Quietly Thinking Aloud

blackcrowcalling:

TW warning: mentions of assault

tithenai:

So a relatively well-known comics artist, Tony Harris, has taken his dignity in both hands, placed it gingerly on the floor, and then jumped up and down on it while flinging filth into the wind like a monkey. I don’t want to talk about him. Other people are talking about him. I’m sure people will be talking about him all week. I am heartened to see all the comics people I know — fans and creators alike — staring at him in confusion and condemning his words and behaviour.

What I want to talk about instead is what happened a couple of hours ago, as I was on my way home.

I was standing at the bus stop in front of Chapters, on Rideau Street, opposite the Rideau Centre. I had just missed the 9:00 PM bus, and was waiting for the next. As I stood there, idly gazing across the street, I became aware of a young woman very slowly walking into traffic.

She was walking with what looked like calm deliberateness. I had a moment of wondering if she was high, since she wasn’t pausing and looking around as she walked. She was staring straight ahead, clutching a tall cup of coffee against her chest in both hands. As I looked at her, concerned about the fact that there were cars zipping along around her, I became aware of the fact that a man was following her out of the Rideau Centre.

He stood by the door to the food court, shouting things at her. He’d stand, shout, then look around, duck back inside behind the glass door, staring at her, and then open the door and lean out and shout some more. She crossed the street. I could see she had tears on her face, though her mouth wasn’t moving. She passed me, pressed her back against the wall of the Chapters, and continued staring straight ahead, occasionally lifting her cup of coffee to her mouth without taking a sip.

I looked across the street to the man. He was still hanging around that door. In fact he was kind of flattened against the door handle on the inside, staring through the glass. I stared back at him. Eventually he noticed I was looking at him, made eye contact with me. I kept looking until he looked away. I wanted him to know someone was watching him.

I could feel adrenaline starting to surge as I watched him. Everything about his body language had this air of dangerous indecision about it. I knew he’d be crossing the street eventually. I knew he was gauging how busy the street was (very — thank you, STO buses, for being so few and far between) while watching her, debating whether to come out and cross the street or not. I played scenarios through my head. I debated calling the police.

I kept trying not to look at the young woman. I became aware of the fact that no one was looking at her. And I figured that maybe even doing the wrong thing would be better than doing nothing at all. So I walked up to her and asked if she was okay.

“Oh,” she said, and instantly smiled this apologetic smile, this I’m sorry to be such a bother smile, “I’m fine, thank you.”

“Are you sure? Is there anything you need?” And here I felt myself falling down this rabbit hole of inadequacy, of unpreparedness, of the vast gulf between propriety and what I wanted to say, which was I will fight and destroy this person for you, I will call the police, I will make sure he doesn’t hurt you, and the simultaneous realisation that I had the power to do none of those things, because even calling the police would place demands on her that maybe she would not want, and all I could do was offer.

As she shook her head, still smiling, face still wet, I said, “I’m sorry, I know it’s none of my business, but he has no right to talk to you like that.”

And she said, “yeah, we haven’t been getting on so well lately. But thank you. Really, thank you.”

And I had nothing else to do and nothing else to say, but I stood there staring him down from across the street and contemplating the best angle at which to stab someone with a hairstick at close quarters.

He crossed the street as my bus approached, as all the people on the sidewalk began piling in. At that same moment I heard the young woman he was approaching talking on her phone. He was getting really close, not touching her but crowding her, while she ignored him and talked very loudly into her phone, saying “he was being a total jerk, he threw me up against the wall,” and at that point I was on the bus and asking for a transfer and trying to listen and watch, and saw that she was getting on the bus, too, and so was he.

The bus was crowded. I had to move toward the back. People shifted around and I saw the young woman sit down next to someone with a couple of other people standing near her while the man pursuing her hunkered down next to her, looking very intense and being way too close, and eventually — I couldn’t hear what was being said by either of them — he backed off and moved to a different seat. One right in front of me.

He was very pale. He had a tattoo of the word “Karma” in a cursive script over the knuckles of his left hand. He had tattoos of praying hands and other words on his neck. He had a mustache, short sandy hair under a baseball cap with a turquoise bill. He had a thick red watch on his right wrist. He wore a bulky white sweatshirt over baggy dark jeans, and had two scabs at his hairline. I found myself memorizing these details as I stared at him, wondering if he’d only gotten on the bus because she did, wondering if she’d only gotten on the bus because she saw him crossing the street, wondering what I could do, if he was going to follow her until they were in a remote place, wondering what I could do.

My street came up and I got off the bus. I walked into my sister’s house and railed at my brother-in-law about how I hated not being a superhero, how I hated not being able to do anything, how I hated seeing scum like that get away with their behaviour with the sanction of people around them too uncomfortable or scared to do anything. I railed against not being powerful, against not having the strength or skill or conviction to prevent violence.

And you know, this has nothing to do with Tony Harris, except that in my mind it’s all of a piece. Hating women, hating their activities, hating the movement of their bodies, shouting at them on the street or on the internet, preventing them from enjoying conventions or comics or a cup of coffee. I had been thinking of Tony Harris before I left the house, and I was raging at Tony Harris in my head while I saw this man staring — hatefully, always angrily and hatefully — at this woman who wouldn’t open her mouth to cry, who looked apologetic because I noticed her, and I am thinking of Tony Harris now, even when I don’t want to talk about him, because I am always, every day, having to think and talk and deal with the fact that Tony Harris and people who are like him and agree with him exist.

It’s all the same thing.

freedominwickedness:

nobledendrobium:

senor-bizarro:

toughasbro:

shibakin:

summmitt:

chaseross:

ukelear-weapons:

zmizet:

freedominwickedness:

maximilianoo:

Not just that I won’t be forever alone. 

But that I’ll be the man she will forever look to for help. I’ll be the one waiting for her at the end of the aisle. I’ll be the man of the house, my house. I’ll be the man who fixes things for her. I’ll be the man who spends all day cleaning the garage, or fixing the car, or fixing the sink, or mowing the lawn. I’ll be the man she tells her friends about.

She’ll call me her husband. 

My kids will call me daddy. They’ll look to me to take the monsters out. To kill the spider in the shower. To be the one they wrestle with. To teach them how to ride a bike. To teach them anything really. 

Everything changes from here on out. 

Ladies and gentlemen, this is a perfect example of the sad fact that trans men are just as much of sexist pigs as cis men. Feminists really need to stop falsely accusing trans women of being misogynistic and start calling out trans men for their actual misogyny.

well there you have it.

^^^^^^^^^

Ok, but how is that sexist? Because he said, “my house” rather than “our house”? Because as a guy, he’s more likely to be the one to fix the car, working in the garage, etc?

I doubt he’ll be upset if his wife wants to do these things. These are just the things he hopes to do when he’s married.

Please explain how this is misogynistic.

what you just wrote is misogynistic O M G 

“Because as a guy, he’s more likely to be the one to fix the car, working in the garage”

ARE YOU KIDDING ME

Oh give me a fucking break guys. Not everything is meant to be sexist. Calm your shit.

Tumblr.

Yep.

Apparently a man being more likely to be dealing with CV grease (one of the most disgusting substances known to man) undoing bolts that require herculine strength, and shredding his hands to bits, is an act of hatred against women.

Hi Tumblr. How you doin.

Edit: I will hold this as an example of the whining fuck above having absolutely no fucking idea what’s involved in tinkering with and fixing cars. Just wave your wand and superpowers, and the mess in the engine bay stops being broken. It is hard, dirty work. Especially if you’re dealing with a turbocharged car, the heat in the engine bay under running conditions is tremendous, and this seizes bolts on. God forbid your downpipe joints break their welds (protip, this happens fairly regularly on cars like Subarus). The heat here is incredible, and it’s hard to reach. It’s a pig of a job, and is usually left for the strongest guys and best tools so it actually gets done.

You’re going to get covered in things (ATF, which clings to everything; MTF from at the very least the diffs, which reeks to high heaven and is bloody hard to wash off your skin, hair and clothes; CV grease from older cars, which is like MTF on crack; old engine oil, which is carcinogenic; brake fluid, some varieties of which will burn or irritate your skin). You’re going to rip your hands to shreds (not just bolts to worry about, you’ve got heat shields, edges of the block, etc etc). You’re going to burn yourself (the engine block will stay hot for hours sometimes, and the exhaust and radiator are MIGHTY SPAICY when you first get in there).

It’s safe to assume most women aren’t going to want to do this. Most seem to refuse to even change their wheels when they get a flat tyre - too dirty, too heavy. Wut.

So no, it is NOT an act of hatred, violence or bigotry to women to assume that most of them aren’t going to wreck their bodies doing this, especially if it’s not a repair; however, a subsection of men will quite masochistically do all of the above out of choice to make their cars better, faster, stronger. One of mine has a siamese downpipe, a larger turbo, strut braces, a WRX motor, STi suspension, and because it’s over 300,000km it’s had most things refreshed. The other has Gymkhana STi suspension, a full STi body kit, alloy bonnet, alloy control arms, strut braces, larger swaybars, a full 2.5” exhaust, and waiting for it are huge brakes and a 6-speed short-throw gearbox with a shitload of extras. Guess how many female-bodied people have worked on either car in the last 7 years of my ownership?

Yep, just me.

Plenty of girls have watched, gotten bored, and ordered us to do more fun things like help with the BBQ or take them up the road to the shops (in the cars that are in pieces, naturally).

I rest my goddamn motherfucking case.

And if they want to fight gender stereotypes so bad, they should put their money where their mouth is and fix their car or wipe down the grill so that a man doesn’t have to do it for them. Not go on Tumblr and complain when a trans guy is getting married and is HAPPY.

There’s no reason to scream MISOGYNY when a dude just wants to be chivalrous, people. Complain if a guy says “you can’t do it, you’re a woman” not “I’d like to do this for you because it sucks.”

I don’t want to change engine oil. I don’t want to replace breakpads or struts. I don’t want to get cancer causing agents all over myself and have dirt under my nails and look gross. And if that makes me a misogynist, oh well. 

I would if I HAD to. But I don’t enjoy eu de Auto Shop.

Have you ever smelled axel grease? IT SMELLS LIKE A DIRTY OLD CAR. Thank goodness for other people who are willing to get covered in stinky stuff and ruin their hands just so I can cater to my hypochondria. 

The sheer hypocrisy in some of the responses to these criticisms is quote staggering. We literally have a guy complaining that feminists should only complain when guys explicitly say that girls can’t do things because they’re women… while he’s reblogging another guy who just assertedthat women can’t fix cars because it’s too hot, messy, and hard for us to handle.

Which is, of course, only true in Male Fantasy Land. Over here in reality, girls are just as good as guys at fixing cars.

I’m a girl. My former roommates — both also girls — and I jointly owned a 1980s Volvo station wagon and a modern Toyota subcompact, and we did all of the maintenance and repair on those vehicles ourselves. Up to and including repairing frame damage and replacing the front bumper on the Toyota after a traffic accident, something that most people — male or female — would have to take to a body shop. We fucking BUILT a cargo trailer for the station wagon when they moved out, so they could haul all their shit to the literal opposite side of the country.

Girls can’t even fix a flat tire? We’ve pulled over and changed flat tires for strangers — and guess what, several of those times it’s been a guy who was standing helplessly at the side of the road.

That’s why this is misogynistic bullshit. It’s not the “doing nice things for your partner” part that is sexist, it’s assuming that you need to do X, Y, and Z because your partner is female. There isn’t a single damn thing a guy “needs” to do for me because my sex makes it impossible for me to do it myself. If you’re better at me than something, it’s because you’ve spent more time and resources in learning and practicing, not because you’re a guy and I’m a girl.

(Source: titty-slip)

partysoft:

stunglikehell:

None of the men I’ve spoken to believe me when I point out that women don’t talk more than them and that we don’t interrupt them with our “banter.”

Seriously we don’t.

According to a study conducted by psychologist Don Zimmerman and sociologist Candace West in their “Sex Roles, Interruptions and Silences in Conversation,” study.

“…males interrupt females far more often than they interrupt other males - and much more often than females interrupt either sex.”

In fact, “in mixed-sex conversations, men ‘hold the floor’ more of the time than women, even when the women have higher status…” (pg. 210)

Deborah Tannan, a sociolinguists in the 1990s, did a study where she recorded two-and-a-half hours of conversation, noting that, “…men often do dominate their conversations with women by interrupting.”

Dominating conversations doesn’t stop at interrupting, even “stony silence,” is a pass for this. How? She gives an example:

“…she cit[es] a dialogue between a husband and wife in Erica Jong’s novel, Fear of Flying. Bennett, the man, remains stonily silent, while with mounting misery his wife Isadora begs him to tell her what she has done wrong. When he finally tries to leave the room, the scene ‘ends with her literally lowered to the floor, clinging to his pajama leg. But the reason his silence is an effective weapon is her insistence that he tell her what’s wrong. If she receded into silence, leaving the room or refusing to talk to him, his silence would be disarmed.” (pg. 211)

This obviously, can be dismissed as an exaggeration. It is, after all, a reference taken from a fictional account but also points out something that rings true: How interactions are defined by the participation of all parties involved. For starters, patterns of speaking and conversation styles taken on by most women usually contain “frequent use of qualifiers or hedges that decrease the assertiveness in the statement,” we also use what linguists Robin Lakoff calls: “empty” adjectives - adjectives that do not have connotations of power.

Other assessments show that it IS typically women who ‘hold onto’ men, in a very figurative way, when we converse with them. We are usually the one’s that try to keep the conversation going.

Pamela Fisherman, a sociolinguists who analyzed 52 hours of couples amongst themselves, concluded that women “work harder” to keep conversations flowing. In our attempts to do so, we are more likely to use tag questions (e.i: “phrases that can be used to obligate one’s partner to reply”), we give encouragement to continue a conversation and force interests more often to ensure the man knows we are being attentive.

In those moment when we DO initiate a conversation on a particular topic, they fail 64% of the time. In comparison to the men on the tapes whose topics successfully carried 96% of the time. This means that, “women had to keep bringing up new subjects all the time and mostly they fell flat.” (pg. 209)

The most notable way that men killed conversations was something as trivial, as minimal, as saying, “Um,” when the woman had finished speaking. The woman’s response? They “pursued whatever subject the men seemed willing to talk about.” (pg. 210)

What does this all come down too? It confirms a few things. 1) In mix-gender conversations, women typically, put the concerns and interests of men first. 2) In mix-gender conversations, women still come across as less assertive and even, less convincing. (“studies have shown that the tentative style that women often use makes any speaker seem less convincing and believable,” and this becomes an issue when it trickles into work place perceptions, adding another layer to the glass ceiling: “Women [who] were not convincingly powerful in their style of speaking…were not put into positions where they must present themselves powerfully.”) 3) Men interrupt women more in conversations and all-in-all, dominate these conversations. In one way by the conditioned leeway women usually give them (e.i: we are expected and trained to be more polite and thoughtful of the feelings of others, this slips into conversation style as well. Lakoff specifies that we use “overly proper grammar and excessively polite speech,” most of the time). At the opposite end of the spectrum, men are more likely to cut off women through socialized feelings of entitlement a.k.a, a manifestation of male privilege.

[The trippy thing about “privilege” is that many privileged people cannot identify it until it is pointed out to them and when it is, it is usually met with hostility because their power and the cultural advantages the society gives them is being attacked. In context of these studies, it has to do with how the opinions of men are more valued, thus most men grow to internalize these beliefs and this is externalized through putting their views above that of women’s].

For the guys: You may not notice you’re doing it, but try to get in-tuned to how often you talk compared to how often the women in your life talk when they are conversing with you. Whose topics carry on the longest? Who interrupts who the most? Do you give unwarranted encouragement through verbal cues or body language? (e.g: nodding your head, giving “ahuhs” or throwing in tag questions). When awkward silence enters the conversation, whose the first to break it?

Experiences will differ from person-to-person. But all these studies, from the Fisherman and Tannen’s tapes to Lakoff and Kramarae’s observations (Dr. Cheris Kramarae pointed out that these speech patterns are also cross-cultural), there should be a gender-specific pattern to the conversation styles.

But at the end of the day: No, we do not talk more than you when we are talking with you.

Spencer, Metta et al. Foundations of Modern Sociology: Seventh Edition. “Gender Roles.” Prentice-Hall Canada Inc., 1996. (pg. 209-211)

there’s a reason why groups split evenly between men and women are deemed female-dominated

related reading, some of which deals specifically with self-silencing in the face of sexism (or other prejudice):

Aukrust, V. G. (2008). Boys’ and girls’ conversational participation across four grade levels in Norwegian classrooms: Taking the floor or being given the floor?. Gender and Education, 20(3), doi: 10.1080/09540250802000413

Chaudoir, S. R., & Quinn, D. M. (2010). Bystander sexism in the intergroup context: The impact of cat-calls on women’s reactions towards men. Sex Roles, 62(9-10), doi: 10.1007/s11199-009-9735-0

Kaiser, C. R., & Miller, C. T. (2001). Stop complaining! The social costs of making attributions to discrimination. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27(2), doi: 10.1177/0146167201272010

Kimble, C. E., Yoshikawa, J. C., & Zehr, H. D. (1981). Vocal and verbal assertiveness in same-sex and mixed-sex groups. Journal of Personality and Social Pyschology, 40(6), doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.40.6.1047

Sellers, J. G., Woolsey, M. D., & Swann, W. B., Jr. (2007). Is silence more golden for women than men? Observers derogate effusive women and their quiet partners. Sex Roles, 57(7-8), doi: 10.1007/s11199-007-9277-2

Shelton, J. N., & Stewart, R. E. (2004). Confronting perpetrators of prejudice: The inhibitory effects of social costs. Pyschology of Women Quarterly, 28(3), doi: 10.1111/j.1471-6402.2004.00138.x

Swim, J. K., Eyssell, K. M., Murdoch, E. Q., & Ferguson, M. J. (2010). Self-silencing to sexism. Journal of Social Issues, 66(3), doi: 10.1111/j.1540-4560.2010.01658.x

Swim, J. K., & Hyers, L. L. (1999). Excuse me—what did you just say?!: Women’s public and private responses to sexist remarks. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 35(1), doi: 10.1006/jesp.1998.1370

(Source: gynocraticgrrl)