What men say about women when they don't know you've lived as a woman

[EnderD_503]

Originally Posted by CherylNYC

As for the actual content of the article, I've often found myself repulsed and threatened by what men have said to each other when they thought women weren't listening. I work with a great many giant, well fed men whose job is to lift and move scenery from here to there. While there are plenty who do not, and would not, say the things I find most horrifying, they're also not in the habit of challenging those who do. There have been far too many times when I've found myself on the other side of a piece of scenery while the abovementioned oversized men have said something particularly violent and threatening about specific women, or women in general. The few times when they've realised I was within earshot, they've been embarrassed and apologetic.

Their being embarrassed and apologetic is not my experience at all. In fact, where I work and have worked on and off for many years (warehouses, hardware stores etc), as well as the previous industry I worked in, the opposite was the case. Men were and are saying disgusting shit to women's faces. It wasn't and isn't something that they go around saying behind women's backs. It happens in both environments, whether women are present or not. When this shit happens in the work place, it's also management that needs to change. Many women don't say shit (or even defend these guys when someone challenges them) when a lot of similar statements as demonstrated in the article are said to them or about other women.

The fact that this shit is seen as socially acceptable should be addressed here, imo. When guys say this shit or display unsafe behaviour and a woman or transguy goes to management about it because its repeated frequently and often, management in those industries rarely take it seriously. And that should be the point, imo. That this is not some "shocking and earthshattering discovery" that men supposedly say when women aren't around/behind closed doors, but that men do say it when women are around and that authoritative bodies do not take it seriously. I've been hearing men say shit like this about and to women to women's faces since I was a kid, and particularly since I began working as a teen (having worked most in minimum wage jobs...which is perhaps another issue of in what environment and in front of what status of women men feel they can say and do anything without consequence...because there is no consequence in many of these industries). It's time to stop acting shocked about something we already know is happening every minute of every day, and start taking bigger steps to make sure those with the authoritative power to do something about it start taking this shit seriously and put consequences and appropriate education in place.

Originally Posted by CherylNYC

It's furthermore about the duty that people who once were female, or at least female bodied, have to not let those comments pass.

I'm sorry, but it's not for you or anyone else to label other people's bodies nor to tell them what their duty is according to the way you perceive their bodies. Everyone makes their own duty. I think every human being should be calling out misogyny, transphobia, racism, classism, homophobia, ableism and discrimination of any sort...but I would never place a "duty" on someone else's shoulders simply based on my perception of who they are and what I think they have or haven't experience because of the body I perceive them to inhabit or to have inhabited at any given time. You don't solve anything by mislabeling people's bodies and telling them what they should or shouldn't be doing according to their bodies.