With warm weather comes more revealing clothes. Jamie Utt encourages men to resist the urge to objectify or harass women in the spirit of “Spring Fever”.
How is it possible that any person could hate spring? I love few things more than stepping out of the gloom of winter to enjoy the warmth of the sunshine with friends, tossing around a frisbee, having picnics, going for bike rides! Spring makes me absurdly happy!
After reading a post by “Sista Toldja” over at The Beautiful Struggler [editor’s note, The Beautiful Struggler no longer exists, therefore we have removed the link] entitled “Cruel Summer,” I remembered a conversation I had with a female friend a few years back. We were getting ready to go to the park to enjoy the sun, and before we walked outside, she took a deep breath and said, “I hate this!” I didn’t ask immediately what she hated so much, but I quickly realized what she was preparing for with her deep breath. In the ten blocks or so that we walked to the park, nearly every man we passed stared, eyes down, some even being bold enough to lick and smack their lips. One dude even grabbed at his crotch. The part that amazed me is that we were walking together and very likely could have been a couple, and a few guys even felt entitled to “cat call,” commenting on her ass as we walked by!
She ignored them and asked me to do the same, and as we got to the park, we talked about it. “It’s hard for me not to hate spring,” she said. “It’s always worst in spring when the warm weather clothes first come out. It’s like they’re starved puppies who are watching a meat truck unload its wares for the first time in months!”
I, of course, was furious! My friend is being objectified, and it’s happening right before my eyes! This needs to stop! We men need to learn how to act! Look at what a good, feminist, progressive man I am!!
Well, as I am so good at doing, I found myself a hypocrite today. I was in line at a Subway, and I caught myself leering at the woman in front of me, eyes down, practically memorizing the shape of her backside. I shook my head in frustration with myself . . . after all, haven’t I written this blog before? I ordered my sandwich and walked a few blocks to the coffee shop where I planned to work for a few hours. I sat down, noticing but not recognizing the girl sitting directly across from me. When she stood up to go to the bathroom, I realized I did recognize her. I recognized her ass from Subway. Yeah . . . I didn’t recognize this young woman’s face, but I recognized her backside.
Sitting here now, writing this blog, I am frustrated with myself, and I want to open the discussion to my readers. In her blog, “Sista Toldja” ponders, “How exactly should a woman respond to street harassment?” On the other side, we men need to be having a similar conversation.
Undoubtedly my socialization that says, “OBJECTIFY HER! OBJECTIFY HER!” is powerful considering that I work actively against such leering and yet still sometimes catch myself doing it. So how exactly should we, as men, begin our work to change the way we look at women and to respond to the men around us who are cat calling and leering at women? In thinking about this, I think of the point a fellow educator made recently as we talked about how we can approach healthy sexuality with the young men we meet. He stressed that we should be careful not to encourage shame in young men who feel aroused when they see a body they find attractive? The solution seems to be in trying to move our thoughts and actions more toward the “appreciation of beauty” side of the spectrum, but how!?
Flier You Can Give to Harassing Men. Download it and more at StopStreetHarassment.com
To me, “appreciating beauty” means appreciating a woman I find beautiful as that . . . a woman . . . a human being with whom I can build a relationship, with whom I can have a conversation. If I find myself casting those leering eyes downward, I try to lift my eyes to look at the person in the face and smile (though I quite clearly fail far too often). I find myself needing to think back to a blog post I wrote nearly six months ago:
For me, the line must be drawn with relationships. If I am simply staring at a woman’s body, separating the beauty of the female form from her as a person, I am simply objectifying her. When, though, I can appreciate how beautiful a woman is in the context of her as a person, her physical beauty mixed with her beauty as a person with hopes, dreams, passions, faults, and realities, I am taking a step toward appreciating beauty in a much more healthy way. In doing so, though, I must keep in mind the standards of beauty laid out for the women in my life by the media and the men (including myself) and learn to see all types of beauty.
I want to interrogate that further, knowing that I can’t develop relationships with every person I meet and find attractive. Is it possible for me to briefly admire a woman’s form without it being objectification? If so, how long is too long before I’m start leering, staring? How is my gaze causing women to sigh, saying, “I hate this!”?
Maybe I should simply take the advice of the Astronomical Kid and “stop staring at [his] moms!”
Originally appeared at ChangeFromWithin.org
Lead image and poster both from StopStreetHarassment.org
Hi Martin
Is this what is it like in the US? Or maybe you live somewhere else.
Can you not respond to women that flirts with you?
That makes it awfully difficult to a man.
But different cultures have different rules for acceptable conduct.
I’m in the UK. As with anywhere there are no rules as such but certainly as a recently single guy who doesnt do bars/clubs, it is the impression given. Also quite frankly a lot posts on this site are telling men that they are wrong to assume women are interested because they are being nice – this seems to preclude the assumption that maybe they really are flirting. But generally where I live there are two mindsets that in all honesty seem to e dictated by class/background. The men AND women where I live regularly use darling/love/babe/flower/petal, but then the… Read more »
Hi Flyingkale I never wanted to offend or harass Archy! It warms my heart when he read his comments. But it is true,I am BAD! The female sex role script does not suit me,so I abandoned it years ago. But when I tell a women friend or a man that I love them,it means I feel love in my heart. It does not mean :” I desire you”. I will be more careful from now on. I know I sometimes flirt when I should simply be friendly. So I apologize to Archy! Archy shows deep empathy and that is fantastic… Read more »
I didnt so much read Kal’s comment as asking you to stop, but a tongue in cheek way f highlighting the fact that we all do this (as I think you may have just done too). Same as when I call a check-out girl “love” or “darling”, it is not a casting of my ownership, simply a nicer form of address than “madam”. Keep up spreading the love as far as I am concerned, but take home the idea that if you hear women moaning they have been called “love”, you should tell them to stfu. The line between flirting… Read more »
Didn’t offend me, often people say I love you as a way to truly high 5 the author. Wouldn’t bother me if you loved me either, world needs more love. Thanks for the compliments, it means a lot. 🙂 I’m glad it warmed your heart.
You’re seeing things far too black and white and it has resulted in you demonizing your own natural instincts, instincts that are crucial to continuing the human race. You have the same thoughts as the guys who smacked their lips at your friend, they’re on one spector and you’re on the other. To be honest I’d rather be the other guys on the street than you, because they don’t feel the shame you feel. When you see a pretty girl there isn’t a pressing need to look, a real man knows that more women are down the road, they’re in… Read more »
“You really made me angry!
Are your arrow broke ? May this be why your woman feels invisible ?”
Oh cool, impotence shaming. As long as you don’t say anything bad about feminism, though…
To “Days of Broken Arrows”
You really made me angry!
Are your arrow broke ? May this be why your woman feels invisible ?
It is amazing how little some( but not all) men understand and know women.
Do you seriously think woman want their sexually acknowledged this way?
This has nothing to do with “acknowledging ” another persons sexuality.
I am so sorry you do not speak my language. What I feel now can not be expressed in words.
I think he meant that in the burbs, no one is hitting on them and they feel invisible. But in the city, they’re getting hit on but this is far more than being hit on, this is harassment.
I assume the writer of this post is living in a city, where this sort of thing is commonplace. You want to solve this problem? Move to suburbia, where the sexless worker-drone dads won’t give you a second look and their sons will be too shy to say anything. The problem is the location.
Of course, once women do settle into sexless suburbia, they complain “I feel invisible” due to the total lack of acknowledgement of their sexuality. You can’t win.
There needs to be a balance. It’s ok to look, but don’t act like a creep about it. I doubt most women would care if a guy looks at her every once n a while (many do it to guys), but don’t just stare at her. It shouldn’t even need to be said that catcalls n degrading comments are bad, we don’t live in a society where a compliment of her breasts would be seen as safe. What can sound like a compliment can be threatening because she has no idea of their intention, and popular culture doesn’t help either… Read more »
Hi Archy
I LOVE YOU!
Woot, share the love. Thank-you 😛
Hi Iben.
You do realize that you just mirrored the “harassment” that we are discussing along with the article? Kind of ironic, isn’t it…?
But of course, since you are a woman and Archy (to the best of my knowledge) is a man, everything is a-okay.
In suburbia, two blocks from my house and right outside my son’s middle school/HS, some JHS/HS kid said to me as I was walking home from work: “You make my pants want to get up and dance…!” This is the kind of offensive stuff I get pissed off about… Who is teaching kids to say stuff like this to their neighbors and strangers walking by? Is it their fathers, their uncles, their friends? By contrast, my doctor ( who is very handsome BTW) gets paid to look at my breasts, but he looks no more than is necessary… He shakes… Read more »
When I was growing up I thought wolf whistles were just used to compliment. I saw it mostly in cartoons, I think it was an actual wolf or a dog that use to wolf whistle to a cat or something, not sure which cartoon it was but I think it was a Warner Bros production. Silly stuff like this, though over the top ht tp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbUpGoOjFWw I didn’t find out until I was an adult that the wolf whistle had such a bad history, I’ve only heard it done in the cartoons and friends doing it to each other when they… Read more »
Thank you, Jamie, for writing this… And thanks, Archy, for your thoughtful comments… I am already plotting my spring wear defensive wear: light weight raincoat or long jackets over the warm weather dress— because obviously I deserve wolf whistles and disgusting lip- smacking and ugly obscene comments on my way to work on the train, subway, and on the streets because I remind idiotic street guys of street walkers and not of a professional woman with graduate degrees that I worked hard for… And because I am not walking with my husband or son that I deserve to be treated… Read more »
I think part of the issue is that some of the behaviour, the looking, is ambiguous. Some will say it’s creepy, others will say it’s normal. There can be a theme in the anti-harassment stuff to go a lil overboard where it feels like men can’t even look at a woman without being thought of as objectifying her. But the behaviour the harassers do is different from the average Joe looking at a woman and admiring her beauty respectfully as the unwanted comments, the outright staring, the wolf whistles are completely different behaviour. I think it would be important for… Read more »
Boy, this is getting ridiculous. Next thing we’ll have writers here asking for legislation to prosecute guys for looking at a woman’s butt. Here’s a newsflash – I’m a person, and it’s part of my biology to want to look at an attractive member of my species. If I choose to look at her butt, big freaking deal. Being harassed is one thing, but being checked out? As someone said earlier, “poor you”.
This wonderfully illustrates why I find it so impossible to believe commentators like those in the “Yoga Pants” thread who say they can tell the difference between harassment and disrespectful objectification on the one hand, and harmless “just looking” on the other. What you describe and are flagellating yourself over in this piece, Jamie, could hardly be a more benign example of “just looking”, but as a trained feminist, you reflexively classify what you did as “leering” and feel obliged to interrogate yourself over it. You didn’t cause the woman whose posterior you appreciated any discomfort, didn’t smack your lips,… Read more »
@ Marcus
I think “harassment” has assumed a new definition, which has gone from actual harassment to anything that might make a woman feel even slightly uncomfortable, or somehow has the potential to make her feel uncomfortable.
Just look at the whole Adria Richards “donglegate” fiasco.
Indeed BAG, well said.
That “wanna get laid” poser is hilarious because it actually encourages men to try to use “treating women with respect” and “treating women as equals” to get laid.
You know, the way all those evil “NICE GUYS TM” are only nice to get laid.. which makes them bad people.
So, according to the poster, we should be respectful to women because it turns them on and means we can get laid.. but we should never be respectful to women because it turns them on and means we can get laid, because that makes us Entitled Nice Guys TM.
I noticed that too. I think the logic behind it might be that if the reader is dumb enough to think cat calls or leering will make her interested then he’ll be dumb enough to think being nice and respectful will too. Swing and a miss there.
There’s a bit of chicken-and-egg here but only a little. If women wear low-cut, revealing clothes, they surely realise they’ll get a reaction. But the reaction is in a man’s power to control. It can be an appreciative glance or a smile, but should not be a leer, or cat-calling, or worse, groping and intimidation.
Behave like a gentleman, basically. That doesn’t mean you can’t even look.
Hi Jamie
Thank you!
Take a look at this video and get a an idea of how it feels to be woman:
http://www.stopstreetharassment.org/2012/08/brussels/
She gets hit on AND harassed quite a lot. I wonder if harassment would be as high if both genders were encouraged to ask each other out?
Hi Archy I hope men respond with respect when woman or young girl ask them out! But here is something else. I wonder if the culture in America puts more pressure on women to have as few sexual partners as possible than other countries in the West In another thread a man wrote( I think it was Danny) that many women do not understand how difficult it can be for men to get sex. My guess is that Danny lives in The US. And since I live in Scandinavia things look a bit different Naturally we have unwanted celibacy as… Read more »
Yet another area in which we, as Americans, are falling farther and farther behind the times. You know?
This is the double bind men are put in. On the one hand, they’re expected to take all the initiative and make bold (and even risky moves) if they want any kind of romance or intimacy. It wouldn’t be so bad if women in this country actually knew how to flirt and give off good signals, but from what I’ve observed, women are pretty bad at flirting and signaling their interest. If men do everything that people such as Jamie Utt suggest (ie. respect her boundaries, don’t be too pushy, don’t treat her as an object, etc), then unless those… Read more »
Dude. You are being way to self critical. Wear sunglasses if you are worried you might be–lord almighty!–caught checking someone out. Spring has sprung, my man. Enjoy it while it lasts for fall will be here soon enough. And yes, it is okay to admire the form of another human being without feeling guilty. Spend a week in an AZ college town this time of year and try and write that same column. I dare you.
yeah…you’re desire to “leer” at her backside has nothing to do with socialization and everything to do with you having a pulse. If you’ve managed to talk yourself into believing that you must censure your eyes and deny your thoughts, then you’ve sacrificed your basic humanity to your dogma. And let’s stop assigning this to a problem of masculinity. We all have base needs and desires, but we don’t all need to ask the public to participate in them. Flagrantly leering at someone so as to make your base needs known is akin to passing gas loudly in public -it’s… Read more »
Look, but do it with respect. Don’t yell out compliments, try to balance out compliments of teh body with other compliments on things like her personality, her accomplishments, etc. Don’t leer, a few seconds at most is ok but staring for too long can trigger anxiety in people (and pretty much every animal alive).
yeah…you’re desire to “leer” at her backside has nothing to do with socialization and everything to do with you having a pulse. If you’ve managed to talk yourself into believing that you must censure your eyes and deny your thoughts, then you’ve sacrificed your basic humanity to your dogma.
agree with you rs.
i raised my eyes at the socialisation part too. reminded me of the recent piece here by guy that does not stand to piddle, as he saw this act as assertion of masculinity.
this has been edited and no note left
from memory, my post
http://jameseq.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/my-post-from-memory.html
a despot has removed my posts
**yawn**
I would just die if women were always checking me out, letting it be known they were interested and found me attractive and wanted to have sex with me. Good thing I’m just an average guy and don’t have to worry about any of that. Poor women.
Whilst it would be nice to be looked at, it’s not nice to be harassed. Would you want to be harassed, groped, threatened because someone finds you attractive?
Sure. As opposed to what? Being ignored all the time when not being rejected?
Both are bad. It’s not good to be harassed, nor is it good to be ignored.
I agree, and I do appreciate the point you make. Though it doesn’t change much, it has got me thinking more from that perspective. Sometimes life just sucks.
I have a tactic for this. For anyone that I would think steryotypical things for. I do it in some cases of race but I do it for girls too, I say to myself “that person looks nice” Now, sometimes they don’t look nice and I have to reassess. But I am making a consious decision to start out assuming everyone is nice, and then add on all the other stuff. So for men, they could try this (or something like it) with women and maybe think about their niceness a little faster than they otherwise would have. Do it… Read more »