Monday, April 14, 2008

"Rub Against Me and I'll Expose You"


A loyal supporter of "Breaking the Code" sent me a link to this article this morning. I find the last line a particularly telling (and somewhat disturbing) indication of where things stand when it comes to street (or subway) harassment:
"'Maybe the campaign is good because it makes women think about it ahead of time,' added Midgley's mother, Lynn Greiner."

2 comments:

eximo said...

http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/News/Media-office/Press-releases/2008/WTD039337.htm

yeahhh.... until you guys stop having clearly higher levels of paranoia in subway paranoia studies (watch video), I don't know if this is true or much of it is simply validations of paranoid thought processes...

Zoe the Wonder Dog said...

It is important to remember that "paranoia" in this study is a specific term from the field of Psychology. Sociologists, for example, would approach this study far differently -- not focusing on the rationality of people's responses but rather on the conditions that produced them. You, oh anonymous eximo, seem assume that someone who is wary on a subway car is merely acting as an irrational individual, rather than connecting their reactions to larger social patterns. Isn't it at all interesting to you that so many people demonstrated what the Psychologists labeled "paranoid" behavior? If it is such a common response, maybe it is not just the pathology of the individual at work, eh?