There is a strange post by Eugene Volokh about “involuntary sexual arousal and touching” here, at the Volokh Conspiracy. It elicited a very strong negative reaction from Belle Waring, which is posted here, at Crooked Timber. Volokh’s theory seems to be that people don’t like to have their genitals touched nonpermissively because it involuntarily arouses them, or as he stated in the comments thread: “It may be both arousing and disturbing; it might in fact be disturbing partly because of the arousal, or of the possibility of arousal.” I think it is fair to characterize Waring’s reply as emphatically stating, “No, that is NOT the reason unwanted touching is disturbing.”
Like most women, I have been inappropriately touched by strangers, most commonly in the close quarters of a mass transit environment. My usual response to physical intrusions is to shout, “Get your hands off of me!” or “Stop touching me, you pervert!” very loudly. This usually scares the offender away, but most of the other people on the bus, platform or train will avert their eyes and move as far away from me as possible, as if I have done something scandalous. On a few occasions someone has asked me if I am okay, or if they can help, which has been very much appreciated. Gropers and frotteurs rely on the embarrassment that victims often feel to keep them nonconfrontational. Any suggestion that victims derive sexual arousal, even involuntarily, from unwanted physical content, is not only wrong, it is utterly repulsive, and seems pointedly designed to further shame victims into silence.
I know Volokh enjoys theorizing about law and society in provocative ways, but I simply can’t believe that “arousal” would be the overriding cognizable emotion he would feel if a stranger unexpectedly grabbed him between the legs, and I don’t understand why he would want to project this at best counterintuitive reaction on anyone else.
Via the Crooked Timber comments thread: A scholarly analysis of “Sexual Harassment as a Gendered Expression of Power” by Christopher Uggen and Amy Blackstone is available here. The comments evoked by both Volokh’s and Waring’s posts are quite informative.
–Ann Bartow
NB: Mimi Smartypants has a relevant mass transit story here. She manages to make it sound humorous, but the laughs are angry ones.
Update: I hope I was pretty clear in this post that I think Eugene Volokh is very, very wrong on this issue. He was wrong about torture, he was wrong about “homosexual conversion,” and he was wrong when he encouraged his commenters to slime Brian Leiter. Actually, if I tried to list all the times I think he’s been wrong, I’d have to make it my summer research project, and it would be one I might have trouble finishing by September. But here’s the thing: He’s not an elected official, and he’s not a judge. He’s not a policy-maker. He’s just an academic who likes to provoke people. He’s still human, and some of the ad hominems floating around are a bit much.
Update 2: See also Shakespeare’s Sister’s post, “I wonder if it would have been possible to get this more wrong.”
[...] Law Prof Eugene Volokh is being taken to task for a recent post on unwanted touchings. The backlash includes this angry rant from Belle Waring on the Crooked Timber blog and a milder scolding on the Feminist Law Professors blog. [...]
[...] I wrote about groping here; Belle Waring did so much more powerfully here and here. In the second post she noted: I invite male [Crooked Timber] readers to just go around and start asking women they know if anyone has ever felt them up on public transit, or in a crowded mall, or a bar. I’m waiting. What, all of them?! That almost sounds like a serious societal problem we should do something about! Something like…embracing feminism (Now balloons and confetti are meant to come down from the ceiling). Many young men are also victimized by this type of thing, and the awesome thing about feminism is that it’s also opposed to sexual violence against men, be it on the bus or in our poorly-run jails. Such violence almost always turns on the hinge of “feminizing” some men and thus making them sexually fair game. [...]
[...] Eventually, I will put him in a dress and make-up and make him ride the subways in Chicago. There will be video, I promise. [...]
[...] We have all been there, and it stinks. Why not try to do something effective like separate cars, that will be a lot more effective than avoiding crowded cars and yelling ata individual offenders. I don’t think I’ve ever been groped on a train or a bus by a woman. In every context that has been studied, women are A LOT safer when men are not around. A while back Heart wrote this about women only commuter coaches in Rio de Janiero: News reports covering the woman-only cars in Rio de Janeiro are hard for me to read, because they contain such unapologetic anti-woman, anti-feminist commentary, including from government officials, some of whom decried the cars as discriminatory and unconstitutional. Their logic seemed to be either that officials should address the problem of groping, sexual assault and sexual harrassment in general, rather than ghetto-izing women by creating woman-only commuter cars, and/or that the woman-only cars discriminated against men. Recently men opposed to the woman-only cars have engaged in protests, standing at bus and train loading areas with signs marked “gay,” “hippies,” “men,” and more protests are planned. City officials intend to challenge the laws enacted to create woman-only transportation. In some instances, according to the reports, men have violated women’s commuter spaces uneventfully, but in general, security guards are available to enforce the laws and regularly do so with the hearty approval of the women riding. When Women’s E-News interviewed commuters in Rio de Janeiro, by far the majority of women were enthused about the woman-only transportation, while all of the men queried disliked it. Well, of course. It either interferes with their groping plans — according to Alternet coverage, there is an online community dedicated to “those who enjoy pressing up against women on crowded buses and trains” which encourages them to leave descriptions of what amounts to their sexual assaults on women on the site for others to enjoy — or it flies in the face of what they want to believe about men, or of the excuses they make for the pandemic proportions of the problem of male sexual violation of women. [...]