This morning's commute (the 'ugh' edition)

Incidentally, Ally Fogg (whose politics I don't always agree with but who nevertheless takes gender issues from a male POV seriously and who thinks about them clearly and carefully) has a write-up on this which segues very nicely into our recent discussions on this very thread

http://freethoughtblogs.com/hetpat/2015/04/28/wolf-whistling-and-over-reactions/

Ally Fogg is good value. He manages to speak for everyone's issues in a pretty non-partisan way.

Yeah, absolutely, I like him. I've never seen him resort to lazy stereotyping and he does a good job of not necessarily taking sides while simultaneously avoiding being on the fence over everything. It's a tightrope that he's good at walking.

today:

"MMM THAT'S A LUCKY SADDLE"

when i yelled fuck off over my shoulder he made the kenneth williams "ooooh!" noise

east dulwich i am disappoint

Last night in a bar with Nic and a female friend I had set up to play pool. A group of guys walked past and one of them scattered the balls and one walked off with the black ball. We all scrambled to stop any balls being pocketed which would have wasted a quid.. Nic and our mate walked after the black ball thief and I was left watching the table. One of the guys was goading me in to playing doubles. I declined and he kept pushing for it saying I should be more fun and that he was fun and not like his mates who had messed up the table and we should play doubles. He then touched my arm and called me darlin, I growled and he finally gave up and left and he mumbled something about me being no fun..

Why do some men deem this appropriate behaviour and was this their wingman flirting technique? Act like a dick so your mate can swoop in and be the cool friendly guy.. Ugh.

Why do some men deem this appropriate behaviour and was this their
wingman flirting technique? Act like a dick so your mate can swoop in
and be the cool friendly guy.. Ugh.

I dont have an answer to why some guys feel, being forward/pushy to the point of sexual bullying, is appropriate behavior. But the 'good guy/ bad guy' routine is one of the oldest in the book. Even if it wasnt planned.

The Public sexual harassment described on this thread is shocking.

Yeah probably a bit unfair to link those two things but they were being proper dicks.

As a guy. I kinda understand him taking the opertunity to flirt, after his mates had been dicks.

I dont think its OK, in any way, to escalate to bullying when it doesnt work out. Theres definitely a relationship between the private sexual bulling of someone that cant accept a no, and the very Public sexual bullying of abuse described previously. So the links there in my mind.

If you step on my foot, you need to get off my foot.

I love this post.

http://www.stopstreetharassment.org/2015/05/shhumanrightsviolation/ relevant. written by a friend

also - http://bust.com/your-summer-guide-to-annihilating-street-harassers.html

a car full of boys (five of them, white, about 20yo) on peckham road just ruined my day. as they drove past me (i was in the cycle lane), the passenger leaned out, whole upper body, and tried to touch my bum. as I've said before, this wasn't the first time this has happened to me. i was wearing a dress, thick tights and cycling shorts. i could see in my peripheral vision he kept his face towards me as if he deliberately wanted to make eye contact with me. he kept his hand out for ages after he'd passed me (he came within about ten cm) and his friends in the back laughed and turned around to have a look at me multiple times. after deciding that actually i wasn't going to just ignore it (i was on my way home from a really nice SEs and pizza and it fucking annoyed me so much) i gave the guys in the back the typical deathstare and middle finger and sped up to the passenger window. he hurriedly wound it up and i stopped him and said what the fuck he thought he was doing. he gave me some bullshit about "yeah, you got a real nice bike" checking out my legs the whole time so i told them to fuck off and took a different route home. i feel gross, creeps are shit.

i also got "hot stuff" yesterday. it is not a compliment. i feel gross.

I missed this thread earlier. Very interesting to hear about women's experiences. I haven't read any recent research, but the fear of sexual harassment always featured in research of why fewer women cycle than men. There were other factors, of course, but that was always there.

I think it's fairly inevitable that someone will post something like what thiscocks has posted. Good on the mods for not moderating it out. Apologies for the extreme obviousness of most of the rest of this post, but I think it's worth being obvious about such things sometimes.

It's quite clear that the remarks and actions Lucy and others report are sexual harassment and that they differ from the abuse that male cyclists get in that the latter tend to be about cycling and bike riding (its perceived eccentricity, 'riding in the middle of the road', etc.), whereas the former are about the person herself/the persons themselves, or rather about very superficial aspects of them.

The general rule is, of course, that if you say something to anyone you first have to take into account how well you know them and adjust your remarks accordingly, and the instant jump from not knowing someone at all to remarks that in all their superficiality would only be appropriate in an intimate relationship is what makes them so distressing, along with the frequency with which women have to endure them. I haven't followed all of the links yet, so this may already have been posted somewhere/referred to in something posted before (it didn't seem very prominent on the London Hollaback page), apologies for reposting in that case:

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/10/30/living/hollaback-10-hours-walking-in-nyc/

It gives every man an easily accessible idea of how often this kind of thing happens and, of course, it's not limited to cycling. Reasons why it happens range from male insecurity about their masculinity to peer pressure (often motivated by said insecurity) to the fact that because of gender stereotyping still being strongly ingrained in popular culture, it is seen as necessary to continue popular culture in the same vein. Gender stereotyping, of course, affects anyone negatively.

(It's based on ignorance and revolves around the superficial, and therefore ignorantly accessible, fact that the shape of men's bodies tends towards strength and that of women tends towards beauty (while there are, of course millions of shades of difference within that, the comparison I'm applying is like that between a sister and a brother, i.e. people who are quite similar; of course, there are many women who are very strong and men who look beautiful, but even for a strong woman her putative brother would be stronger if he followed the same exercise régime, and for a beautiful man most likely his putative sister would look more beautiful), resulting in the constant expectation that men should be strong and women should be beautiful and weak; quite apart from what that could possibly mean in respect of personalities, it is quite clear that transferring superficial perceptions of bodies to personalities is at best reductionist and generally very damaging. Everybody has loads of important aspects and little can be more detrimental than trying to live up to a single, fruitless, impersonal 'ideal'.)

However, the kind of harassment that's the subject of this thread affects mostly women. Men get harassed in a different way, and much more rarely sexually, except with remarks about penis size, homophobic remarks, or when sexual innuendo forms part of the powerplay (e.g., "I'm challenging you to a fight and I'm not only stronger than you but also more virile").

It's certainly very important to reduce the incidence of this in cycling, although there are obviously wider social issues involved. The London Hollaback site has a tag for cycling:

http://ldn.ihollaback.org/category/cycling-2/

It is fairly obvious that there aren't many posts there, in any category, it seems. Do people think this sort of campaign works or is the option of posting harassment incidents there not very important?

I don't think that apart from this anyone is currently campaigning actively to give it a wider hearing specifically within cycling, though, so there's definitely work to do. Maybe someone is doing something and I just haven't heard about it. Perhaps the more general initiatives that include cycling among other initiatives are the best way of going about it, though.

Anyway, good thread.

the shape of men's bodies tends towards strength and that of women's tends towards beauty etc

Oliver - I think this whole paragraph is irrelevant and misleading. It lends weight to those "it's just a compliment" excuses. It isn't much if at all to do with gender stereotypes around perceived beauty, and a huge amount more to do with a widespread cultural norm that it's ok to objectify women's bodies, to belittle/embarrass them for amusement, and to exert dominance as a male whenever the opportunity arises.

I imagine you understand this (the whole strong/weak expectation you describe), but I feel that paragraph is... not so good. (Sorry didn't know how to express that).

Thursday's Graun reports on The Near Miss project's findings that women experience almost twice as much harassment or poor driving while cycling: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/jun/11/female-cyclists-bad-driving-harassment-study-uk-women-men-near-miss

Rachel Aldred quoted as saying that the main link appears to be the lower reported speed of the women who took part in the study compared to men (so presumably more exposure to drivers generally as higher numbers are able to overtake, in addition to the other suggestions listed in the article). Nice one, London!

[NB: the causal feature here is likely to be the speed itself, not specifically gender - people of all genders who report lower speed also report more bad behaviour from motorists; additionally women overall reported lower speeds than men. No heroic shouting about how you "KNOW WOMEN WHO ARE EVEN FASTER THAN ME" will be required here, thx.]

lucyh
i complain a lot about street harassment. it's not because i like complaining, it's because it...
.... unsure whether this thread will die on its arse (i kind of hope it doesn't get any posts?!) and i couldn't see a similar/duplicate thread

Makes for bleak reading. It doesn't surprise me one bit and also confirms something I posted here a few years ago about a woman completely overreacting to something I said/did whilst cycling. I was confused and was forced to explain my intention before she cycled off with a bad impression at which point she became very apologetic.
Thinking back, it tallies up with your post and likely reactions...a bit like when a driver blows up over nothing: S'all about past experiences.

At work this week [as a cycle instructor] I was working with a very friend. She is very experienced and pretty senior. We used a spot that has a few big vehicles/plants/refuse services yards. When I stood there with the trainees riding towards me, I had a one or two conversations about how sensible it was using such a spot. (They can't get it through their tiny heads that there is a primary school meters down the road that has been there for over a 60 years and the kids houses are just across the street therefore it is relevant and vital they use such streets. It is also road listed on the TfL cycle route....)
Yet when she stood in the same spot they weren't having discussions as much as telling her what was best and pissed her off to the point of her needing to move our location as she was on the edge of losing it. Sadly not the first time I've gotten a very different reaction in a similar situation with her.

Sad times.

lucyh
a car full of boys (five of them, white, about 20yo) on peckham road just ruined my day. as they drove past me (i was in the cycle lane), the passenger leaned out, whole upper body, and tried to touch my bum. as I've said before, this wasn't the first time this has happened to me. i was wearing a dress, thick tights and cycling shorts. i could see in my peripheral vision he kept his face towards me as if he deliberately wanted to make eye contact with me. he kept his hand out for ages after he'd passed me (he came within about ten cm) and his friends in the back laughed and turned around to have a look at me multiple times. after deciding that actually i wasn't going to just ignore it (i was on my way home from a really nice SEs and pizza and it fucking annoyed me so much) i gave the guys in the back the typical deathstare and middle finger and sped up to the passenger window. he hurriedly wound it up and i stopped him and said what the fuck he thought he was doing. he gave me some bullshit about "yeah, you got a real nice bike" checking out my legs the whole time so i told them to fuck off and took a different route home. i feel gross, creeps are shit.

i also got "hot stuff" yesterday. it is not a compliment. i feel gross.

A quick "how would you feel about your daughter/mother/sister/girlfriend getting this level of harassment?"
And prepare to watch the gears turning in their tiny little heads. These kind of plebs tend to need to show their manliness and I'm not sure they could handle the cognitive dissonance. But you have to do it without showing any signs of upset or anger.

Good luck!!

#everydaysexism

thiscocks
The comments you describe I dont think can be described as sexual harassment. Fair enough when physical contact is involved, then that's ott but not just light hearted comments?

Ive had quite a few of the standard lycra based comments (sometimes a 'nice arse' if im lucky) which I would ignore or just say the usual thanks with a thumbs up. Maybe its different for a bloke I dont know, but I cant help thinking people take some stuff too seriously.

Reply

It's deffo different. I'll guess you've never felt humiliated by it. Ever. Many years ago I learned how it felt to be sexually harassed: I stood in the wrong section in DC10, Ibiza. The dudes were huge (god-like bodies but huge mostly 6' 2"+) just watching me in every direction I looked. I remember thinking, "where are the doormen?! If these dudes decide they want some of me...then I'm done."
A lot of it was due to the dehydration + the other stuff you do on a party holiday but it hit home how it felt to be weaker and perved over.

lucyh
some guy just made a kissy noise at me (like a proper smoochy noise) and when i ignored him he spat at me and revved off.

ISN'T IT NICE WHEN THE SUN'S OUT.

Take that spit to the Police. Wouldn't be surprised if his DNA is on their records.

I remember thinking, "where are the doormen?! If these dudes decide they want some of me...then I'm done."

[...] it hit home how it felt to be weaker and perved over.

precisely. it can range from annoying to terrifying to humiliating to infuriating. mostly, i find the comments to be annoying, and their reactions to my indifference or fighting back to be the really scary part. it's not worth calling them out or trying to say something most of the time in case they become aggressive. it is absolutely the worst to be made to feel objectified and weak when i'm just commuting home/similar, and then called a fat slag or a frigid bitch because i'm not approving of their catcalling. I JUST WANT TO RIDE MY BIKE.

i haven't posted in the thread much recently but it still happens nearly every day. yesterday both on the way to and from track yesterday i got an mmm alright darling and one of these. a couple of weeks ago i was cycling home with laner - at one point i was about twenty metres behind him riding in the bus lane when a car of young men pulls up alongside me, cruising and winding down the passenger seat windows. i can't remember exactly what they said now (i try not to hold onto things like that) but it must have been something involving my number or going 'for a ride' or something, my answer was a definitive and uninterested nope and i sped up. they correspondingly sped up but when i caught laner they realised i was with him and drove off. case in point: it's not a compliment, it's an expression of power that pathetic men try to pull over women.

it's like when someone asks you out in a bar/similar and you say no thanks, i've got a boyfriend, and they hopefully leave you alone. because you know full well that just saying no thanks, i'm not interested wouldn't be enough. they respect the mere mention of a presence of another man more than they respect you as a woman or your opinion.

nb - obvious addendum of not all men. just the shit ones.

I was once smacked on the arse with a dildo by someone leaning out of a car window. Car full of 5 "lads". Going around a roundabout as well, it came completely out of the blue.

Obviously they drove off and I caught them at the lights where they appeared quite sheepish when they realised they had sexually assaulted a man. I guess they saw the pony tail (sadly no longer with us) sticking out from under my helmet and thought I was a woman.

At the time I found it funny, however I'm not sure I'd take such a light-hearted view nowadays.

I never did figure out why 5 young men out for a drive would need a massive dildo...

BTW that's not meant as a "this happens to men too" post. Just a relevant anecdote.

Wait, they saw your ponytail, but not the beard?

The beard and pony tail are mutually exclusive. Got rid of one before growing the other.