hands to themselves, they would be more likely to smack those assholes for creating the shortage.
By having a limited # of cars at inconvenient times (like the Tokyo example) it implies that women need to inconvenience themselves if they want to go to work unmolested, and that groping is SOP.
“If she didn’t want to be groped, she would have gotten up 2 hours earlier and taken the WO bus.” Which serves to encourage groping and limit the freedom of movement of the women.
Yes, I understand the idea is to help women, but I see this degrading to limiting their movement very quickly. It doesn’t matter if something is done for a good reason, if the patriarchy can abuse it to limit women’s power, it will.
re: difference in responsibility and consequences of men vs. women to speak out against groping and other forms of sexual harassment:
As I angrily snapped back at my brother once….(less coherently, of course)….
Men may risk harm if they speak up about groping and the like, but they have the option of ignoring it. For women, it’s the choice between being bullied in silence or speaking up and risk being bullied even more.
We men all have a responsibility to try to end groping and other forms of sexual harassment, if only for the freedom of our sisters, wives, daughters, friends.
Elena, you missed my point. Street harassment and groping is a HUGE issue in Cairo, directed at ALL women, expats, Egyptians, western, white, black, brown, etc. The women whose experiences I shared were all western, fair-skinned women. As westerners, they were the targets as much as any woman without a male relative.
But mugging and stranger rape are not huge issue. There is little street violence (it happens occasionally and is reported in the local press). Women can walk alone in the evening and not fear for their wallets.
I ride the metro daily and am often the only non-Egyptian on the women’s car. My life is sheltered to some extent, but please don’t presume I’m not around ordinary Egyptians, who are also some of my closest colleagues here.
For what it’s worth, I live in Yokohama, and I commute into Tokyo every morning on a train that is friggin’ packed with people. I’m talking packed so tight that I’ve nearly passed out a couple of times from poor ventilation. I’ve also been groped, and as a large guy (6′3″-275lbs) I was really shocked that someone had the guts to do it, even in a tightly packed train, which brings me to my point. Even thought I immediately turned around to see who had grabbed my ass, I had no idea who had done it because there was no evidence that would identify my groper. At least in my experience, this happened because the over crowded condition of the train already puts us in intimate physical contact (I’m talking about bruises on my hip from a wristwatch being smashed against it for a 45 minute train ride) and because anonymity is virtually guaranteed when you can hardly turn around, let alone at speed enough to catch someone in the act. I have never seen groping happening to someone else during rush hour, but that is because you can’t see anything beyond the person you’re pressing up against. Even as a pretty tall person (for Japan anyway) all I can ever see is the tops of heads. I’d love to stop that kind of crap from happening, but the fact is, I have no idea whether anyone has ever been groped in my immediate vicinity, since I’ve never been able to see it. Since no one says anything, you just ride your ride and hope that everyone is ok, and that if they weren’t, they’d say something.
We have at least one, but I think there are actually two (I don’t really know for sure, since I’m not allowed to ride in them lol) women only cars that run from the first train (5:00 AM-ish) until 10:00 AM. By 10, things have usually calmed down, and the cars have only a fraction of the people riding them. It would be far far more difficult to grope with impunity after the traffic thins out. I’m in favor of these cars, but I think riding a non-women’s car is in no way ‘asking for it’. If you’ve ridden rush hour traffic from out here in the burbs, you’d understand. It’s hard enough just to get space on a train at all, let alone on a particular car. Expecting all of the women who didn’t ‘want to be groped’ to be on one or two cars on any given train during rush hour is patently ridiculous. You get on where you can, when you can.
Of course it’s easy to see a groper using that as justification, that a woman riding in a non woman’s car ‘wants it’, but in my discussions with my female friends here, that’s never come up as a concern. Riding rush hour traffic is generally unpleasant anyway, and most discussions about it revolve around things like ‘that damn woman standing on my foot with her spike heel over and over,’ or ‘the teenager with rancid breath who sneezed into my hair repeatedly at a range of 4 inches’ rather than fear of potential groping.
The women only rule starts up again later at night, around when people start coming home from the bars. As another poster stated, older generation Japanese businessmen with a head full of alcohol can get grabby, and so again, having these cars is probably a good idea. Of course there’s the disclaimer that alcohol is no excuse and so on, but that’s the reality of the situation here. After some of the bars I’ve been in in Shibuya and Shinjuku, I’d imagine a guy-free zone at the end of the night might be kind of a relief.
For what it’s worth, I live in Yokohama, and I commute into Tokyo every morning on a train that is friggin’ packed with people. I’m talking packed so tight that I’ve nearly passed out a couple of times from poor ventilation. I’ve also been groped, and as a large guy (6′3″-275lbs) I was really shocked that someone had the guts to do it, even in a tightly packed train, which brings me to my point. Even thought I immediately turned around to see who had grabbed my ass, I had no idea who had done it because there was no evidence that would identify my groper. At least in my experience, this happened because the over crowded condition of the train already puts us in intimate physical contact (I’m talking about bruises on my hip from a wristwatch being smashed against it for a 45 minute train ride) and because anonymity is virtually guaranteed when you can hardly turn around, let alone at speed enough to catch someone in the act. I have never seen groping happening to someone else during rush hour, but that is because you can’t see anything beyond the person you’re pressing up against. Even as a pretty tall person (for Japan anyway) all I can ever see is the tops of heads. I’d love to stop that kind of crap from happening, but the fact is, I have no idea whether anyone has ever been groped in my immediate vicinity, since I’ve never been able to see it. I would think this would make groping a near impossibility to successfully prosecute, at least in the form that it happened to me. Since no one says anything, you just ride your ride and hope that everyone is ok, and that if they weren’t, they’d say something.
We have at least one, but I think there are actually two (I don’t really know for sure, since I’m not allowed to ride in them lol) women only cars that run from the first train (5:00 AM-ish) until 10:00 AM. By 10, things have usually calmed down, and the cars have only a fraction of the people riding them. It would be far far more difficult to grope with impunity after the traffic thins out. I’m in favor of these cars, but I think riding a non-women’s car is in no way ‘asking for it’. If you’ve ridden rush hour traffic from out here in the burbs, you’d understand. It’s hard enough just to get space on a train at all, let alone on a particular car. Expecting all of the women who didn’t ‘want to be groped’ to be on one or two cars on any given train during rush hour is patently ridiculous. You get on where you can, when you can.
Of course it’s easy to see a groper using that as justification, that a woman riding in a non woman’s car ‘wants it’, but in my discussions with my female friends here, that’s never come up as a concern. Riding rush hour traffic is generally unpleasant anyway, and most discussions about it revolve around things like ‘that damn woman standing on my foot with her spike heel over and over,’ or ‘the teenager with rancid breath who sneezed into my hair repeatedly at a range of 4 inches’ rather than fear of potential groping.
The women only rule starts up again later at night, around when people start coming home from the bars. As another poster stated, older generation Japanese businessmen with a head full of alcohol can get grabby, and so again, having these cars is probably a good idea. Of course there’s the disclaimer that alcohol is no excuse and so on, but that’s the reality of the situation here. After some of the bars I’ve been in in Shibuya and Shinjuku, I’d imagine a guy-free zone at the end of the night might be kind of a relief.
derrp, come on.
i’m 5′9″ and 160 pounds of faggy-looking twentysomething. i’m not necessarily sure i have the choice to incur that risk - it’s already there.
i just read the jackson katz book The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and and How All Men Can Help. it’s difficult for me because i read the part about bystanders and i’m like “hey, that’s usually me”. i realize i’m not supposed to just let shit pass - but it’s awfully difficult to step up to people who are usually bigger and older than you when you don’t really feel like a full-fledged member of the empowered group anyway.
(nods) True. Privilege isn’t exactly equally distributed.
(And while I know you weren’t addressing me…) To clarify, the brother I originally said that too is certainly more imposing than I am.
Hey, a little shameless self-promotion (sorry). Read my take on this whole thing here.
I lived briefly in Mexico City, and I can attest to the incredibly overcrowded conditions on the public transportation. People hang onto the door frames of buses, and are squashed so tightly together on the Metro that they can’t move. I remember being literally expelled at one Metro stop–not mine–because the press of exiting people behind me left me no choice but to exit as well. I oh, adding more cars and buses?was lucky enough to not get groped, but I can imagine how easy it would be for a groper to do it and get away with it in that situation. You can’t even turn around, much less identify the asshole.
I guess it’s just cheaper to turn some cars into “women only” cars, as opposed to doing something to relieve the overcrowded conditions or working to make groping unacceptable.
Hmm, how did that get screwed up? Should say “I was lucky enough to not get groped.”
I get harassed a lot when I’m walking (guys yelling, mostly, some trailing on occasion).
Jeezus Amanda…I’m still remembering the LGM discussion where I related my own frightening experiences and they were dismissed by a couple of individuals as rare…outliers…as in: just get over it.
I’m not a big fan of segregation…but fuck me, when I can get “trailed” and verbally harrassed pushing a goddam stroller with my infant son and am, 30 years later, essentially told to “quit overreacting”, I can do segregation.
i’m not sure i understand why we have “normal” cars and “women-only” cars. why not “men-only” and “women-only”? i’m normally not a proponent of separate but equal, but i think when talking about buses and metros, it’s pretty a simple solution.
The argument against ‘Band-Aid’ type solutions has always seemed a weird one to me. Waiting for vast social changes isn’t much help to people in the here and now. Similar arguments tend to be made against Affirmative Action.
I’m not so sure about women-only cars, however. It does seem as though it’s abdicating peoples’ responsibility not to, y’know, grope women. “Just go ride the women’s car” is the too-easy response.
I agree with those above who stated perhaps the necessity is for a “men-only” train since it appears the problem lies not with the women (of course, we all know the women just being there causes the men to get all out of control - but if they can’t control themselves, they should be separated out, if you’re going to separate someone from the rest of the population).
As far as being groped, I have lived in large cities but none with any public transportation worth speaking of. The only instances I have of being groped, etc, happened in bars or concerts. In every instance, I was able to determine the groper (by the leer or laugh), and he was then treated to a bloody nose, fat lip, or sprained/broken finger. As I look back, my temper could have gotten me into much worse situations…but I think perhaps the fact that I used to go into “rages” when angered made the men think I was just crazy enough to REALLY hurt them, and they left me alone after that.
Phoenician in a time of Romans, I don’t know if you spoke to your friends and if they had anything to say about harrassment, but I live in Wellington (as I think you do) and I’ve been harrassed plenty by men here. This anywhere from getting hollered at as I walk home from the clubs at night (”hey baby, you got a nice ass etc.” and then, when I don’t respond, out comes “you stuck up c***, f*ck you you b*tch etc. - I’m writing this from work, otherwise I’d type it out in full) all the way through to attempted fingerings in bars and a guy showing me his piece in the brightly lit Manners Mall KFC. And I’m hardly what would be considered an easy target based on how I look (ie. I’m not short and I’ve got punky hair and am not shy-seeming, which are things that these assholes tend to target, as I understand).
So, yeah, it all happens here in NZ too. Although when I was in NYC recently I did notice there was a lot more street catcalling and that particular type thing I haven’t experienced as much except when walking home at night.
Actually, WTF, having walked home wondering about this I have no idea why I said “attempted fingering” in the last post because there was nothing “attempted” about it. I haven’t thought about it in a few years now but I guess maybe there’s some “blame the victim” stuff going on in my own mind there. Because that dirty piece of work totally did in fact put his fingers where they were most certainly not welcome. Ugh. And I was only about 18/19 and he was much older.
God I’m bitter.
“Walking home at night”
Right up there with “how do I protect my baby boy if these assholes decide to follow up.”
I hate this. I hate the fact that the world-at-large is contemptuous of the impact of street/physical harassment. I hate that the very real fear is dismissed as overreaction. I hate the reality that the very female presence in the public arena is sufficient justification for threatening abuse.
In my worser moments, I hate my lack of physical stature and clear physical limitations, and in my better moments, I’m still dead nuts on…down at the target berm.
I hate this. My response is CCW, and before ya’ll pile on…plz remember that I didn’t pick the fight, and it does not appear that the issue will be addressed by anyone other than bloggers anytime soon.
Ugh, tell me about it ahunt; it drives me nuts. These sleazes say something offensive when you really don’t want a light shone into their sexually explicit little thoughts and then give you a whole heaping of abuse when you ignore them, because how dare you not be oh so very complimented when they treat you like a walking cunt. The worst is that when I’m walking home alone in the early hours of the morning on the biggest drinking night of the week (I live in town so the walk where I’m actually away from the crowds is around 5 mins max), I really don’t feel safe enough yelling back and getting in their faces like I really want to, although occasionally I’ll fling back a “fuck you” if I’m able.
When I was in NYC I got right up in a guy’s face who made a lewd comment to my sister, in part because it was the middle of the afternoon and we were in a crowd outside of the Letterman show, and it was SO SATISFYING. The little shit obviously hadn’t been called out on it much before, judging by his pathetic attempts at comebacks and because I felt safe enough to have a go at him I really got to let loose and swear up a storm. I suspect he’ll be a bit less likely to do it again, but these other pieces of shit will keep on cowardly doing it when you’re in an already intimidating situation. As for the clubs, let me just say that I there are some ways in which being gay is a blessing, and one of them is rarely stepping foot in straight bars.
Phoenician -
I got groped on a bus back when I lived in Christchurch, NZ. Guy pinned me against the seat and got his hands all over me. The thing is, I’m tall, muscled, and a very assertive woman … I collapsed into a meek wee thing, terrified out of my mind, and I was bigger than the guy. I didn’t admit it to anyone, until I broke down at work and got taken to the police station by coworkers (the cops got the guy, and they were bloody awesome about it, I have to say).
Here in Chicago I’ve been groped a couple times on public trans (specifically the subway - the EL). Now I’m more inclined to do something about it, and I’ve had one guy virtually run off the train as I threatened him with bodily harm, and the other women around us realised he was doing something and started moving towards him too.
But back in NZ I used to get street-harassed too. There was one time I was walking across my campus and a bunch of workers doing construction work made some really nasty sexual comments, and so after dropping my bag off in my office I went to complain at the departmental office. Both of the staff there (older women) basically told me that I should just shut up and enjoy it, as soon I wouldn’t get comments anymore.
I was so stunned I left the office without saying anything.
I must admit I am kinda conflicted about band-aid solutions like this. On the one hand, as an activist feminist I hate this idea, for the reasons Amanda brings up. But on the other hand, the idea of a women-only train would be a wonderful relief of being able to drop my guard a tad.
Phoenician in a time of Romans, I don’t know if you spoke to your friends and if they had anything to say about harrassment, but I live in Wellington (as I think you do) and I’ve been harrassed plenty by men here. This anywhere from getting hollered at as I walk home from the clubs at night (”hey baby, you got a nice ass etc.” and then, when I don’t respond, out comes “you stuck up c***, f*ck you you b*tch etc. - I’m writing this from work, otherwise I’d type it out in full) all the way through to attempted fingerings in bars and a guy showing me his piece in the brightly lit Manners Mall KFC.
Yeah, the one I spoke to mentioned the occasional harassment on public transport, and I recall some of the stories about the way Manners Mall has gone downhill.
*sigh*.
I hope (Northern) Europe is a bit more civilized.
Again *sigh*. Another friend (mid 20s, quite attractive, straight) has commented that she’s not been harassed on the streets or public transport, but does have to deal with it in bars a lot. And she’s more concerned with racial harassment, being Asian.
I love my country; I’m just a bit more disappointed in it now.
Phoenician -
Yeah, that’s why a lot of my straight female friends loved coming with us lesbians to gay bars, because having the only men in the bar be gay meant they could have a fun night without all the crap they would get from being at a straight bar (course, they’d also be hit on by queer girls, but that wasn’t like the crap they’d get otherwise).
I definitely noticed the difference between straight bars and gay bars myself because I’m femme. Course, kiwi guys are a bit more likely to accept a “piss off!” reaction, but they still wouldn’t be that much better.
From my experiences in New York, bystanders almost always respond with ostracism, especially men. “OMG! It’s a hysterical woman! Clearly she’s the one at fault or else she wouldn’t be making such a fuss.”
In fact, many of my friends and I experienced harassment or groping where we didn’t say anything and a bystander noticed what happened. In all of those cases, the bystander (always a man) treated us as though we were at fault.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Sarah in Chicago, agreed on that. I’m femme too and can pass easily for straight, and straight bars are typically horrid for harrassment. Although, believe it or not, I also got repeatedly harrassed in a gay bar by a gay man who wanted me in a three way with his boyfriend. God lord, are no men safe (of course most of my close friends are gay men, but you get the point)?
I do want to make it clear that although the examples I used mostly revolved around clubbing, I’ve experienced varying degrees of harrassment in all different parts of the public sphere. I was stalked for a brief period by a neighbour I met because I used to go and sit on a bank at the edge of the cemetery opposite where I grew up in the late afternoon sun in summer. It took me quite a while to realise he had begun deliberately showing up when I was over there, but his agenda became abundantly clear when, despite knowing I was gay, he suggested I give him a blowjob. Then he’d go down on me, of course; quite the gentleman. That put a stop to my being able to go and partake of the innocent pleasures of some sun after work in what was, in effect, my nearest park. And, Wellington being the size it is, I ran into him around 5 years later while walking home alone one night at about 4am so now he knows where I’m living (thankfully they’re apartments so there’s security and he doesn’t know my number). You can imagine that just about made my night. What *does* one say to the creeper stalker who still recognised me 5 years on, 30 kilos lighter and with long brown rather than short pink hair?
What’s amazed me about responding to this post is just HOW MANY incidents start coming back to you when you sit down and recall them. I’m someone who considers myself to have got by relatively unscathed and I haven’t been raped so I’ve always felt “lucky”. But then you write it all out and start remembering even back to the dirty teacher you had when you were 6 who held you uncomfortably close on his lap (and was later thrown out of the school; I’m sure you can guess why) and you start realising just how fucked up society is for women when I feel like nothing’s ever happened to me and then, actually, I could relate incident after incident over the years.
Hekie -
I definitely hear you on realising one’s own personal history as a woman in our cultures. I too have been lucky enough to not be raped, but there is just so much out there in regards to harassment and abuse simply for ‘Existing While Female’, that it fades to a certain extent into being a part of our everyday lives.
But you have to think about the effect that has on you in being constantly exposed to it over a lifetime. It’s no wonder we internalise this shite and a wonder we retain any self-possession at all.
I will say one thing to Phoenician above though, in kiwiland’s defense I’ve experienced FAR more harassment here in the US than I ever did back home in NZ. We’re not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but Aotearoa is a LOT better than some other parts of the world.
On a personal note, damn but I miss Wellers! I came out as lesbian and later as femme (and femme-orientated) in Chch while being at Uni, and I got SO much shit from the lesbian ‘community’ there for being femme. Going up to Wellington (where I was actually born) I felt so much at ease being a femme … not to mention, I simply adore Wellington as a city. If I am ever to move back home to New Zealand, it will only be to Wellington (plus my baby sis lives there), so I just wanted to say “hey!” to another Wellington femme lesbian *smile*
Oh, I definitely recognise the effect, Sarah. It’s amazing how many hits you can take and still consider yourself to be “without a scratch” because you haven’t suffered the most serious of abuses/violence, but all of these knocks definitely take their toll.
I agree that NZ is better; I’ve travelled a fair bit and certainly things like street harrassment are worse in many of the places I’ve visited. I’m always wary of taking that line, though, because I hear it frequently from other Kiwis on everything from race relations to abuse of women, and it’s usually used by Kiwis to pat themselves on the back and ignore the problems (that whole “will no-one think of Muslim women forced into burkhas?” trope we see so often *eyeroll* ). That we treat Maori better than the Aussies treat Aboriginal people is hardly any proud thing, for example. Preaching to the choir, of course; it’s just a particular expression of opinion that bothers me unless you’re talking to someone you know for sure understands the whole context (eg. while Phoenician is feminist/pro-feminist/whatever, he’s still a man, and as such has no first hand knowledge of the harrassment NZ women get).
I love Wellington too and am a born-and-raised. We’re currently sans gay bar! A people without a home!
I really like the scene here. My major problem with the femme thing is that most people just assume I’m straight on the scene and there’s that implication I need to prove my credentials all the time. As with masculinity which must be ever proven, so too is the femme’s burden, *girly sigh* 