During my first trip to Taipei, Taiwan, as I marveled at the clean and efficient metro system and wandered around the city, something felt different. I’m used to attracting attention as a traveler when I go abroad, usually because I’m taller than average and no one can pinpoint my exact “ethnicity.” Most people (especially Germans) seem to think that staring long enough will reveal the answer on my forehead. harassment
I anticipated this in Taiwan, but I didn’t have that same feeling of being “watched” on this trip. No one noticed me, at all, and I shared this observation with a friend of a friend who is from Taipei but has also traveled and lived outside of the country.
“I can walk around late at night here with no problems. I always feel safe, no matter what time it is.” Any time of night? In such a large city? Indeed, I learned. Taiwan is famous for its “night markets,” small sections of streets filled with food and clothing vendors open until late into the night. Both locals and visitors flock to the vendors to indulge in fried, skewered, and steamed Taiwanese specialties as they bargain over other goods along narrow alleyways.
My friend mentioned that sexual harassment in the U.S, including “catcalling,” is pretty notorious. Everyone knows it happens.
When I recounted how often I opt for taking a cab as opposed to taking the subway late at night, or how I, without fail, attract attention of men on the street when I leave my home, I got very angry.
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It seems unfair. Unfair that as a woman in a modernized country, I worry about how I look, how I dress, what I say (or don’t say) because it could put me in danger. Unfair that boys are not (always) taught from a young age to treat women as humans but as prizes to be “gotten.” Instead, a girl is told to dress respectably and then grows up to second guess her outfit before stuffing mace into her clutch, “just in case.”
Why is sexual harassment and violence against women such a normalized instance of American culture?
We’ve come to accept the mindset so much that government agencies have now adopted it unconsciously. In a seemingly well-intentioned campaign to warn women about fetal alcohol syndrome, the CDC shamed women into thinking that their alcohol use has some unlikely, even implausible, risks.
Risks of drinking for any woman include “sexually transmitted diseases,” “injuries/violence,” and “unintended pregnancy.” Huh? I thought sex caused pregnancy and STDs, not binge drinking (which, of course, isn’t a healthy habit to develop anyway).
The idea that women, solely, are at fault for the violence that others commit was conveyed during the recent Zika virus scare. (Go here for a NY Times article by a Brazilian woman who articulates this point much better than I can.) Several South American countries have advised women, in an attempt to prevent birth defects, to avoid “getting pregnant.”
Something’s off about that advice: it neglects to mention a man’s role in causing pregnancy. It isn’t as if women are spontaneously impregnating themselves; men are impregnating women. However, there hasn’t been a national call from Brazil for all men to remain abstinent for 2 years. That would be ludicrous, right?
If South American countries, many of which are predominantly Catholic, had health care systems that provided women with consistent and safe birth control options, this advice wouldn’t be so far fetched. However, birth control can be difficult to come by in many other countries and the stigma associated with these methods stems from the heavy religiously influenced background of South American countries.
Reversing this incredibly biased perspective on women starts with removing the stigma around women and sexual health. This begins with parents having open conversations with their children. It continues when men avoid shaming women for their bodies and sexual health. And it looks like women and men treating each other equally in society and governments doing the same.
(UPDATE: The CDC has taken down the infographic after criticism and Anne Schuchat, the principal deputy director of the CDC, defended the agency’s intentions, told The New York Times, “we weren’t as clear as we had hoped to be.”)
Musings of a Burgeoning Brooklynite 