I'm fully prepared to be told I sound marginal and meaningless

Deborah of Property of a Lady quotes and links to an entry by Karen, a woman who recently attended an explicitly feminist comic book convention. It seems she experienced a few seconds of discomfort in an elevator filled with tall, non-con-attending men.

What did these men say or do? Well, she was dressed for a costume party as the super heroine Black Canary, in fishnets and a black leotard. By her own description, the men on the elevator greeted her with a laugh, asked where she was going, and when she told them, asked if they could go. She declined and got off the elevator at her floor.

She writes:

They didn’t say anything foul, they certainly didn’t touch me, and it wasn’t even close to harassment by the standards of our society.

So great then, right? Uh-uh. Because she then writes about 400 more words about "the patriarchal imperative to judge women primarily by their physical appearance," and how that is extremely unpleasant. And equates the men's remarks with yelling "show your tits" out a car window or groping a woman on a train.

I don't get it. I'll take the heat for this. Even though another undercurrent of the entry (and Deborah's) is that men are not allowed to criticize women, women are only allowed to criticize men. And you know how I love that attitude.

But sometimes I have what I think I'll start calling "bullhorn moments." That's when I'm looking at something that seems to me to have a whole lot of bullshit in it, and start wishing I could pop into a scene and cut through it with a few words on a bullhorn.

Like when I see pundits talking around and around in circles about how or why George W. Bush has done something.

"BECAUSE THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES IS A LIAR AND A CRIMINAL. THAT'S WHAT HE DOES, IT'S WHO HE IS."

Or, in this case:

"YOU WERE DRESSED IN A COSTUME THAT WAS DESIGNED TO APPEAL TO THE ADOLESCENT SEXUAL FANTASIES OF 11-YEAR-OLD BOYS."

And I find myself wondering: Is it supportive of patriarchal harassment to say I feel it's somewhere between confusing and hypocritical to then fly into high dudgeon because you are assessed on your appearance?

Is there anything those guys could have said in that situation that would not have been construed as harassment? Not even a "You look very nice?

Is the appropriate response to someone wearing such clothing no response at all?

If so, why does one wear it?

(One or two of these questions are anticipated in the women's original blog entries. The answer, apparently, is that to question women is to blame women, who are free from responsibility.)



But then, again, I know it's my problem. I think of women as confident and strong-perhaps even more so when they're dressed in ways that indisputably invite comment on and assessment of their appearance.

Not only then (absolutely not only then), but perhaps even more so. To me, a woman wearing such a costume is sending a not terribly coded message. That message is something like: "I think I have nice legs-nice enough to make this costume work." There may even be an implied "What do you think?" attached, but not necessarily.

That message is not (he said, spelling something out he hoped would be self-evident, in the interest of preventing misunderstanding) "I invite you to talk dirty to/grope/rape me."

Things like this make me just a little bit angry. Not because I think men should be able to say or do anything they want to women.

I'd like to repeat that, again because I fear a jumping to conclusion.

I do not think men should be able to say or do anything they want to women.

I just hate being reminded that, as confident and strong as I like to think of women, some of them apparently see themselves as scared fragile little flowers who must be protected at all times.

Even the ones who like to dress up as super heroines.



Or, to put it another way: Would the real Black Canary give two shits about what a couple of nameless guys said on an elevator?