Changing The Creepy Guy Narrative

[garbon]

For Ide.  Also I've cropped the intro as I thought it was a bit long in the tooth and only posted the good stuff.

http://www.readability.com/read?url=http%3A%2F%2Fchrisbrecheen.blogspot.com.au%2F2013%2F07%2Fchanging-creepy-guy-narrative.html%3Fm%3D1

It is the narrative of how men hit on women in public places.  A tired old story if ever there were one.  A story where consent is not a character we actually ever meet, and where the real antagonist is not a person, but rather the way she has been socialized to be polite, to be civil, to not be "such a bitch"....no matter how much of a Douchasauras Rex HE is being about not picking up the subtle clues. Yes, a human being might fill the role of the immediate obstacle--and in doing so personify the larger issue, but the careful reader of this tropetastic narrative knows the real villain is the culture that discourages her from rebuking him in no uncertain terms lest she be castigated.  (And that's the best case scenario; the worst is that she angers someone with much greater upper body strength who may become violent.)  The real antagonist is a society where she is actually discouraged from being honest about what she wants...or doesn't want.  And the society that socialized him that it's okay for him to corner her...pressure her....be persistent to the point of ignoring the fact that she has said no.

I saw the heroine of our story sitting on the BART.  The train wasn't busy in the afternoon along the "anti-commute" line, so it was only a few of us spread out far and wide.  She was thin but not skinny and wore one of those wispy skirts that always make me want to send God a fruit basket for inventing summer.  The kind of woman my step-father would have gotten distracted by and then grudgingly called "a real looker."

But what is much more important that I noticed, because I'm all writerly and observant and shit like that, is that everything about her screamed "leave me alone."  She had headphones jammed in her ears.  Her nose was down in a book (my hand to God, I think it was Storm of Swords). She was pulled inward with body language that couldn't have been more clear if she had one of those shields from Dune...activated.

But still....he tried.

He sat right behind her--already a warning sign on such an empty train.

The real antagonist may have been society, but our personification of it was well cast.  He had a sort of Christian Bale look about him, if Christian Bale were playing a role of a douchecanoe.  Revisionist memory is always suspect, but I'm telling this story, and I'm going to stand by the fact that I thought he looked like a creepy guy long before he started acting like one.

He waited until the train was in motion to make his move--a true sign of someone who knows how to make the environment work to their advantage.  Then he leaned forward.  "Hi."  "How you doing?"  "What are you reading?"  "What's your name?" "I really like your hair." "That's a really nice skirt."  "You must work out."

It was painful to watch.  She clearly wanted nothing to do with him, and he clearly wasn't going to take the hint.  Her rebukes got firmer.  "I'd like to read my book."  And he pulled out the social pressure.  "Hey, I'm just asking you a question.  You don't have to be so rude."  She started to look around for outs.  Her head swiveled from one exit to another.

The thing was, I had already heard this story, many many times.  I knew how it would play out.  I knew all the tropes.  I probably could have quoted the lines before they said them.  I wanted a new narrative.  Time to mix it up.

So I moved seats until I was sitting behind him.  I leaned forward with my head on the back of his seat.

"Hi," I said with a little smile.

He looked at me like I was a little crazy--which isn't exactly untrue--and turned back to her.

"How are you doing?"  I asked.

"I'm fine," he said flatly without ever looking back.

"I really like your hair," I said.  "It looks soft."

That's about when it got.....weird.

He sort of half turned and glared back me, and I could tell I was pissing him off.  His eyes told me to back the hell away, and his lips were pressed together tightly enough to drain the color from them completely.

But no good story ever ends with the conflict just defusing.  He started to turn back to her.

"Wait, don't be like that," I said.  "Lemmie just ask you one question..."

"What!" he said in that you-have-clearly-gone-too-far voice that is part of the freshmen year finals at the school of machismo.

And I'm not exactly a hundred percent sure why I didn't call it a day at that point, but.....maybe I just love turning the screw to see what happens.   I gave him the bedroomy-est eyes I could muster.  "What's your name?"

Right now I'm sitting here typing out this story, and I'm still not entirely sure why I'm not nursing a fat lip or a black eye.  Because that obviously made him so mad that I still am not sure why it didn't come to blows.  There are cliches about eyes flaring and rage behind someones eyes and shit like that that are so overdone.  But it really does look like that.  When someone gets violent, their eyes just kind of "pop" with intention--pupils dilate, eyelids widen. And his did. Even sitting down he was clearly bigger than me and I was pretty sure he was kind of muscular too, so at that moment I was figuring I was probably going to need an ice pack and sympathy sex from my girlfriend by day's end.

"DUDE," he shouted.  "I'M NOT GAY."

That's when I dropped the bedroom eyes and switched to a normal voice.  "Oh well I could see not being interested didn't matter to you when you were hitting on her, so I just thought that's how you rolled."

(Of course later, I thought of a dozen cleverer things I could have said, but, I'm going for honesty here.  I was tripping over my own words due to the adrenaline dump.  My voice was probably shaking too, and I'm guessing the line above was more shouted than said with even, level, movie-caliber cool.  I am in no way a badass.)

But whatever I said, or however I said it, it did the trick.  I don't know if he "got it."  I don't know if he just thought better of committing assault in front of the BART cameras.  I don't know if he just didn't want to escalate past bravado.  But whatever went through his head, he turned back in his seat, sat back (away from her) and muttered "asshole."  And that turned out to be this story's climax.

What I do know--and this made almost getting my clock cleaned worth it--was that the denouement was quite nice.  She mouthed the words "thank you" to me as she stepped out the door of the Rockridge station.

Yep.  Worth it.

I think interaction would have been stronger though had he skipped the moralizing to the guy - which the writer happily acknowledges.

[CountDeMoney]

That's an awesome piece. 

[Maladict]

Heh, I did pretty much the same thing once, without the gay angle but just annoying the guy until he left.
Then the girl started hitting on me, which was a bit awkward as I wasn't really interested.

[KRonn]

Cool article. Pretty ballsy of the guy to get in the middle of things.

[derspiess]

Douchebags like the dude hitting on the girl are annoying, but then so are (albeit to a lesser extent) guys who have a hero complex like the writer.

The sad fact is that some women actually respond positively to this kind of approach-- apparently just enough to encourage guys to hit on women like this.

[merithyn]

Once, when I was in college, I was taking the bus home from campus kind of late. I was tired and had gotten on the bus going the wrong way, which wasn't a huge deal since it looped around and would eventually go back to my dorm anyway. This guy got on the bus one stop after me, and proceeded to do something pretty similar to the guy in the article. After the second or third "don't be like that", I finally had had enough.

I turned around to him with a really big, obviously fake smile plastered on my face and said, "Okay! I'll be like this instead! Hi! How are you?! What's your name?! What's your major?! Do you want to go on a date?! How about we get engaged?!" The look on his face was priceless, and then he got bitchy.

"You don't have be such a bitch about it. I just wanted to talk to you. You'd think you'd be complimented."

"Well, you weren't taking no for an answer, and bitch seemed to get the point across better. Now, if you don't mind, leave me the fuck alone. Please."

He got off at the next stop.

[merithyn]

Douchebags like the dude hitting on the girl are annoying, but then so are (albeit to a lesser extent) guys who have a hero complex like the writer.

The sad fact is that some women actually respond positively to this kind of approach-- apparently just enough to encourage guys to hit on women like this.

No means no, and it was clear that this woman was saying no.

[Berkut]

Douchebags like the dude hitting on the girl are annoying, but then so are (albeit to a lesser extent) guys who have a hero complex like the writer.

The sad fact is that some women actually respond positively to this kind of approach-- apparently just enough to encourage guys to hit on women like this.

That fact isn't sad - there is nothing wrong with responding to someone hitting on you.

The issue is not that some women respond - the issue is douchebag who doesn't know to stop when they DON'T respond.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Talking to strangers on public transport........  ..the horror! the horror!

[garbon]

Talking to strangers on public transport........  ..the horror! the horror!

This!

I don't know you, I'm not trying to be your friend, I ain't trying to have sex with you, so leave me alone.

[Jacob]

Douchebags like the dude hitting on the girl are annoying, but then so are (albeit to a lesser extent) guys who have a hero complex like the writer.

The sad fact is that some women actually respond positively to this kind of approach-- apparently just enough to encourage guys to hit on women like this.

Right. It's women's fault that creeps act like creeps towards them. 

[garbon]

Douchebags like the dude hitting on the girl are annoying, but then so are (albeit to a lesser extent) guys who have a hero complex like the writer.

The sad fact is that some women actually respond positively to this kind of approach-- apparently just enough to encourage guys to hit on women like this.

Right. It's women's fault that creeps act like creeps towards them. 

Well she was wearing that wispy skirt...

[derspiess]

Douchebags like the dude hitting on the girl are annoying, but then so are (albeit to a lesser extent) guys who have a hero complex like the writer.

The sad fact is that some women actually respond positively to this kind of approach-- apparently just enough to encourage guys to hit on women like this.

Right. It's women's fault that creeps act like creeps towards them. 

That's not what I said, Stevie Wonder.  Obviously the blame falls on the creeps themselves.  But women stopped responding to this approach, many/most of the creeps would stop trying it.

[garbon]

Douchebags like the dude hitting on the girl are annoying, but then so are (albeit to a lesser extent) guys who have a hero complex like the writer.

The sad fact is that some women actually respond positively to this kind of approach-- apparently just enough to encourage guys to hit on women like this.

Right. It's women's fault that creeps act like creeps towards them. 

That's not what I said, Stevie Wonder.  Obviously the blame falls on the creeps themselves.  But women stopped responding to this approach, many/most of the creeps would stop trying it.

Doubtful. I doubt most of these creeps have had high success rates with this method, if any success. People aren't always rational machines.

[derspiess]

Doubtful. I doubt most of these creeps have had high success rates with this method, if any success. People aren't always rational machines.

They don't need high success rates.  I've known plenty of guys who would have no problem being creeps and getting shot down by 19 girls, if it at least worked on the 20th one.

I'm just as disturbed by the aggressive creep approach as you guys are-- it just disturbs me even more when it works.