Running is an oasis for the mind. It’s a welcome escape when we face overwhelming emotional stress from work or feelings of monotony in our day-to-day lives. Unfortunately, not everyone gets equal access to this oasis, or feeling of “letting all your worries go.” Virtually all runners will experience some kind of unwelcome remarks from people who have loud opinions about what you look like, what you’re doing, or who you are. Aside from carefully chosen remarks of genuine encouragement, cat-calling, hateful language, and even ‘joking’ commentary yelled out to runners of all genders, races, body types and identities can be highly problematic and hurtful. One of the most obvious problems in the United States today is the issue of men ‘catcalling’ women. This problem is not as simple as it seems, and there are merits to exploring the reasons behind this behavior in order to change it. In this post, I will try to examine multiple sides of this issue from different perspectives so that all citizens of this world can come to behave in a manner that respects everyone’s choices, identities, and entitlements to physical and mental personal space (even while out in public!).
I have the privilege of being a man in a world in which men do not have to fear much when they go out for a night-time jog. I can easily clear my mind when I head out for a run past dark after procrastinating all day, even though I might get a little freaked out about the dark every once in a while. The fact that the only negative emotion I have to feel on a night run is “slightly freaked out” already demonstrates my privilege as a male runner, and it does not hold a candle to the intense fears that many women who run feel during the day, without even factoring in the compounding threats to women’s safety in poorly-lit conditions. As Jess Keefe says in her powerful Runner’s World article, “Toxic Masculinity Is the Real Problem Behind Women’s Harassment,” “the best part of running is that it’s about freedom.” The best part about running is being able to free your mind of your preoccupations and focus on the meditative state wherein you can bring the smell of the ocean coast or the spring bloom to the forefront of your mind, appreciate your legs’ ability to power you up a gravelly hill, and to let your mind wander unhindered and non-judgmentally in any direction whatsoever. Anyone who has felt their safety threatened by others knows for a fact that fear is not conducive to peaceful reflection and focusing on sensorial pleasures. Women who need to preoccupy themselves with threats to their personal safety deserve the benefits of feeling this freedom as much as men. Keefe states, “When I’m out running, the only dangers I should have to navigate should involve the natural world. I should just be concerned about being struck by lightning, maybe. Or falling into a crevasse,” but instead she has to worry more about a man doing something that will ruin or end her life. Women statistically fear for their safety more on runs, and these fears are also backed up by more than enough hard evidence that demonstrates the increased frequency with which women are harassed, abused, and even murdered.
Jess Keefe quite reasonably attributes the problem to toxic masculinity, a concept which encapsulates the socially destructive aspects of society’s expectations as to how a ‘real man’ should behave. I am fully in agreement with Keefe. Since I have learned about toxic masculinity in college, I have been able to identify its poisonous effects not only on women, but on the emotional health of many men themselves, and on man-to-man relationships. I have also experienced the overwhelmingly negative impacts of toxic masculinity on my own acceptance of my sexual orientation (I identify as gay, which is a pretty big departure from the traditional hegemonic tenets of masculinity) and through my own exhausting endeavors to pull apart complexes that I struggled – and still struggle – with because of my confusion as to what society and the people around me expect of me simply in virtue of the genetic happenstance of having been born with certain physical features and having a sexual orientation I cannot change or choose.
While I have experienced a lot of shouts and chides from passersby while running – because of my ‘short-shorts’, my thin body type, and the random whims of strangers – there are more hurtful comments that can really damage people’s identities more than the annoying “Run, Forrest, Run!” that I’ve heard a million times. One of the most fun workouts during the track season at my university is the yearly t-shirt relay, where teams made up of members from both the women’s and the men’s teams were pitted against each other in a lighthearted workout. Everyone had to bring a shirt of theirs to donate as a ‘prize’, and the winning teams got to pick a teammate’s t-shirt first. On this particular year, my relay team was not the quickest, so we picked our t-shirts last. I thought the event was a lot of fun, and the t-shirt I got was the least of my worries. I ended up with a t-shirt that one of my female teammates had brought. It was nothing extremely flamboyant, but it was noticeably fitted for a woman with a smaller body size than me. I put it on for the celebratory cool-down to partake in the spirit of the event (and because I didn’t mind the shirt!) and started off with my friends of both the men’s and the women’s teams. On the way back to the school’s gym, one younger male in the passenger’s seat of a car dangerously speeding past our group of runners leaned out the window and yelled, “Nice shirt, f*ggot!” This comment immediately and unexpectedly brought all of my insecurities about my sexuality that I had been deeply struggling with at this moment in time to the forefront of my mind, not to mention the embarrassment I felt at this event occurring with all of my best friends from college surrounding me. For the rest of the day, I fixated on the pain, embarrassment, and self-deprecating thoughts that this singular comment sparked in my brain, unable to control their continuous flow.
No matter how I rationalize this event, I never forget how much I struggled that day when I was so vulnerable and filled with confusion and self-loathing about myself simply because some inconsiderate kid yelled a hateful comment at me. I’ll never forget the smug and hate-filled tone of his voice that contrasted so starkly with the accepting and lighthearted friends with whom I had just finished doing the activity I loved the most. It didn’t compare to anything else that anyone had ever shouted at me while running, by a long shot. I also felt like my safety was threatened, as most gay men do when they go out dressed in clothing that might reveal that they’re not conforming perfectly to the heteronormative stereotypes of how a male ‘should’ dress. I honestly have appreciated so many of the things that fellow runners, bikers, walkers, and even people in cars have shouted to me encouragingly while on a run, like “Nice pace!” or “What a beautiful day for a run!”. It can be nice to be acknowledged in a positive way, and other people’s support motivates me a ton. But, at that moment in time, I would have traded all of the positive support I had ever received while running for the possibility that I could have avoided that single interaction. Words can hurt a lot, and toxic masculinity affects everyone, whether you’re aware of it or not.
Toxic masculinity “prioritizes toughness and aggression over compassion and care,” and is the result of traditional ideas that being a man means being “Strong! Violent! Powerful!” and “Too tough to be bothered by pesky emotions” (Keefe). This idea of toxic masculinity is especially problematic for me since years of philosophy have led me to the conclusion that there is basically nothing more important than human emotion, and that suffering should be minimized. Keefe mentions the all-too-common phrase, “Boys will be boys!” which is a classic example of how male children’s apathetic, violent, homophobic and aggressive behaviors are simply dismissed with an oversimplification and a misattribution to biological ‘impulses’ particular to males and not females. It is important to realize that just because toxic masculinity is a problem doesn’t mean that all masculinity is problematic, or that men don’t suffer from particular problems simply because they are men. The problem comes in when men treat other people less respectfully and cause physical or emotional suffering because they are attempting to fit an image of what they think it means to be a man. When that image causes men to expect that women must “comfort and please,” in the words of Keefe, they begin to treat women “more like furniture than people.” We are all humans, and we all have common emotions that need to be acknowledged and respected.
Act One of Episode 603 of the podcast This American Life explores the motives and effects of catcalling. I highly recommend listening (right now!), because it is interesting and informative (minutes 5:13-18:52 of the episode), and no summarizing that I do can replace the impact of the interview itself. In Act One of this episode, called “Hollaback Girl,” Eleanor Gordon Smith, who is a professor of ethics at the University of Sydney, does an experiment where she treats catcalls like the beginning of a conversation, and she asks the men who catcall her what they are trying to get out of the situation, and then she genuinely tries to get them to change their behavior. The episode of the podcast is her interview with one man, Zac, who is willing to converse with her, and I think his answers and reasons (or lack thereof) really do illustrate how toxic masculinity can be a roadblock to what’s really important and to a sensitive understanding of how one’s actions affect others, but it also illustrates how catcalling may not seem to be such a bad thing to the men who do it, and that there is often a lack of understanding of the consequences of their actions that is involved.
It is clear from Eleanor’s experiment that many men think that women enjoy being catcalled, even though to many women that fact may be astounding because it is so far from the truth. Zac asserts that he believes that slapping a woman’s ass if she is a member of a group is like picking her out and complimenting her by implying that she is the most attractive in the group, and he relates it to the mating display of “a bird in paradise.” When Eleanor protests that catcalling and slapping a woman’s ass makes most women feel terrible, he challenges that she is just probably oversensitive, and that she cannot speak for all women. Amidst a large sample of women who were interviewed when they were out on the town, only one said she enjoyed being singled out in this way, while all of the other accounts demonstrated overwhelmingly negative emotions. One girl said, “I hate it so much. It makes me feel so uncomfortable, pissed off, and scared. Shitty, but also super scared.” Another said, “Just the idea that someone is so much bigger than me and could so easily do something to me. I feel cheap. I feel like I need to change my clothing, like I shouldn’t have worn a dress today. I’ve never met like, a single person who enjoys it. Not even really drunk women like it, I don’t think. I’ve never ever, ever met a girl that enjoyed it, ever.” Even if one girl may be okay with it, there are very slim chances that other women who are randomly catcalled on the street enjoy it, and taking the risk of catcalling random women is going to result in a lot of emotional harm. Even if the chances weren’t that slim, I think that avoiding harm can be more ethically relevant than evoking the small amount of pleasure that this action could cause.
When confronted with statistics, Zac became more receptive to Eleanor’s argument, but he was resistant to the end. Eleanor informed him that a survey found that 67% of women think that an interaction in the street, like a catcall or a slap, is going to escalate into something like a physical attack (so 2/3 women think it’s going to get worse), and that 5% feel angry, 78% feel annoyed, 80% feel nervous, and 72% feel disgusted. Besides Zac’s frustrating unwillingness to fully consider a woman’s perception on this issue, and the relative ease with which he should be able to refrain from this action given the harm it could do even before he learned the statistics, he circled back to the same point: “But you can’t speak for every girl, you know? You don’t know—.” Eleanor observes that “He seemed to have this whole imagined world of women who were into this, and he wasn’t ready to let it go.” Zac goes on to say that he was reluctant to give up the practice of catcalling because when he thinks about how he would feel in a situation where someone slapped him on the ass without warning and without asking, that he would feel special, especially if he was in a group of friends, because he would take it as a compliment that he had a better ass than his friends. I have seen a similar pattern before in my studies of oppression. Many of us are taught that if we just put ourselves in another person’s shoes, then we can decipher what a good form of action may be. The problem is that when someone belongs to an oppressive group, this person does not have all of the relevant experiences, feelings, and interpretations that members of the oppressed group have that would otherwise make this formula effective. It’s easy to have a more ‘laid back’ perspective of what you would do or like in a certain situation when you haven’t had to experience repetitive abuse and fear in the same manner as a member of an oppressed group. Although a world where everyone could take a slap on the ass as a compliment might be nice, it is not this world. We live in a world where unwelcome sexual harassment and violence towards women is all too common.
Finally, Eleanor expresses her frustration that she goes around telling people statistics about sexual violence and how angry and sad it makes women, and the reaction is always one of “that doesn’t matter to me.” She says, “it makes me feel like I’m walking around begging people to take people like me seriously, and they’re choosing their fun over how I feel. It makes me feel so small.” Zac replies by shirking the responsibility onto his impersonal concept of ‘the world’ by saying, “Well, that’s kind of just the selfishness of the world. People know how fucked up– how bad of things have happened to people. But it’s still not going to hinder the way that they are or anything like that. That’s just like human selfishness.” Eleanor replies, “But I don’t want to talk about humans and selfishness. I want to talk about you.” To Zac’s credit, he agrees not to slap any more asses. Still, it shouldn’t take this much work to convince one otherwise kindhearted man to refrain from such harmful behavior. This is why philosophical thinking combined with an attitude of affecting change starting at the individual level is important. We may feel that the ‘world’ in all its mystery, abstractness, and complexity is too big for us to change. That’s the fundamental mistake that keeps oppression going in circles. It is our duty to fellow human beings to remain optimistic that we can affect change. Even if other people are doing horrible things to each other, does that mean that you need to give up and do horrible things with them? Or can you challenge and educate yourself to the best of your abilities and learn from other people so that you can at least know that you are living your best life according to principles that are simultaneously rational and respectful to the emotions of fellow human beings? The choice should be clear
It is all of our responsibility to reflect on our own behaviors and to realize that not every personal interaction takes place in a vacuum, but instead has many connotations and consequences based on a social and worldly context. Even though we cannot guarantee that everyone will change their behavior in conformity with certain goals, we must take responsibility for our own behavior by acknowledging the fact that every person’s behavior is part of a system that we do not get to choose whether or not we belong to, so we can either worsen systematic problems or contribute to repairing these problems.
“Be the change you wish to see in the world”
-Ghandi
Also check out these enlightening articles I stumbled across!
-“Running While Female” (Runner’s World): More insight from a female perspective and great stats.
https://www.runnersworld.com/training/a18848270/running-while-female/#survey
-“The Problem with a Fight Against Toxic Masculinity” (The Atlantic): A bit more exploration of the concept of toxic masculinity versus masculinity in general.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/02/toxic-masculinity-history/583411/
Thanks for reading all the way to the end of this monster of a blog post! Run forth with mindfulness and social awareness. 🙂
-Josh Janusiak
Sources:
-Jess Keefe, “Toxic Masculinity Is the Real Problem Behind Women’s Harassment.” Runner’s World. Accessed 5/12/2020. https://www.runnersworld.com/women/a29196004/toxic-masculinity/.
-Eleanor Gordon-Smith & Ira Glass, Act One: “Hollaback Girl,” Episode 603. This American Life, 12/2/2016. Accessed 5/12/2020.