I think one of the worst things people can do for the male gender is make excuses for them. I remember, after having my butt grabbed in a museum when I was 14 or 15, listening to a male cousin remark: "You should be flattered someone would want to grab your butt." I issued another of my passionate arguments, and he appeared to have been won over (although he might have decided it wasn’t worth pursuing).
The attitude of resignation which so many seem to have adopted irks me, because I think it’s another method of excusing, as if to say: "It happens, live with it, try to look on the bright side". For instance, I was talking to a male friend the other day when he shared the story of how, when he was walking back from dinner with a female friend, some four or five mechanics working until late whistled at the female friend, called out to her and tooted their horns. He also revealed that while his friend tried to ignore the cat calls, he found it extremely funny and was laughing the entire time.
But then again, speaking out only seems to ask for trouble, doesn’t it? (Or at least that’s what so many of us are led to believe). Darren Kang was apparently beaten to death after confronting a bunch of youths who were said to have made degrading remarks about his girlfriend (there are, however, numerous versions of the story). A friend who was regarded as the ’slut’ in her school told me how, in the days after Kang’s murder, a teacher warned her not to bother fighting back the label: "You’ll just be asking for trouble, like Darren Kang." With attitudes like that influencing people, it should be no surprise then that Kang’s killers only got five years in jail; the judge admitted he had taken Kang’s behaviour into account when deciding the sentence.
"Don’t bother, it’s a small thing", "too much trouble for nothing big", and the classic "boys will be boys" line. Are we ever going to run out of excuses for this sense of entitlement we allow? It doesn’t surprise me that sexual harassment exists, since the dominant ideology seems to be "it’s a guy thing."
Dahlia
I think the only reason why people casually dismiss sexual harassment is because there aren’t enough people collectively speaking up against it. There is a sense of security in numbers- which brings us back to the issue of retaliation. I think numbers make a lot of difference as illustrated in the case of Darren Kang.
Comment by Yee Mun — March 15, 2006 @ 11:57 pm
Reading this pissed me off…
*fumes*
Comment by Scarlet — March 18, 2006 @ 8:19 am
Why are we pissed off?
Comment by Dahlia — April 1, 2006 @ 3:46 pm
I think the pissed off part is due to the fact that we cannot control the situation. If a girl is walking down a road to her house all alone and is teased by a bunch of pathetic excuses for a male, what can she do? She’s all alone and there’s a bunch of them. Unless she’s a super martial arts master, I think the best thing she should do is keep quiet and pray they would not follow her home.
Comment by Asphodel — April 3, 2006 @ 8:39 pm