Via http://fashionsco0p.blogspot.com
By: Molly Redding, San Francisco, CA, USA, SSH Correspondent
An experience I had the other day got me thinking about how much street harassment has to do with heteronormativity and the presentation of gender in public spaces.
It was Pride weekend and the streets around my apartment in San Francisco were filled with revelers coming to soak in the atmosphere of pure elation after the Defense of Marriage Act was killed and Proposition 8 – a California ballot initiative restricting marriage to one woman and one man – was overturned.
My roommate and I ventured out to get dinner, and as we were walking down the street a gentleman looked at both of us and called, “Hey, lesbi-ans!” Now, given that the Dyke parade had passed not 20 minutes earlier, his assumption wasn’t crazy, but it made me stop for a second, because it was the first time someone had assumed for me a sexuality that I didn’t claim.
For me, this happened once. For many people, this is a daily experience.
Heteronormativity (one of my favorite words, btw), is exactly what it sounds like – the assumption that everyone is heterosexual unless proven otherwise. Much of street harassment rests on this notion, since many (but certainly not all) street harassment incidences are men sexualizing women’s bodies or body parts. They assume the woman is heterosexual, and thus, available to interact with them under the guise of “courting.” That any of the harassers ever think their actions are going to actually win them a date is a whole other blog topic.
On the flip side, non-compliance with heteronormativity also begets street harassment, when the person walking down the street does not fit within the heteronormative framework. This is why there is a high incidence of street harassment aimed at the LGBQT community. Being in a public space and outside of what the harasser might consider “normal” allows them power to point out and ridicule those differences (this, of course, seems insane to many of us who at one point in our lives learned that differences are opportunities for learning, not ridiculing).
And finally, there’s the issue of performativity – the “performance” of one’s gender. A large focus of street harassment has to do with clothing – how much or how little a woman was wearing when she was harassed. Wearing too little clothing is considered a sexualization and “overperformance” of the female gender – and leaves the situation open to blaming the victim.
But “underperformance” of one’s gender can also leave a person vulnerable to harassment. Judith Butler outlines this in a video where she discusses a young boy who was killed by his classmates because of a certain “swish” in his walk (start around minute 4:30 until 6:45):
“So then we have to ask why would someone be killed for the way they walk? Why would that walk be so upsetting to those other boys that they feel they must negate this person, must expunge the trace of this person, they must stop that walk, no matter what . . . it seems to me that we are talking about an extremely deep panic or fear, an anxiety that pertains to gender norms. If someone says you have to comply with the norms of masculinity otherwise you will die, or I kill you now because you do not comply, then we have to start to question what the relation is between complying with gender and coercion.”
Expectations of gender performance need to stop. Heternormative assumptions need to stop. Their outcome, street harassment, needs to stop.
Molly received a graduate degree in International Development and Gender from the London School of Economics in 2011, where her dissertation focused on websites allowing victims of harassment to post about their experiences. She has worked in the non-profit sector for over 10 years. You can follow her on Twitter, @perfeminist.
