SYABM comic 12: “Is it me you’re looking for?”

Beardface: “Honey, this is my friend Sam I was telling you about. Sam, this is my boyfriend -”

[LATER]

Beardface: Say, why were most of the men in the NYC street harassment video black or Hispanic?

Social Justice Sam: Well, um, according to the makers of the video, white dudes catcalled just as much, but they were mostly too low-quality to include in the video.

Beardface: Really? Ten hours of walking in New York, and they didn’t get a comparable number of white dudes? Over half the video is from Harlem. Much of that from the same street. Do you think that there might be a cultural element at play here?

Social Justice Sam: That’s racist.

Beardface: But it’s not sexist to say that this is a problem with men? It’s not racist to generalize from the experience of this one white woman in tight clothes in one city to every woman in America?

Social Justice Sam: Her experience is representative of women in general, you misogynist!

Beardface: And how do you know? Did you ask feminists, who tend to be kind of biased? Because lots of women would take some of those remarks as complements. Heck, plenty of the people calling it out are women. Ignoring them is sexist.

Social Justice Sam: You need to listen and believe, and stop denying women’s lived experiences!

Beardface: But only the woman you find convenient.

Social Justice Sam: Men don’t have to walk around scared!

Beardface: “Men don’t have to-” Men are more likely to get assaulted and murdered than women are. Plenty of men take safety precautions and carry weapons. Just look at Everyday Carry. You’re mixing up fear of assault with actual risk.

Beardface: Also, they did the same video with a man. Took a pretty dude, put him in tight clothes, and walked him around NYC. He got basically the same results, down to a significant amount of black women. More gay dudes, though.

Social Justice Sam: Hollaback said the woman got over 100 incidents of harassment! Doesn’t that mean anything to you?

Beardface: Sure it does. It means that with over 100 examples of “harassment”, not a single one involved any kind of actual sexual assault.

Beardface: Sounds a lot like you need to lower your threat rating.