Note: any typos or errors are mine. Dana.Why I'm Angry
by Bryn Holland, 17
The music was blasting and people were dancing. Club hoppers pushed my friend and me from all sides. Guys were coming from every angle, thinking it was OK to put their hands on me. Eventually my friend and I danced with our backs against a pole to keep our butts from being stared at or grabbed.
Boys were staring at the girls like predators eyeing fresh meat. The music rang with lyrics about beating, slapping and even killing women.
My friend and I stuck it out for as long as we could, but by 11 p.m. we had had enough. Regretting that we had each spent $10 on the cover charge, we left.
"I feel so gross," my friend said.
"I know. I need to take a shower." I said. I put my hand in my hair and brushed it backwards only to find something wet.
"There is spit in my hair!" I said.
"Ewww!!" my friend screamed. I grabbed a tissue from my bag and started wiping the gloppy mess out of my hair. I asked my friend if she could pull up close to the curb, so I could throw up into the trash can. As I rolled down my window, two guys on the sidewalk started yelling things.
"Yeah, roll it down." they shouted. "What are you up to?" My friend sped away.
"I should have thrown the spitty tissue at them," I said.
"Do they ever stop?" my friend asked.
This experience was really a reality check for me. I felt so helpless and lost in that club, but I realized no one knew I was feeling that way and probably would not have cared. It made me wonder if anyone would ever understand. Why can't I be treated with respect? Why can't everyone?
All I am asking for is a world where people of every race, sexual orientation, class, gender and so on can come together to dance, talk, and be merry. To me, that's what it means to be a feminist.
Yes if I were to tell a person walking down the street that I was a feminist, he or she might ask, "You're a man-hater, aren't you? "Why are you so angry all the time?" "Don't you think you're overreacting?" "Are you a lesbian?" Feminism has a really bad rap in today's society. Why? Because it challenges what this society is based on -- oppression.
At Cleveland High I am in the humanities magnet, which focuses on social justice. One day we watched a video called "Dream World," which depicted media messages about women, including a Prince video and other rap videos. I watched Prince dance with two women and throwm them to the floor and pull them around by their hair.
Then the screen flashed to "The Accused," a movie that tells the true story of a young woman who was gang-raped. I watched a man slam a woman up on a pin-ball machine and pull her hair and rape her. Even if you closed your eyes, you could still hear the rape scene going on. I sank in my seat. "This is reality," I thought. "This actually happened."
Female and males alike walked out of the video screening with tears in their eyes and pained expression on their faces. It was ovvious how wrong it was that music videos were making money off of a woman's worst nightmare.
Afterwords, a male friend gave me a hug. I knew he was a big rap music fan, so I asked, "Are you paying attention? I mean, is this affecting you?"
"Yeah. It's been an eye-opener." I could feel that he was just starting to see how hard it is to be a girl in this world.
I wish people understood the fear that many women live with. When I walk down the street, guys stop what the yare doing to stare at me. I just want to hide. I feel so violated. It makes me hat being me, being female. Why do I have to fear for my life, my safety?
I'm glad I can ask these questions. Instead of blaming myself and apologizing for the way I dress or the way I walk, I can be angry for being treated that way. I can see that when men whistle at me, they're the ones who are wrong, not me.
Walking While Female
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Dana Sheets
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Walking While Female
These articles were originally published online and republished in this month's edition of "Youth Today" under the title of "Walking While Female"
Last edited by Dana Sheets on Wed Apr 09, 2003 11:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Dana Sheets
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Note: Again, any typos are mine. DanaTired of Being a Target
by Loretta Chan, 18
One summer night, some jerk threw a Snapple bottle at me while I was crossing a Manhattan street. I don't know what provoked him. I didn't even know who he was.
When I turned back from thecurb where the bottle had landed (thank God it didn't hit me), all I saw was a group of young guys standing around, smiling and saying, "Look at her, look at her." When I turned back in the direction I was originally heading, a guy said to me, like it was funny or something, "Baby, somebody doesn't like you."
I continued walking to the train station like nothing had happened. At least I acted like nothing had happened. But, behind my sunglasses, I was trying hard not to cry.
I had never felt so defenseless. It caught me off guard and I couldn'tdo anything to protect myself or to retaliate. For that moment, I wan't the I-am-woman-hear-me-roar girl that a lot of people know me as. Instead, I became on of those pitiful girls who can't stand up against a male chauvinist pig.
I had never walked away from a situation like that before without at least giving the guy a cold stare and letting him know I was offended. But all I did this time was walk away like I couldn't care less about how I was treated!
That night I told my mother what happened. I was expecting her to comfort me.
Instead, she barely looked up from her desk. The first thing she said to me, in her Chinese accent, was, "Because of what you're wearing. It's too sexy." She even used the same hand gesture she uses when she yells at me for coming home late. She never even said that she felt badly about what had happened. And for the next week, she inspected the way I dressed even more closely than before.
By now, you're probalby wondering what I was wearing that day. It was a long, sleeveless floral dress that was almost down to my ankles. OK, it was a little fitted, and had a slit on one side, but in no sense was it "slutty" or "showy" in comparison to what a lot of other girls were wearing on that hot day.
And what difference does it make? No matter what I was wearing, why should my mother blame me for getting a bottle thrown at me? Why did I always have to feel like I was on the defensive whenever I stepped out of the house?
Long before this, I'd learned how to stare straight ahead when passing any male and to walk very quickly. And the other basic stuff: never get into an elevator alone with a guy and not to walk in a deserted area at night. But I never thought that anybody would ever attack me on the street, in broad daylight, as long as I minded my own business.
My mind became filled with hateful, violent thoughts toward men. I remembered the times they whipped out their penises on the train in front of me and started masturbating. I thought of the remarks on the street about my body. I thought about the perverts whispering their sexual fantisies to me as they passed me or were walking behind me. I had dealt with those things by just putting them out of my mind. But I couldn't just forget the Snapple incident.
So I started considering other options. First I thought of different ways of cursing guys out. Then I went down to the store to get a bottle of pepper spray. A week later I was looking at stun guns on 42nd Street. And for a moment I considered getting a small handgun and going to a shooting range to learn how to use it.
What really kills me is that I'm back to sqaure one. I hate spending all this time bitching about something that half of our population has to put up with and to not have a solution. It would be too cheesy to just end with a moral for the males like: "Have respect for women." It's just a simple rule of thumb, yet they've had difficulty with it for centuries.
It would be even worse for me to tell other women that we'll just have to put up wit habuse and harrassment for the rest of our lives. Just the thought that women in the future, maybe my own daughters, will be treated as second-class humans makes me want to thred every male on this planet to pieces.
In this moment of passion and fury, that's the only solution I can seem to conjure up.
Just Walking...
Youth Today (the Paper and kids) are dealing with a slew of issues. Don't know if it's greater than for my generation or those before. There is undoutably a barrage of unprecedented media images, however, and kids seem to be confronted with these issues much earlier and much more explicitly.
My own kids like rap.... "How can you listen to that misogynist crap?" I asked. He said not all rap is about that. Sounds like a response I might have made about rock and roll when I was younger. But my son and his friends do struggle with what it means to be a "man" and how this relates to the opposite sex. They seen guys mistreat females but then they too have been mistreated by females. So round and round it goes...
We adults aren't free either... Just talking to a Vietnamese colleague yesterday. He is the builder and director of this country's first Vietnamese Community Center. That took a lot of work, vision, commitment, networking and other skills. Going back to the center from a meeting, he saw four African American teens beating and mugging a Vietnamese man. He started to intervene when one of the teens turned and asked, "Man, you want some of this!?" Gone was the sense of personal power, achievement, possibilities. Left was the sense of dispair, futility, anger and hate...
Life can be challenging for any of us...
david
My own kids like rap.... "How can you listen to that misogynist crap?" I asked. He said not all rap is about that. Sounds like a response I might have made about rock and roll when I was younger. But my son and his friends do struggle with what it means to be a "man" and how this relates to the opposite sex. They seen guys mistreat females but then they too have been mistreated by females. So round and round it goes...
We adults aren't free either... Just talking to a Vietnamese colleague yesterday. He is the builder and director of this country's first Vietnamese Community Center. That took a lot of work, vision, commitment, networking and other skills. Going back to the center from a meeting, he saw four African American teens beating and mugging a Vietnamese man. He started to intervene when one of the teens turned and asked, "Man, you want some of this!?" Gone was the sense of personal power, achievement, possibilities. Left was the sense of dispair, futility, anger and hate...
Life can be challenging for any of us...
david
Walking while female
Couple of things going on here that influence how we view things.
So many young kids come from dysfunctional, broken home (often being raised by single parent mom) with no established normal behaviour patterns of how women should be treated. They don't see loving, caring and respectful relationships. They often see a mom wanting some kind of social life, dressing young while trying to attract a man....attracting a less than savory candidate who doesn't want to be a father or hang around kids (could be he has his own). Relationship goes downhill fast and mom moves on to the next candidate, often repeating the cycle.
The young son viewing this play is resentful of another man in his house and see a pattern of abuse established toward his role model mom....this is acceptable bahavior for a man to do to a woman because my mom keeps putting up with it. Result: skewed view of male/female interaction.
The young girl sees this behavior and thinks that that is the way a woman must behave to attract a man and this is the behaviour she should expect from the average guy. History repeats itself.
Another thing going on: peer pressure to dress like Brittany and the movie stars showing all the goods. The young girls that are barely pre-pubescent start dressing older, showing way too much flesh and can't understand why they guys want to jump their bones....fail to see that they are eye candy advertising their wares. Sad part is that they so badly want attention, bad attention is better than no attention at all.
They are sexual earlier and don't know how to handle it. They often don't respect themselves and are not secure enough in their identity to hold off but use sex as a way to be loved.
Now days, you have to have a defensive mind thought especially when alone. The last thing a single woman needs is to draw attention to herself with low shirts, high skirts, skin tight clothing, wanton looks, and anything else that would get a hormonal man even more aroused than they are at their sexual peak. Let's face it, guys don't need much to get them going at that age....seems like I remember some statistics about the frequency of sexual thoughts occurring in pubescent male being every 30 seconds or something like that....and it's not just in men.
A lot of variables occurring within the woman walking alone and the males she encounters....very unpredictable. Just because a woman dresses suggestively does not make it right to be aroused and abusive in reaction but why add fuel to the fire. Think before you dress and be aware of your surrounding environment.
Just my thoughts,
Vicki
So many young kids come from dysfunctional, broken home (often being raised by single parent mom) with no established normal behaviour patterns of how women should be treated. They don't see loving, caring and respectful relationships. They often see a mom wanting some kind of social life, dressing young while trying to attract a man....attracting a less than savory candidate who doesn't want to be a father or hang around kids (could be he has his own). Relationship goes downhill fast and mom moves on to the next candidate, often repeating the cycle.
The young son viewing this play is resentful of another man in his house and see a pattern of abuse established toward his role model mom....this is acceptable bahavior for a man to do to a woman because my mom keeps putting up with it. Result: skewed view of male/female interaction.
The young girl sees this behavior and thinks that that is the way a woman must behave to attract a man and this is the behaviour she should expect from the average guy. History repeats itself.
Another thing going on: peer pressure to dress like Brittany and the movie stars showing all the goods. The young girls that are barely pre-pubescent start dressing older, showing way too much flesh and can't understand why they guys want to jump their bones....fail to see that they are eye candy advertising their wares. Sad part is that they so badly want attention, bad attention is better than no attention at all.
They are sexual earlier and don't know how to handle it. They often don't respect themselves and are not secure enough in their identity to hold off but use sex as a way to be loved.
Now days, you have to have a defensive mind thought especially when alone. The last thing a single woman needs is to draw attention to herself with low shirts, high skirts, skin tight clothing, wanton looks, and anything else that would get a hormonal man even more aroused than they are at their sexual peak. Let's face it, guys don't need much to get them going at that age....seems like I remember some statistics about the frequency of sexual thoughts occurring in pubescent male being every 30 seconds or something like that....and it's not just in men.
A lot of variables occurring within the woman walking alone and the males she encounters....very unpredictable. Just because a woman dresses suggestively does not make it right to be aroused and abusive in reaction but why add fuel to the fire. Think before you dress and be aware of your surrounding environment.
Just my thoughts,
Vicki
"Cry in the dojo, laugh in the battlefield"
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Dana Sheets
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I can be wearing a t-shirt and jeans - neither being tight - and get comments, looks, suggestions, etc. I don't carry myself with a "come hither" attitude and I don't shake my hips on the way by.
This kind of behavior goes way beyond clothing. It goes way beyong something as abstract as somebody's interpretation of your stare. This kind of repeated behavior speaks to an underlying view that women are sexual objects first and people second.
Find something you're attracted to, and then figure out if she's the kind of person you'd like to know.
Buy the meat and then check the flavor.
That's what I hear in the stories of these two girls. A confusion on why they are looked at as objects before anyone tries to meet them as individuals.
This kind of behavior goes way beyond clothing. It goes way beyong something as abstract as somebody's interpretation of your stare. This kind of repeated behavior speaks to an underlying view that women are sexual objects first and people second.
Find something you're attracted to, and then figure out if she's the kind of person you'd like to know.
Buy the meat and then check the flavor.
That's what I hear in the stories of these two girls. A confusion on why they are looked at as objects before anyone tries to meet them as individuals.
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Stryke
This is a really tough topic , while Rob discussed empowering women to not accept victimisation in another thread , I tend to beleive also a major contribution is a lack of positive role models and discipline/structure for young men .
Society gets more permissive and leniant and encouraging towards both sexes , and the young know this , Young people know they will probably get away with bad behaviour , there is seldom any thought of consequences , certainly none that compare to the peer pressure of other youths , while not incredibly old myself , i can see the change in attitudes of even the last ten or so years .
I remember a stage when anyone youth who was out of line would get called on it by ANY adult in the area , now we have a turn the blind eye society , youth needs positive enforcement and feedback to develop in an appropriate way , they need inclusion support and guidance , they need to have discipline and reward , they need a community , seldom kids these days kids have support even from there parents let alone a the wider community .
I really dont know the answer to what we can do on a larger scale , but we all can as individuals make a difference . wether to the kids in our dojo , or the community , give them the time and give them dreams and boundarys , we as a community need to take individual action and not leave it up to others to deal with , this is the only way i can see any progres being made , try instill self respect and ambition , pride and self worth , I`ts a rare thing to see someone with self worth need to harass or violate another , they only hurt themselves in the process .
Society gets more permissive and leniant and encouraging towards both sexes , and the young know this , Young people know they will probably get away with bad behaviour , there is seldom any thought of consequences , certainly none that compare to the peer pressure of other youths , while not incredibly old myself , i can see the change in attitudes of even the last ten or so years .
I remember a stage when anyone youth who was out of line would get called on it by ANY adult in the area , now we have a turn the blind eye society , youth needs positive enforcement and feedback to develop in an appropriate way , they need inclusion support and guidance , they need to have discipline and reward , they need a community , seldom kids these days kids have support even from there parents let alone a the wider community .
I really dont know the answer to what we can do on a larger scale , but we all can as individuals make a difference . wether to the kids in our dojo , or the community , give them the time and give them dreams and boundarys , we as a community need to take individual action and not leave it up to others to deal with , this is the only way i can see any progres being made , try instill self respect and ambition , pride and self worth , I`ts a rare thing to see someone with self worth need to harass or violate another , they only hurt themselves in the process .
Stryke-sama has a really good point about the lowering of the standards of behavior and the adults who fail to take responisbility for calling a kid on it when one steps over the line.
Part of this reluctance I can attribute to the litigiousness of our society - talk to a kid the wrong way and you end up in court - or worse.
And that lack of corrective response from the so-called "responsible adults" around them, is a major part of the problem.
Kids today also know that a verbal dressing down from an adult means nothing - there are no further consequences. Even school detention means little to them as it amounts to just time on their rear ends doing little to nothing anyway.
No real consequence there, either.
And that's just school. Many parents out there do not discipline their kids the way some of us (age-wise) seniors were.
For me, an infraction was anything from grounding to three swats with an open hand on my backside. Real consequences there. Not to mention the social stigma of getting into trouble that went with it.
Anyone with you when you got into trouble also got into trouble.
Today, many parents take an attitude of "my kid didn't do it, so - so what?"
By me, this is not right, either. We all know how one kid can egg another on to do something wrong. We've all been there and done that ourselves.
What might help would be a rollback to the days where there were real consequences to bad acts - and consequences that would redound to ALL of the participants.
But I'm also one of those guys who believes that we are each responsible for our own actions and should TAKE responsibility for them as well.
FWIW,
Lee Darrow, C.Ht.
http://www.leedarrow.com
Part of this reluctance I can attribute to the litigiousness of our society - talk to a kid the wrong way and you end up in court - or worse.
And that lack of corrective response from the so-called "responsible adults" around them, is a major part of the problem.
Kids today also know that a verbal dressing down from an adult means nothing - there are no further consequences. Even school detention means little to them as it amounts to just time on their rear ends doing little to nothing anyway.
No real consequence there, either.
And that's just school. Many parents out there do not discipline their kids the way some of us (age-wise) seniors were.
For me, an infraction was anything from grounding to three swats with an open hand on my backside. Real consequences there. Not to mention the social stigma of getting into trouble that went with it.
Anyone with you when you got into trouble also got into trouble.
Today, many parents take an attitude of "my kid didn't do it, so - so what?"
By me, this is not right, either. We all know how one kid can egg another on to do something wrong. We've all been there and done that ourselves.
What might help would be a rollback to the days where there were real consequences to bad acts - and consequences that would redound to ALL of the participants.
But I'm also one of those guys who believes that we are each responsible for our own actions and should TAKE responsibility for them as well.
FWIW,
Lee Darrow, C.Ht.
http://www.leedarrow.com
