One in five women are stalked at least once in their lives. 20% of all women. This is what we know. Men are prone to be predators. Hunters go after prey. Often, stalkers keep track of dozens. Their targets are rotated through, often daily. A cascade of calls, of drive-by gawks, of street corner ogling, following, peeping, prowling, watching, threats, intimidation, vandalism overwhelms victims. It is terrifying for the targets. Such behavior often escalates to violence , rooted in resentment that becomes hate, all out of frustrated fantasy.
Confrontation does no good. Beating up or warning off the stalker makes no change, except for the worse. Opposition is seen as both challenge and, perversely, affirmation. Obsessives are willing to do extreme things for the next response.They’ll call hundreds of times day, or starve sitting in outdoor cold, live on sidewalks outside her house, live in attics, crawlspaces, basements, or storage areas, literally motionless when she’s present. Nothing deters them, not even arrest, jail time, or a loss of job.
Abnormal doesn’t begin to describe all this.
Mental illness? Not in most states. If the stalker is smart enough to stay on public ground, cops can’t do much, if anything. No law’s being broken. They’ll even prattle about high-school persistence to win that coveted date, which makes the woman, and control of her body and life, a prize. It’s at the core of sexist male culture, not just in chauvinism and machismo, but in the way law is administered.
Women are forced to wait until there is a physical attack, a rape, even until they’re kidnaped or murdered before they can file any kind of meaningful complaint. Even then, law does more to protect the stalker than help the stalked.
Voyeurism is generally considered harmless, even pathetic or comical. It’s the basis for movies, as Hitchcock liked to point out. Think of REAR WINDOW as perhaps the most explicit and prolonged example. Voyeurism is, however, a violation of privacy, an invasion of a life. Peeping toms escalate, same as prowlers and burglars. Even if they don’t, it’s still a form of rape. Why else are they often called weenie wagglers?
Law does little and psychiatry does less. For one thing, it’s prevalent, far more common and widespread, than society admits. Find a corner in a public place, then watch men as they continually scan or ‘clock’ women. It may, and should, chill you how basic such hunting behavior is. Much male culture encourages, rewards, even inculcates it. ‘Check her out’, or a wolf whistle, or an elbow dig and raised eyebrows as a woman walks by teach even boys that women are on display for men’s benefit if seen in public. Boys are told to ‘keep after her’, to ‘wear her down’ if their importunity is waived off.
Some cultures force women to hide their bodies, even faces, as if shame is built into their sex. They blame infidelity, rape, incest, and any other sex crime on women and stone them to death for the slightest hint of rule infraction. Sexism is vile, ugly torture and murder. Women aren’t even allowed to educate themselves. They must be kept down, forced out, never to participate in society. Chattel, baby breeders, receptacles for male fear, ate, and lust. They cannot be priests or own property, vote, or have a voice.
Sexism is wrong in all ways.
Misogynist culture keeps things stable at a low level of cruelty. We see it in school kids, co-workers, and families. Strangers are as apt as those we know to click on, to become a hunter. Girls must be escorted, protected, controlled at all times. Her only value lies in a male’s ownership claim. Tainted goods are slut-shamed, considered ruined, for doing what males are expected to do regarding sex.
Control is a key part of it. Stalkers often intend to control their target. All aspects of the target’s life becomes forfeit to the stalker’s will. Approval of every tiniest thing becomes a constant focus, leading to ‘punishment’.
Here is where violence flares. Slaps and pinches become punches and throttling. Beatings and rapes become murder. Failure to cower properly, a lapse in kowtowing, results in slams or stabbings. Putting cigarettes out on skin is standard, and the term human toilet is self-explanatory. Any humiliation of women — even elevation to a pedestal for false reverence —serves to boost the weak, fragile male ego.
As long as such barbaric crushing brutality is not only permitted but encouraged, male society remains invalid, and the gropers and grabbers, the thugs, creeps, and monsters will stalk still.
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