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Here's a thing
XKCD
One of the things I like about XKCD is the ironic meta-commentary that happens on multiple levels.
However, I don't actually know any women who wish the complete stranger but-cute boy on the train would talk to them. Women are trapped on trains and buses, until the vehicle stops. A woman is typically a lot more aware of whether the creepy guy from the bus is following her to work, than whether or not the "cute boy" -- who is nonetheless a complete stranger -- will ever work up the nerve to talk to her. So the XKCD strip? It isn't a scenario I can even imagine a woman writing.
I happened across this particular strip from a comments thread link, following this post:
Schrödinger’s Rapist: or a guy’s guide to approaching strange women without being maced
Although the writer makes a number of assumptions with which I'm not in complete agreement, she also makes a some points that bear discussion and reflection, and sharing with your friends and acquaintances. And in the comments thread, before things go all to hell, woman after woman makes the point that she tries very hard to pointedly read her book or look out the window -- and inevitably, when some guy tries to make conversation, she's braced for him to escalate things to "Jeez, I'm being nice, bitch - what's your problem?"
From the post linked above:
Now, you want to become acquainted with a woman you see in public. The first thing you need to understand is that women are dealing with a set of challenges and concerns that are strange to you, a man. To begin with, we would rather not be killed or otherwise violently assaulted.
“But wait! I don’t want that, either!”
Well, no. But do you think about it all the time? Is preventing violent assault or murder part of your daily routine, rather than merely something you do when you venture into war zones? Because, for women, it is. When I go on a date, I always leave the man’s full name and contact information written next to my computer monitor. This is so the cops can find my body if I go missing. My best friend will call or e-mail me the next morning, and I must answer that call or e-mail before noon-ish, or she begins to worry. If she doesn’t hear from me by three or so, she’ll call the police.
It brings to mind a number of thoughtful posts I've seen from men, the last few years, as well.Well, no. But do you think about it all the time? Is preventing violent assault or murder part of your daily routine, rather than merely something you do when you venture into war zones? Because, for women, it is. When I go on a date, I always leave the man’s full name and contact information written next to my computer monitor. This is so the cops can find my body if I go missing. My best friend will call or e-mail me the next morning, and I must answer that call or e-mail before noon-ish, or she begins to worry. If she doesn’t hear from me by three or so, she’ll call the police.
Joss Whedon on "What's wrong with women?" wrote:
I have yet to find a culture that doesn’t buy into it. Women’s inferiority – in fact, their malevolence -- is as ingrained in American popular culture as it is anywhere they’re sporting burkhas. I find it in movies, I hear it in the jokes of colleagues, I see it plastered on billboards, and not just the ones for horror movies. Women are weak. Women are manipulative. Women are somehow morally unfinished. (Objectification: another tangential rant avoided.) And the logical extension of this line of thinking is that women are, at the very least, expendable.
Jim Hines wrote:How pathetic is it that, in our culture, the only thing you have to do to be a good guy is say, "Hey, one of these days I'll write something about rape." Even that sort of vague, empty comment about rape is enough to make you stand out. Because that's already more than most guys seem willing to say or do.
From an essay on http://meloukhia.net, called Feminism and Joss Whedon: Men, Women, and Dollhouse:
We are taught, as a collective society, that women’s bodies are public property, and that they are always available for sex [Emphasis added]. The female body is an object of collective social consumption, not something which is private. While people may argue that rape is viewed as socially unacceptable, our entire society is structured around the idea of female availability, which is one of the reasons why many women and feminists have reacted so strongly to the troubling themes of personhood, body, and agency in Dollhouse. Even the perception of rape in the real world is complicated, which makes a reading of the events on Dollhouse far from simple. For women and feminists, the show is skirting dangerously close to a reality which already exists, a world in which women’s bodies are assumed to come with consent attached and in which grey areas are automatically not rape. In perhaps the most classic example of how this plays out in the real world, it is assumed that rape cannot take place in a relationship, because consent is built into the structure of the relationship, which means that the body is always available for sex, even when the body’s owner “isn’t there” in the sense that she is drugged, or drunk, or asleep. Even when she explicitly denies consent, it is not rape, because, in the eyes of society, how could you revoke consent once you’re in a relationship?
I'm thinking a lot about women, women's bodies, and sexual politics in SF, partly because I'm reading Bear's Carnival, and thinking about how to go about writing a long essay about the book as a sort of ironic meta-commentary/response to the 20th century feminist utopian novel tradition.
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I'd only be squicked if I were on a perfectly normal Dell or Mac and got that comment. It kind of harks back to
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You know, I never consciously thought this thought, but it's there every time I leave my house, every time I know one of my girls is out, alone.
Very thought-provoking post, Mac. Thanks.
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I avoided making a long, rambling comment on it last night, but I do want to throw out there that my experience has been utterly different. As a transwoman, one of the most striking things about my transition is how much *safer* I feel as a woman than I ever did as a man.
But I also don't think that contradicts anything you said, which is all very true.
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I think that it varies a good deal regionally, as well. Some of that is simply human instinct, though, I'd think -- like I'm more careful in unfamiliar cities than in my own...and I'm damned careful in rural areas and small towns, because I'm pretty clearly and visibly a dyke --and one of those who can't pass, but been physically very other since I was a kid -- and that aspect of my appearance has put me in danger more than once, as well.
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A very significant part of the difference is the disappearance of this strong, constant, background anxiety from multiple sources, but which could be bundled under the heading of "There are all these things I'm supposed to do, and none of them feel right or make any sense." Dominance games, in particular, always felt utterly foreign, so having to interact with unfamiliar men was absolutely *terrifying* -- whereas now I get to opt out of those completely. (This is really what you were talking about in your comment, I think. A lot of people looking from the outside don't really understand the role of the ever-shifting landscape of dominance in male interactions, and how it means that most men are rarely able to *feel* their privilege.)
But even apart from those, there are some things that do go to the point of your post. Being raised male, I have a very strong sense of my own personal integrity, and my ability to physically defend myself. I got to have the experience of beating up the school bully in 4th grade. I'm very secure in my physical capabilities in a struggle, and I know how I react to surprise attacks. So my fear of physical attack is close to zero. And I recognize that that's a form of nascent male privilege. So much of the fear that I see many women living with seems to me to be a learned -- or really, *enforced* -- helplessness, and that objectively they are over-estimating their danger. I know *why* they do this, but it saddens me to see it happen. *But* I also understand that this may just be my perception. I may well be the one who is mistaken.
(These days I find that I have become much more certain of what my beliefs *are* and much less certain of whether they are *true*.)
The last thing I've identified really reinforces one of your main points (and might seem to contradict my last one, though it doesn't) which is how important public vs private ownership of one's body is in this. What being trans *means* is that your body is disconnected from your self. It has only been very recently that I have begun to understand that my body has anything to do with *me* in any essential way. (My friend Jude puts it best when she says: "Before transition, I experienced my body as a rental car.") I still spend most of my time at war with "the meat" as I call it, but as a woman I can actually glimpse what that kind of personal autonomy *means*, where as a man it was so incomprehensible that I didn't even perceive its lack.
See what I meant about rambling? :)
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She explained herself a little more carefully, further down in the comments. But it's a thought provoking and remarkably coherent explanation of how and why some people think and behave very, very differently in different sets of circumstances.