some things just make you realize your "gender"
funny how you can truly see how fucked up society is just from taking the subway.
first, patriarchy happened to manifest itself as a man jerking off in an (almost) empty train car, standing up on the seats so my friend and i could see his manhood. when we called for the conductor at the next station to come remove him, which he wouldn't, he stopped the entire train so the cops could come do it. he decides to tell the rest of the train the delay was because two women wouldn't just leave the car and ignore it (we wouldn't leave the car because a) if this asshole started the train again we didn't want to have it happen to someone else. a woman was coming on with a little girl, if i hadn't started screaming at jerking-off dude he would have continued doing it with them there, and b) i don't trust cops), so we then have to deal with a train of drunks at 4 am, and other MTA workers arguing with us as if we were the ones whipping it out. after the whole ordeal, some man comes into the car and said he saw what was happening and left instead of alerting us, and then "felt bad" when he thought about how stupid that was.
after getting out at the west 4th street station, i looked around at others waiting for the train. almost ALL drunk, loud, dominant male types. there were maybe two women, and a few other men who didn't fit this description, and they looked very scared. the whole thing was kind of like watching a film, when the protaganist has a realization, only this is one i've had before and nothing changes.
for any males who might try and argue otherwise: i'm sure it's only because you want to seperate yourself from the type of behavior displayed by these men, but please don't deny that patriarchy and male privilege exists; we can't combat this through ignorance. even as a younger 'anti-racist' i used to deny to myself that white privilege existed because i didn't yet understand what it was. until i learned about other peoples' experiences (especially women of color) i finally 'got' what privilege means.
i'm going to eventually post this to http://www.hollabacknyc.blogspot.com/ which everyone should check out for some of the essays on there, and the funny pictures of street harassers.
first, patriarchy happened to manifest itself as a man jerking off in an (almost) empty train car, standing up on the seats so my friend and i could see his manhood. when we called for the conductor at the next station to come remove him, which he wouldn't, he stopped the entire train so the cops could come do it. he decides to tell the rest of the train the delay was because two women wouldn't just leave the car and ignore it (we wouldn't leave the car because a) if this asshole started the train again we didn't want to have it happen to someone else. a woman was coming on with a little girl, if i hadn't started screaming at jerking-off dude he would have continued doing it with them there, and b) i don't trust cops), so we then have to deal with a train of drunks at 4 am, and other MTA workers arguing with us as if we were the ones whipping it out. after the whole ordeal, some man comes into the car and said he saw what was happening and left instead of alerting us, and then "felt bad" when he thought about how stupid that was.
after getting out at the west 4th street station, i looked around at others waiting for the train. almost ALL drunk, loud, dominant male types. there were maybe two women, and a few other men who didn't fit this description, and they looked very scared. the whole thing was kind of like watching a film, when the protaganist has a realization, only this is one i've had before and nothing changes.
for any males who might try and argue otherwise: i'm sure it's only because you want to seperate yourself from the type of behavior displayed by these men, but please don't deny that patriarchy and male privilege exists; we can't combat this through ignorance. even as a younger 'anti-racist' i used to deny to myself that white privilege existed because i didn't yet understand what it was. until i learned about other peoples' experiences (especially women of color) i finally 'got' what privilege means.
i'm going to eventually post this to http://www.hollabacknyc.blogspot.com/ which everyone should check out for some of the essays on there, and the funny pictures of street harassers.