This is the time of year in southern Arizona where evening thunderstorms form right about the time you want to cook on the patio. Last night’s storm was a teaser. It looked like it was going to stay parked over the mountains, so I tempted fate by lighting the grill. The first gust hit as I walked back into the kitchen, snuffing out all three burners in the covered kettle gas grill. We had to broil our steaks in the oven, and if that isn’t blasphemy, I don’t know what is.
Speaking of blasphemy, I’m not quite willing to toe the party line on this widely-shared blog post. In it, Erin, an attractive young woman, describes running a daily gantlet of leers, unwanted sexual cracks, and verbal assaults from strange men. Erin, speaking for herself and other women, says hey, leave me alone. I should be allowed to wear what I want when and where I want, without being verbally or physically assaulted. I deserve this, we deserve this, as much as men.
Well, who could disagree with that? I don’t stray into the dark corners of the net, so I don’t know what the trolls are saying about Erin’s post. Most of the commentary I’ve seen has been positive. But I have to admit my first thought, upon reading Erin’s post and looking at the photos she chose to include, was that she’s pulling our legs. Click the link. Go take a look.
You’re back? Good. Now tell me those photos aren’t meant to showcase Erin’s physical attractiveness. They’re like the posed glamor shots aspiring actors carry around in their portfolios. In fact, I’m pretty sure they’re exactly that: posed glamor shots from Erin’s own modeling portfolio. And then read her words: “I wear a size small in my Nike compression shorts that I like to wear when I workout … and looser baggy clothing just gets in my way of my workout”; “I often run in just a sports bra …”; “We deserve to feel sexy in our own skin without feeling like we’re here to bait you.”
The last statement is important. I totally agree: we all want to feel attractive or sexy in our own skin, but that doesn’t mean we want strangers touching our skin or coming on to us, especially in a crude or aggressive manner. At the same time there’s such a thing as going out of one’s way to look sexy, and Erin here isn’t exactly hiding her light under a bushel. She clearly wants to be seen as sexy and attractive, but not to have to endure the looks and unwanted attention that comes with it. She may be trolling for attention from the right man or woman, but she doesn’t want any from me, or you, or that gross old man over there. And she shouldn’t have to put up with it.
Well, yeah, that would be nice. And that is how civilized people should behave. I know women feel uncomfortable in coed gyms. I go to Anytime Fitness, and make a conscious effort to not ogle the women working out next to me. I’ve noticed we all do that, men and women who share gyms: we look at the equipment or the wall TVs, never at one another. Nor would I ever talk to women the way Erin says strange men talk to her. I don’t know any man who would … which is another thing in Erin’s blog post I wonder about. Do you know men who talk to women like that, who would walk up to a strange woman at the gym, tell her they like her leggings, that they make her ass look great, and that they’d look better off? Because I don’t, and I’ve been around men my whole adult life. We might talk that way about women who aren’t there … locker room talk … but we don’t talk that way to women who are. Unless we’re really drunk.
No, I’m not saying Erin exaggerates. I’m sure strange men do come on to her with inappropriate comments, and she is right to ask to be left alone. But the photos she chose to include with her blog post suggest to me she wants to have her cake and eat it too.
I’m in enough trouble already with my social justice warrior friends, so I’ll say no more.
But hey, my blasphemy pales beside that of Rebecca Schoenkopf, editor of the satirical news website Wonkette, who wrote about Juanita Broaddrick’s claim that Bill Clinton raped her many years ago. Ms Shoenkopf defended Bill by arguing some things we call rape today were regarded as mere alpha male sexual aggressiveness back then, that Bill himself probably never believed he raped anyone, and that even if that’s what he did, a man can redeem himself by being sorry and not doing it again. The flying rage monkeys of the internet swooped down upon Ms Shoenkopf within minutes and are still gnawing on her bones two days later.
As for me, I take no position. I don’t think the old rape accusation has anything to do with Hillary Clinton or her campaign for the presidency, though it’s clearly being dug up again to hurt her chances. As for what may or may not have happened in an Arkansas hotel room almost 40 years ago, hasn’t that been investigated and commented on to death? I might not mind this being stirred up again if anyone in the media was asking about accusations Donald Trump raped a thirteen-year-old girl, but on that subject all I hear is crickets chirping. If similar accusations were directed at Bill Clinton we’d hear about nothing else.
The last thing I’ll link to this morning is this eyewitness account of the stampede at JFK Sunday night, after someone started a panic about terrorists firing shots inside the terminal. There were no terrorists, no shots. It’s a frightening story nonetheless, and it shows what all the airport security we’ve invested so much money in has bought us: absolutely nothing. The people who should have been in charge fell all over themselves. TSA agents deserted their posts and joined the stampede. Police and airport officials had no idea what to do. There was no evacuation plan, and at one point panicked passengers from the terminal were milling around outside on the tarmac next to a Korean Airlines jumbo jet from which other panicked passengers had escaped by sliding down the emergency ramps!
How frightened we are, how likely to bolt and run screaming at the least provocation! I was going to go on a rant about the home of the brave, etc, but really people would have reacted the same way anywhere in the world. We are herd animals. There are very few Chuck Norrises among us.
Whew, blasphemy is hard work. I think I’ll take a break now and go read the ads on Facebook.
Okay, about Erin. Contrary to what she thinks, it’s not the clothes that are her problem, although, for some guys, they’re certainly an excuse. The problem is the guys themselves. You, sweetie, would never speak that way to a woman, especially a stranger, but I and just about every woman I know have had similar experiences. One night, a long time ago, in downtown Sacramento, I got off work and went downstairs to wait for the bus. An old man sat down next to me and spent the next ten or fifteen minutes telling me in explicit, graphic detail all the things he would do to me to make me feel so good. What could I do? I was waiting for the damn bus! Finally, the bus came, I got on, he didn’t. Trust me, neither you nor the men you know might say such things, but there are plenty of men who would and do. And because, like me, most girls are still brought up with that faint echo of being a lady, and because probably, like me, most girls wouldn’t know how to throw a punch to save their lives, we don’t punch the guys out. But, y’know, storm is coming. I’m hoping more girls WILL learn to punch as they’re growing up. Because it’s about damn time women stopped being helpless and it’s about damn time men had reason to think twice before accosting them. Jus’ sayin’.
On the other hand, let’s say it’s a guy writing. He runs shirtless, of course, because, y’know, guys do. And he wears a “small size in [his] compression shorts.” And “I’m not humongously endowed, but I’m, y’know, healthy.” And let’s say it’s not girls berating him but maybe gays, party boys, or maybe old Republican politicians making comments about what they could do in the men’s room. Would he still be asking for it? We’ll assume that he’s posted comparable pictures of himself on his blog. Would you still say that he’s posted pictures of himself intended to be sexy? Or is he just providing evidence? I’m with Erin. She has a right to wear what she wants — especially when she’s obviously a hard-working athlete. I mean, good lord, have you seen what men SWIM in? It’s a simple point. No one has a right to interfere with with someone else no matter what they’re wearing. Harassment is harassment, plain and simple.
I’m happy it’s a friend remonstrating with me rather than strangers on social media. There, you go from #HasJustineLandedYet to people contacting your boss to being doxxed to death threats in the time it takes to pour a cup of coffee. I see it happen every day, and only reluctantly posted a link to this post on Twitter. Good for me I have only a couple of hundred followers, a third of whom are fans of a British musician named Paul Woolford, another third fans of Paul Woodford the BBC car show host.
Robin, I totally agree women should be able to dress the way they want and be free from unsolicited sexual commentary, touching, etc. I still have a hard time believing so many men talk that way to women they don’t even know. I was a member of an aggressive, hard-drinking, chauvinistic male-only brotherhood for 24 years, and never saw that happen … but I defer to your own experience. If you say it happens, I have to believe it happens.
I have to disagree on Erin’s photos, though. She consciously chose them. They are obviously posed and meant to accentuate her cuteness and sexiness. They are not the kind of photos you or I would choose to use if we were demanding strangers stop coming on to us sexually. There are probably teenagers masturbating to those photos as I write. And she knows it. That’s why I said one of my first thoughts was that the blog post was satire. The Onion could not have done better.
Is Erin really so self-unaware? She can’t be.
I won’t go into the photo thing. That’s a minefield in my opinion.
As far as boorish behaviour goes, it happens all the time. I used to believe we as a society had evolved into better than that, right up until I started serving on mixed gender ships and had female Sailors in my charge. It was a serious eye opener when they’d come to my office and tell me what they had been dealing with. And when my own little girl was assigned to a CVN ready room, that’s when it got really ugly. I had seen the “pointy nose” guys and knew what they were capable of. Had even taken a couple of XOs and COs aside and had those “conversations that are not pleasant” about their JOs. Anyway, I had hopes that since she was going to a “big wing” squadron, things would be different.
Let’s just say it’s out there and it knows no bounds.
And it goes well beyond inappropriate talking and touching.
We’ve come a long way (as a society) but we’re not even at the first mile marker yet.