Streets Are Talking
NOTE: DRAFT
He’s tall, white, handsome, well-dressed, well-groomed, obviously well-educated. You’re walking on the street and he allows you to notice him first, then catches your eye, double-takes, and says — in an accent that is obviously well-travelled and well-bred — “I’m sorry to bother but — you look great in this outfit. Like, amazing, really.” He keeps his hands raised to show no foul intent, stays at a distance, and then indicates he’s not looking for anything, even further conversation or a thank-you, “That’s all — sorry to bother I just wanted to tell you.” He smiles and returns to his friends, who are probably discussing literature.
Two blocks later, a very different man steps off the stoop as you pass and you can feel it coming before he opens his mouth. You quicken your pace. “DAMN baby you look HOT today why don’t you come talk…” but you’re gone.
The difference between these two scenarios is not intent, and it’s not level of danger. It’s the societal class level, the mate value of the man, and most likely, some racial issues as well. Are both of these street harassment?
Don’t get me wrong: there is a MASSIVE amount of street harassment that is obviously verbal assault or “pre-sexual assault” and I support all efforts to eradicate it. And if either of these scenarios — even the supposedly “good” one — happened to me every day I’d be very unhappy.
But it’s called street harassment for a reason — because it doesn’t happen in art galleries. It happens, overwhelmingly, where there are men who are either unemployed or in jobs that women do not take. The classic scenario is the road or construction worker crew, and the classic victim in the scenario is on her way to a professional job. (My gut tells me the classic scenario is not the way that harassment most commonly occurs, but we’re talking here about how we perceive these situations.)
93% of on the job deaths and injuries are by men, and the consequences of unemployment are far worse for men. Men make up a greatly disproportionate percentage of the street homeless as well — those who will not sleep in a shelter that night. Might not these men have a reason to cry out when a beautiful woman walks by? Should the fact that they did not attend a private school, or grow up in homes where their mothers schooled them in grammar and etiquette when approaching a woman, should this indict them or somehow be indicative of a harassment culture?
Because that first guy — the white guy — he isn’t going to be accused of harassment. The men in both of my scenarios said the exact same thing. It’s just that one’s language and comportment were that of the upper and upper middle classes. Whereas the construction worker? Could there not be at least a pinch of resentment that this woman, walking by, will never be in as much danger for her job as he will? That she will never be in as much danger if she loses it?
That the discussion of street harassment does not — almost ever — contain any comparison of the lives of the perpetrators versus the victims is a bit disturbing. An unemployed minority male who is standing in the street and whose vocabulary for dealing with say, a white female grad student, is limited: how exactly should he interact with her? Should he throw his coat over puddles so she doesn’t have to? Should he just keep quiet? Are men of the lower class not allowed to approach women with degrees except when offering them services? Should his life matter to her when does say “hey baby you got a fine ass?” Probably not. But in general, the lives of these men, men who were once boys, could they matter even once in a while?
Many lynchings in our history — probably more than we know of — were the result of a black man whistling at a white woman, or some other form of cross-class harassment. So how men of the lower classes speak to women of the middle and upper classes, especially if they are expressing romantic interest — this is not a new issue in our culture. It predates modern feminism. Perhaps some of the things driving the discussion of street harassment predate modern feminism as well. There are times, when I’m reading descriptions of women’s experiences with street harassment, where I wonder if the victim ever wanted to say “How dare you speak to a white woman that way?”
To a construction worker on his third strike who got the shit job today, he didn’t see a disgusting lump of meat walk by. He didn’t see an enemy he feels the need to enslave, or an Other who needs subjugation. He saw a fantasy — of a life where people use moisturizer and have a clean apartment, of a woman who would be kind to him, in contrast to what his job is like, where the conversations are far worse than what she’s ever heard. He sees heels — and wonders what it would be like to have a job you can do in heels? He knows she’s headed towards a latte and air-conditioned employment, and he feels jealousy and resentment, but not enough to overwhelm attraction. He feels a lot, probably the first feelings he’s had all day besides “Nino better not drop that fucking winch on my foot again.”
None of these feelings he can express or even clarify, certainly not in the language that she would want him to. All the other guys stay silent… but fuck it. His day’s been shit. “Hey baby…” Well, it doesn’t end well for him. In fact, she told him he was disgusting and to fuck off. He can’t quit or it’s back to prison. She will, on average, live 10 years longer than him. He is more likely to become an addict. Does he wonder what would happen if she turned around and said “Why thank you baby I really do have a sweet ass let’s go get corn dogs together?” Yes, he saw her as an object. But so did she — he was the object that makes sidewalks and buildings. Did she treat him as a malfunctioning object?
I love watching the videos of women confronting their harassers. It’s amazing — all the women I’ve seen do it were really great. Usually they ask questions “Why did you say that to me? Why did you call me that? Did you think I wanted to be whistled at? Has that ever gotten you a date?” The men are genuinely confused, because they didn’t see a person walking by, they saw a fantasy object, and because their real crime is that they’ve never interacted with a woman who asked those sorts of questions, and they are not at an education level to understand the answers. The lower middle class construction worker who is either so subservient that he knows never to speak to a white woman unless spoken to first, or who is so well-read on gender roles that he only approaches with perfect suaveness: these are also fantasy objects, and the fantasy is equally repressive.
No one is ever going to accuse me of street harassment, and I tell random women on the streets that they have “great shoes” all the time. Why has no one ever reacted negatively to my compliments (quite the opposite, in fact)? Because I’m of the social and educational class level that knows to complement her choices. I dress like I own a hair salon (which I do). I’m white. But mostly, the power is in the language, as Eliza Doolittle learned. And my language is pretty strong, whereas the language that poor men use in street harassment is just awful. I think we can safely assume there has never been a writer for The New Yorker who yelled “hey baby get back here.”
A lot of street harassment involves predators who will eventually assault women working up the courage to increase the level of their activity. It’s why minor sexual assault has to be harshly dealt with — the predator is building his courage, warming up for worse things. Abusive language is a clear sign of intent to harm, but ironically, we are replicating an approach that we’ve already had for centuries: “You are not allowed to speak to women that way.” You are still allowed to talk to men this way, but then, men could do things like punch you or fire you. Now that women can fire you, too, the resentment of harassers may have increased.
I have a hunch that the way to break this dynamic open is to fill our construction crews and road crews and roofing crews with women. I’d advocate feminist groups working hard, just as they did to fill the law schools, to get the percentage of women whose jobs can injure or kill them up to 50%. There’s a few benefits here: one, respect. Why should a roofer respect a woman in the White House if women have never been on top of it fixing the roof?
Personally, I think all our buildings and roads and mines and oil rigs and quarries will be handled by robots before we ever get the chance to see how being 50% of those killed and injured on the job would change gender relations. But if we learned anything from our racist history, it’s that immigrants or minorities would choose to take the more difficult and dangerous jobs because they knew it earned them respect and a modicum of equality. A lot of black guys fought and died in war to prove (something they shouldn’t have had to) that they were equals, and this was a major factor in the post-WW2 Civil Rights Movement.
New York seems ripe for such an experiment. Let’s replace two city blocks with roof and construction and asphalt and trash crews made up exclusively of women. Let’s give it a few months for the broken fingers and toes and the burns from the rivets (the outdoor kind, not the small indoor machinist rivets used by the eponymous Rosie) to take effect. Let’s maybe even wait long enough for one major on-site injury to occur. We’ll have to work hard to keep the experiment going then — the men on the crews will probably protest if the injured person was a woman. But after that debate settles down, let’s see if any of the Williamsburg waif boys walking by get barked or whistled at. Honestly, I’m really curious.
Again, I think we’re far more likely to see robots building all our buildings before women do. What I’m not sure about is if those robots will be programmed to speak politely, with perfect diction, to middle class white women.
