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| Iguanas don't disturb passersby. Apparently they also don't fall for traps that stupid. |
Recently, I was walking to work, approaching a corner where a lone man was standing, apparently unoccupied.
Oh boy, I thought,
I know what this means. Sure enough, as soon as I passed, he started talking to me, not to say "Bonjour", which is legitimately relatively common to say to total strangers while walking down the street here, but to try to get my attention, as if he had a question, leaning quite close to me. I said "Bonjour" and kept walking, the received advice for these situations. He started walking with me, leaning in closer, staying a little bit ahead and to the right of me, leaning into my face and starting to get more rude. As I stepped out to cross the road I couldn't really see around him. Suddenly, a moped came screeching by, nearly smashing into both of us. "See there," the man following me said, "You almost got hit, almost got smashed to bits because you're
mal-élevée", a word which here translates roughly to "not raised right". That's correct, the man harassing a stranger on the street, who continued to follow me while calling me rude names for a block and a half, felt he had the moral authority to tell me that I wasn't raised right. At least as soon as he stopped following me, the poor guy on the moped drove past, leaning over to shout, "Désolé!" in apology.
While this guy was particularly nagging, the fact of the matter is that street harassment is *literally* an everyday occurrence for me and other women I see walking about. Every single day, it's not an "if" but a "when" a strange man will follow you, say obscene things to you, shout at you, and even grab your arm as they try to keep your attention. I dare say that it's as bad as it was during my summer in Paris before they passed the anti-harassment laws. Oh, right. They made it punishable by fine to harass people in public, and the problem, while not completely gone, diminished dramatically in scale. Over about a year's time, with the passage of that law, my walking-on-the-street experience went from dreading going out because I knew men would lean in to whisper profanities in my ear and follow me to being genuinely surprised when strange men tried to talk to me.
Why don't they do that here?
One reason, I believe, is all of the apologeticism for it. One woman assistant brought up the issue of street harassment in our orientation, and the local teachers, men
and women, came up with every excuse from, "Men here appreciate beauty and want to tell you," to, "It's the heat." "It's a complement," one lady insisted, "it's not
rape."
All this reasoning and minimizing is ridiculous, of course, and I said as much in my written evaluation of the orientation. That being said, I think there is a real reason why local women go to such lengths to excuse such behavior: racism. I know what you're thinking,
you just see racism everywhere. While that may be true, hear me out: part of Racism as it was developed in the West entailed the hyper-sexualization and hyper-criminalization of black people, right? Perfect: white people are extra paranoid about their pure resources (white women) being appropriated by impure, virulent underclass (black men). So, they're quick to accuse black men of sexual crimes, throughout history and in many countries. All the while, white men are committing sexual crimes against women, too, both in the mainland and in the
colonies DOM/TOMs. Yet, accusing a white man of sexual harassment entails much more social and financial risk to a woman, whereas accusing a black man of it comfortably confirms racial prejudices and poses relatively little risk of serious consequences. So, even though black and white men are both harassing women, both in terms of criminal convictions and cultural representations, it seems like black men are the problem. How are black women, especially ones from the underserved
colonies DOM/TOMs supposed to feel about this? They may feel a loyalty to women and be frustrated / afraid of street harassment, but I can only imagine that this loyalty, above all to white women, is strained by economic struggle and cultural chauvinism on the part of mainlanders. Meanwhile, they also feel a defensiveness for men of their own race / local origin, who they know are only part of the problem yet the focus of racio-sexual hysteria. Result: they defend black
colonized DOM/TOM resident men to the death, even though they're also frustrated and afraid.
My analysis, I admit, is based more on in-class discussions of Muslim / middle-eastern francophone women defending patriarchy, and not so much on conversations with locals, because locals won't discuss it with me. I'll keep poking around and initiating uncomfortably political conversations, though, and keep you posted.
