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Street Harassment: Why “Cat Calls” Suck Big Hairy Balls

Date: November 19, 2013
Author: julietjeske
Categories: New York City, Women and Feminism
Comments: 1 Reply
Hairy balls

Hairy balls (Photo credit: @Doug88888)

I purposefully gave this article a ridiculously provocative title.  I don’t mean any offense, as some people really enjoy doing a lot of things with testicles.   I just wanted to use heated sexual language directed at men to make a point. Gentlemen, imagine hearing a phrase like that yelled at you all day long.

Some men resent women because they think we have it so much easier when it comes to dating.  In some ways we do.  For instance it’s a lot easier for the average women to get no strings attached sex. Of course, a few men have a lot of luck hooking up with multiple partners, but for the most part, women usually have no problem having casual sexual encounters.  The downside is that women are often the victims of forced sexual advances, sexual harassment, rape and sexual violence. For most of us, unwanted sexual attention comes at us all day long.  This is exactly why cat calling sucks big hairy balls.

Now because men and women do have different realities when it comes to street harassment, I don’t know an easy way to put this.  If you are male and are reading this please picture the LEAST sexually attractive person you could imagine coming on to you. If this real or imaginary human were to overtly make some type of advance, your skin would crawl.  The thought of having sex with this individual makes you want to vomit.  It would be so disgusting, you would never want to have sex again.  Really burn that face into your psyche. Now imagine if nearly every time you stepped out of your apartment or home, there they were…ready to make some graphic or illicit sexual remark directed at you.  They might follow you down the street, prevent you from walking, lean in close, physical touch or intimidate you.

That is what many women deal with, every day, all day long, all year round in nearly every conceivable situation.  Has it hit home yet?  Maybe? OK I’ll try to tell it from a woman’s perspective now.

When I’m walking down the street, I’m usually thinking of the next place I have to go, I’m not thinking I about any number of men:

  • Who I know nothing about
  • Who might be drunk, or flying high on drugs
  • Who might be much younger or older than me
  • Who could get violent at any moment or try to assault me
  • Who chances are I have no physical attraction to whatsoever

Believe it or not lovers of cat calls, street harassment is quite intimidating.  In fact, there have been several cases of rape, and even murder have begun with seemingly innocuous cat calling.  So no, I’m not overjoyed when some stranger treats me like a sexual object when I didn’t want the attention.

In my short 40 years on this planet, I’ve had to deal with the following scenarios of street harassment.

I have had men assume I was a prostitute – They would pull their cars over, open their doors and ask “how much?” – this happened several times when I was going to work at a coffee shop in college at 5AM.  I was always wearing khaki pants, a t-shirt or long-sleeved shirt, tennis shoes and carrying a bag.  I usually also had a hat on, so I have no idea why this read as prostitute.

I been groped by strangers – I wish this wasn’t true but it’s happened at clubs, bars or on the subway. The physical touching wasn’t ambiguous. Men would grab my ass when I was a cocktail waitress – every time it happened a security guard threw them out of the club.

I been followed, threatened and stalked – You name the threat I’ve heard it.  From “I’m gonna cut your head off” or “I’m going to smash your brains in” and the usual “I want to fuck you so hard”

I have had total stranger grab me, or block my path – When this happens I totally blow up at the man, which usually leads to one of the “I’m going to smash your brains in” type of comments.  But honestly why should any stranger physically touch or grab someone they don’t know? No one has a right to touch another person or prevent them from walking down the street.

I had men expose themselves and masturbate towards me – This has happened more than once and both times on the subway in Chicago.  I learned after my first experience to completely ignore the man. The second time it happened I refuse to acknowledge anything was going on, and luckily this strategy worked and he got bored and stopped.  Again before this might sound HOT to any men reading picture the someone you who actually sexually repulses you doing this to you!  Not so fun now is it.

It happens every day, all times of the year, all day long, regardless of what I’m wearing, or how I look. Even mild interactions tend to wear me down.  Here is a typical one.

It was 5:30 a.m.  I was walking down the street dressed in a conservative skirt suit while hauling a rolling suitcase behind me.   A sanitation worker blocked my path on the sidewalk and physically prevented me from moving.  He said simply, “Hey baby.”

I don’t look up, and politely walked around him with my suitcase.  As I walked past him he shouts, “Bitch.”

Was I supposed to make myself late to work, and just start talking to guy who chose to say “Hey baby.”  Should I have smiled back only to invite even more attention?  Why can’t I just ignore it?    This type of attention is grating, annoying and seriously starts to make women angry at the men who do it.  We don’t view as complimentary.  It’s harassment plain and simple and sadly no joke.

If none of this has swayed your opinion and you are man who still thinks street harassment is welcome, picture your daughter, niece or a friend’s defenseless young child walking down the street…now imagine grown men making sexually lewd comments to her.  The first time I was sexually harassed and intimidated I was about five years old.  So it really does start when girls are extremely young.  Would you want your daughter, sister or mother to go through it?  Of course you wouldn’t.  So the next time you think of making a kissing noise at a random woman, or shouting at her about her ass, or blocking a female on the street, stop yourself.   Your tactic not only won’t work, but you are probably making that woman’s day that much worse.  If a woman thinks you are cute, she will probably find a reason to talk to you, but when you scream “Hey baby you look so good I want to fuck you”, you’ve just lost any chance that it will happen.

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Sexual Harassment – Nothing to Brag About

Date: March 21, 2013
Author: julietjeske
Categories: Uncategorized, Women and Feminism
Comments: 5 Replies

sexharass

sexharass (Photo credit: iVoryTowerz)

The first time it happened I was shopping with my mother in a discount department store.  I felt a physical quality that was completely new to me.  It was a fear, almost primal in nature that filled me with an uneasiness and mild panic.  I was drifting in and out of the circular racks of clothing when I felt it before I heard their words,

“Look at blondie.  Someone thinks she’s sexy.  Hey, little sexy girl.”

I was only five years old.  They continued,

“Do you want to come home with us pretty little lady?” as they laughed in a way that caused my spine to ache.

My mother, at first in shock that this was even happening, laid into them in a rare public display of anger.  Her voice strident with all the rage of an animal protecting her young,

“What is wrong with you?  She is a child?  You are disgusting! Get away from my daughter!”

Even with my mother’s objection they simply cackled in her face and walked away.  I wondered what I had done to cause them men to do that.  Was I walking strange?  Did I have a weird look on my face?  Was it something I was wearing?  I knew it wasn’t just the words.  What I felt that day was unseen and startling to me – it was predatory sexual energy.

That incident was the first of many.  Strangers have grabbed me on the street, I have been stalked, cyber-stalked, intimidated, threatened, insulted and fought off more than one would be attacker.  My childhood dentist would make blow job references.  One eye doctor was noticeably aroused in front of me, when I was only 13 years old.  Then there was our parish pastor who simply creeped me out.  A photo exists of me in my first communion dress standing next to him, the rigidness in my back, apparent from my body language.   I am not sure why he made me uncomfortable, I just knew his hand on my shoulder made me queasy.

In the workplace I didn’t fare much better.   It didn’t help that most of my jobs, meant to supplement my acting career, were rife with toxic work environments.  When I worked at a sandwich shop near the Chicago Board of trade my manager had the back room plastered with X-rated porn images.  He would comment on my body and more than once graze up against me.  Was it an accident?  Why did it seem to happen nearly every day?  I needed the job for the summer, I put up with it with the message in my brain. Just one more month, just one more month, just one more month.  I only had one more month until school started and I didn’t have time to quit and find a new job.  I had to pay my rent, so I put up with it.

Multiple food service jobs that I had over the years I dealt with: comments from co-workers, full on gropings and even uninvited kisses.  I would always blow up and chastise the men for their behavior but why did I have to constantly correct them after the fact?  Even in the corporate world it didn’t completely stop.  Once when discussing my tax returns a co-worker implied that my acting and modeling income was the same as working as a stripper or prostitute.  I threatened to go to Human Resources and report him, he immediately apologized.

Recently I shared a story about having to drop out of college and give up on a full ride scholarship due to overwhelming sexual harassment. A peer in a writing class commented that

“I was bragging”

because of this admission and another story about being hit on in a work related environment   He  put the two stories together and decided I was boasting about being sexually desirable.  I was just so floored that a man would view sexual harassment this way.

“I should be proud that “I still have got it!” was his second quote.

Well at the time of the first sexual harassment, in college, I was all of 18 years old.  I think most 18-year-old women have got plenty to attract most men.

When the words came out of his mouth I was just too dumbfounded to actually say much of anything.  Is this really how some men view sexual harassment?  Should women be open and gracious to all sexual advances no matter how unwanted or inappropriate?

Is it really so difficult to understand the concept that sometimes women just want to go to work, get and education or walk down the street without having to feel like the object of some man’s sexual fantasy?  Do these men understand that we don’t want to feel like we must “go along” with comments or actions to keep our jobs, get a good grade or be polite?

Would this same man view a story about rape, attempted rape or child molestation as boasting?  That somehow I was so physically attractive that a man just couldn’t help themselves and decided to force me into a sexual situation.  Harassment is simply a weaker form of sexual abuse.  Rape, molestation and sexual intimidation are all various shades of the same color.  Because that is what harassment is at its core – intimidation.  It is forcing a woman who has no power to speak out or do anything about the abuse to put up with it.  She may have thought she was getting an education, or working at a job, but a man with some power over her, has decided that it is more important that she is a sexual plaything.

As if being intimidated to the whim of an older man with power over my future was somehow something to envy.  It seemed like a classic case of projection.  Perhaps he had a fantasy of an older woman coming on to an 18-year-old version of himself.  What he failed to understand about female and male sexuality is profound.  Perhaps he resents the sexual inequality between the genders.   Woman can get sex easier than most men.  The downside is of course, that woman also have to deal with sexual violence far more often than men.  I wondered if this man had ever had a grade in college determined on whether he would or would not have sex with a teacher.  Would it be OK if the teacher harassing him was a gay man?  Had he ever been pushed up against a wall by a stranger and groped?  Had he ever had a man force himself on him sexually?

Was he implying that sexual harassment is not a real problem?  He even used the phrase

“I was making much to do about nothing.”

It was shocking really.  I walked away from a full ride scholarship because I didn’t want feel forced into a sexual relationship.  Would this man want his daughter to face the same dilemma in her career?  Would he want his mother, sister or girlfriend to put up with this kind of treatment at her workplace?

I baffles me that sexual harassment should even be talked about in this way.  I am more than whatever sexual desire a man wants to project upon me.  I am more than the sum of my body parts.  I am more than my physical appearance.  And when I finally become too old, when my glory days are over.  I won’t look back and miss the feeling that I first felt at such a young age with my mother – like a prey animal about to be devoured by a predator.  I am not bragging when I simply call to light a problem that nearly all women have had to deal at some point in their lives.  I am just sharing what it is like to be female – and our reality is not always so nice.

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Stalking – Why it is no joke

Date: April 16, 2012
Author: julietjeske
Categories: Dating - NYC, New York City, Uncategorized, Women and Feminism
Comments: 6 Replies

Ted Bundy mug shot, Feb. 13, 1980.

Ted Bundy mug shot, Feb. 13, 1980. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I put a little sliver of my life on this blog, not my entire existence just fragments and pieces.  🙂  Due to some of my increased exposure as of late, I have had to deal with a problem of a few male “fans” who have crossed boundaries on various social media outlets.  What usually happens is they start commenting on everything I post, either on this blog or on Facebook.  Their correspondence gets increasingly personal and disturbing until I finally block them from my profile.  These men then respond with repeated vicious attacks using just about every means available to them.  I have received harassment on this blog, in my regular email, on Facebook, twitter and even once on an online dating website.  That particular man created not one, but two fake profiles with the sole purpose of harassing me.  In most cases, I have never met these men outside of cyberspace, nor have I had any personal history with them.

Immediately after a particularly bad episode with one male, a few of my friends posted the following joke on their Facebook pages.  I am not sure of the exact wording of the joke so I will paraphrase

“If a guy is unattractive he is a stalker, if he is good-looking then he is a secret admirer”

Women were gleefully posting comments as “so true” and the like.

I don’t know anyone who has had a “secret admirer” since grade school, maybe middle school.   When an adult male desires a woman, he will usually let her know and in the most direct way possible.  And in my 38 years on this planet I don’t know any woman who would find a stranger following them around in a car or hanging outside their apartment building or home, anything but a threat.  Even if the man is devastatingly handsome if he is lurking about on your property…how would that not be creepy?

Real stalking is a huge problem and it has only gotten worse with our privacy free world of the internet.  In most cases women are stalked by former boyfriends, or ex-husbands.  So conceivably at one time these women found their stalkers quite attractive.  Somehow the relationship went south and now the man is using stalking tactics to try to control, dominate and intimidate his former lover.   I have known several women who have had to get restraining orders against men who refuse to leave them alone.  And with background searches so easily and cheaply attainable any potential stalker can find out almost anything he wants about his would be prey.  A stalker can find where a woman works, where she lives, her phone numbers, friends, hobbies, and even her exact location thanks to those insane “check in” computer apps.

I have had men send multiple angry emails, at first begging me to write them back, followed by angry vitriol filled diatribes, and finally I will rue the day I snubbed them.  Why they feel the need to get so upset at someone they have no history with, and no shared experience is beyond me.   I won’t get into many specifics because I worry that if any of the men who have sent me threats read this, I would only be adding fuel to the fire by reprinting in detail what they have sent me.  But I have gotten the following two remarks included with sexually explicit degrading remarks.

“Maybe I will see you at a show sometime”

or

“You will really feel bad if I decide to show up at one of your comedy shows” 

I have a calendar on my website, as I am trying to promote my performances and help out the producers who have hired me.  I can’t really hide when I am going to appear onstage; and, producers are going to promote me anyway.

What a joke about stalking is really saying is that stalking isn’t a real problem.  That somehow women wouldn’t mind angry crazed emails on their blog, in their inbox and even in their online dating profiles if the man making them was attractive.  Getting nasty emails or letters filled with sexually threatening language isn’t exactly welcome from an older unattractive man, or a beautiful young man.  The physical appearance of the man sending the intimidating material is irrelevant.  A joke like this is yet another dismissive attack on women and the right for all women to lead independent lives.

According to the Stalking Resource Center – National Statistics for Crime

  • 3.4 million people over the age of 18 are stalked each year in the United States.
  • 3 in 4 stalking victims are stalked by someone they know.
  • 30% of stalking victims are stalked by a current or former intimate partner.
  • 10% of stalking victims are stalked by a stranger.
  • Persons aged 18-24 years experience the highest rate of stalking.
  • 11% of stalking victims have been stalked for 5 years or more.
  • 46% of stalking victims experience at least one unwanted contact per week.
  • 1 in 4 victims report being stalked through the use of some form of technology (such as e-mail or instant messaging).
  • 10% of victims report being monitored with global positioning systems (GPS), and 8% report being monitored through video or digital cameras, or listening devices.

The stalker “joke” reminds me of another poorly aimed attempt at humor that I have heard one too many times.

“He is only a rapist if he is ugly”

Well again, can’t really agree with that joke or find it funny.  After all Ted Bundy was an extremely attractive man, he was also one of the most prolific and brutal serial killers of our time.  He would not only strangle women but have sex with their corpses days sometimes weeks after he had murdered them.  His actions are not exactly funny or something to laugh about.   His attractiveness made him a more effective killer since women were less likely to suspect him, but according to his few surviving victims his sexual relationships weren’t consensual.   Bundy preferred to have sex with his victims after he killed them.

So call me politically correct, but I am going to disagree with anyone who thinks a “stalker” joke is funny or lighthearted.  Any woman, or man for that matter, who has had to deal with a stalker situation would never find it humorous.   My tactic for dealing with men who try to intimidate me on the internet is the following.

I stalk my stalkers.  I have the full names, emails, phone numbers, places of work, home addresses, criminal histories and even family members of the various people over the years who have threatened me.   If I have a flurry of activity from a stalker, I walk around with a hard copy of any threatening emails, and a background check of the person.  That way if they show up at a performance and try to harm me I will have more proof for law enforcement that this person has done more than just show up to see some comedy.  When I have stalker activity, I also don’t broadcast where I am going, or what show I might be attending on twitter, on facebook or in any other public forum.

I just want to live my life and this blog has improved mine immeasurably since I started it, so I am not about to shut it down.   And as I always say if you are really so worked up, write your own blog and get off of mine!  🙂  That is the more proactive approach now isn’t it.

And if you are experiencing a problem with someone who is stalking you.  I found an excellent resource in the Stalking Resource Center

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