Disturbing the universe is a social gaffe
Reading this excellent post on how to deal with harassment over at Geek Feminism, I am entirely in accord with the view that this is not a problem for the individual, it's a wider social issue.
I'd also like to point out that the people who are advocating women expressing their response to creepy behaviour by violence, physical or verbal or just by forceful repudiation, don't seem to have any idea about how social life works.
This doesn't just apply to this kind of sexual harassment situation or in the sphere of gender relations - the person who lets their feelings burst out in other scenarios (as it might be, political arguments) is seen as having committed social fail and inability to control their emotions. Losing their cool, tut-tut.
There are, indeed, occasions in which one has more than a suspicion that one party is deliberately trying to goad the other into an outburst.* (Am now trying to remember novel I read in which woman is resisting 'seduction' and does so by bursting into tears, and comments something like, he was looking for some reaction and making a woman weep worked as well.)
While harassment often works on assumptions about women's social conditioning, breaching that conditioning in order to protest does not necessarily accrue sympathy. If this sort of thing happens within a social setting, it's the person who reacted in a way that disrupts the sense that we are all here having an agreeable time who gets looked at askance if not accused of over-reacting and causing offence. In fact, the person who reacts may be marked down for failure of poise in not cutting off the interaction earlier or dealing with it with more grace.
I.e. it's condemned in terms which are based on standards of appropriate womanly conduct or general social etiquette. Harassers are manipulating these, like the guy at a work-related party who complained of my unfriendliness to my then line manager, because I had been unwinding his arm from around my waist throughout a conversation. And would not have done this to line manager, because she was visibly partnered with his immediate boss. I don't think party spirit required standing still for this, any more than it required acceding to belief of one of his colleagues that anyone would consider a smooch on the cheek from him more than adequate recompense for assisting with the post-party clear-up.
But there are, of course, consequences in terms of reputation. I didn't mind being considered the local stroppy feminist, and neither of these men had direct influence over my workplace situation. Or even my academic activities, particularly. But the costs for other people in other situations may well be higher.
Difficult, touchy, and liable to inappropriate outbursts in social situations are not good things to have being bruited about about one. Whereas the female gossip network of necessary information such as tagging certain men as 'Not Safe in Taxis' has traditionally not had much clout, however much pragmatic survival strategy it supplied.
Disturbing even the small and temporary universe of a social situation is not a particularly low-risk strategy.
*Okay, am thinking here of the situation with Q who rather than discuss any issues that may have been going on within our friendship, persistently niggled away at me in an annoying and passive aggressive fashion on unrelated matters at a party, and when I finally snapped and said something, was able to create a narrative that I was a mean person who had insulted her and she did not want to see me any more. No, we were not 6 years old any more and this was not the school playground, srsly.)
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