Survival of the Nicest: Why Women Shouldn't Prioritze Politeness
*Article from Lexington Lines Autumn/Winter 2023 Issue, pages 6-9
Check out the full issue here.
Trigger Warning: Mentions of sexual harassment and sexual assault
In an empty parking lot somewhere in the world, a woman is probably being harassed right now.
That woman may ask herself if it’s because she was being nice. Because she apologized for not helping a man jumpstart his car. Because she kept her mouth shut when he touched her inappropriately on public transportation, or because she smiled when stared a little too long.
Women have been socialized to portray “ladylike” behavior and instill it as a necessity. We are then blamed for our victimization in assault or harassment because we practiced the niceness society taught us.
“For the most part, girls’ and women’s experiences with harassment are still cloaked in silence and we continue, as a global society, to peddle dangerous advice to girls about ‘staying safe’” Soraya Chemaly writes in Rage Becomes Her.
In 2020, “Crime Junkie” podcast hosts Ashley Flowers and Brit Prawat suggested another approach: “Be weird! Be rude! Stay alive!” It is the idea that rather than prioritizing niceness, a woman should use any means necessary to keep herself safe.
What prevents women from doing so? The fact that practicing assertiveness has long been sidelined in favor of remaining calm, rational, and likable.
“We don’t acknowledge the risks that women take if they go on a date, walk down the street, go shopping at night, park their car in the wrong place, decide they want to go running; we just ignore it all.”
“We are so busy teaching girls to be likable that we often forget to teach them, as we do boys, that they should be respected,” Chemlay writes.
Roberta’s story
Roberta, whose name has been changed at her request, is a 22-year-old brand representative for a liquor company. She told me that once, she was on a ride-along with her 40-year-old boss to meet with account managers.
All of the meetings were at bars, and he bought her a drink at each stop. Throughout the day, she became more and more drunk, and he became more and more flirty.
“I wasn’t even sure if I was supposed to be drinking or how I was supposed to respond because it was my second week at a big girl job,” she says. “I didn’t want to come off rude or entitled in such a male-driven work environment.”
Towards the end of the day, she asked him to bring her back to her car.
“I was in no place to be working or meeting people,” she recalls.
But on the ride back—while driving—her boss, who is married with children, began trying to kiss her.
“Not sure how to react to him, I just playfully laughed it off,” she says. “At one point, he wouldn’t take his eyes off me and then ran off the road and blew out his two front tires.”
Unfazed, he asked her to get in his back seat. Luckily, they were already close to her car, so she got out and called her boyfriend to pick her up.
“I look back and wish that I wasn’t so polite and told him to f*** off,” Roberta says. “But it is what it is.”
Chemaly has seen an increase in the “it is what it is” attitude over the past eight years. She emphasizes that women, from adolescence through their twenties, often end up with a “sense of despondency.”
“I don’t really blame them for feeling that way,” Chemaly says. “We put people in office who actively worked against women, and we sat at dinner tables listening to friends and family members find this acceptable.”
It is what it is
Roberta’s case is not an outlier. In fact, sexual harassment and assault are most commonly perpetrated by someone known to the victim. According to the National Institute of Justice, this is the case with 85 to 90 percent of assaults on college women.
“The idea of ‘stranger danger’ takes away from a larger threat,” says Meghan Sacks, Associate Professor of Criminology at Fairleigh Dickinson University and host of the podcast “Women and Crime.”
While the blame for sexual violence does not fall on anyone but the perpetrator, victims are typically the ones who carry the weight. Reeling with trauma, they are frequently compelled to behave passively after an attack—to pretend it didn’t happen in order to keep the peace—but in doing so, they undermine the harassment or assault.
Cezanne, a 20-year-old college student, told me about an experience she had with a man she met in the city. She went to his apartment and “immediately felt something off” but didn’t want to be rude and leave.
“While we were hooking up, I told him multiple times I had to go and to stop,” she remembers. “He didn’t listen to me, continuing to bring me into multiple rooms and not stopping despite my effort.”
She wound up grabbing all of her things, shoes in hand, and running out the door. She got on the elevator, but he followed her and stopped the door from closing.
“He kept saying come back,” she remembers. “And I said, I’m so sorry—I promise I’ll text you, I just need to go home now. It’s getting late.”
The apology and promise were a way to placate her attacker.
“Anger seemed like the wrong response,” Cezanne tells me. “It took time to realize I had every right to be assertive and leave.”
The right to be angry
As women, we all know stories of harassment. We live in fear of these stories becoming our own—and when they do, we continue to mask our anger.
When we let assertiveness slip out, we tend to be labeled as fussy. Reactions to assault and harassment that occur in public spaces are often governed by the learned notion of assertiveness as inappropriate.
Take street harassment as an example. Chances are, you have witnessed catcalling or have been a victim of it yourself. Did anyone speak up? Did anyone intervene? Did it just feel like a typical afternoon in the city?
The minimization of sexual assault and harassment in our society in no way conveys the imprint these experiences leave on a woman. That story is on her mind as she considers a late-night run, uses public transportation, or performs errands alone.
In some cases, that story is with her as she clocks into her job or enters her own home.
Society’s lack of respect for women’s anger appears first in early childhood rearing and education. Young girls are taught that anger does not equate to humanity’s ideal picture of womanhood.
Chemaly, for her part, has three daughters, and she quickly discovered the cultural pressure to teach them to be discrete, passive, and polite.
“I was livid that I had to be the person that was supposed to socialize them this way, and I just refused,” she tells me. “I was not going to do it this way, I was not going to do it the way everyone around me seemed to be doing it.”
The sad reality is that disclosing the risk inherent to being a woman is necessary. The decision to shelter your children will not keep them safe.
trust yourself
“What would I really do at that moment? What if I freeze? What if there is no one around that I know? What’s a funny way to disarm the situation? What happens if I slam his instep with my heel?”
If you are a woman reading this article, you most likely have sent a text along the lines of “hopefully he isn’t a murderer,” or you have gotten that uneasy feeling in your stomach before a date, in an Uber, or at a work meeting. In turn, you may have brushed it off, called yourself crazy, ignored that feeling because there was no obvious justification for it.
Except there was: your intuition.
“When you feel the hairs on your neck stand up, your heartbeat racing to tell you something’s wrong, it usually is,” Sacks says.
Sacks says she considers this instinct a woman’s “strongest layer of protection,” but that women sometimes ignore it “because you don’t want to offend him.” Offending someone, or even possibly misjudging them, is worth it if it means staying safe.
Chemaly points out the importance of women helping each other prepare for the worst.
“It is entirely possible for us to role-play and ask what would you do if someone does x, y, or z?” she suggests. “Ask: what would I really do at that moment? What if I freeze? What if there is no one around that I know? What’s a funny way to disarm the situation? What happens if I slam his instep with my heel?”
She equally emphasizes the importance of talking to young boys and grown men.
“A lot of fathers, brothers, spouses font know this is happening,” Chemaly says. “When they find out what is happening, they minimize it because it is a failure to do their job protecting you.”
It’s okay to make a man feel less than if it contributes to a safer community for women. It’s okay to avoid escalating a situation while realizing escalation—into anger or otherwise—is sometimes necessary.
“The feeling that people in the institution are stacked against you is a valid feeling,” Chemaly wants us to know. “That is why collective anger is so important.”
Remember: Perpetrators are 100% responsible for occurrences of sexual violence in any manner. Resources for sexual assault or harassment victims are below.
National Sexual Assault Hotline 800.656.HOPE (4673)
National Street Harassment Hotline 855.897.5910
National Domestic Violence Hotline 800.799.SAFE
National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs 212.714.1141