Street harassment in 1946

With the montage video of a woman enduring street harassment repeatedly while walking in New York City making the rounds, I'm reminded of a movie I watched with friends in 2004 and the surprise in cultural norms it presented.

In The Stranger, Orson Welles is a Nazi hiding as a professor in America. At 12 minutes in he speaks to a group of young, educated, friendly men when this happens:

Watching this ten years ago gave my friends and I a big, awkward laugh because of how absolutely inappropriate this was, yet it was treated as a normal everyday event. I'm not sure what the norm was in the mid 1940's, but this scene always appeared to me to be a dipstick for society's progress.

I've looked and it's been extremely difficult to find the demographic profiles of a modern street harasser, but I imagine it has slunk back to the uneducated and ill-mannered. This is a serious problem that we shouldn't accept or tolerate, and it shouldn't just be the feminists who speak out against it.

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Airplane sexism

A short essay from a mom who doesn't want men to be allowed to sit next to her kids on an airplane has drawn some much-needed criticism. The idea that all men should be considered rapists and pedophiles, and treated as such until proven otherwise, is a modern sickness

I came across the following comment from a man named Michael in Virginia that is worth preserving here:

I once got on a standby flight that was filled up by a travelling youth group (a choir or something) and one of the chaperons pitched a fit with the airline when they tried to give me the one empty seat. Her argument was that the seat was paid for, but the ticket holder was out sick. I wasn't sure why she was making such a big deal out it until I realized that I was an adult male and these were teenage girls. Believe me, if anyone was getting abused on this flight, it was going to be me. I just wanted to put on headphones and listen to music and drown out the chatter. 

After many arguments with various airline personnel, including the captain of the plane, the woman finally compromised by having the seats reshuffled so I was sitting in between two chaperons and not next to any of the girls, which really irritated me more because I was now forced to sit for three hours next to a woman who thinks I am a rapist.

Treating adult men and adult women differently is sexism, and it's disturbing to see how often pedophilia is on the minds of some parents.

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How not to argue against privilege

Today while reading an otherwise brilliant and moving piece about the struggle of one father to see his own son, I had to forgive the author for making a common error when he closed with a shout against the concept of male privilege. Specifically, he wrote:

This is why I have a problem when people tell me I’m “privileged” just by virtue of my being a male.

As I wrote before, there are clueless social justice warriors who misuse the legitimate concept of privilege and treat it as a dumb "I win" button in discussions. Those people act as if accidents of birth dismiss the validity of someone's arguments, and only personal experience can be used to find truth in the world. Those people are wrong and should not be taken seriously.

But the actual privilege arguments are much more modest and reasonable. They do not say that men or whites have every advantage in society, but say that there are certain scenarios where some people do not have to worry about certain things. Tim Wise used the example of a cop helping jimmy open the lock on his car without checking to make sure it was actually his. If Tim has been black, the cop probably would have at least asked.

But what Tim Wise and the other social justice warriors don't include in their message is that all groups have privilege, including women. Female privilege, for example, includes not worrying about being accused of pedophilia while interacting with kids, sitting next to them on a plane or when using a public skating rink bathroom.

As Warren Farrell said, our society is sexist against men and women at the same time in different ways. That is not to say that they automatically break even, but that the two are not mutually exclusive.

Many, many times I see someone going up against an activist by pointing out some injustice men face and asking how they could possibly be "privileged." When they say that, I know they don't really understand the concept, and they are guilty of making the same simplistic assumption the social justice warriors make by assuming only one group can experience harm at a time.
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Word games

Taking a page from race profiteers, fringe feminists like Diana E. H. Russell are saying this Samsung ad portraying a stupid, grunting, sloth-like husband are not sexist because that word only applies to situations that are diminishing to women.




Well professor, what do you propose we call it when the most hostile stereotypes for a gender are used to portray a fictional man? Even if the rest of us took your arbitrary language hijacking seriously and agreed not to use the term sexism - something I will fight to the grave - what is the name for this phenomena?

This is what I hate about the dismissal about men's rights issues the most. It would be one thing if it came from apathy, but the people doing it are not neutral about gender issues; they are heavily invested in them as long as women are the victims. The moment the same forces are turned on men they shut their eyes as a reflex and defend the worst cases of gender stereotypes, hostility and discrimination.

It's because they assume sexism against men and sexism against women can't exist in the same same society, and that even admitting sexism against men exists or causes problems threatens their world view.
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You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

A dozen years ago I took a public speaking class where the instructor told us not to use "sexist" language in speeches. By this she meant gendered terms like "waitress" and "waiter" or "mailman," not language that trivializes a person based on accidents of birth.

Prejudice is so reviled today that talentless political hacks know they can score cheap points by twisting something an enemy said into a vestigial organ of racism or sexism.

This week we were treated to two beautiful examples. One was MSNBC's Martin Bashir who is claiming that Republicans trying to tie President Barack Obama to the ongoing IRS scandal makes the word "IRS" a secret code for "nigger." The other is a brainless post from a gender studies graduate who is accusing a gay rights advocate of being a racist when she didn't like First Lady Michelle Obama's response when she tried to steal the stage from her.

When interviewed after being escorted out of the fundraiser, Sturtz said of the First Lady, “She came right down in my face. I was taken aback.” 

...Notice the language Sturtz uses to describe the encounter. Rutgers Anthropology Ph.D student Donna Auston emphasizes that Sturtz’s word choice of “taken aback” is one of distinct privilege; Sturtz sees herself as above reproach in this situation. As Auston inquires, why was Sturtz surprised at Obama’s response? “Is it because you did not expect her to exercise agency? Did you not expect her to assert that she is your equal?” Auston asks. Either black women are supposed to tacitly accept maltreatment and disrespect, or when they do exercise their agency, they are branded as the “Angry Black Woman.”

Issues like this are obvious examples of false flags, where racism is invoked for a situation just because one of the participants was black. What I find more troubling is the expanded definition of words like racism and sexism for issues of insensitivity.

For example, it's insensitive to assume that all black people like hot sauce. There is a stereotype that most black people enjoy putting hot sauce on food. There's nothing degrading or unworthy about enjoying food with a little kick to it, but it's still a stereotype.

Say I had a few people over and we were eating French fries and one of them was black. It would be insensitive for me to ask only the black person if he would like some Sriracha sauce. It would also be somewhat insensitive if I only thought  to get the Sriracha bottle out for everyone to use because there's a black person present.

Both of those are examples of acting on stereotype, but there's nothing hostile or malicious about it. While we still need to address those issues, it's deceitful to compare a host who wants to make their guests feel welcome with a KKK member who wants to harm other people and thinks of them as inferior.

This could be part of a vast spectrum, as a host who offers fried chicken to a guest is clearly acting on a stereotype in a way, but there is also a different context here. Taunts about fried chicken and watermelon have been used maliciously for years. That's not true for hot sauce.

By blurring the line between acts of malice and hate and insensitive acts that may even be kind, we are watering down the term "racism" to the point it is useless. This vague use of language allows some progressives to declare that no major advances have been made in terms of race relations over the past 50 years because "racism" is still alive, even though things are clearly better. We no longer tolerate rhetoric and attitudes that were socially acceptable two generations ago.

But notice how quickly the rhetoric snaps back to the original definition when needed. Suddenly, "racism" means the old definition again and anyone guilty of the modern definition of racism  is going to hate rallies and burning crosses on lawns. It's just like how anyone critical of third-wave feminism is painted as opposing the first-wave.

We have two reasonable choices here. Either use new terms such as "racial insensitivity" or declare that racism isn't that bad.
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