The Consequences of No: #ByeFelipe and Victorian Refusal

Around this time last year, the hashtag #byefelipe emerged. This tag, and the instagram with the same name created by Alexandra Tweten, documented the way in which men instantly become angry, hostile, and threatening as soon as a woman rejects them - often, no matter how nicely. This behavior goes beyond virtual space - there are dozens of tragic stories of women who are attacked and murdered after refusing to give out a phone number or go on a date. In Detroit last year, Mary Spears was killed for refusing to give out her phone number to a strange man. If there was ever a sign that men feel absolutely, intensely entitled to women’s time, attention, and bodies, these murders are it. As there so often is, there is a racial component here as well: women of color face far higher rates of violence for saying no.

This is the scary stuff - the kind that many otherwise feminist men don’t fully grasp. There is real, tangible, looming threat of violence for saying no. One second you’re “so beautiful, baby, date me” but the second you say “no, thank you,” men can, and do, turn in an instant to wrathful, nasty, and violent. White women often receive “you’re fat and ugly and a bitch anyway” as a followup, whereas women of color have to deal with that and racist abuse.

Refusal in the America of 2015 has this miasma of male entitlement around it. We have to tread carefully, smile politely, say “I have a boyfriend” even if we don’t.

So I had to think about how women’s refusal was treated in that most misogynistic of time periods: The Victorian era. In particular, I’m going to look at Anthony Trollope's Palliser novels, set in the 1870s, in this context.

Victorian women were living in a world where spousal rape was absolutely legal. Husbands could also essentially incarcerate their wives in their homes if they chose. In the Palliser books, Laura Kennedy, a wealthy and socially prominent woman, is threatened with this loss of freedom by her husband. He only chooses to leave her alone because people would gossip about their situation, but both the characters and the narrative acknowledge that he has every legal right to do so.

The pressure to get married was an intense theme in Victorian women’s lives. Choice and independence in marriage usually depended on being independently wealthy. Women lower on the socioeconomic ladder had far fewer choices available - especially if an interested man happened to be rich.

Despite all this, there is an ideal present in Victorian literature that men should continue to be friendly with women whom they once loved, and they should accept rejection “manfully” and kindly.

Violet Effingham, a young beauty in the novels, refuses her erstwhile lover Lord Chiltern, and he respects it - even though he’s a guy with a lot of anger and rude, abrupt manners. He states directly, “It’s unmanly to persecute a girl.” Lord Chiltern asks Violet to marry him numerous times, but does not abuse or insult her for her multiple refusals. Even the women in the novel state that it’s okay to propose more than once - as long as you remain friends - but once you’ve been like, “Miss Effingham, will you make the happiest of men and be my wife?” and she’s all “Seriously, dude, I cannot give you my heart,” you tend to leave her the heck alone. There is a social contract in place where suitors, even rejected ones, are not supposed to impugn the name of a lady or insult her.

The ideal for rejected suitors was that men should behave “manfully” and accept refusal. This is an ideal, though: it’s not always enforced. It also doesn’t fully respect a “no” - asking multiple times is hardly respectful.

It’s also important to note that this is operating in a context of white womanhood, which was treated as pure and worthy of protection. You can bet your best petticoat that British men in the colonies, for example, weren’t treating native women of color with any kind of respect for refusal or their personhood.

Keeping these caveats in mind, we still shouldn’t have to look all the way back to Victorian lit to find examples of men accepting refusal and continuing to be genuine friends with the women they pursued. It shouldn’t be a high-minded ideal to NOT heap abuse and hateful words because a woman turned you down for a date.  

In Trollope’s novels, we see rich male-female friendships. Women are political actors - when “our hero,” Phineas Finn, succeeds in winning office thanks to women’s influence, his lady friend tells him, “they’ll call you the women’s pet, but you mustn’t mind that.” His political office was still won fair and square. Most of Phineas’ friendships are with women, making him a highly sympathetic character. Women were the majority of the novel-reading audience, and creating a male character who was sympathetic to them, kind, and handsome, but with believable flaws and vulnerabilities, appealed to both women and men. In 1917, a critic said that "Anthony Trollope reveals an amazing insight into the love and the motive of woman. In this detail he has no equal in the whole catalogue of British male novelists, until we go as far back as Richardson. Trollope has an amazing comprehension of the young lady.”

Trollope’s women are genuine, fully rounded people - not the sentimental cardboard cutouts of many other writers of his time. They are forced to revolve around men, who are the only ones officially able to participate in public life, but they find ways to influence the greatest public issues and politics of their day.

Trollope shows women who are spirited, independent, and want a marriage with real love in it. They also want the right to change their mind, like Violet Effingham - who does eventually decide to marry Lord Chiltern - and remain friends with men whom she had rejected. Violet had “a peculiar gift for that friendly intimacy” with jilted lovers. Sounds like a lot of emotional work,  but she was able to operate under the expectation that a refusal didn’t equal automatic abuse.

This nuanced portrayal of women was accepted with cheering approval by the reading public, suggesting it rang true for most readers. Trollope enjoyed popularity on par with Dickens in his time, despite a slight falling-off in the later years of his life.

Trollope wrote some of the most popular novels of the 19th century, depicting ideals of behavior that demanded politeness and had no space for abusing women who refused. There’s plenty to leave behind in the Victorian era, but men could learn from this basic concept, and extend real courtesy to ALL women - whether they say yes or no.

Anti-Life: This is What an Angry Feminist Looks Like.

I don't remember the specific moment of epiphany when I realized this, but it becomes more and more clear the more I educate myself on legislation that relates to reproductive/sexual health and federal funding for women and children's programs.

It dawns on you slowly at first, but then becomes crystal clear and even painfully obvious. The epiphany? Right-wingers are against life. The moment you get out of the womb, they absolutely do not give a shit about you.* Okay, maybe they care if you're white, rich, male, and abled, but god forbid if you're female, disabled, poor, or any shade besides lily-white. They are as thoroughly against living as you can be. This is shockingly evident in HR-1, the Republican proposal to (de-) fund the federal government.

If Republicans were for life, and for the lives of women and children in particular, would they vote for HR-1, which slashes $747 million dollars from WIC, the Special Supplemental Program Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children? This program provides food and counseling for low-income mothers and families. It saves the lives of infants whose parents literally cannot afford to feed them.

Yup. It keeps babies healthy, happy, and alive. 

Aren't anti-choicers really into that stuff? Isn't the lives-of-babies thing like their whole bag? Funny...I don't hear the Family Research Council, or the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, or any other conservative group talking about the fate of the millions of women and babies who receive assistance from this program. Hm- this seems a lot more like hating on poor people and single mothers. How strange.

If Republicans cared about children the second after they exited the womb, would they cut $1 billion dollars from Head Start and $39 million from childcare programs? These programs provide a safe place for parents to put their children while they work. Without programs like these, children will get left alone or with incompetent caregivers, which negatively impacts their safety. Imperiling children...doesn't sound very pro-life to me. It fact, it sounds like another stab at poor people and single moms (the ones who are most likely to need childcare so that they can go to work to, you know, support their children).

When Republicans start caring about life in all its forms, I will respect their position on forcing women to carry pregnancies to term (well, I won't, because it's awful, but at least it will make logical sense).

When Republicans start fighting for nutrition for babies, for responsible care for children, for prenatal care for all women regardless of documented status, for the abolition of the death penalty, for the end to wars (what else is more anti-life than war?), for sound environmental and wildlife policy (do non-human lives matter?), and for the lives of the poor and the disenfranchised, maybe then they can call themselves "pro-life." When women's and children's lives are respected as much as rich male ones, then they can call themselves "pro-life."

Start caring about the quality of my life, guys, and the lives of my future children. Then call yourselves "pro-life."



*I am specifically talking about the folks in Congress who consistently work in this direction, as well as the people at various conservative organizations who directly lobby for these causes and call themselves "pro-life." I realize that not every single lay Republican holds these views, but find me a dozen of these law- and policy-makers who are against these specific positions and have said so publicly, and I'll give you five dollars.

Pink and Blue: From the Mouths of Babes

So I take care of kids for a living. (This statement is somewhat facetious, as I am lucky enough to have parents that pay for a bunch of my stuff). So not really a living per say, but you could say it is my main trade. Childcare is one of my most accomplished and marketable skills. I have a ton of experience doing it, and have worked as a full-time nanny for the last two summers.

And it makes me twitch when I see the extent to which children are gendered. From their earliest moments, before they are more than wrinkle-faced blobs, kids are subject to adult assumptions of how they should behave based on the gender they are assigned at birth. And these tiny people have ears, and they begin to internalize what you say to them before they can speak themselves. Children are sponges, and this comparison extends far beyond the fact that both things are clingy and often slightly damp. At a very early age, you will find them trying to figure out how gender works in our culture.

One of my frequent charges, who for the purposes of the internet we will call L, is male (as far as I know), five years old, and possesses the largest, roundest, and bluest eyes you've ever seen before. He asked me something very interesting when I was watching him recently. He had been remarking, with a sage and furrowed brow, on the oddness of the fact that I was wearing boxers which were slightly visible above my sweatpants (it was 8 AM, so sue me) and the fact that I had short hair, yet I was referred to as female.

He asked me, "Do you think you're a boy or a girl?"

Now consider the wisdom in that statement, delivered to me from about three feet off the ground and from behind a large gap where two front teeth are missing. Behind that adorable face, the wheels are turning like crazy as he tries to figure out all this gender stuff. He doesn't even know the word "gender"! But- he used the word think. Did I think I was a boy or a girl? How did I feel about the matter? Never mind everybody else, what did I think, personally?

L. wanted to know how I felt about my gender, and that is more courtesy than most adults will give you. I speak broadly and I certainly do not speak for everyone, but I believe the average gender-variant/transgender/genderqueer individual would kill for that kind of consideration from the world at large. I consider myself to be somewhat genderqueer, though generally comfortable with female-oriented labels, and nobody would ever think to ask me this. I was stunned, and in the best possible way.

I managed to steer the question away from myself (as prescient as he is, the concept of genderqueerness is still a little heavy for a first-grader) and instead took the time to talk to him about how we are all allowed to like whatever we like, and how there is no "girl stuff" or "boy stuff" or even really sharp divisions between "girls" and "boys," but instead there is just "stuff," and "people." He took it all in better than any adult to whom I've ever had to explain the gender spectrum.

What I'm saying- "my point, if I had one," as my father would say- is that despite all the binary messages that children get from the world at large, they are sponges. They will listen if you speak! And if you tell them not to worry about boy/girl and pink/blue, then, when they grow up, we might find ourselves with a generation that is easy in their minds, in their bodies, and in their genders- whatever those genders may be.

I will hold out- I will scream and I will shout

This post on Yes Means Yes really made me think. It discusses the "boiling frog" principle and applies it to sexual assault- how women are taught, throughout their whole lives, not to raise their voices, put up a fight, or make a fuss. I think it also applies really well to street harassment.

I wasn't always as brave as I am now. I wasn't always as willing or able to kick and scream and raise absolute hell when I was being made to feel afraid. I credit internet feminism with bringing out my natural belligerence, and I couldn't thank the movement enough. Because of discussions on amazing blogs like Yes Means Yes, Jezebel, figleaf, and the rest, I feel like I have the right to enforce my boundaries and protect my privacy in a way that makes me feel safe. This wasn't always true.

A couple of years ago, when I was maybe 17, I was hanging around my town library on a Saturday afternoon, waiting for the guys at the tire place to be done fixing up my car. I was in the stacks, idly perusing titles, when a guy came up to me and asked the time.

"One-fifteen," I answered, or something like that. I barely looked at the guy- I was too busy looking at books. Then he went away, and I continued wandering around the shelves.

After a minute or two, I became aware that this man was following me as I walked around. He was also doing that stereotypically creepy heavy-breathing thing as he did so. I was immediately terrified- my heart was racing almost instantly.

This man was making me feel so unsafe. I was in a library with tons of other people, but what did I do? Did I tell a librarian or another adult? Nope. Even though I felt, distinctly, that what was happening to me was not okay, I wasn't sure enough. I didn't feel that I could tell someone and not be laughed at or brushed off. What if this wasn't really happening? Should I really make a fuss?

This man proceeded to follow me out of the library and into the Whole Foods next door. My rationale: maybe if there are lots of people then he won't follow me in. This plan did not work. He followed me in and then sat down a few tables away from where I sat, staring at me.

This is when I thought that I had to tell someone, so I called my dad. I told him what was happening and that I was freaking out, and he helped me stay calm. He told me to stay where there were lots of people, and to try and go get my car.

So, still on the phone with Dad, I made my way out of the Whole Foods and down the street. For one happy second I thought the creepy guy was done following me, but I looked back and my heart sank as I saw he hadn't given up on his mission of making a teenage girl so afraid she felt like throwing up.

He followed me all the way down the street- several blocks- staying maybe fifteen feet behind me the whole time. As I walked, my all-encompassing terror started to subside even as the adrenaline kept pumping. What right does this guy have? I kept thinking to myself. What right does he have to make me so afraid in my own hometown? This isn't okay. I deserve to feel safe.

Finally, I was crossed the street to get to the tire place where my car was. My heart leapt into my throat again as I contemplated the thought that this dude would know which car was mine. I couldn't let that happen.

I turned around to face this guy, who was in the middle of crossing the street (I secretly hoped that maybe he would get hit by a car, but no such luck) and I said, as loudly and forcefully as possible without actually yelling, "Would you PLEASE stop following me?" He muttered something unintelligible and vaguely apologetic-sounding and walked away to leave me alone at last.

I felt victorious, at first, but also drained from the whole traumatic experience. The whole time, worst-case scenarios had been racing through my head. What if he has a gun? Or a knife? What if he tries to hurt me or rape me? With him gone, I could finally breathe, but I had to reflect on how unsafe women are made to feel in public space. Would a cisgender male ever have put up with this crap? No, not in a million years, huh? Then why the hell should I? After that day, I promised myself that I would do whatever was in my power to never allow anyone to make me feel that way again.

More than anything, I wish that no person ever had to feel this way. I should never have to realize that I should never be made to feel unsafe in a public place- it should just be a given, like how 99.99% of men walk around every day without being intimidated, catcalled, followed, or harassed in any way. I deserve to feel safe- just like the other half of the population.