I play baritone sax. It looks like this:
My saxophone weighs about 20 pounds on its own, and in its case, it probably weighs about 30. The saxophone is obviously kind of big. We look like this together:
We’re good buddies.
I’ll admit, the horn in its case is pretty tall — I can rest my elbow on it comfortably without bending or reaching. And I’m kind of short — about 5′3″ — so the proportion of my height to the sax’s height is pretty jarring to many people, especially if they don’t know me or know that I play bari. I’ve been playing this saxophone for about twelve years, since I was a young teenager, right around the same time that I stopped growing taller. So that means I’ve been carrying my own saxophone from house to car to rehearsal to gig, gigantic as the sax is, for almost half my life with this exact same body. And, yes, I have a vagina.
That’s right: I’m a woman, and I play a big saxophone. I carry it around by myself. Without a dude.
I’ve been doing it for years. Longer than most people have known me.
On Wednesday, I left my apartment with my saxophone to go to a rehearsal with a quartet I’m currently working with. I set my horn in its case down to check the mail. Some guy I don’t know walked up from the parking lot and, without even saying hi, asked, “Do you need help carrying that?”
Politely, and to my dismay, I replied, “No, I’ve got it, thanks.”
I fucking thanked him for offering to help. Then I carried my horn, as I have been doing for over a decade, to my car, pushed it into the trunk, and started driving to rehearsal. This brief exchange was all I could think about the whole way there. By the time I pulled up to the rehearsal site, I was pretty damn annoyed with that dude.
Now, you’re probably thinking, “But L, he was just trying to be nice. I think it’s great that you were so polite and courteous with him.”
I also thought that. I had this struggle myself. I was responding in kind to a polite question issued from a state of concern about my wellbeing. I can see that, and I can understand it.
However, what bugs the shit out of me about this is that if I had looked like a dude, that guy wouldn’t have asked if I needed help.
This is the very essence of sexism. It’s benevolent sexism, but sexism nonetheless.
If I looked like a dude, I’d look like I’m more than able to handle a silly saxophone. But since I look like a gal, despite what other features I have going on, such as thighs that could kill a small elephant or arms obviously bulky enough to carry 30 pounds of saxophone, I’m assumed to be weak enough to need help.
So, here’s the thing, my friends: I don’t want to be treated like a dude or a gal. I want to be treated as if I’m capable of living my own life without the assistance of the Almighty Penis. I want dudes not to see my breasts and my hips implying “female” and think, “Hm! Perhaps she needs [not wants, mind you] my help! Let me go inquire!” I want a dude to see me standing in front of my mailbox minding my own business with my saxophone at my feet and assume that I got it to that point myself and that I’m perfectly capable of doing more with it, or, if necessary, asking for help.
I can and will ask for help if I need it, okay? Otherwise, assume that I’ve got my shit under control.
Besides, I don’t want some random asshat I don’t know touching my $3000 saxophone in the first place, let alone putting it into my car without somehow denting the car, the case, or the horn itself. So, really, just back the fuck off.
Now, I’ve helped out people without their explicit request. Recently, there was a woman at the grocery store struggling to reach the two-liter soda bottles on the top shelf. It looked like she was just a little too short, but she seemed to be determined to get some root beer herself. I thought she had one, but it slipped out of her fingers, dropped, and started spraying all over the floor. I asked her if she wanted me to get another bottle for her, and she said that would be okay.
The difference between the soda example and the dude in my example is that I wasn’t obviously struggling with my sax when he asked me if I needed help. I was standing there, checking my mail, with a sax case near my feet. The woman at the grocery store really couldn’t do it herself. Or she could have, but she might have slipped on the soda drenching the floor, and I didn’t see any employees around for her to ask for assistance.
I want to be clear that I’m not saying that people shouldn’t help each other out. I’m saying, don’t assume people need help when they’re not really looking like they need it. If a woman is walking into a building and you’re a dude who’s behind her, you shouldn’t assume that the woman wants or needs you to rush ahead and open the door for her. She probably doesn’t need your help. If that woman is carrying two kids and a bag of groceries, however, she may want and/or need your help — you should ask.
It’s really not that difficult. Fight your internalized, unconscious sexism by thinking about and examining how you decide whether someone needs help. Do you only help women? Do you help them when they don’t obviously need it? Do you help them without asking? (The same goes for ageism or ableism: Do you only help old/disAbled people? Do you help them when they don’t obviously need it? Do you help them without asking?) If you answered yes to any or all of those questions, you are battling some preconceived notions about gender roles and inherent ability.
If you are one of those guys who asks girls you don’t know if they need help when they’re not obviously in need of it, think through a scenario where you ask a random guy if he needs help. Better yet, go out and actually try it. If it feels weird even to think about, that’s because you’re sexist. It happens — we live in a patriarchy. We’re all sexist to some extent. It’s not the end of the world. But you should definitely work on that. Try not to ask women if they need help unless they are truly, obviously struggling, and try to keep an eye out for other dudes who are struggling to ask if they need your help. That’s one step toward ridding the world of sexist bullshit that keeps both men and women in their respective, restrictive gender roles.
The bottom line: Your role as a dude, my bepenised friends, is not to save women. It’s to treat them as human beings, because that’s what they are.
I can and will ask for help if I need it, okay? Otherwise, assume that I’ve got my shit under control.
Abso-freaking-lutely!
Politely, and to my dismay, I replied, “No, I’ve got it, thanks.”
What did you wish you’d said/done in retrospect? Aside, perhaps, from unleashing a tirade…
There are very few one-liners that make the truly thought provoking point. Suggest to men like this that they are patronising you and all you get back is a closed minded “oh, you’re one of *those* laydeez” kind of thing.
Maybe hand him a small card or flyer with the following printed on it?
If you are one of those guys who asks girls you don’t know if they need help when they’re not obviously in need of it, think through a scenario where you ask a random guy if he needs help. Better yet, go out and actually try it. If it feels weird even to think about, that’s because you’re sexist. It happens — we live in a patriarchy. We’re all sexist to some extent. It’s not the end of the world. But you should definitely work on that. Try not to ask women if they need help unless they are truly, obviously struggling, and try to keep an eye out for other dudes who are struggling to ask if they need your help. That’s one step toward ridding the world of sexist bullshit that keeps both men and women in their respective, restrictive gender roles.
Oh, crap, sorry about that messed up html.
Fixed it — is that better?
I don’t know what I wish I had done instead. Ignoring him sounds like a good response. Rolling my eyes at him might have been another. Or holding his eye contact while I demonstrate just how capable I am of carrying my own horn. I could have asked him, perhaps, whether he would have offered me help if I looked like him.
I’ll have to keep on thinking about it.
Thanks for commenting, starfish. I haven’t seen you around here before — do you have a blog to link to?
The code is just as I intended, thank you. I’m logged into my blog now, too.
“I could have asked him, perhaps, whether he would have offered me help if I looked like him.”
Yeah, I thought of something like that, though that could lead to a protracted, irritating conversation during which you were obliged to make all the necessary points anyway. Maybe “I’m good, thanks” or “I *can* manage” is about all that’s easy to say.
I do love that paragraph I quoted and bolded above. It really says it all, from my pov.
Even more annoying than the “My god, you can’t carry that!” is the assumption that if we pause to consider a decision while going about our business, it can only signify how confused and bewildered we are by the big wide world.
Riding a motorbike into a multi-storey car park, with no traffic behind me so no hurry, I stop at the barrier to read the prices. Passing boy (he was about 18) breaks off from his mates and helpfully informs me that “You have to press the button, and take the ticket”. I look from him to the sign saying “Press button and take ticket to enter”, and back again.
“Yeah, I know,” I say, and go back to reading the prices. No mention of bikes, damn these places, looks like I’d have to pay the same as a car and nowhere even to stash my helmet, perhaps I’ll just turn around and–
Boy has pressed the button and ticket is waiting for me. He smiles proudly, as if he’s pushed the button with his penis (I can’t imagine any other reason he’d think he’s just done something I couldn’t have), and now I have to pay over £5 just to park my bike for a few hours (either that or have the watching attendant also think me a confused, indecisive female for riding off and leaving the ticket).
DIY stores are the worst, though. The amount of times I’ve been stood weighing up prices of tools and had men who don’t even work there come up and tell me what tool I’m holding in my hand, and then ask me what I was looking for, as if I must have wandered into B&Q mistakenly thinking it was Superdrug and picked up a pair of bolt-cutters in the hopes they’d magically metamorphose into nail-clippers.
Ugh, that’s so obnoxious. I don’t know why so many dudes think their involvement in affairs not their own is not only required but desired. Entitlement, entitlement, entitlement.
(Again, I want to reiterate that I don’t think people should just ignore each other, especially in times of need. I just think that dudes in particular should have a teeny bit more discretion about when and why they involve themselves in women’s daily routines.)
Not to mention that maybe you don’t want some stranger walking to your car.
Now that is an excellent point, crankosaur.
[...] damsels in need of male assistance in everything from deciding what to do with our time to carrying our own shit around, and eschew all of these silly little behaviors that in the short term get us attention and favors, [...]
I think it’s worth saying that you don’t conclusively know he was being sexist, because you don’t know how he would have reacted if you’d been a man in the exact same situation. Does this man know you? Does he know you’ve been carrying a massive saxophone for countless years? No. Maybe he just saw a person with something that looked like it could be bulky and offered to help. Maybe he would have behaved differently towards a man, but you are assassinating his character with no concrete basis for comparison.
My thighs could also kill a small elephant, but ask yourself how you’d've felt if you saw him eyeing up your legs before he asked you the question…
And as a girl who has, at times, had to lug contrabass and bass clarinets around on foot, it’s not that I don’t sympathise with the general point that it is insulting when people assume you can’t cope.
It’s true that I don’t know his entire thought process and can’t say for certain that he was being sexist, androgyne. I agree — and actually wrote in the post — that it’s possible that he was just trying to be nice and that this offer didn’t come from (consciously) sexist assumptions. However, considering the situation — I was standing outside looking at my mail, with my case next to me on the ground, and this dude appeared out of nowhere and without even saying hi or making eye contact with me, he asked if I needed help — I think it’s a pretty safe and well-founded conclusion to reach that sexism played a significant role in our brief conversation.
I hardly think that I’m “assassinating his character” in this post. For one thing, none of you reading even knows this guy, as I gave absolutely no identifying features aside from the fact that he was a dude. I don’t know the guy either, so how exactly could I assassinate his character? Besides that, I’m not spreading malicious rumors that will exile him from his community. The very most I’m saying here is that he was probably sexist in his offer to help me. I’ve called lots of people sexist and misogynist, and not a darn one of them has been ostracized from his or her community. Unfortunately.
I may not have “concrete basis for comparison” (who does? honestly), but I can and do speak about my own experiences through the lens of feminism and gender studies. A common feminist rhetorical technique is to turn the tables — Gloria Steinem does this in many of her writings, including “What if men could menstruate?“. Turning the tables in this thought-experiment sort of way highlights gendered double standards that are difficult to see otherwise. Steinem’s essay isn’t scientific. Likewise, this blog post is not and was never intended to be a scientific study of the reasons men and women offer or receive help. This is anecdotal at best, and you should definitely take it with a grain or two of salt. Don’t cite this in your academic work. But do think about how offers of help may be gendered in your own experience, which may or may not be similar to what I’ve discussed in this post.
ETA: I somehow overlooked this part of your response, androgyne:
My thighs could also kill a small elephant, but ask yourself how you’d’ve felt if you saw him eyeing up your legs before he asked you the question…
Uh, yeah, that would have been really gross and inappropriate, and I definitely wouldn’t have accepted his help in that case. What does lechery — which didn’t occur in the actual situation, to my knowledge — have to do with this discussion?
I’ll answer the last point first and then go through in the order you did:
But since I look like a gal, despite what other features I have going on, such as thighs that could kill a small elephant or arms obviously bulky enough to carry 30 pounds of saxophone, I’m assumed to be weak enough to need help.
Apologies if I read too much into what was meant as a flippant remark (because seriously, I really do have thighs that could kill a small elephant and was feeling kinship!), but this section of your post seemed to indicate that he should have examined you physically before weighing up the probabilities of whether you needed help.
Even if he was doing this with the purest of motives, i.e. assessing whether you were likely to need help, my point was that you would not have felt particularly happy with this method of deciding whether or not to offer help. Because you would, as you point out, have felt leched at. And I was also attempting slight irony, apologies if this didn’t come across. My fail.
1st par: Fair enough, it’s your conclusion to draw. I’m never going to know exactly what happened without somehow being psychic. I personally have found myself get het up at times over apparent sexism and, on later reflection, decided I’ve over-reacted and seen sexism where there wasn’t any. I’m not saying that’s what you did, merely that it’s made me less likely to reach it as a conclusion.
2nd par: I’ve called lots of people sexist and misogynist, and not a darn one of them has been ostracized from his or her community. Unfortunately. Hehe. I sympathise. With regards to the “assassinating his character” comment, perhaps I over-egged the pudding a little there, it’s true none of us know this person and what you’ve said could hardly be called libellous. I plead the colourful language amendment, it just seemed to me that your reaction against him was a little strong, given that we didn’t know his motivation, so I responded in kind. But as I said before, you were there, I wasn’t.
3rd par: Thanks for the link, I’d heard of Steinem but not read anything by her. And don’t worry, I think about offers of help through a gendered lens all the time. I had it out with my boyfriend and one of his friends because when we were on holiday they would both keep offering to carry my stuff ALL THE TIME. Boyfriend said it had nothing to do with gender and that he would offer, whoever I was, regardless of gender, and to be fair, I think this is true of him. His friend said he probably wouldn’t be offering if I was a boy and then apologised and stopped asking. It’s one small step for womankind…
As for “concrete basis for comparison”, admittedly it would be difficult to get such a basis in this scenario, I realise it’s anecdotal and as I’m (sadly) not at college anymore, I won’t be citing it for anything any time soon, but as I said earlier, I’m more wary than I used to be of crying “sexism!” than I used to be. I found it led to me demonising men at times and expending energy over things that were, in the scheme of things, not that important. I’m more enraged about female circumcision for example, than I am about guys deciding to hold open doors for me. That’s why I said what I said. And to an extent, I was playing devil’s advocate. A lot of replies seemed ready to just assume the man was an asshole. I thought acknowledging the possibility, that you do indeed raise, that he might not have been was a point worth re-stating.
I hope that helps and has not offended.
Yay for women with elephant-killing thighs! How’d you get yours? I got mine with over a decade of competitive figure skating. Good times. I see where you’re coming from with the potential for lechery that my comment about my physique raises; however, I think that a quick look to see that I’m a healthy-looking adult who happens to have boobs is enough and would not require “eyeing” me up and down. I can tell what size a guy is — and that it’s a guy — without being obvious or gross about it, and I think that guys are capable of this too.
Your comment does help, and I’m definitely not offended. Generally speaking, I just don’t care much for devil’s advocacy. I think it comes from a belief that I can’t or don’t consider more than what I wind up writing in my posts. Blog posts — and everything we write and say — are necessarily limiting and exclusionary. I could never deal with all of the things I thought about regarding this situation in this blog post — there’d be too much. Rest assured, however, that I did think before I wrote this, and I thought as I wrote this, and I’m still thinking about this post, even almost five months later. I don’t care for devil’s advocacy because it assumes I haven’t thought hard enough or carefully enough about my life. Just know that I have.
Also, I think that devil’s advocacy is just another way of saying, “This issue isn’t that important and you’re overreacting.” I mean, that’s pretty much what you wrote in your last big paragraph. This post isn’t about female “circumcision”. I agree that female genital mutilation is an important feminist issue, but writing a blog post about my experiences with sexism isn’t going to take attention away from FGM, and it doesn’t signify that I don’t care about FGM. My experiences are important too, and, as you said, “it’s one small step for womankind” when I write about something like this that other women have experienced as well but maybe haven’t considered the role of sexism in those experiences. Sexism is sexism is sexism — it’s all part of one big problem called patriarchy, whether is manifests in the form of FGM or assumptions of female weakness when it comes to horn-carrying.
I think it’s good for you that you’re wary of “crying ’sexism!’” if that’s what you want, but I take issue with your application of that wariness to what I’ve written about here. I’m not “crying ’sexism.’” I’m analyzing an experience I had and I have reached the conclusion — with much thought, mind you — that sexism played a role in what I experienced. “Sexism!” is not the first thing that jumps to mind every single time I interact with a dude; in fact, upon further reading, you may notice that it took me quite a bit of thinking to realize that there was a gender issue at all in this experience.
So, yeah, I’m not offended, I’m just a little annoyed. I hope you keep reading this blog, but I also hope you bear in mind that I’m not blogging about everything under the sun that is a feminist issue, mostly because I can’t. I’m busy and I’m just one person. I appreciate your responses here, though, androgyne. Thanks for writing.
A combination of ballet between the ages of 5 and 12 (I can still stand on one leg without falling over for a considerable period of time, unfortunately no one pays me for this) and judo between the ages of 18 and now, with the odd bit of weight-lifting here and there. Though I don’t do that so much now. I can see figure skating would do the trick, my mum used to do it and I often think it’s a real shame she gave up.
I would second you on the thought that guys are equally capable of sizing people up without being lecherous, but think they would probably have a harder time explaining it if anyone spotted them doing so!
I do believe that you’ve thought about this far more than you’ve written. But then, if posts are by necessity not going to be fully comprehensive, people are almost always going to pick up on the aspects you don’t cover. That’s the joy of comment threads. And I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily the same thing as saying you haven’t thought about the issue, more that they want to know what you do think about the areas the post didn’t cover. And from debates with friends, although I too get annoyed by devil’s advocacy at times, I often find it a useful tool for honing my argument. But I didn’t intend to annoy.
With regard to “this issue isn’t important and you’re over-reacting” I have to say that I don’t necessarily see guys over-officiously offering to carry stuff and cultures that practice FGM as part and parcel of the same thing. Yes, they are both a product of sexist attitudes towards women, but I can’t imagine the friend who kept wanting to carry all my stuff ever condoning FGM. I think that’s doing him an extreme disservice. I didn’t want to imply that what you went through was unimportant, but I think there are more important things. Obviously that doesn’t invalidate your feelings or your experience, and I may well have felt similarly had it been me. But I got to a stage where I was complaining to a friend that it was sexist that you could buy cake shaped like boobs in the local supermarket and not cake shaped like penises and she told me there were more important inequalities to spend my energy on. And I think she was right. Part of me still thinks it’s obvious we need to win the small battles as well, but part of me also thinks that with that attitude it’s going to take a helluva lot longer than it should. But that’s me, I’m conflicted. And you know, I haven’t upped sticks to go and work for Oxfam yet.
I wasn’t trying to imply that you were crying sexism. Just trying to explain that because I’m wary of doing so, that was why I felt it was worth flagging up again the possibility that this guy was just trying to be helpful. Sorry if that wasn’t clear.
As for the blog, I have no idea what the rest of it says as I came to this post via a specific link and haven’t had a chance to explore further yet. I shall certainly have a looksee :) And won’t hold you up as a bad feminist for failing to tackle all the big issues all day and every day ;)
It’s worth saying I mentioned female circumcision as a purely illustrative example and wasn’t trying to chastise you for failing to be up in arms about it. It’s just that on my personal spectrum of things to kill the patriarchy for, cakes shaped liked boobs score pretty low in comparison!
It’s going to take forever anyway, and frankly, this conversation about whether my post about a bit of sexism I experienced is Important In The Grand Scheme Of Things or not isn’t really contributing to the movement to end sexism all around. I can decide for myself whether this is worth spending my energy on — and I felt that this incident was worth spending my energy on, so I wrote it. And you can decide for yourself whether telling me that I’m wasting my time is worth your time and whether that’s mportant In The Grand Scheme Of Things.
I guess my point is, who cares if I’m writing about something that’s a low priority for you? Obviously I don’t have the same priorities as you do, or you wouldn’t see this post, right? And if it wasn’t on someone else’s priority list, they wouldn’t have commented. I just don’t really see the purpose of devil’s advocacy in this case, I guess.
For the record, I did not say anywhere that people who are sexist in one way are sexist in all ways, which is what you seem to have taken from my statement that FGM and sexist attitudes are all within the patriarchal spectrum. Of course I don’t think the dude in question here is a supporter of FGM. That’s just not even connected to what we’re talking about here.
Ballet to judo! That’s quite the transition! Or is it? I bet they’re closer than I think.
I’m not trying to say that you’re wasting your time, how you spend your time is up to you, but yes, I think if it had been me, I would not have blogged about it. Each to their own.
I doubt very much if anyone cares besides me that I don’t completely agree with you. It’s your blog, you can say what you like. But I’m assuming you don’t have too much of a problem with it because you’re allowing my comments. You have given me a platform to disagree. Thank you.
Sexism is sexism is sexism — it’s all part of one big problem called patriarchy, whether is manifests in the form of FGM or assumptions of female weakness when it comes to horn-carrying.
This does not say that people who are sexist in one way are sexist in all ways. But I think it could easily be taken to mean that all types of sexism are equally bad.
Ballet and judo both require flexibility and the ability to keep a low centre of gravity. Judo is a lot like dancing in that you need a partner to do it but you’re fundamentally trying to keep them off balance rather than on, so you can throw them on the floor. And then there’s the groundwork, which would be pornographic if you weren’t wearing thick white pyjamas in front of a crowd of people with referees awarding points. I’m not sure what the equivalent in ballet is. You just need to have no concept of personal space and be perfectly ok with the fact that strangling someone with your thighs may mean their face is inadvertently in your crotch. Which may explain why in the social time outside of fights, it’s full of some of the dirtiest jokes known to person.
In a spirit of good humour, may I draw your attention to this, though you may have already seen it. Though I am actually going to bed as it’s gone midnight where I am and unfortunately I have a day job :)
*chuckles*
And it didn’t even OCCUR to you that you might have been looking female privilege right in the face?
Read this and this, james.