Tonight, this tweet from Sunny made my timeline explode. The article it links to is about TubeCrush, a new craze that’s apparently taken London by storm. It bears similarity to the ‘Fitfinder’ website (now defunct) which took over university campuses (campi?) last summer, although Fitfinder was different in some ways.
The conversation turned to why, as a society, we accept and even encourage the objectification of men in this way, while the objectification of women is regarded far more suspiciously. From my perspective, the answer’s simple: women objectifying men is relatively harmless because men hold the power in terms of sex and more generally in terms of whatever comes between flirting and sexual harassment.
If a woman takes a picture of a man on a train and he sees her, one or both will be embarassed but very few men would feel threatened by such behaviour.
If, however, a man takes a picture of a woman on a train and she sees him, immediately she has to think about the possible dangers of the situation. Is this guy a creep? Is he a potential rapist? Is he going to follow up the action with some verbal or physical harassment?
The odds are that this guy isn’t a rapist, but if you’re in a room with 100 glasses of water, 1 of which is poisoned, the odds don’t really hold much comfort. The risk that the worst-case will happen is still scary, however slim the possibility.
I don’t want to expand too much on this – I’m sure there’s reams of wonderful feminist critique you can read if you want to. This article covers a lot of the issues (h/t Soph). What I do want to do is provide some examples of behaviour I’ve either seen or been told about which makes women act in the way they do (ie they are suspicious of men’s motives and intentions).
“I liked him but I wouldn’t let him walk me home because I didn’t want him to know where I lived.” < she met a guy on a night out, but still had to call me to walk her home because he might have been a stalker/worse. Girls have to think about this sort of thing all the time, which must be a serious burden.
I was walking someone home after a night out when two men walking in the opposite direction started “complementing” her. “Come home with us, love – we’ve got huge cocks, this guy you’re with (ie me) is a dickhead,” was probably the line of choice. One of them said he wanted to “eat ice-cream off her tits” as well. Even though I was right there and we were walking arm-in-arm, these two guys thought it was perfectly reasonable to objectify her in the most vulgar and violent terms and act like they were doing her a favour in the process. I can’t even work out what would have happened if she had been on her own.
Someone I know was walking back from lectures when a boy rode up next to her on a bike and just watched her walking for about 2 or 3 minutes. When she looked at him, he said something that made her realise that he would follow her back to the house if she didn’t do something. She had to dive into a pub and call her boyfriend to meet her there. For quite a few weeks she wouldn’t make the 5 minute walk from university to the house alone.
It was the height of revision season, and the university libraries were predictably full. She was sat down, making notes or whatever, when a man came and asked if he could sit next to her. This is pretty standard during exam season, and she said yes. About half an hour later she realised that he kept staring at her and felt really uncomfortable. When she started packing her things to leave, he said something along the lines of, “Don’t leave babe, I want to get you know you. And your ass.” I believe in this case she took a taxi home, she was that shaken up.
Add to this the countless times I’ve seen guys told to to piss off on dancefloors and at bars refuse to get the fuck away (which I can’t even be bothered to list individually) and you get the picture I’ve seen: Some Men Are Twats. Not all men, but some. Quite possibly most.
It affects how women behave, and it affects how decent men behave as well. Sometimes I think about something I want to say/do, and then think, Actually, that could be misconstrued. If we’re inclined to give the y-chromosomed the benefit of the doubt and say twattish men are in the minority, which probably isn’t the case, this minority are ruining stuff for everyone else by forcing women to treat all men as though they are as disrespectful, forceful, violent, insensitive and dangerous as the worst of us are. I, for one, don’t blame them.
Wonderful & bang on point. Thanks J. x
“If a woman takes a picture of a man on a train and he sees her, one or both will be embarassed but very few men would feel threatened by such behaviour.”
How do you know few men will feel threatened? It would be useful if you post your sources, or if you don’t have any dont post generalisations, especially when dealing with this subject.
I carried on reading regardless and see you reached a very insightful point.
“Not all men, but some. Quite possibly most.”
Yawn.
“How do you know few men will feel threatened?”
I don’t know. I didn’t conduct scientific research into the matter. I’m not IpSosMori. All I did was take into account the replies I saw at the time on twitter and the views of some friends I asked myself.
This article is rather over the top isn’t it?
It begins by ostensibly commenting on the situation of men being surreptitiously photographed by females on the tube in order to salivate over them on facebook and instead makes it as an opportunity to attack men per se as possible rapists, etc. Are you really expecting to be taken seriously?
I’m not “attacking men per se” – the original tweet from Sunny brought up whether our reaction would be different if the site was focused on women, not men. This blog merely looked at why women have to be much more wary of this sort of behaviour than men, as a rule.
My entire point is that all men aren’t dangerous, but that because some are, this impacts on how people have to behave.
How come there aren’t any photos on Tubecrush of its founders, whom the Evening Standard tell us are only prepared to be known as Stephen, Andy, Gemma and Michael? Wouldn’t it be “funny” if somebody inadvertantly posted a photo of one of them on Tubecrush which its visitors then proceeded to downgrade on a sliding scale to a zero “munter” class in the attractiveness department? If they’re prepared to put other people up to be rated then they should do the honourable thing and put their own photos up and invite everyone on the Internet to rate them on an attractiveness scale, too. So c’mon “Stephen, Andy, Gemma and Michael” stop hiding away there and step forward into the light so that the rest of us can decide your worth based on physical appearance, too!!!
I fail to see what that would accomplish, personally. I do agree that it would be funny if, inadvertently, one of them did appear on the site, if it hasn’t happened already.
What the **** are you people on? Does the use of ONE female name throw you off the scent? TubeCrush is the work of four gay men. Most (all?) of the pictures were taken by men. And it is aimed mainly AT men.
haha I think I am inclined to agree with you MDH64 though ‘Gemma’ may be a woman. She might just appreciate how men like to look at other men, too.
[...] The main feminist argument against TubeCrush can be summed up by this blogger, My Crippled Eagle: [...]
[...] it comes to the point of the male “creep”, this utimately comes down to threat and power-relationships, and is a subtly different (but associated) point. He talks about men being seen as “pervs, [...]
Therefore feminists like you are pushing for a future with privacy for women, but not men. Thanks a bunch.