(Hi, folks! For the time being, some, most, or all of the fol­low­ing links will still revert back to the orig­i­nal Writ­ing About Writ­ing web­page over on Blog­ger. This is not a mis­take. It just takes a long time to move thou­sands of arti­cles. Thank you for your patience as we nav­i­gate this tran­si­tion.)

Changing The Creepy Guy Narrative

How being a writer helped me rewrite a sex­ist trope…for real.

[Edit 3 (7/25/13): I speak to some of the more com­mon com­ments, ques­tions, and crit­i­cisms I’ve recieved in this Mail­box arti­cle. 

Edit 2 (7/18/13): Con­tin­ue com­ments at the ded­i­cat­ed entry for the con­tin­u­a­tion of com­ments if you want a reply from me.

Edit 1 (7/16/13): This post has gone viral and it now accounts for over half the traf­fic that this blog has ever received since I start­ed it in Feb­ru­ary of 2012.  Unfor­tu­nate­ly, that means it’s start­ing to show signs of con­form­ing to the laws gov­ern­ing the “bot­tom half of the inter­net.”  Some real­ly brave and touch­ing sto­ries have come in under Anony­mous com­ments so I real­ly don’t want to change the com­ment pol­i­cy mid stream; how­ev­er, rest assured that I’m actu­al­ly quite okay cheer­ful­ly delet­ing any­thing that drifts into the ter­ri­to­ry of abu­sive or incen­di­ary in its hos­til­i­ty (espe­cial­ly to oth­er read­ers) .  Feel free to dis­agree with me, cri­tique the writ­ing, call me out, what­ev­er (not all the com­ments below are con­grat­u­la­to­ry), but I’m going to ask that every­one play respect­ful­ly if they want to do so here. I’m sure you can find forums about this arti­cle if you want to be a meanieface.]

So a thing hap­pened to me yes­ter­day on the BART as I was com­ing home from work.  (Not shark­na­do, sad­ly.)  I want to tell you that it hap­pened because I’m a writer–I want that because then I can write about it here in a blog about writ­ing, not because I think writ­ers are more awe­some than oth­er peo­ple. If I tell you this hap­pened because of a unique set of insights I got from being a writer, then I can total­ly write about it here, and it’s okay. But the truth is, aware­ness can come from many places, and I hope that a lot of plumbers and archi­tects and bee­keep­ers and mid­dle man­agers and stel­lar car­tog­ra­phers would do what I did.  But just for this arti­cle, so I can put it here in this blog about writ­ing, let’s pre­tend it’s not what any­one would have done. Writ­ers are good at pre­tend­ing.

You see, as a writer, I am also a reader–a big crazy, pro­lif­ic-as-shit read­er.  I’ve read two or three dozen arti­cles my friends have linked over the years on wom­en’s expe­ri­ence with creep­ers on pub­lic transit–usually with some sort of com­men­tary attached to it by said friend along the lines of “ZOMG THIS!!!!” or “SO FUCKING TRUE!!!!”  I’ve read Schro­ding­er’s Rapist, Rape Cul­ture 101, Jezebel arti­cles by the dozens (per­haps hun­dreds), and even my own friends’ tribu­la­tions on BARTs and busses.  I even read that arti­cle (which I can’t find now) that lays out a well rea­soned case that our cul­ture’s entire­ly fucked up sense of con­sent and rape cul­ture exist nat­u­ral­ly as an exten­sion of the same mind­set that cause women to be afraid of being blunt and hon­est when they get cor­nered in pub­lic by some­one they’re not inter­est­ed in.  [ETA- One of the com­menters knew the piece I was talk­ing about.  It’s called Anoth­er Post About Rape.]

Could “non-writ­ers” have read all these arti­cles and more?  Of course! (But I had to shoe­horn a per­son­al sto­ry into a blog about writ­ing, so work with me here.)

And in read­ing all these things I’ve come to be aware of a nar­ra­tive.  An every­day nar­ra­tive almost as com­mon for women as “the train pulled into the sta­tion, and I got on.”  It’s not that no one but a writer could be aware of this nar­ra­tive it’s just that in a world where trag­i­cal­ly few are, that was my gate­way.

It is the nar­ra­tive of how men hit on women in pub­lic places.

A tired old sto­ry if ever there were one. A sto­ry where con­sent is not a char­ac­ter we actu­al­ly ever meet, and where the real antag­o­nist is not a per­son, but rather the way she has been social­ized to be polite, to be civ­il, to not be “such a bitch”.…no mat­ter how much of a Douchasauras Rex HE is being about not pick­ing up the sub­tle clues. Yes, a human being might fill the role of the imme­di­ate obstacle–and in doing so per­son­i­fy the larg­er issue, but the care­ful read­er of this tropetas­tic nar­ra­tive knows the real vil­lain is the cul­ture that dis­cour­ages her from rebuk­ing him in no uncer­tain terms lest she be cas­ti­gat­ed, lest he esca­late to anger.  (And that’s the best case sce­nario; the worst is that she angers some­one with much greater upper body strength who has been been raised in a cul­ture where every emo­tion dis­tills into anger, where vio­lence is strange­ly revered, and where his sense of enti­tle­ment is sel­dom hip-checked.)  The real antag­o­nist is a soci­ety where she is actu­al­ly dis­cour­aged from being hon­est about what she wants…or does­n’t want cou­pled with the soci­ety that social­ized him that he is enti­tled to com­ment on her…corner her…pressure her.…be per­sis­tent to the point of ignor­ing the fact that she has said no.

I saw the hero­ine of our sto­ry sit­ting on the BART.  The train was­n’t busy in the after­noon along the “anti-com­mute” line, so it was only a few of us spread out far and wide.  She was thin but not skin­ny and wore one of those wispy skirts that always make me want to send God a fruit bas­ket for invent­ing sum­mer.  The kind of woman my step-father would have got­ten dis­tract­ed by and then grudg­ing­ly called “a real look­er.”

But what is much more impor­tant that I noticed, because I’m all writer­ly and obser­vant and shit like that, is that every­thing about her screamed “leave me alone.”  She had head­phones jammed in her ears.  Her nose was down in a book (my hand to God, I think it was Storm of Swords). She was pulled inward with body lan­guage that could­n’t have been more clear if she had one of those shields from Dune…activated.

But still.…he tried.

He sat right behind her–already a warn­ing sign on such an emp­ty train.

The real antag­o­nist may have been soci­ety, but our per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of it was well cast.  He had a sort of Chris­t­ian Bale look about him, if Chris­t­ian Bale were play­ing a role of a doucheca­noe.  Revi­sion­ist mem­o­ry is always sus­pect, but I’m telling this sto­ry, and I’m going to stand by the fact that I thought he looked like a creepy guy long before he start­ed act­ing like one.

He wait­ed until the train was in motion to make his move–a true sign of some­one who knows how to make the envi­ron­ment work to their advan­tage.  Then he leaned for­ward.  “Hi.”  “How you doing?”  “What are you read­ing?”  “What’s your name?” “I real­ly like your hair.” “That’s a real­ly nice skirt.”  “You must work out.”

It was painful to watch.  She clear­ly want­ed noth­ing to do with him, and he clear­ly was­n’t going to take the hint.  Her rebukes got firmer.  “I’d like to read my book.”  And he pulled out the social pres­sure.  “Hey, I’m just ask­ing you a ques­tion.  You don’t have to be so rude.”  She start­ed to look around for outs.  Her head swiveled from one exit to anoth­er.

The thing was, I had already heard this sto­ry, many many times.  I knew how it would play out.  I knew all the tropes.  I prob­a­bly could have quot­ed the lines before they said them.  I want­ed a new nar­ra­tive.  Time to mix it up.

So I moved seats until I was sit­ting behind him.  I leaned for­ward with my head on the back of his seat.

“Hi,” I said with a lit­tle smile.

He looked at me like I was a lit­tle crazy–which isn’t exact­ly untrue–and turned back to her.

“How are you doing?”  I asked.

“I’m fine,” he said flat­ly with­out ever look­ing back.

“I real­ly like your hair,” I said.  “It looks soft.”

That’s about when it got.….weird.

He sort of half turned and glared back me, and I could tell I was piss­ing him off.  His eyes told me to back the hell away, and his lips were pressed togeth­er tight­ly enough to drain the col­or from them com­plete­ly.

But no good sto­ry ever ends with the con­flict just defus­ing.  He start­ed to turn back to her.

“Wait, don’t be like that,” I said.  “Lem­mie just ask you one ques­tion…”

“What!” he said in that you-have-clear­ly-gone-too-far voice that is part of the fresh­men year finals at the school of machis­mo.

And I’m not exact­ly a hun­dred per­cent sure why I did­n’t call it a day at that point, but.….maybe I just love turn­ing the screw to see what hap­pens. I gave him the bed­roomy-est eyes I could muster.  “What’s your name?”

Right now I’m sit­ting here typ­ing out this sto­ry, and I’m still not entire­ly sure why I’m not nurs­ing a fat lip or a black eye. Because that obvi­ous­ly made him so mad that I still am not sure why it did­n’t come to blows. There are clich­es about eyes flar­ing and rage behind some­ones eyes and shit like that that are so over­done. But it real­ly does look like that.  When some­one gets vio­lent, their eyes just kind of “pop” with intention–pupils dilate, eye­lids widen. And his did. Even sit­ting down he was clear­ly big­ger than me and I was pret­ty sure he was kind of mus­cu­lar too, so at that moment I was fig­ur­ing I was prob­a­bly going to need an ice pack by day’s end.

“DUDE,” he shout­ed.  “I’M NOT GAY.”

That’s when I dropped the bed­room eyes and switched to a nor­mal voice.  “Oh well I could see not being inter­est­ed did­n’t mat­ter to you when you were hit­ting on her, so I just thought that’s how you rolled.”

(Of course lat­er, I thought of a dozen clev­er­er things I could have said, but, I’m going for hon­esty here.  I was trip­ping over my own words due to the adren­a­line dump.  My voice was prob­a­bly shak­ing too, and I’m guess­ing the line above was more shout­ed than said with even, lev­el, movie-cal­iber cool.  I am in no way a badass.)

But what­ev­er I said, or how­ev­er I said it, it did the trick.  I don’t know if he “got it.”  I don’t know if he just thought bet­ter of com­mit­ting assault in front of the BART cam­eras.  I don’t know if he just did­n’t want to esca­late past brava­do.  But what­ev­er went through his head, he turned back in his seat, sat back (away from her) and mut­tered “ass­hole.”  And that turned out to be this sto­ry’s cli­max.

What I do know as she mouthed the words “thank you” to me as she stepped out the door of the Rock­ridge sta­tion. Worth it.

Obvi­ous­ly bet­ter bystanders than writ­ers inter­vene every day; I’m try­ing hard to write about writ­ing not sug­gest­ing we’ve got an edge in the being-a-decent-human depart­ment. Many oth­ers could and more men in par­tic­u­lar should.  But what I do sort of think is that I was aware of that nar­ra­tive because I am a writer. I knew the tropes and the clich­es and the tired old lines. I was aware of how to cre­ate a role rever­sal in the “typ­i­cal char­ac­ters.”  I’m aware that most men don’t know what it’s like to be hit on by some­one they’re not inter­est­ed in who won’t take their hints.  I look at things differently–tried to see the world from anoth­er angle.  I think what would hap­pen if we told this sto­ry from anoth­er point of view. And some­times, a bystander will­ing to inter­vene can change a nar­ra­tive com­plete­ly.

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