I’ve hesitated to post on this for a couple of days now, largely because I am in agreement with the conclusion: men, don’t hit on strange women in public, it’s obnoxious as hell. But I find the reasoning to be pernicious, and since I’ve been thinking about it for three days…
The piece follows on the heels of this boneheaded xkcd comic, in which hero Stick Man decides not to talk to a strange woman on the train because he doesn’t want to come off as creepy, and it turns out she was trying to attract him by pulling out her netbook! True love lost! The takeaway, I imagine, is that nice guys lose, because they no longer read the universal symbol of desire that is the eeePC.
So, the piece. It’s called Schrödinger’s Rapist. Nice men should not approach women on trains because women think like this:
So when you, a stranger, approach me, I have to ask myself: Will this man rape me?
Do you think I’m overreacting? One in every six American women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime. I bet you don’t think you know any rapists, but consider the sheer number of rapes that must occur. These rapes are not all committed by Phillip Garrido, Brian David Mitchell, or other members of the Brotherhood of Scary Hair and Homemade Religion. While you may assume that none of the men you know are rapists, I can assure you that at least one is. Consider: if every rapist commits an average of ten rapes (a horrifying number, isn’t it?) then the concentration of rapists in the population is still a little over one in sixty. That means four in my graduating class in high school. One among my coworkers. One in the subway car at rush hour. Eleven who work out at my gym. How do I know that you, the nice guy who wants nothing more than companionship and True Love, are not this rapist?
I don’t.
This is presented as a rational calculation, so I think I can say that it’s going to be completely irrelevant to point out that I don’t actually worry about rapists on public transit or when I walk home late at night. (Statistically, living near a campus, I probably reduce my risk of rape by walking away at night, and the thing I fear is getting mugged. More on this in a bit.) If the number’s one out of sixty guys who are rapists, I should be worried. I’d be irrational not to. Right?
Let’s take the number as given, and play with it.
1. Imagine that you had a child, and your child had the misfortune to be born with a rare but severe genetic disorder. Really rare, actually; only 0.4% of the population suffers from this disorder. You, being an enterprising sort, decide that you’re going to raise money for this disorder. You’ll pick a color, and a slogan, and your ads will feature a concerned-voice announcer gravely intoning one of the following options:
- 99.6% of Americans will never suffer from this disorder.
- 0.4% of Americans will suffer from this disorder.
- 1.2 million Americans will suffer from this disorder.
- 1 out of 250 babies will be born with this disease.
Which sounds the most scary, assuming the humanities major hasn’t bobbled the math? The first one’s out; it focuses on the healthy people. The second one makes it sound like it’s no one’s problem at all. The third and fourth are scary. My sense is that the fourth is the most scary, because 250 is a number we can encounter — it’s the size of an undergraduate lecture hall or a graduating class — and it makes us think about people we know, and one of them having the disease.
(I’m sure the sociologists and cognitive scientists have a name for this phenomenon. Googling, “you know, that thingy, like in advertising?” isn’t helping me, though.)
Let’s apply the lesson. One out of sixty men is a rapist! 1.7% of men are rapists. 98.3% are not. How should I understand this?
Let’s play war or car! (Everyone loves a good game of war or car.) If you’re sitting on that train, and that train is in America, it is statistically more likely that guy voted for Nader (2.7% sez Wiki.)
Wait, you say. Nader voters aren’t very scary, nor is encountering one going to be a major life changing event. We are right not to fear the Nader voter.
Okay. It’s more likely, if you’re on the pill, that you will get pregnant (8% with typical use!) than that guy will turn out to be a rapist. (“One in twelve women will become pregnant while on the pill”, the abstinence-only video announcer intones. “Gee!” says the youth group, “the pill isn’t reliable.”)
My point here is that we should really be careful about using the 1 out of 60 number as the justification for a social norm of not harassing strange women in public. If that really were the reason men shouldn’t hassle women on the subway, we’d have to conclude that women are by and large being irrational, and if we were to give that advice to young men of good intentions (the piece’s target), they’d have to conclude that xkcd probably has a better read on what’s probable.
Onto why I think this is pernicious, rather than just a misguided mental exercise.
2. Let’s play with the 1 in 6 number. This is the chance that a woman will be the victim of sexual assault in her life. I’ve heard this number as 1 in 4 or 1 in 8 or 1 in 9. It’s generally calculated by taking the FBI statistics for sexual assault and then, since rape is generally agreed to be underreported (60% is what I’ve heard), the figure is adjusted upward, to give women a more accurate sense of their risk. It varies based on the year, on what sets of stats someone is using, etc.
But most of these rapes are not stranger rapes. The overwhelming majority of rapes are committed by someone known to the victim; probably someone she thought was safe.
Here’s why this is relevant.
This advice really seems to assume that avoiding rape is something women should try to do by ascertaining the risk of a guy; the advice here is to the guy, but the guy is being told to imagine himself in the place of the woman and to follow her train of thought to figure out what he should do. That’s why you shouldn’t approach women on the subway, the advice says — she has to figure out whether you’re a rapist first. If she’d think you’re safe, then approach her.
But most rape is committed by guys who are already thought to be safe, not by strangers. You know, like that nice guy, at church, your mom knows his mom. Or that cute boy in your chemistry class. Or that guy you met through your friend. Or your dad’s hunting buddy. Or the guy you married. All guys who didn’t walk up to you on the train.
It would be bad if the takeaway from this were “young women should fear to walk home alone at night because one out of sixty men might turn out to be a rapist, but they should not fear as much in social situations, like frat parties, where everyone is of their age and social class and seems to be safe.” I don’t think it’s the intended takeaway, but that’s the frame. Don’t approach until she has determined you are safe, because she has to do this to protect herself from rape.
I don’t want the rationale for being left alone on the train to depend on heightening the threat of stranger rape and minimizing acquaintance rape.
3. So what should we tell the nice guy? I think women should have the presumption of their personal space on public transit because they’re human beings, not just because they fear rape. So, with that in mind:
Imagine you’re a genuinely nice guy, kind, loyal, and a little bit shy. You have a hard time meeting people, and your workplace is dull. One day, you see a man on the train. He is young, handsome, and dressed in the cornflower blue shirt, black suit, and dark peacoat that is the uniform of the newly minted professional guy, so he’d probably be a good business contact and he’d fit in well with the rest of your friends. On his finger is a ring from your alma mater, so you know you have something in common. His face is genial and he’s kind, always giving up his seat to old ladies. This morning he’s listening to his iPod and typing on a small laptop and completely ignoring you and everyone else.
Are you inclined to interrupt him and ask him to be your friend? Are you going to think that you’re justified because you really, really need a friend? Are you going to put your hand on his arm to get his attention? Are you going to heap abuse on him later over beer, thinking that it’s no wonder he doesn’t have any friends and he’ll probably die friendless and alone because you could have been his perfect friend, his soulmate, and now he’ll never know?
No? Then why do you think it’s acceptable behavior towards a woman?
http://kateharding.net/2009/10/08/guest-blogger-starling-schrodinger%E2%80%99s-rapist-or-a-guy%E2%80%99s-guide-to-approaching-strange-women-without-being-maced/#comments
49 comments
October 11, 2009 at 8:42 am
Ben Alpers
But most of these rapes are not stranger rapes. The overwhelming majority of rapes are committed by someone known to the victim; probably someone she thought was safe.
This observation also belongs in your first point. Which is to say that far fewer than 1 in 60 American men are rapists of strangers. Statistically speaking women ought to be more worried about the man they’re going out on a date with than a random stranger on a train.
Please note that I do not intend this comment as an argument in favor of men chatting up random strangers on trains, nor as an argument against going out on dates.
October 11, 2009 at 8:48 am
Leo
As a man who rides a commuter train every day, I can say that I very rarely strike up conversations with strangers on the train, but the few times I have (maybe 2-3 occasions in as many years) it has been with another man, not a woman. I would definably think twice about doing the same with a woman of roughly my own age, specifically for the reason that such a thing would be regarded as “creepy.”
Which is fine of course. I have no great need or reason to talk to anyone on public transit.
October 11, 2009 at 9:02 am
dana
I made it a separate point because Starling’s proceeding from the idea that this guy is approaching you to get acquainted (not to hurt you on the spot), and so he belongs in the general category. But the point is well-taken.
October 11, 2009 at 9:03 am
Leo
Yeah, I understand the difference.
October 11, 2009 at 9:22 am
delagar
There have been a (very few) times guys have approached me on busses/trains in a genuinely friendly manner — once when I was reading Zinn’s People’s History, and he was a history graduate student who could not restrain himself, for instance — but usually, in my experience, guys who approach women in public are doing it out of hostility: it’s a dominance move, same as the cat-call is. These fellas know most women have been socialized into being polite and submissive, especially in public, and they use the public situation to force the women to submit to their manly manhood.
I am appalled to admit how well this worked on me when I was younger.
October 11, 2009 at 9:27 am
Matt D
This is precisely the reason that I think “Take Back the Night” marches are a bad idea. They make two mistakes. The first mistake is the one you point out: they misidentify the source of the danger, and make rape seem as if it is something that is carried out by strangers in dark alleys. This has the effect of making some women overly worried about a relatively small risk, and insufficiently worried about the larger risk.
Second, they try to make a gender issue out of something that is decidedly not a gender issue: the safety of our streets. As a white man, I rarely get the chance to play the victim card, but Take Back the Night marches that exclude men have always really bothered me: I was the victim of a random nighttime attack, I ended up in the hospital with some pretty painful injuries, and as a result, I experience exactly the kind of constant worry when walking the streets that Phaedra Starling claims is the exclusive province of women. Many young men are, in fact, extremely nervous about walking along after dark: getting jumped and beaten unconscious pales in comparison to getting raped, surely, but it still sucks.
To make some wildly unsubstantiated empirical claims: I suspect that there are many more men who are willing to attack, beat, and rob strangers on the street than there are men who are willing to attack and rape strangers on the street. And I also suspect that young men are disproportionately represented among the victims of violent nighttime assaults. Now, many of these young men put themselves in harm’s way in various ways– mouthy drunks have a tendency to get punched in that mouth– but blaming the victim seems like a bad idea regardless of the victim’s gender.
But like you, I agree with the conclusion: trying to chat up strangers is generally creepy, and men should recognize that many women understandably do not welcome it. It would just be nice if our discussions about the particular evil of rape concentrated on the particular evil of most actually existing rapes. (The view of rape as something strangers do to you in dark alleys is one of the sources of Polanski apologia, I suspect.)
October 11, 2009 at 9:38 am
Nora Carrington
The answer to the question you pose at the end is “because women owe men sex.” Your question is exactly the right question to ask, because it makes the answer obvious, and the obvious answer is genuinely repugnant to genuinely nice but clueless guys. To the rest of the guys, I recommend delagar’s point, which is also exactly right.
October 11, 2009 at 9:54 am
ME
I think this misses the point as well. In the xkcd comic, the woman wants to be approached by the guy. So given that we have a train full of women, some of them wanting to be approached (though we can’t tell which ones), and full of men worried about being seen as rapists (though some of them actually are), is it not a tragedy that the innocuous men will never end up talking to the women wanting to be approached? It seems like everyone ends up unhappy, except for the men who do choose to violate social conventions.
It’s like if car dealers operated from inside their own homes. If I’m in the market for a car, I would have no way of knowing how to get one except if I went door to door and asked people if they were selling cars, which would violate the rules of polite society. So I would be stuck without a car and the car dealer would be stuck without my business. Would this not be an absurd situation? And why is it not also considered absurd in the context of male-female interactions?
October 11, 2009 at 10:03 am
rosmar
Other than the implicit heteronormativity, this is a great post.
October 11, 2009 at 10:06 am
Ben Alpers
I think this misses the point as well. In the xkcd comic, the woman wants to be approached by the guy.
I think that the problem with the cartoon is precisely that this is a Nice Guy® fantasy. My impression is that actual trains are not brimming with actual women who crave being approached by strangers (presumably because they are incapable of approaching strangers themselves?).
A more accurate/clever comic would have added an additional frame placing the (current) final frame in another thought bubble of Stick Man.
October 11, 2009 at 10:08 am
ed bowlinger
Are you inclined to interrupt him and ask him to be your friend?
No, of course not. “Do you want to be my friend?” is a terrible pick-up-line. I’d go with “Hey brah, catch the game Saturday? It sure felt good to finally beat State!” And then if the guy was all, “Yeah, cool brah.” I’d drop it and look at my iPhone for a while. But if he was into it, and he seemed cool, maybe I’d invite him to watch the game next week with my bros, at this bar by my apartment with awesome wings specials on Saturdays.
October 11, 2009 at 10:28 am
dana
Other than the implicit heteronormativity, this is a great post.
I plead that I was responding to a post that assumed it implicitly.
I think that the problem with the cartoon is precisely that this is a Nice Guy® fantasy.
Yeah, this is it. I mean, you really have to be pretty deep in a geek fantasy to think that the woman engrossed on her laptop had decided that this was the best possible way to attract that one specific geek and is currently lamenting losing him on her blog, instead of thinking “she’s trying to do some work.” My first thought was and maybe she also has a Princess Leia costume and needs you to bring the lightsaber.
And why is it not also considered absurd in the context of male-female interactions?
I’m not sure why you it’s helpful to analogize women to cars, but note that the advice here is “never approach anyone ever and DIE LONELY”, but “treat women as human beings who might have their own things going on, not as mere ends to be pursued.”
October 11, 2009 at 10:47 am
ucblockhead
I suspect there are women in trains who have no interest in being approached by random strangers and yet think that one particular guy over there is kinda cute but have no way of striking up a conversation without it seeming weird and overly forward.
Honestly, I think it’s a bit sexist to think that only men ever scope out other passengers for attractiveness.
For a man to approach a woman on the train is seen as overly aggressive and is likely to set off “potential rapist” bells. For a woman to approach a man on the train is also seen as overly aggressive and is very likely to be seen as “easy”, which can obviously have huge negative consequences for the woman. Thus, no one looks for mates on trains and a lot of people that might be romantically perfect for each other end up riding next to each other for a half hour without saying a word. If you’re single, all these missed connections are sad.
That’s the point of the cartoon.
This is why I’m glad I am happily married and can just glare in a surly fashion at everyone on the train.
October 11, 2009 at 10:49 am
Josh
I mean, you really have to be pretty deep in a geek fantasy to think that the woman engrossed on her laptop had decided that this was the best possible way to attract that one specific geek and is currently lamenting losing him on her blog, instead of thinking “she’s trying to do some work.”
But if it’s a geek fantasy, whose is it? It has to be the omniscient narrator’s, because the last panel explicitly breaks out of Stick Figure’s head.
(Also, one of xkcd’s recurring themes is that women can be geeks too. Sexist!)
October 11, 2009 at 10:50 am
artemis
Take Back the Night is a gendered movement because of the way that women are targeted by messages about how dangerous it is for them to be outside, regardless of the “real” dangers of mugging, etc. Even on TV shows or movies that depict mugging, for example, a man might be targeted precisely because he is escorting a woman and is off his manly guard. I can’t tell you how often my mother and sisters have sent me emails to park under street lights close to the store and to walk with my keys out as I approach my car at night. How many men have been admonished to never go to the movies alone? Maybe you’re thinking of TBN as just another moment when women are being cautioned about the dangers, but I see it as a way for women to say that they belong out in public as much as the next guy–no matter how one spins the numbers that Dana is talking about.
What’s interesting to me about Dana’s critique is the idea that men are the cartoon’s target, not women. If we see this as being about rape and not fears that our virtual lives interfere with our “real” lives, the punch-line is about how the rhetoric about rape hobbles their mutual ability to show each other that they are attracted to one another.
(It’s heteronormative, I suppose, because women are so infrequently warned to watch out for lesbian rape. I have never gotten a forward about that.)
Though both their love-lives are at stake, the joke is told at the woman’s expense–she’s the one who acts mistakenly in the boy’s dream and in her own virtual world. It seems like one of those will-those-fickle-women-just-figure-out-what-they-want-already things. Unless, of course, we imagine that the boy is getting off on the idea that he might be called “creepy”…
October 11, 2009 at 11:06 am
dana
artemis, my read of Take Back the Night is the same.
It has to be the omniscient narrator’s, because the last panel explicitly breaks out of Stick Figure’s head.
Yup. It struck me as an awful lot of projection. I don’t know the percentage of women that would choose to signal interest by opening a netbook and turning away, but we could have fun with those numbers, too. (My bet: fewer than one in sixty! eep!)
Honestly, I think it’s a bit sexist to think that only men ever scope out other passengers for attractiveness.
No one has claimed this, as near as I can tell.
October 11, 2009 at 11:18 am
Josh
It struck me as an awful lot of projection.
Well, okay, but in that case saying
strikes me as a little off. I mean, it’s not like the woman in the strip *actually exists* outside of the strip.
I also don’t see the strip as making the argument that Stick Figure *should* try to chat up the girl. I mean, his imagination of how the interaction shows that he’s internalized Phaedra Starling’s argument. If it’s arguing for anyone taking action, it’s saying that the girl should make her interest clear, rather than relying on an ambiguous signal.
October 11, 2009 at 11:20 am
Barbar
I’m not sure the comic suggests that the woman has a netbook just so that she can attract geeks on the train. Furthermore, I don’t think the strip is implying that a woman typing on a computer is *probably* writing about her regret that the cute boy isn’t hitting on her. In my experience fiction often depicts objectively unlikely events.
There is a social coordination problem here. Nerd-boy’s “nice-guy” concerns about being a creep push him to what he believes (correctly IMO) is a sub-optimal equilibrium point. But then people who are seriously worried about being considered creeps tend to be actual creeps in some sense; someone who is deeply afraid of the hypothetical thought-bubble scenario in the comic probably has some issues about women and power. People are often ugly deep inside.
But the XKCD comic doesn’t recommend that the boy ask the girl, “Hey, do you want to be my friend? We could be soulmates.” I don’t think it’s too generous to read it as just suggesting that the boy actually go ahead and say, “Nice netbook.” And yet many of the critical responses to this comic basically argue that the girl’s ideal response would be the one described in the thought bubble — except, you know, society has conditioned women to be powerless and submissive in public space, and so the girl wouldn’t have the courage to actually speak her mind.
I don’t think this comic is that boneheaded. It’s not the last word on social interactions but then it only has four or five panels.
October 11, 2009 at 11:23 am
Josh
(But whatever I think about the strip, I’m not arguing for men’s right to chat up women on public transportation. I wear noise-isolating headphones and an iPod for a reason.)
October 11, 2009 at 11:30 am
dave
I think the comic, together with the chain of responses down to here can all be seen best as part of a tragic tableau of the impact of brute reality on the aspiration of well-meaning humans to be able to trust one another’s intentions.
October 11, 2009 at 11:36 am
ME
I’m not sure why you it’s helpful to analogize women to cars
Not cars, but car salesmen. Or alternatively, the car salesmen could be the men, if you prefer. I simply meant to give an example of two groups of people who commonly have mutually beneficial exchanges.
And yet many of the critical responses to this comic basically argue that the girl’s ideal response would be the one described in the thought bubble
This is exactly right. Better than I could have put it. Look, people approach me occasionally, and I know better now than to rudely tell them to go to hell, and I don’t recommend that anyone else do it either. Because I know now that no matter how annoying some people are, no people at all is far more annoying.
I think that by highlighting how unlikely it is that the woman is interested, you’re effectively turning the whole thing into a zero-sum game, which is where both players and “nice guys” alike originate. Maybe it would be more effective to understand how to make this be less zero-sum instead.
I also want to bring up that on the flipside, the solution proposed to men as a cure for loneliness or lack of female companionship is to do precisely what is being maligned here.
Another idea: it’s scary to be raped, but isn’t it also scary to miss out on a potential connection? Let’s say you have two potential life paths: one where you get savagely beaten, sexually assaulted, what have you, but down the line you do meet your soul mate, and have a wonderful family (which your psychological scars prevent you from fully enjoying, but still). In the other, you’re never the victim of violent crime, but you “DIE ALONE.” I think some men and some women might choose the first path.
October 11, 2009 at 11:38 am
Matt D
Artemis, Dana: That read on Take Back the Night strikes me as what the event *should* be saying. I’m just not sure that, at least in the cities I’ve lived in, it’s what it *is* saying. That is, my read has always been that is says “women, it is not safe for you to walk the streets at night. This is a bad thing.” In other words, it’s *reinforcing* the gendered social message about the risks of strangers, not challenging it.
But maybe I’ve just misinterpreted it because I’ve internalized that social message too. If the goal is as you describe it, then my objections to the gendered character of the event go away. I’m just not sure that goal gets clearly articulated.
October 11, 2009 at 11:40 am
dana
I mean, it’s not like the woman in the strip *actually exists* outside of the strip.
I wasn’t confused on that point, seriously. For one, she’d be easy to pick out, being all made of lines. But what’s she supposed to be representing?
Furthermore, I don’t think the strip is implying that a woman typing on a computer is *probably* writing about her regret that the cute boy isn’t hitting on her.
Hard to say. Fiction often depicts unlikely events, but the interpretation that seems to be winning is that since these are the comic’s Every Man and Every Woman characters (certainly the xkcd forums are full of guys thinking that maybe they shouldn’t be so shy, and talk to the girl, because that’s what girls are thinking, maybe! they will chat to the girl with the netbook!), this should be read as something that is generalizable to human experience. “Go up and chat to girls even if they’re showing no sign of being interested in you” is not a norm I really care for.
October 11, 2009 at 12:06 pm
JPool
On the xkcd front, I think that strip fails because, while I suspect what it’s going for is comic over-statement of the “we all die alone, LOL” variety, it ends up misrepresenting the dynamic. In Mr. Stickfigure’s fantasy, it’s not that he’s perceived as scary, it’s that he’s held up for public ridicule for presuming to speak to Ms. Stickfigure without the Mysterious Signal. In the closing alttext, Ms. Stickfigure has indeed been sending a mysterious signal, but it is of the inscrutable variety. Those women with their secret languages. What do they want?
The setting for this exchange, a traincar, makes the whole thing especially ridiculous. If we move the dynamic this strip to a coffee house, the whole thing would seem less pernicious. It still has unfortunate narrative message “women are devastating and scary/why won’t the nice shy guys step up”, but in that space a certain amount of easily easily deflected openings, of the “that’s an interesting looking book” variety, are generally acceptable and not especially gendered. The train by contrast, because of its confined space, has developed a social norm that presumes the right to be left alone. Because none of us want to be stuck in the moving thing with the person who won’t stop talking to us, whom we are unable to walk away from, we have agreed not to do any talking with the people we don’t know (and probably minimal talking with the people we do know). The reason for violating this, as delagar and others have pointed out is not a desperate human need to connect, but the apparent thrill that comes from the socially aggressive chatting up.
October 11, 2009 at 12:10 pm
Barbar
But isn’t the issue simply that shy people are trapped in their own little world, because they are shy? And so they grab on to a reason to not-be-shy? And the whole thing is ridiculous and pathological and pathetic and unavoidable?
My wife spent a lot of time in France growing up and claims that the French boys were much more direct than American boys, and that from her point of view this was not a bad thing at all. Perhaps this is just a matter of exoticizing-the-other but I admit that the last time I was in Marseille I observed a nice-seeming young man strike up an hour-long conversation with a young woman on the beach, beginning with “What’s your dog’s name?”
October 11, 2009 at 12:50 pm
kyllaros
JPool: Do you really think that “the apparent thrill that comes from the socially aggressive chatting up” is the reason why people like Randall Munroe fantasize about being able to get up the courage to chat with the woman who sits next to him on the train every day? The whole point of being shy/introverted is that chatting up people you don’t know is extremely painful.
I also kind of doubt that the point is that “women are inscrutable”. To the shy, all people are more or less inscrutable. Both the humor and the tragedy of the xkcd strip is that if you actually put a shy, nerdy man next to a shy, nerdy woman on a train, day in and day out, they would likely never talk to each, precisely for the same reason they might actually be well suited for each other.
It was through a sort of bizarre circumstance of fate that I, a shy, nerdy guy, met my wife, a shy, nerdy woman. It’s pretty shitty to think that you have no active means at your disposal to find love and that you’re entirely dependent of happy accidental circumstances.
October 11, 2009 at 12:52 pm
kyllaros
To be clear, this is not to say that I think men should harass women on trains; I just think that people are being a bit harsh with regards to the subject of the xkcd strip.
October 11, 2009 at 2:15 pm
JPool
On the Starling front, I think she’s trying specifically to reach out to the Nice Guy Who Takes It Personally, who believes that he’s supposed to be the one to approach women, but doesn’t know how and feels like he’s being unfairly singled out for rejection. Her useful point is that it doesn’t matter to the woman that you’re trying to talk to in public place X or Y that you know you aren’t a rapist or a horrible person. She doesn’t know you. So you don’t have to be uniquely scary, just an unknown quantity. Be considerate and try not to freak people out.
The problem is that men who are clued in enough to get this point have probably gotten it already. Plenty of others, as shown here, presume that the sense of public or personal danger (and I think that Starling is attentive to predominance of acquaintance rape, more than dana was giving her credit for in the OP) that most women experience is no different from their own. (Matt D, did you feel a similar sense of fear and anxiety walking down the street before you were assaulted? Did you experience fear of assault in your private life as well? Those would be some of the differences.)
kyllaros,
Both the humor and the tragedy of the xkcd strip is that if you actually put a shy, nerdy man next to a shy, nerdy woman on a train, day in and day out, they would likely never talk to each, precisely for the same reason they might actually be well suited for each other.
Uh huh, and if you put an extremely confident man next to an extremely confident woman on the train day after day, they will also probably never talk to each other, because you don’t generally talk to people on the train. Yes, shy people are shy, this is useful knowledge to have about them, and yes, it would be nice if they/we were less shy and more able to talk to the people we want to. This is all the more reason, however, that shy people should learn the appropriate locations and manners with which to make such talkings, so that, when they eventually get up the nerve to do so, they just come off as shy and not as weirdos with no sense of boundaries.
October 11, 2009 at 2:51 pm
Urk
I read most of these comments before clicking links, and the comic strip isn’t nearly as boneheaded as I’d expected from the comments. It’s a little too neatly tied up in it’s “oh what a sad world” point, and it would be better if both the talking and not-talking scenarios were pointedly made to be daydreams/fantasies of stick dude, but it does get at something.
It can be hard for guys who recognize the pitfalls and evils of male privilege to negotiate how to act. this isn’t meant to be an equivocal statement regarding the problems that privilege causes for women, because comparatively, we have it easy. But still, significant cultural forces shame us for not being jerks or creeps, and we see plenty of examples like the ones that delagar alluded to, where it works on women that we know are too smart for it. This last part especially makes being lonely and trying to be good very frustrating, and the comic speaks to that. It could speak to it more clearly, true. As it is it’s expressing it without describing it.
October 11, 2009 at 5:53 pm
kid bitzer
i find myself unable to agree with starling’s interpretation of schrödinger’s thought-experiment.
October 11, 2009 at 7:21 pm
Jake
Isn’t the point of the strip that it’s ok to say “nice netbook” or “nice bike” or “nice dog” to anyone EXCEPT a woman that they would conceivably like to generally chat up? Because the assumption is automatically that you are trying to flirt with them, even if you just think that they have a nice netbook, and that the probably wouldn’t mind hearing it and might say something interesting in return? And that the conversation here directly illustrates that overall net negative dynamic?
Or do other people not say “nice dog” to strangers walking down the street with nice dogs?
October 11, 2009 at 8:05 pm
Caio
Oh my Jesus frakking Christ, what the humanities do to people. Please take a moment to peruse the following page:
http://newyork.craigslist.org/search/mis/?query=w4m
That’s the New York Craigslist missed connections page–specifically, the w4m page. A fair number of them involve precisely the situation in the comic, down to the location. Which is only to show that the male character in the comic is really just incidentally male, and the situation might have been reversed and been generally the same, except for the fact that the man is generally expected to take the initiative.
Which brings me to reiterate Urk’s point, which is that the comic is expressing a real anxiety of being a nice, shy guy, which is that it’s hard for us to tell when an advance is welcome and when it’s going to come off as creepy, and that, because we’re worried about coming off as creepy, we’re not going to stop ourselves from striking up a conversation on some occasions when it would be welcome, though we may never know when that’s the case. Also, please note that the comic is not advocating any particular course of action or attitude, just illustrating some emotional truth about a certain kind of person (and I think more successfully than Urk seems to).
And finally, I guess I just don’t see it as such a huge disrespect to try to start a conversation on the subway. Sure, there’s a wrong way to go about it–you can be too insistent, too aggressive, too crude, etc, but not every attempt to start a conversation is aggressive or laden with expectations that immediately turn into spite when the advance is spurned. You can also be friendly and innocuous, and take a hint if the other person doesn’t respond in a way that invites conversation. I would say that not much is lost if that happens, that it would be just as acceptable to approach a man in that way, or for a woman to approach another person (and, judging by the missed connections ads, at least some women would like the freedom and confidence to do so). I would, in fact, say more: that a connection is valuable and rare enough that people are justified in breaking social protocol now and then if there is a chance to make one.
October 11, 2009 at 8:38 pm
nameless
What Caio said.
How exactly did we go from an xkcd comic strip about how hard it is for two people to connect with each other, to rape?
In what world is the ‘NiceGuy’ formula a fantasy? Do people here not think that nice guys exist? And how did we get from ‘NiceGuy’ to creepy geek with Princess Leia fantasy.
I am a woman and I have actually had some good conversations on trains. For example, I had a conversation with this guy who noticed I was reading War and Peace. He preferred Dostoevsky and then we talked about the brothers in The Godfather and we went on like that for a half-an-hour. It was quite pleasant. There was nothing more to it. Why do we have to read ‘sexual advance’ into a simple attempt to forge connections and make life a little more pleasant.
October 11, 2009 at 10:12 pm
Urk
Well, the discussion was about sexual/romantic communication/advances in a world where people do rape. So it started there, and then went to, or more like by, the comic strip, which wasn’t a main point of Dana’s post. And, even tho I was sticking up for it a few minutes ago, it’s not unirksome that the strip doesn’t seem to get that there’s an element of rational calculation by women regarding their safety, behind what Caio called a “social protocol.” And that that’s sadder and than the kind of missed connections that the strip pulls the heartstrings about.
October 12, 2009 at 7:10 am
Anderson
Weird issues y’all are having. The XKCD strip is making fun of the guy’s anxiety. It’s not saying that the woman’s unspoken thoughts are actually likely. They’re just the most amusing contrast with his anxious fears.
(He may not even be interested in the woman. He may just think it’s a cute netbook. XKCD has a substantial number of readers who are at least as attracted by netbooks as by women.)
October 12, 2009 at 8:51 am
Chris
there’s an element of rational calculation by women regarding their safety
There’s an element of calculation, but the calculation isn’t rational. In addition to all the problems dana pointed out, the original statistic is also a lifetime risk, which is not much use in a daily situation. The guy you meet on the train today probably won’t rape you 20 years from now, or if he does, it will be either unrelated to the train interaction today, or because you will have been married to him for 15+ years (in which case whether you met on a train or somewhere else is probably irrelevant). So really the risk should be reduced by a factor of around 15,000 to convert it from a lifetime risk to a daily risk.
Furthermore, even among stranger rapes, I’m pretty sure that practically none take place on trains. Setting matters. Meeting the same guy in a bar is far *more* dangerous than meeting him on a train. (Pretty much the only way for the train scenario to lead to even an *eventual* rape is if the potential victim agrees to meet the same guy socially in another setting. Again, the location of the original meeting is irrelevant to this scenario. Presuming that you will meet some guys somewhere sometime, guys met on trains are not any more dangerous than guys met not on trains.) So why is the latter considered socially unacceptable?
There are, of course, explanations for why risk-estimating instincts work the way they do. But they’re not rational explanations.
P.S. People who interpret talking on a train as an act of aggression and that’s why they do it aren’t deterred by the social norm anyway — in fact, it’s what allows them to demonstrate their lack of respect. So it doesn’t even serve any purpose. (And while I’m just going on guesswork here, I bet most of the rapists are in that group. I’m no expert on the psychology of rapists, but it stands to reason that lack of respect for the opinions of others must be pretty prominent.)
October 12, 2009 at 8:53 am
Chris
Also, in case I wasn’t clear: if something is a real danger, you can fear it rationally, but you can also fear it irrationally. Pointing out that some fear is disproportionate is not an attempt to deny the existence of the danger.
October 12, 2009 at 9:09 am
dana
Guys, the xkcd jumping off point was a few days ago. (I called it “boneheaded”, and I’ll stand by that, because I don’t think it works as a meditation on the irony of missed connections) I linked it for context, because I was responding to a whole ‘nother argument which I disagreed with that was said that women should fear strangers on trains because of the risk of rape, and that men should take that fear into account when deciding to say hi.
I would, in fact, say more: that a connection is valuable and rare enough that people are justified in breaking social protocol now and then if there is a chance to make one.
Sure. I just suggest that the rules that govern breaking the protocol w.r.t. women should be the same ones that govern interactions with men. The norms on trains strike me as ones where people generally, though not exclusively, keep to themselves. The rules shouldn’t change just because one of the parties in question is female.
October 12, 2009 at 10:26 am
ajay
men, don’t hit on strange women in public, it’s obnoxious as hell.
Don’t do it in private, either. If anything, that’s worse. (“Who the hell are you? How did you get in here?”)
The no-talking-on-trains thing is, I think, very much a regional US taboo – certainly in most countries I’ve been in people don’t seem to have a problem with talking to strangers (of any description) on trains, assuming the stranger isn’t obviously occupied (reading book, listening to music etc). East of a certain line, it seems it’s actually rude not to.
Interestingly, even in America it seems to be OK to talk to people sitting beside you on an aircraft – the “single-serving friends” that the narrator mentions in Fight Club, for example.
October 12, 2009 at 12:21 pm
Anderson
Interestingly, even in America it seems to be OK to talk to people sitting beside you on an aircraft
Unless the person you’re talking to is me.
October 12, 2009 at 12:41 pm
Frances
I travel on trains in UK very frequently and often trike up long interesting conversations with strangers of both sexes. In the UK its more or less acceptable as long as you start by talking about the weather. OK I am female and well past the first flush of youth but have always travelled on trains and always talked to strangers (I well remembr a great journey back to Newcastle aged 20 one Xmas Eve in the buffet car full of Geordie squaddies coming home on leave. I never bought a single drink and swayed gently off at the Central Station. It could have been dangerous but actually it was really friendly and extremely public. I would have to have been followed off the train for anything to have happened.
I have also gone all the way around the US on Amtrak talking to people all the way. And that seemed normal and expected. Mind you I would never try and start a conversation with anyone on the London Tube. It just isn’t done – but not because of stranger danger – just the natural defensive unfriendliness of too many people cheek by jowel in a tin box.
I have always thought young men in far more danger on the street or public transport then young women. Virtually every man I know has been beaten up by strangers at some time during their life – not sure what the rape numbers among female friends would be – but it mostly always people they know only rarely total strangers
October 13, 2009 at 1:46 am
ajay
I have always thought young men in far more danger on the street or public transport then young women.
This is, of course, true; but as Chris and others point out, it’s the perception of risk that matters, not the actual risk. Note that the linked post calmly assumes that no men ever feel in danger of assault in public places – utterly wrong, of course, but a sign of the author’s beliefs.
October 13, 2009 at 7:29 pm
Neil the Ethical Werewolf
I was thinking through the scenario at the end of the post. There’s a good chance that I’ll say, “Hey, you want to X University?” and try to strike up a conversation with the guy. (That is, excluding the detail about him having headphones on. I don’t bother people with headphones on, and the girl in the xkcd comic doesn’t have headphones.)
And that’s it. There’s no invasions of personal space, and if he doesn’t want to chat, I won’t take it ill or say nasty things about him later on.
But I’m much more reluctant to strike up a conversation with the female version of him that’s in the comic, for basically the reasons expressed in the 2nd and 3rd panels.
Thanks for the War or Car shoutout, by the way!
October 15, 2009 at 7:51 am
serial catowner
Thinking this over, it seems to me that an awful lot of stuff, done as comedy, isn’t funny at all if you take it seriously. Some of it matters, some of it doesn’t. If you’ve never had a Stick-guy moment, you probably just don’t have a very strong imagination.
IMHO, the post would have been better with less comic.
October 15, 2009 at 2:05 pm
thingswithwings
I appreciate this post, because while I too am fully in support of the “hey guys, don’t approach women randomly in public” message, as well as the “the nice guy ™ fantasy is damaging and misogynist” message, I did have trouble with that post on shapelyprose. As well as its followup post that asked “hey, how many of you haven’t been assaulted?”
And I think the thing that bothered me most was – and you approach this in your post – the assumption that rape is the only way in which the guy on the train might possibly do harm to the woman on the train. One in sixty men is a rapist – well, that’s fifty nine safe guys, right? Wrong – because the moment he goes up to a woman who’s not looking at him, who’s typing into her computer and obviously busy, is the moment he becomes like 57 out of 60 guys, because he assumes that his time is more valuable than hers, that his desire to talk is more important than her desire to work on that short story she’s writing. There are thousands of seemingly-innocuous ways in which cismen (and other privileged groups) take up more space in society than is their share, as as a result non-privileged groups are left with almost none. The guy who tries to talk to you on the train even though you’re clearly not interested in talking is the same (often white) guy who talks so loudly in the restaurant that no one else can have a conversation, the same guy who stands at the store counter for an hour yelling at the clerk while a line forms behind him, the guy who is taught from a young age that the world belongs to him and everyone else had better give him what he wants or get the hell out of the way. It’s part of rape culture, certainly, but to think that this kind of behaviour is only harmful when it results in rape is disingenuous.
In other words, the real problem I have with that xkcd comic is that it pretends that stick guy doesn’t have male privilege, that we don’t already live in a world where women are asked/compelled, all the time, to put aside their own desires/work/interests for the sake of men who have to be humoured, listened to, and treated politely.
When a guy comes up to talk to me on the train, my first fear isn’t that he’s going to follow me home and rape me (though obviously this is a thing that happens and shouldn’t be minimized) – my first fear is “oh god, he’s going to talk at me,” and “oh god, he’s going to ask me why I’m not SMILING,” and “how can I politely tell him that I don’t want to talk to him,” and “oh great, now I’ll have to listen to his opinions on trains, the weather, his job, the book I’m reading, or the goddamned netbook that I’m trying to do work on.” My first fear is that he’s going to take up my space as if it were his own.
October 18, 2009 at 10:10 pm
KMD
One guys perspective:
I find much of this discussion horrible. In a previous life I worked as a baggage handler for an airline, back-breaking work whose sole recompense was free travel. Being exceedingly poor, yet determined to take advantage of my job I traveled to pretty much any large city that had decent public transit. I did this because it was cheaper to make a day trip to any of these cities and sip coffee and think deep thoughts than it was to spend a day doing whatever people that make $12 an hour do. I knew no one in these places, and while I could have embraced solitude and embarked upon some lonely existential journey I chose to instead chat up whomever was sitting close to me.
Sometimes I would speak, gasp, to women. Whomever I spoke to, I granted a wide berth and if they were clearly uninterested I would leave them alone. However, it is amazing how many people long for some sort of human contact on a train ride in from O’Hare or Logan or wherever. Sometimes, and always without solicitation, these women would offer me their phone numbers, then I would embarrassingly explain that I was just there for the day. Frankly, at the time I could not afford a girlfriend; hell, in those days Burger King was a luxury.
Perhaps these women offered me their numbers because of my intimidating presence, but I am inclined to think not. My point is that I would prefer to be considered creepy by some number of women and not deny another significant number along with myself the pleasure of a nice conversation. While many men lack the social skills to properly approach women, it was only after I tackled my own fear of speaking to strangers that I embraced an attitude that has allowed me to be far more successful in life. Call me obnoxious, I do not care. My conduct and bearing towards women have always been respectful and I certainly will not take to heart the censure of individuals that embrace an attitude of all-encompassing fear.
It is a dangerous world we live in, and women are justified in being skeptical, but when that attitude closes them off to any man without some sort of introduction I am saddened.
October 21, 2009 at 5:34 am
Neil the Ethical Werewolf
the real problem I have with that xkcd comic is that it pretends that stick guy doesn’t have male privilege
As a general rule, how should we deal with this? By only acting where male privilege is absent? Problem is, that’s nowhere, or close to nowhere, especially when it comes to romantic relationships.
October 22, 2009 at 8:21 pm
Joey Giraud
XMD, your comment was a breath of fresh air. I too am appalled at the crushing degree of fear that rules our American lives, and yearn for a less stressful social reality. Alas, between the religious-sexual repression that leads to rape and the over-charged commercial mindset that amplifies fear for profit, it’s unlikely to change much in my lifetime.
Of course, you would never have had that time to actually meet people if you had that $12/hr job. Poverty is the cure for loneliness?
November 2, 2009 at 12:22 am
wm
I am a woman who often talks to strange men on trains. I have even tried to pick up men on the New York City subway (no success yet, but then I haven’t lived in New York for years). I met my last boyfriend (who I was crazy about) because he sat down across from me in a crowded cafe, and _I_ asked _him_ about the interesting-looking book he was reading (an academic book on economics). I also love nerdy men and totally identify with the women in xkcd (except that I am a humanist, not a scientist). I should add that I am decent-looking.
Now, what amuses me about all this chatter is that unlike many of my female friends (we are in our thirties and early forties) I have never been single for more than a few months. I’m frustrated that I haven’t yet met my perfect match, but I put that down to my being unusual, and to having invested heavily in my career for almost all of my thirties.
So, lonely, nerdy men: I would say, don’t listen to any of this nonsense. Of course, you should be prepared to leave someone alone if they are less than totally friendly–that’s just polite. But in our highly mobile, anonymous world, anyone who doesn’t want to be lonely would be well advised to talk to strangers. So, go for it! Maybe she is me. Maybe you are my true love.