Amanda Marcotte points out that sexual harassment is a grassroots political movement. That’s right, it is.
A guy harassed a woman, she told him to stop, he didn’t stop, she told his mother what he was doing. Oh noes! Violation of the rules!
This interaction doesn’t demonstrate that the man sending the unsolicited cock shot is profoundly stupid or socially inept, but the opposite: He’s extremely well-versed in the unspoken “rules” of social interaction. He’s particularly aware of the profound pressure that women are under to play along and pretend that harassment is “flirting” for fear of being accused of hypersensitivity. Indeed, he demonstrates this awareness by promptly reminding her of her “obligation” to play along to “prove” she’s not hypersensitive. He also knows that women are supposed to be ashamed of being harassed and to try not to draw attention to it, and when she rejects that “rule” by sharing his tests with his mother, he is genuinely freaked out because she’s not playing by the script that his probably countless other targets have. He doesn’t ask her to stop for his mother’s sake. He says, “That’s not right.” He knows that the unspoken rules state that women are to turn inward with shame when sexually harassed, and when someone said to hell with those rules, he—a guy who sends unsolicited cock shots!—becomes All About The Rules.
That’s because the rules are for his benefit, not hers. Obviously.
What’s interesting to me is that sexual harassers subconsciously (or hell, consciously, I don’t know) understand themselves as a grassroots political movement to put bitches in their place. I know this, because they show the kind of unity and determination for their ideological goals that liberal organizers wish we could get for ours. Tracy Clark-Flory wrote about this story at Salon, and she notes the reaction the woman who fought back got:
She has, however, received responses of a different sort. Yes, there are lots of women pumping their fists in the air and cheering her on, but her blog has also reportedly been inundated with messages like the following, “If you had/get some good dick (which you obviously haven’t/don’t) you wouldn’t be such a grammar nazi and prude.” He really showed her! Once again, Internet jerks respond to a woman calling out jerks by being even bigger jerks.
That is what the Internet is for.
That’s because they are a political movement, and when one of their own—a sexual harasser—gets shut down, they rush forward to his defense. A political movement can be defined as a group of people, organized formally or not, who have a belief, some goals to establish that belief in the world, and a set of tactics they use to achieve those goals. For instance, feminists believe in women’s equality and the dismantling of gender roles. They want to establish that belief by fighting for reproductive rights, an end to sexual and domestic violence, and a more equitable share of the workload in both the public and private sphere. They use tactics like lobbying, lawsuits, awareness campaigns, and running for office.
If I were to chart out what pro-harassment as a political movement looks like, therefore, it’s this:
- Belief: Bitches ain’t shit.
- Goals: To feel free to put any random woman in her place both for the immediate pleasure of doing so and for the long-term gain of women feeling stuck in second class status.
- Tactics: Inundate any woman who pushes back against harassment with even more harassment, hoping to make the price of speaking out so high that women give up.
Thus, like clockwork, every time a woman or even a man speaks up against sexual harassment, the bat signal goes up and they get absolutely flooded with harassment. What makes it so frightening as a political tactic is that for the pro-harassment forces, harassment is fun and an end in and of itself. So they have endless bounds of energy for it, which is why they’re so damn confident that they can harass women into silence. Clearly, the only thing that can be done is for anti-harassment people to hang in there and remind themselves that while our opponents may have tons of energy, we have the numbers. The positive response this woman got is heartening. If we keep it up, we can get a handle on this thing.
That’s something I find myself explaining a lot. People ask me why they do it; I explain that it’s fun for them. It is. It’s fun and it costs them absolutely nothing, because they do it pseudonymously. So why would they stop?
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
