Harassment for Dummies: Why Cat Calling is Intimidating to Women

It's not always bad or scary, but it is always an unknown. Because we don't know who you are.

We know 99% of those incarcerated for rape are male, while only 1% are female. 

We know that.

We don't know you. We don't know if you're some nice guy trying to talk to us about our day, or some strange predator sizing up our body and figuring out how to fit it into a trash bag. Because, yeah, we watch Law and Order SVU, homie.  

We know on the news each night we see women with faces just like ours, crying in hospital rooms, talking about the randos on the street who's "attention" suddenly became an attack.

 

Men, you don't get that, and you probably never will. 

Because when you try to put yourself in our shoes you're picturing women (whom you've likely never felt physically overpowered by) innocently hitting on you, and let's be honest, that's flattering. You know at the end of the interaction, odds are, it's up to you whether you stay and engage or you go. You don't feel the need to politely make an excuse to get away as not to upset the person giving you said attention. You say no, and she hears no. Most women are not use to that. We're used to turning a guy down and him drunkenly persisting. We're use to being hunted... because that's what men, from a very young age are told to do. They strive for success... they take what they want... they're taught to be assertive and not give up. All good in the corporate world, but all very dangerous at a bar... during a party... on the street.

So to help you men understand, let's take women out of it altogether. 

Imagine you're on an island, and it's nothing but beefed up gay dudes. Everywhere you go they're making comments about your body, telling you to smile, walking beside you for 5 minutes at a time. Demanding you say "hello" to them or they call you a "frigid bitch." Because you are not beefed up, you're the weaker of the species on this island. You're expected to be more amicable. You should be delighted that these big, powerful men are taking interest in you. And if you're not? Well, who do you think you are? What a spoiled little twat. bitch. pussy. All female related insults. Interesting, huh?

Now let's say every night on the 'Gay Island News' you hear about another slim dude, just like you, being attacked by one of these beefcakes. Suddenly those little "compliments" don't seem so harmless anymore, do they? Suddenly they're not so innocent, and you don't feel nearly as safe.

Welcome to our world. I'm in no way saying all dudes are like this, but I am saying most of you have no effing clue what you're talking about when you comment on videos about cat calling. And rather then railing against the women trying to explain it to you, how about you thank your lucky stars that you don't get it. Learn empathy.

We, as females, don't have the luxury of figuring out which of you are predators and which of you are nice guys. So how about this. In the future, if you're a nice guy you come up to us and say the following...

"Hi, my name is ....." 

Odds are we'll have our guard up for a bit, but we'll also know a little bit about you. And we want to believe that separates you from the guy who just will hiss at us, grab at us, and ultimately treat us as nothing more than a piece of meat there to pleasure them either visually or physically, because you will have given us something. Your name. Next step, make it an honorable one. 

Now go forth and...

Don't tell me to stop talking about dudes sucking. Tell dudes to stop sucking.

Last week while sitting in an airport restaurant during a layover, a heavily intoxicated man approached me. He'd just gotten off a flight and was headed to another terminal when he spotted me sitting at the end of the bar by myself (near the entrance), and made a B-line straight toward me.

A whole incident ensued and afterwards I posted about it on our Facebook page. What made this all status update-worthy, however, was not the man's ultimate arrest for public intoxication (because, yes, he was that bad, which is why I left out some of the more obnoxious details about our time together), but how another woman who I can only assume had been traveling on the same flight as this man, never left me alone with him. I wanted to celebrate this awesome act of sisterhood. She stood back as not to escalate the situation, but kept eye contact with me the entire time letting me know something could potentially happen because of the aggressive state he was in.

And it did.

He had cozied up across the bar from me, loudly demanding I tell him he was cuter than my husband (who, yes, I felt the need to name drop early on, because sadly a woman not being interested is not enough these days... she has to be someone else's property in order to turn down a drunk dude's advances *eye roll*). Then finally at one point, only about a minute and a half into him sitting there, he placed both of his hands on my head. I did not feel in any immediate danger, but I know a big part of that was because I wasn't alone. I knew in that moment he had crossed a line and that the other woman was likely alerting airport security.

They came over and this gentleman was given multiple chances by security to go get a cup of coffee before getting on to his next flight, but he refused and just became more belligerent.

The most disturbing part of all of this though? Not the weird drunk airport arrest I watched go down, but rather the comments left on this very positive Facebook post I had written thanking that other woman for having my back.

I was accused of misandry, and overreacting because after all "nothing had happened"…yet. There was a lot of "well, if the tables had been turned and it was a woman who was the aggressor…"

So, fine internet commenter "Nickolai," let's turn the tables.

If you were suddenly approached by a woman twice your size, who was drunk, who had honed in on YOU, and there was no way of talking her out of the plans she had to take you home tonight, you might begin to feel one iota of what many of us feel all too often. But odds are you've never been in that situation. You've likely never felt physically intimidated by a woman, because if you had (as some men have), you would be more empathetic to what I went through and less accusatory of me for using this experience to- what did you say again? -oh yeah: drive up clicks-throughs. Because the ads. They're just everywhere on this blog, right? Remind me to explain to you how the Internet works in a future post.

I'm going to be very blunt. If you were looking for a politically correct "we're all equal" feminist page, you've come to the wrong place. I don't reside in that la-la land. I live in reality. I live in a world where women are overwhelmingly the victims of sexual assault, not men. I live in a world where I don't have the luxury of boycotting date-rape-detecting nail polish, because I have had GHB slipped into my drink before. I live in a world where I am not equally as strong as a 250 lb. drunk dude, and I won't act like I am. I live in a world where having another woman watch out for me, and sadly needing other women to watch out for me, is a just part of everyday life. It shouldn't have to be like this, but it is. And until dudes change that, I will not apologize for "continuing the narrative" that men are usually the aggressors in situations like this. Because it wasn't some second-hand anecdote; it was something that really happen to me last week. If you're pissed at anyone, be pissed at the dudes who are creating this stereotype, not the women who are merely acknowledging what's happening and speaking out against it.

I'm sorry, but watch the video below, and then be "man enough" to admit shit like this does. not. happen. to. you.