Here’s a post that I wrote before the pandemic. It doesn’t make me feel nostalgic for crowded streets and unrestrained pub opening.
I talk back to catcallers because I don’t think they should be allowed to assume that the women they harass are voiceless objects. It’s important to make clear that you have a voice and a brain; otherwise you are passively doing nothing about a bad situation. It goes against the coping tactics for bullies that we were taught as children (‘Ignore them’). And showing anger opens you up to put-downs of the ‘Calm, down, dear’ or ‘Must be on her period’ type. But I still insist on not being silent, on not allowing men to get away with it, to show them that the person they tried to put down can talk back.
Of course, what I find most horrible is not the words as much as the entitled stares you get if you happen to be walking down the street past men who are stationary. Walking past pubs with men outside them, always takes some courage and mental barrier-making. A certain type of man will stare as you walk past. (Anais Nin, or at least her translator, described this as ‘walking under the arch of loitering men’s eyes’, perfectly expressing the weirdly concrete feeling of the stares). It is as though one is being challenged to notice; and of course you stop feeling relaxed and comfortable when you are being stared at. (I guess catwalk models make a living by walking past a long row of concentrated eyes, in a controlled environment where it is what is expected because they are wearing the clothes of a designer who wants people to come to the show and look at what they have made. But this isn’t a fashion show. I’m simply a person, who happens to be female, and who walks along the pavement because that is where you walk).
Today I walked past a pub, because it was by the side of the road and I needed to walk along that road, and it was the South Circular and it would have taken a while to cross the road and re-cross to avoid the situation; and there were two men standing outside it, smoking. I felt the stares; it’s worst when, as today, there is a long stretch of straight pavement so they have lots of time in which to follow your walk in the most obvious way possible. You might say: ‘It’s only looking, and you’re both in the same place; you can’t be angry when someone looks at you,’ but consider an intense, prolonged stare at a stranger who is walking by; would you really do this? You know that this is uncomfortable. Especially – and I’m sorry to play the ‘female victim’ card – there are two men to your lone self.
How do you react when being stared at? I feel uncomfortable. I feel that I must avoid the eye contact they are trying to provoke, that I must get away from them. Heeding the advice to ‘ignore them’, I go into my most businesslike mode, hoping to pass as quickly as possible. (Already, through the choices I make when being confronted with this situation, the men have shown that they own the pavement; that it’s up to them who feels comfortable there. The pavement! The thing you walk along so that you can get to work!).
Today, I had a lot to do. I was thinking about things. (You know, thinking. The thing you do with your brain, because your body supports a brain as well as the other things the onlookers are thinking about). But mostly, I was conscious of the stares and hopeful that I might get out of the weird social interaction that the men were trying hard to set up.
This is why the inevitable call to ‘Smile’ is so devastating. There is no way you can smile when you are being challenged by those stares. Every instinct tells you to put your head down and survive. What are they expecting, that I walk slowly past them smiling at them? Maybe do a dance for them? Say ‘Hi, I’m just a hot blonde who came by as the entertainment for your smoking break. Delighted to meet you. What would you like me to do?’
Because they have deliberately set up the sense that they are onlookers and you are the performer. When they tell you to ‘Smile’, they let you know that your performance isn’t meeting expectations. That they are happy to make you feel awkward and scared, but that you are still expected to please them and perform looking cheerful and happy. You are denied the option of expressing how you are actually feeling. Because you’re a woman; we need you to be pleasing and have no inner life; all we require is that you look the way we want you to look.
Walking past those stares… it’s like being a side of meat hanging from a hook, progressing down a slaughterhouse production line. You are purely an object, stripped of the possibility of being an autonomous human, or even – how dare you even entertain the thought? – an equal of the other humans around you, regardless of sex. Forget all that. You are something to be stared at, say the men, and we don’t care about your feelings – in fact, we want you to feel awkward.
Because that’s what they are doing with their stares. They are teasing and trying to provoke. To do that and then say ‘Smile’ is an intensely evil way to behave. I can’t smile; I’m feeling uncomfortable because of your deliberate actions. I feel so angry when I think about this. It’s as though they want you to do a cognitive backflip; to feel awkward and scared, but then to smile on demand.
The thought-processes of these men. Trying to imagine how they can do that.
So I stopped. Dead. I turned to my left and looked them in the eye, one after the other, and I turned back to the one who had called, and said: ‘Don’t speak to women like that. Ever again.’ It was delivered shortly, emphatically, and with the kind of anger that gives spoken words a sudden intensity that you didn’t know you were capable of. We held each other’s gazes. They seemed surprised. It was powerful, to lock eyes and show that no, I wasn’t afraid to look at them, that I wouldn’t be hurrying past trying to escape them. But I could see them putting on that ‘I’m so surprised; why are you so angry?’ hurt expression. I got this before, outside another pub (there are lots of pubs on London streets) another time, when I stayed a little calmer, stopping and saying: ‘It’s not up to you what I look like.’ That man, boasting in front of a row of his friends, put on the faux-innocent air and said: ‘I just thought you looked really sad.’ (Yes, because he would definitely have asked me, a random stranger passing by the street, to smile had I been a man. And the insolent stares of a row of men definitely wouldn’t do anything other than make me feel happy).
There was no time for conversation this time. I walked on, still angry, leaving the men to react in their way, perhaps speculating on the current progress of my menstrual cycle. Unsure of how used they would be to their victims talking back, I later imagined, fondly, the idea of a conversation inside that pub going along the lines of: ‘Hmm, maybe women really don’t like it when we ask them to smile’. But I don’t think so. The men know perfectly well that we don’t like it. It’s part of the game. The despicable, nasty, depressing game.
And these vocal men are representations of a wider problem. The assumption that a woman, more than a man, needs to please the people around her is still really apparent in many areas of life, even leaving behind the catcallers on the grubby street. It is present in work conversations, in discussions of colleagues where approachability and charm are praised as tempering factors alongside superior knowledge of a field. Your body looks a certain way; you look nice in a dress. So don’t overstep the mark, try too hard, and stop being that nurturing thing, duty-bound to take care of and please the men around you. Strength in a woman? We don’t like that.
Equal treatment is still far off. And until it comes, I’ll be talking back to the men who try to stare me down and say: ‘Smile.’