I appreciate Denise’s hastily written comment. As others have noted, ‘feelings’ are missing from this thread—strong feelings that many people (women) are feeling. Her reactive comment gives us a good glimpse into the harm being felt, even if it’s hyperbolic .
Emma G-S
Karma: 48
@Aptdell this comment is frustrating to read as a woman who has experienced unwanted sexual harassment/attention in the EA community (for context: I was very involved in the EA community for about 4.5 years, I worked at CEA in Oxford for several years and had/have many friends who would probably count as influential people in the movement.)
Firstly, your description of sexism, including ‘benevolent sexism’, is overly simplistic and unhelpful here. Infantilising women (i.e. treating them as ‘delicate flowers’) need not be conflated with respecting women, respecting their autonomy and existence as sexual human beings. I suspect your description of a “dirty joke” is actually a joke that denigrates and disrespects women—your female friend probably underestimated your ability to understand that nuance. I’ll match your anecdote with another: I have many close and dear male friends—several of whom have a very ‘edgy’ sense of humour, they are able to joke about sex, men, women, relationships—any number of topics, without ever making me feel unsafe. Probably because ‘women’ are not the butt of their jokes—because they see women as full human beings.
Congrats on being cat-called—let us know when you’re yelled at on the street by a human a foot taller than you who could clearly kill you if they wanted to. Let us know when you’ve been followed home, or pushed up against a wall and groped.
“I wish women would invest more in helping men model their preferences.”—this part gripes me the most. You wish we would do MORE emotional labour to help men learn how to stop behaving badly? How often and loudly do we need to say that we don’t want to be yelled at in the street, or hit-on at work, or sent multiple messages after we’ve politely declined advances? I personally have spent so much of my own time gently and patiently trying to explain to “awkward” men why their behaviour sucks. I’m so tired.[Edit: as much as I do have problems with @Aptdell’s post above, I also think they’re getting the brunt of my frustration with this whole situation. I write this not to undermine my post but just to acknowledge that my emotions were running high when I wrote it, and I might revise some parts tomorrow. ]
Thanks Laura, I agree. It feels that whenever these incidents are brought to light, women must still take on a large part of the work in educating men on why/how their behaviour was bad. It is exhausting.