The problem

[liv]

Sexual violence against women and girls is endemic. There's an absolute mountain of evidence that this is the case, from the experiences of my friends to any number of posts on social media to rigorous studies. A big part of the reason I decided to identify as a feminist is because women are routinely denied bodily autonomy and feminism seems to be the only political movement that cares about this.

I didn't know who Harvey Weinstein was until this week, but I'm not at all surprised that yet another powerful male celebrity abused women. I've read some important but deeply depressing stuff about the how society routinely fails women, all the factors commonly called 'rape culture' that constantly put women in situations where they can be attacked, and let men get away with attacking them.

It shouldn't be news but it needs to be repeated. We have to warn little girls to take precautions against men who will try to hurt them. People keep making excuses for known rapists.

Actually the article says men make excuses; my impression is that the problem is much less gendered. I think everybody finds it too hard to drop a friend who has been accused of rape. Women do the whispernet thing, the missing stair thing, but they – we – don't actually cease interacting with people previously considered friends. There's always some uncertainty about whether he really did it, or whether it was just a one off and he's changed now, and that uncertainty is always enough of a chink to keep the person around.

But even knowing all this, it's also the case that sexual violence is not part of my life. I feel really weird when I see campaigns like #YesAllWomen, or its latest incarnation, #MeToo. miss_s_b linked to Why I’m not surprised when I hear that powerful men are fucking creeps, a horrifying, and horrifyingly common, litany of Rohatensky's experiences of sexual violence. Rohatensky is NB, as it happens, but miss_s_b comments that I don't know a single woman who doesn't have a version of this story.. I was really thrown by that. That's not a story about men being rude and a nuisance, or even a story about plausibly deniable groping or pushing things a bit too far sexually. That's a story about multiple incidents of major sexual violence including rape. Now, miss_s_b doesn't know me, we just read eachothers' DWs. But I, unlike apparently every woman she knows, don't have 'a version of this story'. There has been no incident in my life where a man touched me in a sexual way without my full and willing cooperation.

I don't have a lot of experience of ongoing background microaggressions either. I don't get catcalled; I can think of less than a handful of occasions when men have shouted at me in the street, usually indistinctly but let's assume it's sexist comments. It's no worse than the experiences of most men, very occasional vaguely aggressive strangers. I can't relate to descriptions I've often read of this happening frequently enough to be emotionally draining. I don't get harassed, either when I'm out in public or at work. I mean, I can think of a few males who have persisted more than I'd like after I said I wasn't interested, but they've persisted in asking, not pressuring and certainly not overriding a no. I sometimes get importuned by chuggers or evangelists, too, which I assume is also a common experience for any gender, and it's never been more annoying or more scary than that. The experience of being pursued by over-persistent men became a bit more frequent when I lived in Sweden, but still way less than what is often reported as a 'universal' women's experience, about once a year I think, and never seriously scary.

As a result, I don't much take the precautions that 'all' women take. I don't worry about being out in public or after dark or in a dodgy area. I don't weigh up the chances that a given male acquaintance might be a Schroedinger's rapist. I mean, I know the stats, I know that between 1 in 20 and 1 in 6 men will cheerfully admit to researchers that they'd rape someone given the opportunity. It's basically a certainty that several men I trust and consider friends have in fact sexually assaulted someone. But it doesn't feel emotionally real; it's not a fear that actually affects my life any more than the statistical chance that I might be in an accident on the road.

I absolutely believe everybody else's experiences, people I know and strangers writing brave, brave columns and blog posts. I am just a total outlier, and I really shouldn't be. So I'm signal boosting others' accounts, because I know that I needed to be made aware of the scale of the problem, and perhaps some other people reading this could also use the information.

Comments

[slashmarks]

I don't think following the precautions actually correlates particularly well with experience. I have a cartoonishly horrible history of sexual trauma and I don't.

As far as I can tell, precautions like "don't go out at night" or "don't wear x clothing" only have to do with sexual assault insofar as that's an excuse given for enforcing them; the women I know who follow them were raised in environments where they were taught that women weren't supposed to do that.

(To be fair, some of the women I know who don't were, too, it's just that there's usually some process of rejecting the ideology there - eg. I never went further than a few blocks from the house alone except to get to school and back until I was seventeen, which was when I had a friend who was not raised with that particular set of beliefs come to stay with me for three months; I followed her around and nothing that terrible happened, so I kept doing it after she left.)

[I'm not a woman, but I was raised by people who assumed I was one.]

[andrewducker]

I've been following the #MeToo meme, both on Facebook and Twitter, and been utterly unsurprised that so many of my friends have been posting it.

I don't know what percentage of women in general have been assaulted or harrassed. But there do seem to be some women to whom it's never happened at all, some of whom are very surprised to see how many of their friends it's happened to (and some who aren't surprised at all).

[ewt]

I also don't get much in the way of street harassment from strangers, though I have had some major horrible/traumatic experiences. I generally put this down to my height, and it decreased still further when I started wearing metal ring splints that can be mistaken for knuckledusters at first glance. But maybe it isn't height, if your experience is similar.

(Oddly, most of the catcalling etc that I do get these days is when I'm cycling; it's fairly frequent, but not as frequent as close passes. I'm not sure if this is because people think I'm not going to bother to dismount and thump them, or if it's that on a bicycle I don't look as if I'm 6' tall, I just look like a person on a bicycle, because the bike is basically in scale with me.)

[ephemera]

I - wish I didn't have a version of that story, as "mild" as my version is. I'm glad that there are some folks out there who don't.

[green_knight]

Seconded. I've been (mildly) assaulted twice (once in a dark parking lot at work, once in full view of many people at a SF convention; I walked away dazed, missed a step, and acquired mild concussion, after which point all thoughts of reporting went out of my mind); I am _glad_ there are people who have no stories to tell, but I fear there may not be many.

[ratcreature]

(wandering in via network...)

I don't know about being a total outlier -- I also never have been assaulted and rarely get street harassment, though I don't doubt the statistics either.

I mean, even without becoming victimized I've seen the pattern in my direct circles, like "creepy" teachers in my high school. Or later on in leftist political projects too, where accounts of sexual violence and abuse were handled really badly, and men shielded from having to face consequences for a long time when women spoke up despite touted feminist ideals. I probably escaped the worst of it by mostly having joined the women-only subgroups when in mixed projects.

So I also think a big part of my (lack of) experience of direct sexual violence is that I am not sexually interested in guys, so that cuts off a lot of the acquaintance rape risks. And I don't really cultivate male friendships either, preferring mostly or all female groups. The only guy I'm really close to is my brother. I also haven't pursued a career exposing me to common work place harassment situations.

But otoh I never avoided possibly "risky" situations just because they were "risky" either. Like for example, generally I'm not into parties, but first year in university I thought nothing of joining the get-to-know-you parties that were basically get togethers with drinking and mild hazing like being put in dark woods to stumble around and humiliate yourself. And though I don't drink (bad family history with alcohol-I just don't trust myself with drugs) I assume joining that kind of thing as a young woman when the vast majority is drunk guys is also considered "risky". Or I've done ride-sharing where I met some guy in a youth hostel via a flyer on a notice board and offered him a ride in my car for sharing gas. Which isn't quite on the level of hitchhiking but not far from it. And nothing bad happened, and I didn't really consider worst case scenarios at the time.

A couple of times I've had random guys trying to ask me to go for a coffee while on or waiting for various public transport which is mostly just weird, though once was especially bizarre in that I was just back from an eye doctor appointment and couldn't even really see. Maybe the guy thought I was on drugs or something thanks to my widely dilated pupils. He went away after a couple of nos though, and never became aggressive.

The one time I remember feeling threatened for a moment was when I was walking home alone at night, near a park with a dodgy reputation and two guys actually stepped in front of me blocking my way. Which rather alarmed me but then they asked me whether I could sell them weed, which was just so bizarre. I mean who asks a young woman (that was 15 years ago now) whether she's dealing?? I don't think I've ever even seen a female street dealer, and one walking briskly at that rather than loitering? So much wtf. But considering the scenarios that came to my mind when two guys suddenly blocked me alone at night it was certainly harmless.

[karen2205]

Despite/because of my experiences I don't worry about being out in public after dark - I couldn't get anything done if I did. I am more cautious in areas I don't know or where there are fewer people around - I feel perfectly safe in London in the dark where there are always lots of people around.

I don't have proper stats to hand, but my view is that I'm less at risk of serious harm in the streets than a man would be and the risk of that is relatively low, particularly as I don't nowadays tend to drink much alcohol. I do avoid drunks and noisy groups of men/sports crowds. I'm at much greater risk of men shouting at me in the streets which is either ignorable or I can shout back [too many variables re how I decide what to do on each occasion]

[lilacsigil]

Public abuse for me has always been weight related (from both men and women) rather than sexually-based, but then I think back to boys trying to look up girls' (compulsory uniform) skirts and that teacher we all knew like to "accidentally" drop his pen under the table where girls sit and all the girls (at age 11-12) let each other know to immediately stand up so he couldn't crawl around groping your legs, and it's really clear it's everywhere despite my minimal personal experiences.

[mathcathy]

I'm not an outlier.

Maybe I only get catcalls about once a year too (it's less since I'm not out running in the morning so much), but to me that feels like too much and definitely not "similar to what men would get too", because every time it is impactful and scary.

I've had the police involved too often after sexually aggressive behaviour that went too far (do you remember the taxi driver in Stoke?) or which I thought needed to be shut down for the safety of women who might encounter those same men after me and not be as lucky.

I also remember working in a bar and often relying on the security guards to take a drunken man who was propositioning me away so that I wouldn't have to deal with them whilst working.

My behaviour is always modified for protection. Maybe sometimes it doesn't need to be at all, however the few times when modifications may have saved me from fear, or real hurt, mean that whilst cat-calls aren't zero and men who are drunk and refuse to say no, or who block me on the street to make sexually motivated comments, I'm going to keep on with an underlying fear at most times.

The most recent event I remember, now I'm writing this, was on St Patrick's Day, in broad daylight, walking to a Friday evening meet with friends on my own. I walked past a bar and a drunken bloke with a beer in his hand stepped out in front of me and blocked me. I had to turn around and go another way.

I remember one guy on a dare racing up and kissing me from on the lips and racing on again. There was another one who ran up behind me and put his arms round me - I relaxed before I registered that he was a stranger. One time a bloke in a park lay down next to me whilst I was revising, pushing me until I had to go home and work in the safety of a locked house. I remember having to leave a fountain I was dangling my feet in in Milan because two Italian blokes got into an argument about which one was going to try it on with me. I got all the way back to the door of my hotel, fifteen minutes walk away, before they stopped following me and pressuring for a date.

I can go on for hours.

If you don't get this kind of behaviour when you are minding your own business then you are lucky. Really lucky. I get it despite running avoidance tactics.

don't actually cease interacting with people previously considered friends

[(Anonymous)]

I only have direct experience of one whisper network (you can probably infer something from that). At the school which I attended, it was discussed among the pupils which teachers were unsafe to be alone with.
I suspect in that often, whisper networks happen when whisperers don't actually have any way to eliminate the threat, their only option is to work around it. In social groups it only takes one person to invite the threat to a gathering and that person is still around. And only a very few people are willing to say "it's him or me".

[woodpijn.livejournal.com]

My experience is basically the same as yours. I don't think we're "total outliers".

Compare mental health activism, which often focuses on raising awareness that mental health problems are more common that one might naively think, like 1 in 4 or so. This is effective because it helps people who are affected realise they're not alone, and makes people who aren't affected aware that their friends and family may well be, and so they should be sensitive and bear this in mind. But if the claim was that everyone suffered mental illness, then the obvious falsity of the claim would be counterproductive, and lose more sympathies than it gained.

Whereas feminist activism does seem very keen on claiming that all women face a continuous barrage of sexual harassment and assault. I've seen enough of these claims that I'm no longer "really thrown" by them. But I still react quite negatively and cynically to them, and knowing the prevalence of harassment is exaggerated makes it a real effort for me not to also dismiss the actual incidents as exaggerated in severity.

But there was a very interesting article on Slate Star Codex recently about how people can have dramatically different experiences (in general, not just wrt harassment etc) for no obvious reason - certainly not because of anything that's their fault or within their control - to the extent that it's very hard to imagine how an apparently similar person can have such different experiences.

I used to think the claims about universal harassment must be deliberately dishonest, but Scott's article (including many of the comments) has helped me realise how wildly different people's experiences can be - along axes we can't perceive, not just the obvious ones like gender and race - and that if a given woman is experiencing constant harassment, and many of her friends in her bubble are too, it's natural for her to assume that all women do. We just aren't wired to consider that people's experiences could be that diverse. I still have no idea why they in fact are.

[alasse_irena]

I definitely remember thinking when I was younger that either I was an outlier, or that people were exaggerating the frequency with which sexual harassment happened to them. And eventually I realised that for some reason it had never occurred to me to perceived being catcalled or things like that as sexual harassment. It took a massive recalibration for me to understand this as a problem, because for some reason I genuinely kind of went, "Huh, that idiot driving past thinks I'm sexually attractive. Nice." And it was quite weird to me when I started hearing that I was meant to feel threatened or violated about these things, when young me had just been feeling kind of smug.

[ghoti_mhic_uait]

Yes, that's my experience too. Or even things which annoyed me - like being groped by a straight woman because 'I'm straight, it doesn't mean anything' - I dismissed as 'not bad enough to be part of the problem'.

[flippac]

More a response to the usual implications and assumptions than anything you've said, but:

Being a queer woman won't [reliably] save you from partner assault or rape by other women. Nor will being more powerful or a better fighter, because you have to be willing to use it - and somewhere on the list of consequences is that you'll be the one who left a visible mark on another woman. Bonus points if you belong to one of a number of groups smeared as too angry and/or violent.

Men have most certainly held power over eg my sex life, as any other trans woman can attest. I've had a certain amount of the usual casual bullshit and some experiences where a lot of people who know me would be amazed someone walked away with their wrists still functional (as people who don't understand the consequences of actually kicking someone's arse often are). But the worst damage I've experienced was inflicted by other women and we're collectively awful at knowing how to handle that too.

I guess I was lucky on one front: "I'm a woman, I'm safe" wasn't part of the setup in my case. That and/or "I'm AFAB..." certainly happens, and so does a lot of predictably dire stuff around alcohol.

[lovingboth]

I am very pleased to hear that you haven't had any unwanted touching.

I do think the number of women it hasn't happened to is a single figures %age.

It's probably about the same for men in 'gay' spaces.

My count is about four, two of which were as a young teenager and left me shaken rather than pissed off, one of which was by a woman on a train.