Compliments Aren't Currency

When women get street harassed, the most common response from the harasser is the cliché, “I was giving you a compliment!”  Let’s start by being clear about this: THAT IS BULLSHIT.  He was not giving her a compliment, he was reaffirming his control over public space and over women.

With that being said, it is the case that street harassment can sort of sound like a compliment.  Statements like, “You’re beautiful,” “You look lovely today,” “You have a wonderful smile” and other boring tropes of supposedly-“romantic” masculinity could, in a certain context, coming from a certain person, be compliments.  They could be, but they are not.  Hopefully most of the men reading this already know that street harassment is not a real compliment, but I’m sure there are some who do not, or who know it but are confused about how compliments work.  So today I want to explain compliments to you.

First of all, compliments are not currency.  When you give someone currency it is expected that you will get some sort of good or service in return for your payment.  This is not at all how compliments work!  An actual compliment is given out of the genuine desire to say something positive about a person that you really believe.  This is not done to receive something in return.  That is not the case with street harassment, in which the man is expecting something in return.  Specifically, he expects, at a minimum, some moment of a woman’s attention.  This presumes that her time, her body, her energy, some aspect of that woman somehow belongs to him; that he has some sort of right to her.  But all women, like all other human beings, are autonomous subjects who own their bodies.  Therefore, women owe men nothing and men cannot own any part of her.  To believe otherwise is to claim that some part of a woman is your property.

Secondly, these kind of non-compliments aren’t even really about flirtations.  That’s what makes this Jerry Seinfeld sketch so offensive.  

The implication of the jokes here are that men are actually well intentioned, but that we’re just so dumb that we haven’t figured out how to better attract women.  “Please, women,” Jerry might say, “just tell us what we’re supposed to be doing!  Tell us how you want to be interacted with!  We’re trying here!”  Again, BULLSHIT.  First of all, such jokes do a disservice to men by indicating that we’re just primitive buffoons, cavemen who haven’t fully evolved yet.  But second of all, these jokes ignore that this “compliment” strategy of street harassment is not even intended to work!  Street harassment is not a successful strategy for getting dates, getting laid, or whatever else men might claim they’re doing.  All street harassment successfully does is make women uncomfortable in public, to push them back into the home and back toward being the property of males.  That is its real purpose.  Men yelling across the street; men hollering from car windows, bicycles, and construction sites… no one honestly believes that these will get them a date!  The very idea is absurd.  And thus it is clearly not about flirtation at all.  That is so obvious as to be fucking redundant, but unfortunately it needs to be said.

I’m not necessarily going to say that it is completely impossible to genuinely compliment a woman in public.  There is even some advice on the internet about how to do so.  But I am going to say be careful.  Unless a man is very sure that what he is about to say is truly a compliment and not street harassment; unless he expects nothing in return; unless the woman is obviously open to social interaction (meaning, no, she does not have her headphones on, isn’t staring at a book, wearing sunglasses, and ignoring your first, second, and third bullshit attempts to get her attention; and meaning that she is not alone in an enclosed space with you from which she cannot escape) then it’s probably best to just not do it.  After all, are you sure that your compliment is so important that a woman’s life will be incomplete without it?  Think about that for a second.  When you confront women in this way, what you’re saying is, “My desire, as a man, to speak to you, to tell you what I think of you, is actually more important than your personal desires, your autonomy, your humanity.  I believe that my voice, my ability to take up public space, is of such consequence that I’ll do so even at the expense of others.  I, a man, am just that important and you, a woman, are just not important enough for me to make any other choice.”  Seriously, fuck that idea, and fuck you if you believe it.

Finally, understand that women deal with street harassment every fucking day.  Even if you are offering her a genuine compliment and not being a fucking creep, she might not know that; for her safety and emotional stability, she might have to assume that you too are one of the creepy assholes who she has to deal with on a daily basis (and maybe you are; don’t assume you’re not just because you think you’re not).  You may be "Schrödinger's Rapist."  This is a reasonable assumption on her part!  So when you get treated like a creep, like a street harasser, understand that it is not necessarily about you (though it might be about you!  Maybe you’re being a fucking creep!); it is also be about survival for women in a patriarchal society.  So don’t assume you’re a good person who she is just misunderstanding, don’t take it personally, don’t respond with anger or frustration.  Just move on and think twice about opening your mouth in the future; because women aren’t object to be turned into your property by purchasing them with the currency of compliments.

Fucking Against Masculinity

As a man who has been strongly influenced by third wave feminism, I’m very pro-sex, pro-kink, pro-fetish, and anti-shaming.  I’m also polyamorous and have a very active sex life with a decent number of other partners.  I point this out not just because I'm a show off, but because contrary to some shitty assumptions, it is important to recognize that feminism does not have to be anti-sex or anti-pleasure.  In the words of Bikini Kill, “I believe in the radical possibilities of pleasure, babe!”

In fact, I want to go one step further and claim that a healthy sex life can help a man dismantle his toxic and fragile masculinities and build up a much stronger basis for a feminist masculinity.  First though, against its popular usage, I want to say that a “healthy sex life” does not mean a lot of sex, or not just that anyway (though maybe that is a part of it for some people, myself included).  A healthy sex life, for me, means that everyone involved in the sex life is consenting to the activities being engaged in, is being given full and adequate information to consent to those activities, and is doing so joyfully and enthusiastically.  These things should be true no matter how much sex you’re having!  So by “healthy sex life” I mean a sex life that is healthy for the physical and mental well being of all consenting partners.

Such a sex life, rooted in the absolute centrality of consent, requires a great deal of conversation.  It has to begin with active consent and safer sex talks, it will include refusing to sex-shame or slut-shame others or yourself, and it will mean owning your desires, voicing those desires, and seeking out those who will consensually participate in acting out those desires with out.  This all means, communication, communication, communication!

But, frankly, communication is something that a lot of men suck at.  Like, badly.  Like, it’s ruining our lives, ruining our friendships, and might be making us die younger kind of bad.  And it’s hard to break out of that cycle of toxic masculinity.  Instead, we keep fucking over ourselves, our lovers, our friendships, and, without being too dramatic, the entire fucking world.

So, if we engage with the kind of healthy sex life I described above, this links building healthier version of masculinity with something fun: SEX!  Whatever kind of sex you want!  You want kinky sex?  Cool, go for it!  Want a woman to fuck you in the ass?  Awesome, hot as hell, find a woman up for it, get a strap on and go to town!  Want to be submissive to a dominant woman?  I promise you, it’s hot and amazing, go for it.  Want to have sex with a man! Rad, enjoy!  Want to have sex with multiple people of all different genders at the same time?  That's fucking awesome.  Are you into throwing a woman around a little?  That's OK!  Seriously, throwing, choking, and all that stuff is genuinely OK and hot as long as your partner is hot for it and consents to it!  It's not anti-feminist to be into that.  And do you want pretty regular, vanilla sex?  That’s cool too!  Go for it!  Get down with your badass, vanilla self.  Ain’t no shame in that.  But in doing so, always be communicating your desires, your boundaries, your fears, your sexual goals, what feels safe to you, what you want but you feel nervous about and might need some extra care in achieving, and so forth.  What this will do for you is teach you how to fucking communicate.  And from there you’ll be able to bring these habits into other parts of your life: in your romantic relationships, this will let you communicate better outside of the bedroom too; in your work life, communication is probably important, and you’ll be better at it; you may maintain better, more long lasting friendships, and as a result you may actually live a longer life.  And that life will be happier, healthier, and full of way more awesome sex that you want to be having!

Direct and honest communication is really fucking hard for some people.  This is especially true for certain men who bought into the myth that they're supposed to be stoic and unemotional.  Unfortunately, the cartoon above is probably true for too man men: they were so focused on making their way to the "holy land of orgasm" that they never actually learned to talk to their partners about the sex they wanted to be having.  This is a product of the way we raise men in this society, but you can change it!  For now, at least start fucking practicing in your sex life at a minimum.  It'll be good for you, I promise!

A Sociology of Street Harassment

Allow me to preface this.  I recognize that a sociological account of why street harassment exists and persists in our society does nothing to better the experiences of women who have to deal with such bullshit on a daily basis.  There is very little I can say about how women should deal with street harassment because, as a man, it’s not my place to judge the reactions of women to patriarchy and misogyny (though I think I can say with absolute confidence that condescending, placating advice like "raise your pinky finger" is some fucking bullshit), just like as a white person it’s not my job to judge how people of color deal with racism and white supremacy.  With that being said, I do believe that sociological accounts like those below are useful if we wish to recognize that street harassment is a part of patriarchal culture, and that patriarchy has to be understood in the context of its intersections with capitalism and the nation state; that in order to truly overcome the oppression of women, a revolution against all of the above is necessary.  Thus, without further ado…

Historically, men were the owners of public space and of women.  As capitalism and democracy developed, and as industrialism took off, we developed the ideas of the “public” realm of economy and government (which was deemed the world of men) and the “private” realm of the home (the world of women).  Increasingly, in the contemporary age and especially beginning with the second wave of feminist movements in the 1960s, this dichotomy has been breaking down.  While this isn’t the place to get into a philosophical discussion about whether or not the separation of spheres remains, it is at least uncontroversial to say that women have left the home, and that while men still dominate government, economy, and the home through patriarchal power structures and social norms, this dominance is of a different kind than in the past.  It is no longer the case in most of the Western World that women are literally owned as male property nor that the realm of the public is only a male realm, even though it remains predominantly and pragmatically so.

What does this have to do with street harassment?  A lot.  With public space and women no longer literally belonging to men, men enforce their dominance in public space through harassment. 

This is obvious because women are almost never harassed in public if they are in the presence of a man.  If some other man has already “claimed” the “property” that is a woman, then she is left alone   She is not stepping outside of her historically prescribed role as a woman because, by being with a man, she gains the right to access public space;

because harassment of that woman would intrude on the property rights of another man.

Street harassment also has the function of reinforcing male dominance (patriarchy).  It can result in women choosing not to enter particular spaces where they may be harassed or do not feel safe.  This results in maintaining these spaces as male spaces.  Now, I can already hear the idiotic “men’s rights activists” chiming in, “But what about when men get street harassed?  That reinforces space as female!”  In short, no it fucking doesn’t.  First of all, do men sometimes get street harassed?  Sure.  Personally, it’s happened to me literally one time in my life (I got a “Smile, honey” while walking down the street).  ONE TIME.  That’s it.  Very few women could say the same.  Here’s the thing, though, more importantly there is no previously established basis for the female ownership of public space. The very dichotomy of public/private was constructed on patriarchy and misogynistic bases.  When (if) men get street harassed it is inappropriate, but it doesn’t change the balance of power in society or produce a new hierarchy.  Contrary to men harassing women, a woman harassing a man actually is just a shitty individual act, while a man harassing a woman is a function of systemic power imbalances.  When a man walks out his door in the morning, he does not necessarily have to be guarded, prepared for verbal or physical attacks that are based on his gender.  In fact, when (if) these things happen to men only rarely might it actually be about his gender at all.  In contrast, when such things happen to women it is precisely because of how our society places her in a hierarchy, and that makes it all the more objectifying and alienating.  While such experiences are objectifying and alienating on the rare occasions that they happen to men too, it is not the same because men get to maintain their status as individuals and do not share a gendered experience from the interaction.  This does not make it appropriate to do such things to men and pointing out this difference is not meant to belittle the experience of men being harassed; but this difference still matters.

Finally, do I actually think that men are thinking about all of this when some fucking asshole harasses a woman?  No, of course not.  Those motherfuckers probably do not have a sociological analysis of their own behaviors.  But I do think that the underpinning aspect of street harassment is more about the fragility of masculinity and the ways in which men feel “threatened” by the advances of non-male-bodied peoples than it is about any individual (which is why, like sexual assault, street harassment is really about power, not sex or attractiveness; so no, how a woman is dressed does not fucking matter).  Street harassers are fucking assholes and need to be dealt with as such in whatever way the woman being harassed deems appropriate (below is a pretty great example of one way that someone might do this, brought to you by Mexico and punk rock).  But to truly elimination street harassment we need to do more than deal with the individual perpetrators, we need to deal with patriarchy itself and the misogynistic basis of our current society.

Caution: Fragile

I find the phrase “fragile masculinity” to be one of the more useful terms in the feminist lexicon. It so perfectly describes the how and the why of so many men’s reactions to feminism, being called out on their shit, and so much more. What is usually found is that those who are representatives of the dominant order (straight, white, male, cisgender, middle class, relatively normatively attractive, and so forth) have very little skill in understanding the worldviews of others. This is nothing new, in the late 19th Century W.E.B. DuBois wrote about this in his work on the “double consciousness of blackness,” but it is ongoing.

Because such people so rarely need to defend their positions, and so rarely take the time to imagine themselves in other people’s shoes, and because they are only rarely challenged, the ideas that many of those in such positions hold are poorly developed and rarely well defended. Such positions are like a large structure built on a spindly base: they’re weak, easily threatened, and hard to maintain the structural integrity of when under even the most minimal of threat. In short, they are fragile.

SERIOUSLY, MASCULINITY IS SO FRAGILE THAT THIS EXISTS

And like many fragile things, those who wish to protect them guard them quite ferociously, reacting with anger, violence, name-calling, and other such abusive practices. Therefore, like an animal that feels threatened and becomes dangerous, the patriarch or misogynist attempts to defend the fragility of their commitments by resorting to attacks, often personal ones because if the position cannot actually be defended, and the person is unwilling to alter their perspective, then the only defense they have is a violent one. We see this quite frequently on the internet where any woman who dares to discuss her experiences with street harassment, patriarchal culture, rape culture, sexual violence, and so forth is frequently greeted with a barrage of attacks from men and, sadly, sometimes other women who seek to defend masculinity against its potential threats. “We learn gender performance early in childhood, and it remains with us virtually all our lives. When our gender identities are threatened, we will often retreat to displays of exaggerated masculinity or exaggerated femininity. And when our sense of others’ gender identity is disrupted or dislodged, we can become anxious, even violent” (Kimmel: 137).

Of course, it would be far better if the person heard the claims of their detractors, assessed those claims soberly, sincerely attempted to understand what the other way saying and, in many cases, took that person’s claims seriously. When a man is criticized by a woman for being sexist, like when a white person is criticized by a person of color for being racist, we should not immediately become defensive but should instead, following the logic that you cannot assume you’re a good person, genuinely attempt to hear where we may have gone wrong. In the end, defensiveness does not make the base of our structure any stronger, it just makes it so that no one can get close enough to knock it down. We’re left entrenched in our space, safe from attack, but alone (or only surrounded by those who don’t threaten us, creating an ideological echo chamber). On the other hand, a much stronger structure is built by recognizing where weaknesses lie and addressing those concerns until we stand in a better built space, which is ultimately far more capable of being defended because it is not so fragile to start with. But of course, part of the problem with masculinity is it stresses male “rightness” and it is rooted in the power that men have in a patriarchal society. As such, taking seriously the claims of others at a lower place in the hierarchies of our culture proves immensely difficult for some to choose to do. But make no mistake, it is a choice, a choice to engage in never ending growth and to hear criticism not as an attack but as a chance to be a better person.

IF ALL ELSE FAILS, MAYBE BAKING WILL MAKE YOU FEEL BETTER