Ruth Mair, UK, SSH Blog Correspondent
I sometimes find myself wondering what kind of a person I would be, or how my view of the world would change, if I wasn’t always on my guard with strangers. I don’t mean this in a Hollywood rom-com dramatic sense of “I can’t let anyone in”, which is an entirely separate problem for some of us.
I mean it in the sense of how I actively avoid making eye contact with men that I don’t know in the street in case they interpret it as me giving them the “come-on.” I mean it in the sense that if I see a cute dog I smile at the dog, not the owner, in case they think the same thing (or in case they think that I am coming on to them, no buddy, I just want to pet your dog). I also mean it in the sense that if a stranger strikes up a conversation with me, in ANY situation, I am almost instantly put on my guard. Particularly if they are of the opposite sex.
I’m not talking about situations when I clearly do not want to be spoken to (there are some helpful diagrams on the internet about when to speak to strangers especially men speaking to ladies, addressing the culture of interrupting girls reading books or working in coffee shops to try and casually chat), I’m talking about EVERYTHING.
When it was the beginning of the second year of my master’s program, I had to give myself internal pep-talks about actively making an effort to converse with new people at uni, particularly if they spoke to me, because I have to try so hard to fight the assumption that strangers talking to me = bad, danger, harassment and any other number of alarm bells.
For me, this is inherently connected to the experiences I have had of street harassment, ranging from being under 16 and still in my school uniform and having adult men ask for my number on the bus (simultaneously having trapped me in to my seat), to me taking an earphone out whilst running because I thought someone was asking for directions (d’oh, silly naive me!) and receiving unsolicited sexual advances. These experiences have certainly changed my approach to the world, and I would be surprised if there were not others that feel the same.
See, I wonder, if there were no street harassment, would we be so guarded?
I fantasise about being perfectly happy to stop to give someone directions, tell them the time, even smile at them because it’s a sunny day and their dog looks really happy, without having to do the threat assessment of which you are probably familiar: deciding if you could out run them, deciding if they are stronger than you, and thinking about what pithy remark to spit out if they say something inappropriate.
In that world we might make friends more easily, without assuming that if a stranger on the street is talking to you they have an agenda or pose a threat, and without having these calculations leech away at your confidence in situations where you ARE actively socialising, and aiming to meet new people. I wonder if, in the same vein, I would look forward to summer more without having to worry about dressing in a way that won’t draw attention or if my life would be different if I didn’t have to psych myself up to go out of the house wearing lipstick.
Everyone has these different calculations to make, and although they are relatively minor for me as a cis-gender, white female, such calculations are still symptoms of the bigger problem, which is that on the streets, interaction with everyone else is dominated by a culture of unsolicited commentary which can come from any direction, and can range in threat-level.
I long for a world where such threat assessment before we walk out the door are largely unnecessary. However, whilst musing about this thought, I was reminded of an episode of the Simpsons’ Tree-House of Horror, where Lisa wishes for world peace, everyone throws away their nukes, and then aliens invade and they can’t defend themselves. And I do wonder, if were we not on our guards constantly, and did not have to contend with street harassment in all its various forms, there wouldn’t be another threat to calculate for, and defend ourselves from.
It is generally agreed that street harassment is but one symptom of patriarchal society so I am inclined to believe that if it were to be removed, something else would pop up in its place. But, as a result yet again of my own experiences of harassment, am I being cynical? Or is this just my own internalisation of harassers the world over, calling people like me feminazis?
It is this second guessing of oneself that remains, in my opinion, one of the most poisonous parts of street harassment and one of the reasons why even the most confident among us are left with a bad taste in their mouths when they are harassed.
The next step, and one which I have not yet been able to come up with a solution to although I think that many of us have been trying, is how to solve this problem.
Ruth is a human rights MA student finishing her MA dissertation on the legal and normative rights of terror suspects in the UK (spoiler alert: rights are being violated). She also plays bass in a band called Kinshot, sews as often as she can, and spends time getting annoyed at the cat sleeping on top of her computer.
