Sometime after my arrival on the University of Florida’s campus, I began to wonder if men ever thought, even a little bit. This question posed itself to me after an incident my roommate and I call the ‘modern trolley problem.’ On the way to the Publix on 13th Street and University Avenue, walking north, I found myself behind a sorority girl. It was that awkward sort of situation where the person in front of you is going just a bit too slowly, so you’ve got to sort of drag your feet, or pause a moment or speed up to pass them and deal with walking beside them for a moment or two, while they reflect on why you felt the ridiculous urge to pass them. But I’m quite tall, for better or for worse, and I traditionally choose to pass. I sped up, walking on the left side of that too-small sidewalk, and realized with abject horror that a man on an e-scooter, creatures of the devil they are, was rushing towards us both at a pace I couldn’t escape. I wasn’t walking fast enough to get sufficiently far past her to make it reasonable to step to the right in front of her, therefore leaving space for the man on the e-scooter.
I saw the reality of the situation hit his eyes, the both of us walking towards him– him, on his e-scooter, in the middle of the sidewalk, barreling closer. He had to make a decision. One way or another, he was going to hit someone. It was her or me, with the hot Florida sun beaming down on us all. His eyes twitched between us. I think I saw it when he decided, turning his scooter ever so slightly to adjust his path. The straight line he molded it into, one aimed directly and entirely towards me.
It’s okay. I just moved over a bit to let him and his e-scooter through. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it; he had chosen her deliberately over me. Given the choice, he moved himself into a position that would spare her and kill me. You know, as one pulls the lever to kill one person rather than letting the trolley run over five. Perhaps it’s not as serious as life and death. I probably wouldn’t have died if the scooter had hit me– and it wasn’t as if he wanted to hit me; I was just a more negotiable obstacle.
I mulled over what had made him decide I was a better target, but it wasn’t really a question as much as it was a feeling of sick déjà vu. When a man doesn’t find you attractive, you disappear. You aren’t human, you aren’t really there at all. I’ve been talked through, as if they couldn’t see me. It’s assumed I’ll move over on the sidewalk– four guys, walking side by side on the sidewalk, and not one thinks ‘maybe I should step behind my friends to give this girl some space to walk.’ No, I’ll just walk on the dirt.
It feels stupid to be annoyed at small acts like these, but it all builds into the larger culture of misogyny; it’s a static buzzing in the background of everything we do. And women feel it all the time. It is subconscious, for many, this ignorance of mediocre or unattractive women by societal standards, but it is rooted in the concept of worth being defined by your appearance to the male gaze. I am seen as parts, not as a whole, and certainly not as something worth acknowledgment. In the short term, it’s as simple as speaking through me. In the long term, it’s not seeing my contributions as valuable or seeing me as an intelligent creature, equal to him. Even at one of the best public universities in the nation, we are judged visually before intellectually. I have recollections of middle school group projects, where boys would barely deign to work with you when assigned because they weren’t interested in you. It starts young, and some grow out of it… But some don’t.
Women exist on a spectrum between too visible– where they are sexualized and desired– and invisible– where they are dismissed. Both are forms of objectification, where we are seen as subhuman. Some could say it is safer to be unseen, as there is less pressure to perform. Without performing, though, you absolutely find yourself at a disadvantage in life. It is harder to find community, to find a job, to ask for help. There is an evaluation of our usefulness that takes place without us having any say in the matter, one that doesn’t apply to men, which reaffirms a male-dominant hierarchy. And it’s even more interesting how deeply the gaze is normalized, to the point where there is such a desire to be seen as human, as equal, that many women conform to standards subconsciously because they can see a difference in how they are treated. I put on makeup every morning because I want to be seen as someone who can be taken seriously. I shave my legs just to put on sweatpants. Just as women do these acts to serve the patriarchy subconsciously, men judge us subconsciously based on our looks.
I’d like to call on you all to think about what you’re doing to feed into the patriarchal model– I’m not asking you to stop. It’s hard. But at the very least, understanding where your actions come from is important to the eventual dismantling of the system.
I guess on the concrete that day, I recognized something in that small and unremarkable act. When it comes down to it, some of us are just easier to hit with a godforsaken e-scooter.