So yesterday I walked to yoga class. It was lovely out, sunny but not too hot, and I enjoyed checking out all the blooming dogwoods along the way.
Yoga practice was wonderful. For the first time, I could do the full stretch in pigeon preparation (like
this, but with the back leg straight out behind you and instead of opening up, you're face-down over the bent leg. It's harder than you think), we did headstand (i'm still against the wall but it's cool nonetheless), and all-around, I felt like it was a good practice.
Then I head out to walk home. It's still light out, and still the perfect temperature - a bit cooler, but I'm pretty warm from class so it's all good. I've got my iPod, I'm bopping along to some Sinead O'Connor (I am Stretched on Your Grave), I'm walking on the other side of Glenwood (the Rialto side), seeing what's blooming there.
Then I see this truck pulls over a little ahead of me and the dude is leaning towrds the passenger window, saying something. I have my headphones on, I pause the ipod, thinking he's asking for directions. But what I hear when I pause is: "...want a ride...honey, you don't need to be walkin', you lookin good the way you are, you're gorgeous..."
I roll my eyes, press play, and start walking again. Then I press pause, turn back (he hasn't pulled away yet), and tell him, "You know what? I don't EXIST to look good FOR YOU." and then he's all "no, I didn't mean it that way, I just wanted to tell you you look good and you don't need to be walkin'" and I retort back, "I'm walking because I want to walk." and take off.
And then the intracranial conflict begins. Where I'm coming from is exemplified by the writing of Sandra Bartky in Femininity and Domination:
"Consider now a second example of the way in which that fragmenting perecption, which is so large an ingredient in the sexual objectification of women, serves to maintain the dominance of men. It is a fine spring day, and with an utter lack of self-consciousness, I am bouncing down the street. Suddenly I hear men's voices. Catcalls and whistles fill the air. These noises are clearly sexual in intent and they are meant for me; they come from across the street. I freeze. As Sartre would say, I have been petrified by the gaze of the Other. My face flushes and my motions become stuff and self-conscious. The body which only a moment beofre I inhabited with such ease now floods my consciousness. I have been made into an object. While it is true that for these men I am nothing but, let us say, a "nice piece of ass," there is more involved in this encounter than their mere fragmented perception of me. They could, after all, hav enjoyed me in silence. Blissfully unaware, breasts bouncing, eyes on the birds in the trees, I could have passed by without having been turned to stone. But I must be made to know that I am a "nice piece of ass": I must be made to see myself as they see me...Subject to the evaluating eye of the male connoisseur, women learn to evaluate themselves first and best. Our identities can no more be kept separate from the appearance of our bodies than they can be kept separate from the shadow-selves of the female stereotype." (27-28)
So my perspective is that ok, if dude wants to enjoy my supposed beauty, let him do it in his own fucking head, I don't need to know about it. But then the way he justified his actions was as if to say he thought he'd be doing me a service, by letting me know I'm looking good, paying me a compliment.
And I had a serious twinge of guilt as I was slightly telling him off that here I am, a white woman, telling this Black man off, and that it might be interpreted as me saying he should know better than to think he can look at me that way. BUT I DON'T CARE IF HE LOOKS AT ME. I'm glad I said what I said the way I did: "I don't exist to look good for you." Not, "where do you get off looking at me," because that's not what I meant. And I was so pissed off and upset and flabbergasted - because, mind you, I had been blissfully happy, in my post-yoga hyperawareness and focus of what's within - that I didn't have the wherewithal to make that distinction clear.
And then I'm walking away, wondering if that was the most mindful, the most yogini way of handling the situation, and the next track comes on the ipod, "No Man's Woman." Thank you, Sinead.
I never wanna be no man's woman
I only wanna be my own woman
I haven't travelled this far to become
no man's woman.