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.