Microaggressions: They're not just for 'special snowflakes'

Today I got to thinking about microaggressions. For the uninitiated, these are small acts of aggression that may not seem like that big a deal at the time, but cumulatively turn into one big pile of shite that may well end up dogging a person's entire day/week/month/life.

You know how it is. You wake up late for work, your partner snaps at you, your kids whinge, your boss is a jackass, the bus driver is a rude git, that homeless guy blocks your way once again.

On its own, each little thing might not have bothered you that much. Two of them together starts to grate on you. Three feels like it's gonna be "one of those days." And the whole lot leaves you wanting to punch someone by dinnertime.

That's pretty much how microaggressions work. Death by a thousand paper cuts.
Now imagine that, instead of your one bad day, it's your week. Or your month. Or your year.

And instead of the alarm that didn't go off, it's the neighbour who sends you sleazy notes over your fence that let you know he's been watching you, and who urinates in his garden in full view of where you sit to work.

And instead of the partner that snaps at you, it's the boss who touches your backside repeatedly without consent, laughs it off when you challenge him, and you have no union or HR to complain to because you're freelance and you need the money.

And instead of the bus driver being a rude git, it's the man taking photos of women at certain sporting events (which you like to attend) without their consent and focusing on their butts, boobs and headless bodies, and you got annoyed about it a couple of times before but you never really thought about it much after that - except now it's happened to you too.

And then imagine that you try to tell someone from a group who doesn't suffer from these microaggressions. For example, imagine you're a woman trying to tell a man these things. And he says....

"Why didn't you report it?"
"Why are you making a big deal if you don't want to report it?"
"Why are you telling me if you don't want me to fix it?"

And you say "I did report the neighbour. I called the non-emergency police line three times and got a case reference number each time. They told me each time that they couldn't do anything. They told me I should just tell the man I have a partner. They sounded like they didn't really care and didn't really believe me. Oh, and yes it was another woman who fobbed me off this way each time."

And you say "How can I report him? I'm freelance. And skint. I basically have no employment rights. You think I can afford a lawyer?! I need this job so I just have to keep slapping his hand and telling him to fuck off and maybe one day drive a fork into his arm next time he tries it, but then I'd probably be the one charged with assault. And I've known this guy 6 years and, probably stupidly, am likely to make allowances for him because I know he's been through a lot of shit and he's just a different generation. And as a freelancer you never like to burn your bridges because people can make trouble for you."

And you say: "I'm telling you because I just need to get this out, need someone to hear me. It's called catharsis. It's called communication. It's called healthy. Also, I don't think this can be fixed. I know that the first woman who I knew who had an up-skirt photo taken and challenged the photographer, basically had him shrug and refuse to remove the picture from a public forum. I know that the second time I saw a photographer blatantly focusing on a woman's boobs, I heard other women making excuses for him viz "Well, you shouldn't wear a low cut top if you don't want people focusing on your boobs." And when it happened to me, I had neither the time, energy or resources to get into a fight with someone who could feign innocence, stonewall me, go on the offensive (how many sexist men love to do THAT when you call them out!) or spread the photo even further. I'm telling you because men need to know what other men do and what women put up with and exactly why we don't speak out."

Just for the record, the three instances detailed above all happened to me in the past year.And you know what the sickest thing of all is? I feel lucky that worse didn't happen to me.

So this is why microaggressions are not just "whining" of "special snowflakes" who can't take a bit of good ol' friendly "banter." 

They are constant, insidious violations of consent, privacy, bodily autonomy and personal safety. They happen to people because of their race, their gender, their sexuality, their religion, their class.

And we all need to take responsibility for them.

I shouldn't have to feel lucky that I didn't get raped, beaten, murdered, have acid thrown in my face.

NO ONE SHOULD.

The Complications of Compliments

"If it's not too anti-feminist to say this...."

"Can I be horrendously sexist for a minute?"

"I'm about to say something misogynistic..."

 

These are not phrases that immediately precede words of terrible sexism, as one might think. It's entirely understandable that that's exactly what you're expecting to hear, as we all know that as soon as someone utters the words "I'm not racist, but....", they're guaranteed to finish the sentence with a proclamation of racial prejudice. Ditto "I'm not a homophobe, but...", "I've got nothing against them, but..." and all other passive-aggressive forms of expressing bigotry.

 

However, these three phrases were uttered by men in my life, intelligent men who know that any expression of sexism to my ears will be met with a rebuke so forceful it will burn their faces off, so one might expect them to tread a bit more carefully than the average caveman who complains about gays or people with brown skin or thinks sexist jokes are a way to impress a woman. And you'd be right. What followed the three phrases above were not jokes about washing up or domestic violence, not proclamations that the gender pay gap is just women's fault for wanting to have babies, not suggestions that wearing a short skirt is 'asking for it' nor any of the garden-variety expressions of misogyny that one unfortunately still encounters far too often in this supposedly progressive society. Instead, two were compliments about my appearance, and the other was an admission from a male friend that he had had sexual thoughts about a woman he saw that day.

 

So why such caution in expressing these non-earth-shattering thoughts? Has the stereotype of feminism as hostile to all matters sexual and appearance-based really permeated so far that even the smart, feminist-friendly men in my life are afraid to say "You look nice today?" or "I found the woman in front of me in the queue attractive?".

 

If it has, I'm not going to blame feminism for this misunderstanding. To my mind, it's pretty easy to understand. Feminism never made it a crime to comment on a woman's appearance. What feminism has always objected to, is the treatment of women as if their appearance is the first, or only, thing that matters about them, the disproportionate focus placed on the appearance of women, while men's appearances are secondary to their (already assumed) capabilities as people, the insane pressure on women to appear a certain way, and the framing of female sexuality as nothing more than a performance to visually appeal to others and please men.

 

Unfortunately, paranoia about endorsing any of the last four phenomena appears to be halting men from even entering the arena of complimenting women, to the point where they find it safer to just say nothing, rather than risk a torrent of infuriated abuse. Again, I repeat, that's not feminism's fault - if anything, it's the fault of an insidiously-planted and still much-supported warping of feminism's image to that of the (and oh, god I really hate using this phrase) man-hating, humourless harridan.

 

Even though a quick glance around the average feminist meeting will show you plenty of young, slim, white, long-haired, feminine women whose appearance could frankly not be more media-friendly and who tend to outnumber those who prefer short hair or lumberjack shirts, the feared yet mythical misandrist warrior is still the face of feminism in so many people's minds. Even in those of the men who know and love myself (young-ish, size 10, long-haired, make-up and dress-wearing) and many other feminist women in all our multi-faceted, strident glory. How is it that such a tired and offensive stereotype still manages to wash away these men's knowledge of real women, and replace it with the notion that if they tell me I look nice today, they're going to get their face smashed in?

 

It fucks me off that debates still rage about whether we should be trying to make feminism less 'scary', more accessible and more 'appealing'. I say, absolutely not. I say, I'm all for educating and explaining, but I'm dead against pandering, and I am not dressing up my belief system as anything other than its own messy, furious glory in order to placate those who demand such a disguise in the first place. If you aren't sympathetic to feminism's aims to begin with - and that's not the same as admitting you don't know a lot about it, or don't understand certain parts of it, because those admissions are not a problem in themselves - then it's not my job to make it 'prettier' for you. If you can read and you've got internet access (which your reading my blog implies you do!), then you have all you need to educate yourself. If you're already thinking "Wot, I might not be able to refer to women who reject me as 'prick-teasing sluts'?" with outrage, then me trying to glossy-up feminism for you ain't gonna achieve a damn thing - your problems with women run deeper than any argument I can offer in favour of not treating them like shit.

 

But to the 'good guys' who are confused, who feel that the demand for respect sometimes jars with the way they look at, or think about, women, and feel guilty about that fact, I'll say this. It's OK to find people attractive. It's OK to notice a stranger's body parts. It's OK to fantasize, and even though I know there are feminists out there who deeply disagree with this, I believe it's OK to have fantasies that seem dirty, violent, disrespectful, or involve language or imagery that you would not dream of describing out loud. Why? Because they're just fucking fantasies. They're not hurting anyone. If you're feeling like you want to make those fantasies a reality in a way that disregards the agency or bodily autonomy of another person, then that's a problem, yes. But I refer you to my comments above - if that's your problem, it's not an issue for feminism. It's an issue for the therapist's couch, and that's where you should be heading for guidance. As I said in my previous post about porn addiction, I don't care what sexual fantasies a man has, or what his thoughts are about a woman's appearance, as long as he continues to behave in a way that respects women as full people, not just bodies, and not just there for his entertainment. I'm not interested in policing what's in anyone's head - because god knows I'd be thrown in the clink sharpish if people could see some of what goes on in mine.

 

Also, while there are some lucky people who genuinely don't care about how they look, most of us - male and female - do. Although I agree that the disproportionate emphasis on female appearance is evidence of a sexist society, and that our increasingly visual culture is threatening to spiral out of control, I don't think caring about looks per se is evidence that we're warped as a species. Far from it, I think it's quite natural. Animals groom themselves and so do we. In some Native American societies, it was the men who plucked their eyebrows and painted their faces to appeal to the women. We all want to be noticed, we want to be found attractive, and in most cases, that's because we would rather like to have some sex. If I was planning to celibate for the rest of my life, then I might take a lot less care over my appearance (and who knows, I might still strike lucky, because much as a sexist society tells me I'm nothing without my hair done, my make-up flawless, my legs shaved etck, I can recognise that I'm not actually hideous without those things), but the reality is that I'm a pretty highly-sexed individual, and I want the people I find attractive to want to have sex with me. Shocker! So if someone I know and trust compliments me on my appearance - whether or not they're the object of my attraction -  I might be quite pleased, because it's a little bit of confirmation that my career as a sexually active human being is likely to continue.

 

What I'm not going to be pleased about are the following: wolf whistles, car horns being honked, strangers shouting comments about my appearance in the street, comments that reduce me to nothing other than body parts, being touched without my consent, and a million other sleazy, disrespectful approaches that every woman you know will have experienced at some point in her life. What's the difference between this and my male friend telling me I look nice? It's pretty simple. In one scenario, I know I am being seen as a full, varied and complex human being, with feelings, thoughts, values and a personality as well as a face, hair, a bum, boobs and a vagina, and I know this because the person addressing me has known, loved and respected me for 15 years. In all the other scenarios, I instead experience the horrible sensation of having my humanity disregarded and being defined by nothing more than my body. That's the difference. Every woman knows it, because we've all experienced the shitty, undermining and often threatening way in which the latter is carried out, and if he cares about women at all, every man will make sure he knows that difference too.

 

Now, some man (or woman) might be looking at me from across the street and thinking about my bum or boobs or vagina in a way that makes them feel guilty. They may be having 'animalistic' thoughts, filthy fantasies, imagining my body in all kinds of naughty positions. But unless that person uses their thoughts as an excuse to approach me in a way that reduces me to nothing other than a receptive body, I do not care what they're thinking. I have no wish to condemn that person as anti-feminist. A person having dirty thoughts about me and still respecting me as a human being are not mutually exclusive. If you think the two are, then that is your problem to resolve, not feminism's.

 

It's really not that complicated.

Men: Tell Me What You're Thinking

A post on street harassment and how sexist microaggressions are used to frighten women out of public spaces.

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Peter Sagan, Podium Girls and Objectification

When I saw a picture in this morning's paper of cyclist Peter Sagan grabbing a handful of the bum cheek of a 'podium girl' while waiting to be awarded his second-place prize at the Tour of Flanders, the only thing that surprised me was how unsurprised I felt. We're all aware of the icky tradition of young, slim, large-breasted, long-haired (and usually white) women being used as window dressing to celebrate the achievements of male athletes, especially in motorsport. So it kind of felt like only a matter of time before someone took the treating of women as decorative objects in sport to its logical conclusion. Because if you reduce a person to an object, with no feelings, thoughts or autonomy of their own, then why would you see anything wrong with publicly grabbing them? I doubt Sagan is the first athlete to let his hand wander over the deliberately appealing flesh of a young woman in hotpants paid to fawn over him, but it looks like he's the first who got caught doing it on camera.

 

Of course the inevitable attempts to make light of Sagan's actions followed, with puns a-plenty about his 'cheeky gesture'. Apparently the fame and fortune of the professional athlete does make a difference when it comes to applying the law - if Sagan was an office worker who had been PHOTOGRAPHED molesting a female colleague, he'd be suspended for sexual harassment so fast his head would spin. Possibly dismissed on the spot, possibly even arrested. But because it took place in that crazy, hazy world of sport where women are nothing but window dressing and men's actions, opinions and compulsions are respected regardless of whether they're domestic abusers, rapists or murderers, so far we've only seen a social media firestorm and no threat of legal action. Hearteningly, most of the responses - from both men and women - have criticised Sagan for his actions, although there have been a few depressing defences. And even those who question the whole tradition of 'podium girls' have managed to do so without placing the blame at the feet of the girls themselves. But it's still concerning that an act of sexual assault that took place in front of the world's eyes has not attracted a whiff of police attention. Is this because harassment of women within male-dominated sports is seen as a) not a 'real' problem, just 'laddish banter', or b) admittedly obnoxious, but still something women should just expect? I suspect a bit of both.

 

I've had a tiny bit of experience with real-life podium girls, although not in a setting anywhere near as glamorous as the circles Peter Sagan moves in. But I've been at competitions at major UK motor racing circuits and watched as the podium girls were trotted out at the end of the races, and more than simply finding it sexist and obnoxious (which it is), I also found the whole tradition really embarrassing. What's 'glamorous' about standing shivering, covered in fake tan, squeezed into hotpants one size too small so your buttocks are hanging out, in six-inch heels that wouldn't look out of place in Spearmint Rhino, in the middle of the tarmac? And that's not slut-shaming - I celebrate, and regularly demonstrate, a woman's right to dress however the fuck she wants, and by that I mean as sexually provocative (or not) as she wants. But we can't deny that clothing speaks to power structures, and when you're the scantily clad one amongst a group of 30 fully-dressed men (plus a few of us token women), it's fair to say you're not coming from a level playing field. The podium girls were there to be looked at, to provide 'eye candy', to be visually pleasing and sexually appealing. I was there in jeans, a t shirt and a much-needed hoodie (I've never been to a race track when it was anything near actual hotpants weather) - it didn't matter what I looked like, because I was there to report on the race. If I was judged at all, it would be on my writing. Whereas we all knew what the girls were being judged on. A man on my team made dismissive comments about 'those tarts over there', but not because he was objecting to the sexism of the tradition - rather he thought they were not sufficiently attractive, and remarked that you get a more sophisticated class of podium girl at Silverstone. So these girls couldn't win - they were there for nothing but their appearances, but even those were found to be wanting. And so goes the message to women - remember to look perpetually sexually available, even a little bit 'slutty', but never, god forbid, must you look 'cheap'.

 

Still, as I watched the two girls finish up, get back into more comfortable looking clothes and drive away, I reflected that it didn't look like too tough a job. It was certainly a briefer day's work than my 8 hours spent inhaling petrol fumes - not that I was complaining, as I actually really enjoyed reporting on the races, but if you wanted a way of making easy money without having to know anything about motorsport, theirs was certainly the job you'd pick over mine. If I had the height, bustline, waistline, backside, skin tone, hair length and appropriate wardrobe to fit the podium girl template, would I be picking the podium over the pit wall myself? Who knows - it's too big an 'if'. It's depressing, though, that this is how women's roles are still divided. Either you're 'useful' - like I was that day - or you're 'decorative', like podium girls. You're not allowed to be both, because that might muddy the waters. And whichever side of the coin you choose, you'll be punished for it. Ugly girls have to be clever and funny because why else would men pay them any attention, right? And pretty girls don't have to bother being anything but, because their worth is only skin deep, isn't it?

 

In this sense Peter Sagan's actions have been helpful, if only because they spurred on commentators to point out "the absurdity in still having podium girls in 2013". Much like the 89,000 supporters of the No More Page 3 campaign, people are finally coming out of the woodwork to point out how dated, cringeworthy and insulting it is to still treat women like 'dolly birds' in an era where we pay endless lip service to the notion of sexual equality. And it's great that sports writers have used this opportunity to challenge the sexist tradition - Matt Seaton has a great piece in today's Guardian, asking "Does professional cycling really need to award winners kisses from "trophy" females? The whole spectacle is unbecoming - not just tacky and embarrassing, but retrograde and demeaning." It's just a shame that a woman had to be assaulted for the conversation to happen.

Watching The Wright Stuff is rarely a good idea...

...but when you're killing time at home it's bound to appear on your TV screen sooner or later. How I've watched it so much without melting into a rage-induced puddle, or at least phoning in to scream abuse at Matthew Wright for his constant ill-concealed misogyny, I'm not sure, but the occasional word of sense that is spoken by the panel or callers is probably all that restrains me. On various occasions I've seen this 'host' portray women as money-grubbing, superficial, ignorant bitches who deserve what they get if their husband cheats on them while they're pregnant because they must've 'driven him away' (yes I was watching a recent discussion of Coleen and Wayne Rooney, and Wright's constant attempts to goad callers into saying that pregnant women are responsible for their husband's infidelity was damn sickening). Today he was harping on the subject of 'No Right To Get Shirty If Things Get Flirty', or rather the question of whether women have any reasonable expectation of, oooh, I dunno, RESPECT, if they DARE to wear revealing clothes.

What was concerning was not that anyone dared to come right out and say 'Yes, if you wear a short skirt, you get what you deserve and you deserve what you get, ho', but more the utterly confused thinking of the host and panel on the issue. They were all keen to get in the disclaimer that 'no one deserves to be raped' and OBVIOUSLY Judge Pickles (judge who was famous in 80s for telling rape victims they 'asked for it') was wrong, but then they all kinda pissed over the good those words achieved, by going on to say that women 'must shoulder some of the responsibility' if men leer, shout or otherwise treat them like crap for showing some cleavage. Matthew Wright and the two female panelists all said that 'I do believe that ideally women should have the right to wear whatever they want, but that's not the world we live in'. Yeah, I guess I believe that black people have the right not to be called wogs, and that gay people have the right not to have their heads kicked in, but that's not the world we live in, so we should all just roll over and submit to the hatred and ignorance infecting our society, right? For fuck's sake. Was there ever a lazier, more analysis-dodging excuse for vile behaviour than 'Oh, that's just the way it's always been, you'll never change things, so just shut the fuck up and submit'? And yet at the moment that seems to be our answer to everything - why prostitution, rape, violence against women and every shitty tributary of those behaviours will never go away. It's always been like that - so don't even bother trying to change it, sista.

What was also noticeably absent from the discussion (and is soooo often absent from any discussion of male ill-treatment of women) was the behaviour of men. No one, at any point, raised the notion of where cat-calls, leering, sleazing and groping actually COME FROM. No one made any suggestion that the blame and responsibility for these behaviours lie SOLELY with their MALE PERPETRATORS. And frighteningly, no one saw the connection between saying 'women shoulder some of the responsibility' for these acts, and blaming women for sexual violence. There IS a connection. I'm not saying that every knuckle-dragging missing link who shouts 'Nice tits' on a night out is a rapist, but the fact is, such a person is exhibiting a lack of respect, empathy and consideration for women that sows the seeds for sexual violence. Such a man may never do anything more than shout or leer, but nonetheless he is seated on a spectrum of systematic disrespect for women's bodily autonomy, which starts with the supposedly 'harmless' acts of verbal street abuse, and ends in rape. Thinking it's OK to yell sexualised insults at someone because they are dressed in any kind of way stems from thinking that a) everything women do is for male attention, and dammit, they should be grateful for whatever they get, and b) women's bodies are not really their own, they're for public consumption and therefore, why show it off if you don't want me to scream filth about it, sugar?

Matthew Wright was very close to the crux of the issue when he made the point that blaming women for verbal sexual abuse makes as much sense as 'covering them all up with burkas', but sadly failed to go further and explain why. Burka or mini-skirt, hijab or high heels, the very fact we focus constantly on what WOMEN are wearing, shows that we still see women as being the 'gatekeepers' of sexual activity, and men as the aggressors. No one would ever seriously make the argument that a man wearing tight jeans is 'asking for' a woman or a gay man to grab his backside, because what men wear, where men go, how men act, is never up for analysis. Why else would the alcohol consumption of the victims in rape trials be so disproportionately focused on, when it's actually the rapist who is far more likely to have consumed alcohol? Because, as our society currently operates, men hold no responsibility for their behaviour - it all falls to women.

Forget for a moment how horrendous this is for women, I think it's also disturbing just what a vile picture of men this assumption paints. As the current thinking goes, men are mentally retarded, lacking in all self-control or self-awareness, naturally violent, sexually obsessed, and incapable of seeing a woman in a short skirt (because Christ knows, no one's ever seen one of those before, and GOD are they a provocative sight when we've probably all seen enough internet nudity to last us a lifetime) without behaving in ways that would embarrass an ape. Pretty much all the men I know would be heftily insulted by this depiction, and would rather die than ever publicly sleaze on a woman. Yet we're all taught to accept that This Is How Men Are, and it's really quite a fucking sad indictment of what lows our society is sinking to.

I could rant for days about this kind of shit, but I think the fantastic Tairrie B put it better than I could when she demanded a world where women have
"the right to dress sexy when and where I want
Without being harrassed for it
Or being told that I asked for it"

If we're willing to wake the fuck up and stop making excuses of the kind I witnessed this morning, we'll come a lot closer to achieving it.