Randwolf said:
Not sure what to say about this but it seems relevant. In some way, shape or form...
In the strangest way, it seems.
Sexual harassment by either gender should not be tolerated - but I'm not sure ten years in prison would be appropriate. Not that she will actually receive that sentence...
What if I suggested the fear and shame the man felt ... well, see, that's the thing.
To start with the charge,
Charing Ball↱:
For one, the charge of third-degree sex abuse, which carries a possible prison bid of up to 10 years, seems a little excessive for what I witnessed in the video. This is especially true when compared with the sentence of the serial groper who attacked six women, including a police officer. He was only given six months in prison. And those consequences also seem a little excessive when compared to the time I'd reported a creep who damn near stuck his penis in my driver's side window, and yet, I couldn't even get a police report.
There is an implicit question in that, I suppose, and it really does seem fair. But there also arise the usual questions:
The whole sensationalist framing around this case just had me feeling some type of way. But after watching the victim in question tell his own side of the story, I can definitely understand more about his victimization.
According to the Fox affiliate in D.C., the victim, who wished to remain anonymous out of fear of further backlash, said that he was talking to a friend on the telephone when he was accosted and molested by two women at a Northeast D.C. gas station. As he described the assault to the news station, the women were "grabbing all over my body parts nonstop, asking me to go with them as if they were prostituting themselves. Asking for money. I assumed they were trying to get to my wallet – I don't know what they were trying to do. But they first touched my private part in the front, then private part in the back. Then rubbing all over my chest and grabbing me. If I had done that, I would have probably been arrested, thrown to the ground. Twenty years in prison. No out. These being women, I'm thinking they are not women. I am thinking they are men dressed as women because they had strength like men. They didn't have strength like average women. So it is a double standard.”
The victim also alleges that in addition to the molestation, the women followed him outside of the store and flashed him as he pumped gas, which should have cleared up any confusion he had about their gender.
One of the perpetrators has been arrested; the other is still on the run. While the victim isn't sure why he was targeted, he assumes that the women were part of a setup orchestrated by two men who had been standing outside of the gas station and who he assumed were their pimps. He also told reporters that he asked the station attendant for help to which the attendant allegedly responded, "What do you want me to do?”
Feeling threatened by the women who continued to follow him around, the victim said that he was left with no choice but to ask his friend on the phone to call the police for him.
And you know what? I don't blame him.
Although I do wonder if much of the fear he felt was based on his original thought that these women were trans women. And I also wonder about the other two men he mentioned as accomplices to these women, in particular, why they are not also not being pursued by police.
And while it is easy to experience these conflicts as we process the information, we might note they only really exist in a comparative context arising
because enough people will defend harassment.
Ball continues, noting that,
"our politics should never get in the way of our personal safety", explicitly applies the point to both sexes, and reminds,
"while the victim may feel that the reaction his assault has received nationally is reflective of a double standard, he and others like him should know that women are rarely believed too". And this last is important, because she then recites the tale of a woman being
filmed by an apparent accomplice to harrassment, resulting in her fearful flight out of a store and across the street. Ms. Ball concludes:
The videographer, also known as the assailant, made light of her panic by suggesting "Damn, it ain't that serious.”
Also suggesting that the incident was not that serious was the video's caption itself, which read, "When you're scared you might get raped.” Three laughing-to-tears emoticons followed it.
In general, when we fail to take sexual assault and harassment that happens to women seriously, we can't be too surprised when men are not given the benefit of the doubt as well.
And here we come to a conundrum. For all the #WhatAboutTheMen we might hear, explicitly or implicitly, it is easy enough to answer. Rape culture hurts men, too, and not just when they see their futures shattered by a sex crime conviction.
One would think some things are obvious, like,
don't denounce the idea of 'rape culture' for generalizing about men and then indict men generally.
Or, you know,
a failure to regard sexual harassment seriously might haunt you one day. I mean, sure, I get why people behave dubiously about the idea of women sexually harassing men; it's the same kind of gendertyping that compels men to not report domestic, intimate, and sexual violence visited upon them by their female partners. And this is kind of the problem.
Last week,
one of our neighbors↑ noted Margaret Atwood, who compared
a man's fear to fears expressed by women; the man was afraid women would laugh at him, thus making him feel bad; the women were afraid of being murdered.
"Your worst fear": Matt Bors, Daily Kos, 28 May 2014
Last month I tried to make a point about street harassment:
You know, we have a joke, guys. At least, I think. Once upon a time. In the eighties it was someone's punch line about why we don't talk to each other at the urinals. These days we say it about random violence, or someone just flipping out.
You never know what kind of day he's having.
Now, we don't really need to review the point of the joke, right? To the other, really? Is fearsome random machismo the only reason you can think of, dude? Is that the only reason it matters what kind of day anyone else is having?
And I mention that
blog post↱ because Ms. Ball's point about doubt and disbelief―
In general, when we fail to take sexual assault and harassment that happens to women seriously, we can't be too surprised when men are not given the benefit of the doubt as well.
―seems to invoke the same question.
That is to say, maybe societies won't get it together about these issues until
men live in everyday fear of rape and murder because someone else wants to stick a dick in them.
Then again, that ain't happening anytime soon.
We gotta get out of this place; it's the last thing we will fail to do.
____________________
Notes:
Ball, Charing. "The Twerk Assault And The Need To Take Street Harassment Seriously". Madame Noire. 12 November 2015. MadamNoire.com. 2 December 2015. http://bit.ly/1O5qtSP
Bors, Matt. "Your worst fear". Daily Kos. 28 May 2014. DailyKos.com. 2 December 2015. http://bit.ly/1TmokpE