So that’s why men (and women) are afraid of me
by Jennifer Kesler
August 17, 2008
Anytime you claim that men find you intimidating or “scary”, it generates debate. In a world where men are taught to look to women for support, not competition, some men do find a woman intimidating if she shows her intelligence or demonstrates self-sufficiency. The counter usually boils down to, “Just because you’re smart/self-sufficient doesn’t mean that’s why they reject you/ignore you. Maybe they do it because you’re just not nice.”
The problem with that argument is that niceness is required of women and looked down upon in men. We’re told “nice guys finish last.” We may like how nice they are, but they don’t get the promotions, the hot dates, the hard work from their employees, etc. (or so we’re conditioned to think). Conversely, when women are as authoritative, fair but unsympathetic, and aggressive as men are congratulated on being, we often get labeled “bitch.”
Katems at Feministing talks about having mixed feelings because men fear her.
Apparently my landlord, the man of the couple that lives next door, my husband’s mother and brother and everyone else I’ve ever told off have all confided in my husband that they are afraid of me. Both of us find this pretty hilarious considering that I’m barely 5′3 and around 100 lbs. I asked my husband what exactly scares people when I call them out on being ass-holes. He says it’s a combination of my intensity and the fact that I sugarcoat nothing and have a habit off cutting people to the core with my words.
That’s me. I read a lot of stories in which women describe harassment and the feeling of being scared and not knowing what to do, or thinking of some great comeback minutes after the event is over. My response is quite different: my adrenaline surges, I zone in quickly on that person’s insecurities, my vision goes a little hazy, and I want to physically hurt the person. I have to restrain that urge and redirect my energy into a verbal barb or a gesture that lets them know to back off.
For example: if a man tries to touch me in a remotely inappropriate way, I’ll try to edge away politely if the situation permits. If he’s insistent, I am 100% fully entitled to hit him. And I have done it. It stuns people, but to their credit I must say no one has ever criticized me for it. Several men have even congratulated me, and I’m not talking feminist ally types: I’m talking about men from all walks of life who simply don’t think women should be bullied.
This isn’t limited to men or sexual harassment. When AT&T tried to screw me over recently, I called them on every line of bullshit they shoveled my way until they realized they hadn’t a leg to stand on. When a medical billing company tried to charge me for something they weren’t supposed to and on top of that made it nearly impossible for me to reach anyone, I gave them hell to the point that the supervisor called my doctor, realized I was right and called me back, sounding scared. I am very forgiving of mistakes – we all make them. I also restrain myself when dealing with the people who aren’t responsible but get used as human shielding for those who are (i.e., customer service reps). But I just cannot tolerate bullshit, not even when it would be to my advantage to tolerate it for the moment. And even when I avoid being overly sarcastic or using my more colorful vocabulary, there’s a tone in my voice that says, “Nobody’s going home until either I’m satisfied with the outcome or you’re bleeding.”
If at this point you think I sound like a ranting bitch… I feel sorry for you. Get out more – you might just meet some people (not just women) who can be firm and unyielding without being mean or demeaning. It happens.
The more I think about it, the more I wonder if a man who tolerates as little bullshit as I do would not also be considered “intimidating.” While men are conditioned to tolerate less crap than women, I think most people are uncomfortable enough with confrontation to prefer letting slights slide. I’m uncomfortable with confrontation, too, but for me the confrontation begins when someone bullies me, not when I choose not to let it slide, and since I’m already in I might as well kick some ass.
Related posts:
- Open thread: heteronormativity’s effects on all women and men
- Why, if you think women should be flattered by your harassment, you are stupid
- Women so cool, Men so clumsy
- Fiction: escapism for men, problem-solving for women?
- Open thread: chiding women for turning men down
Posted in Real Life on August 17, 2008 Tags: Discrimination
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August 17th, 2008 at 10:50 pm
Jennifer, I have long argued that this is why, in the horseback riding community, that there is this stereotype that “mares are meaners.” I came in as an adult beginner, not having spent much time around actual horses (as opposed to reading books, magazines, etc) but *having* spent a lot of time around other domestic animals. I didn’t see ANY difference across the board – in fact, at the stables where I studied, where the girls were all nodding and sagely saying that “mares are just meaner” the meanest, most terrifying horses on the place were all geldings. Not all the geldings were aggressive and belligerent – this was a tiny subset of the remuda – but the ones that were? Like badly-socialized, spoiled dogs – only ones that weighed a thousand pounds or thereabouts. Yeah, fun. Not.
And yet, “Oh, that’s just Red,” or “That’s just Tutaka,” or “That’s just Romeo” – the geldings were all regarded as individual animals, and not as representatives of their albeit-truncated maleness; but when Windy or Jill or Lady acted up? OMG, there was *proof* that “mares are just meaner!”
I came to the conclusion very quickly that they were seeing what they expected to see – and eventually, that part of the problem was that they were imposing this cultural expectation that Female = Sugar/Spice/Everything Nice no matter what the species (hey, just look at Disney movies! The females are ALWAYS sweeter and gentler and nurturing/caring/loving!) and when the mares in the stable acted just like horses (or, rather, like ALL social animals under various stresses) this violated that baseline assumption that females should always be sweet and obedient and docile, and instead they were being *bitchy* – because even though aggression is simultaneously gendered as normal for males, it’s also accepted, inconsistently & incoherently, as bad and badness is gendered as inherently female, sigh…
August 18th, 2008 at 8:04 am
This is very similar to my reaction. (And the reason suggested by Katems’ husband is almost verbatim what I heard from my mother last year when I expressed surprise that someone I’d met like, twice was reportedly scared of me.)
What makes it so weird (and why it’s taken so long to sink in despite the first occasion where someone told me they’d been scared of me when they first met me being over a decade ago) is that I’m a complete introvert in social situations. To the point of an actual phobia of large groups of people I don’t know. But if someone tries to take advantage or bully me or someone I care about, some switch gets thrown in my head because I don’t play defensive. I’m not going to start the confrontation, but I never really learned the meaning of the word “retreat”.
It’s the same everywhere, but I’ve just had the most opportunity to meet a wide selection of bullies in the medical profession. Yeah, you’re a doctor and you studied this disease for a few years. Whoo hoo. I’ve lived it for 15, and I know how to work textbooks too. I look younger than I am, and in a vulnerable position by default, but that does not make them The Boss Of Me and many of them have a problem with people pointing that out. Unsurprisingly, the really good ones? Usually don’t have that problem.
Because arrogance and a need to completely shut down any strong personality that doesn’t agree with you absolutely is indicative of your insecurity, not your awesomeness.
August 18th, 2008 at 8:19 am
Really? I spent years riding and I never heard anything like that. (I hope that doesn’t sound dismissive, just my experience.) Maybe it had something to do with my age– I started as a child and continued into my teens until health problems made me stop– or maybe it’s because the two sweetest horses there were a mare and a gelding and the two most difficult were both geldings. One was just boarded there so I didn’t know him well but he’d been badly trained and regularly tossed his rider off for months when she got him, the other was my Showoff, who was just extremely intelligent and too stubborn to take orders from someone who couldn’t give him a good reason. (You can probably see why he ended up my favorite. I can respect someone who makes you earn their respect before they like you.) Or I was lucky. I always rode at the same stable, and everyone there treated the horses like co-workers or family, not animals. Refusing to alter your behavior to the horse’s personality was the quickest way to get booted out the door.
Ahem. Not a horse discussion, and I’ve completely forgotten what my original point was. However, I do think that interaction with such large animals might be helpful for some people; it makes the point pretty clear that you should be nice but you still need to be respected. If the horse knows you don’t mean it when you tell him/her to do something you’ll spend most of your time meandering through the field with good snacks rather than getting where you want to go, but being mean doesn’t get you far either. I’ve seen it happen both ways: people who can’t get into the ring until all the clover’s gone, and people who are surprised their horse took the opportunity to scrape them out of the saddle with that low hanging tree branch.
August 19th, 2008 at 11:42 pm
I really really hate confrontations, and do my best to shorten them as quickly as possible – which means I tend to be a pacifist and let people get away with things as long as its not too terribly important to me. But what I thought was interesting is that if you do push me to where I don’t feel like I can let it go or safely walk away or there’s nowhere left to dissemble verbally, and you do force the confrontation, I have something similar to what Jen described. Everything goes clear and still inside my head and a little wavery on the vision, and my voice goes cold and quiet and I think even more clearly and quickly than usual, and I almost never leave wishing I could have thought of something to say.
Interestingly, I also almost never want to hurt anyone, and so my wit is usually devoted to proving myself right, and finding a way to convince the other person, or to extricate myself from the situation. So I guess people are still not afraid of me – even if they make me mad all I’ll do is show them why I’m right and then gracefully leave and never mention it again! LOL
Of course, customer service on the phone at work has led to unrelenting confrontations all day long, with what I consider as a positive result of teaching me how to say no, no, hell no, and make the person think I really listened and made it all make sense. Most of the time. I pity anyone who tries to force me to do anything now.
August 20th, 2008 at 1:36 am
My response is quite different: my adrenaline surges, I zone in quickly on that person’s insecurities, my vision goes a little hazy, and I want to physically hurt the person. [...] “Nobody’s going home until either I’m satisfied with the outcome or you’re bleeding.”
And see, that attitude I find scary – in men and women. I know you say that you only unleash this when you have already been slighted and it is all their fault anyway, but I have strong doubts about anyone being right all the time. After all, I know more than one man who has decided that the reason they *had* to hurt that person was that the other person had insulted/crossed the line/brought it on themselves.
The more I think about it, the more I wonder if a man who tolerates as little bullshit as I do would not also be considered “intimidating.”
Yes, absolutely. Because almost everyone has different scales of what is an affront warranting escalation, and someone who escalates (which is what you are making it sound like you do) will make people worry about setting them off.
August 20th, 2008 at 2:31 am
@Bellatrys, I once knew a gelding named Red who was very temperamental, LOL! I think you’re right that people see what they expect. We’re all trained to overlook/overemphasize one set of traits in males and the opposite set in females.
@Maggie: “I never really learned the meaning of the word “retreat”.” Yep, that’s me in a nutshell.
@Firebird, I get cold and quiet, too. The way you can tell you’ve enraged me to the point we’re not going to be speaking much longer is when I’m seem exceedingly calm.
@LC, you *really* need to re-read. I NEVER unleash that and I do not “escalate.” Right after the first chunk you quoted I said, “I have to restrain that urge and redirect my energy into a verbal barb or a gesture that lets them know to back off.” Restrain = not unleashing it. My point was that my INSTINCT is quite different from that of most women and/or people. My instinct is fight, not flight, and I find it curious that most people lean one way and a few lean the other.
But I am responsible for my instincts, so I’ve honed my control over them. And you’d be amazed what sort of stuff doesn’t upset me – my tolerance for human foibles is high. I just don’t tolerate being pushed around, because I’ve found that just one person standing up to a bully can make a difference.
August 20th, 2008 at 2:43 am
@Jennifer Kesler
I did read. I understand you say that you resist those instincts. But you do admit your instinct when pushed is to look for ways to hurt people. I suspect that was hyperbole to some extent. You asked why people might find you scary, and whether a man who acted the same way would be found scary.
I think you not letting yourself be pushed around is a good thing. Standing up to bullies is a good thing. Not taking shit is a good thing. But you don’t have to go looking for blood to not take shit, and I think the fact that you are resisting your instinct to hurt these people might be why people find you scary.
Now, I think it entirely possible people find you scary just because you are a woman who stands up for herself. I have a friend who has given herself the tag line “unintentionally intimidating” because she is a quiet, focused, fiercely intelligent person and this seems to intimidate all kinds of people.
August 20th, 2008 at 3:30 am
Yep. Just because I might want to kill someone it doesn’t mean I’d ever do anything of the sort, I’ve struck exactly one person in anger in my entire life, and I wasn’t the one who first made that a physical interaction. I avoid confrontation if there’s a way it’s do-able, because I *know* if it gets to a certain point, I will say something very hurtful because I know how hurtful it is. But barring extreme circumstance my instinct isn’t going to be to run or acquiesce, and I think people pick up on that.
It’s like, last year I was out walking a dog when another dog came charging across the street snarling and snapping at him, and to me the only obvious choice was to jump in between them to protect him (because he doesn’t have an aggressive bone in his body, but he’s a pit bull mix and would get blamed because he’s twice as big) and when I was telling this story to other people, a couple mentioned how scary it must have been. But I was just pissed, having been fully prepared to punt the hellhound AND his awful owner across the road if that thing tried to bite one of us and was told “You know that’s not normal, right?” I didn’t, I waited until it was taken inside and left and made the appropriate complaints about an unleashed aggressive dog, but ’scared’ wasn’t where my brain went at all and apparently that’s weird to some people.
Same with people– snarl and bluster all you like, but it’s not going to intimidate me when I’m not in the wrong.
August 20th, 2008 at 4:24 am
Same with people– snarl and bluster all you like, but it’s not going to intimidate me when I’m not in the wrong.
And I’ve got nothing but respect for that, actually.
November 18th, 2008 at 10:52 pm
But you do admit your instinct when pushed is to look for ways to hurt people. I suspect that was hyperbole to some extent.
No, LC, not hyperbole. Just an inappropriate response left over from an abusive childhood in which I *did* have to go looking for blood to avoid taking shit – the only thing that would get my father to stand down before he escalated was a verbal barb in the style of his abusive mother (really sick family, I know, yes). Adults who were abused children typically have a range of “inappropriate responses” because instead of learning the social skills that work on decent people, we learned the social skills that work on psychos. That’s just an unfortunate reality of being an abused child, and one of our crosses to bear is the need to self-monitor the tendency to infer abuse where there is none, or assume a healthy relationship wherever abuse isn’t present.
It’s been a lot of years – well over 10 – since I said anything particularly cruel to anyone. I’ve never hit anyone in my life except for my father. So the tendencies are well under control – I can’t even remember the last time I yelled at someone.
But what I’m asking in the article is basically this: can people sense that when I refuse to take shit, it’s not a conditioned response but rather my gut instinct, my first thought? And does it scare them to detect that instinct in a woman whereas they would respect it in a man, because in a woman it seems misplaced (or so we’ve been taught to think)?
April 13th, 2009 at 10:19 am
I am also ‘intimidating’ to others. Yes, even without my glasses. Jennifer, you are absolutely right: most people *are* scared of women who do not sugarboat things. I call people out on their sexism, racism, and I get what I want or need — most of the time. And it also intimidates them that I am a WOC.
April 27th, 2009 at 9:48 pm
Love it! Love it! Love it!
I’m 51 and have been able to “create” fear in others, most of my life, with just a look. “The look” my family call it.
Many many times I have felt terribly ashamed and infeminine for having this ability as I rarely see other women able to excercise “back off” so efficiently.
Reading this today has made me feel enormously better about this skill and more understanding of how and why I am graced with it, indeed what an incredible bonus it is.
Having this skill has allowed me to successfully act as a licensed publican in a very gang orientated hotel, manage 70 children per day in an afterschool program, stop my pediphile father from further abuse even into my thirties, stop an ex-husband from attacking me or my children when he became violent with rage, sail single-handed for two years fulltime with two small children and exhilerate in the challenges.
You may wonder why I add the last one. Well it’s the personal characteristics that back up this “look” that give it such weight.
I am a hugely capable, intelligent, resourceful, considered, thoughtful, woman. And today, for the first time, I don’t mind being any of those things.
All my life I have felt I need to apologise and downplay that side of myself in order to be feminine. Now I see otherwise.
What a rollercoaster it has been to gain some self control over all of those things and to only apply “the sledge hammer” when it was needed.
I now know that others fear my capabilities because these makes them feel less about themselves. It has nothing to do with me. This is actually the first time I have ever spoken about myself this way. I usually defer to others because I know it gives them space to grow.
There is much power in love and kindness, generosity, gentleness, forbearance and all good things.
It is wonderful to have that but also have the ability to standup to those who would crush me or others in their pursuit of wrong.
Unfortunately the very challenge I offer, by being myself, to others causes them to confront themselves. A most difficult task for the irresponsible.
I thank God that he is my maker and perfecter and I can rest in the knowledge that he created me.
Wooohoooooo…Go God! He doesn’t make junk!!
If you have come this far …I salute you..:-)))
April 28th, 2009 at 6:51 pm
Joy-Mari Cloete, yes, and I think people are even more afraid of assertive women of color than assertive white women. It’s like the more submissive they assume you should be because of your place on the social ladder, the more frightening it is when you exhibit a sense of entitlement. Even if all you feel entitled to is basic dignity and general respect! What a sad world we live in, when you think about it that way.
PatsyJane, some people seem to believe a woman is supposed to AVOID mistreatment, not stand up for herself when it happens. I don’t care how “smart” you are, or what great “relationship choices” you make, unless you live under a rock, you are going to encounter personalities ranging from disrespectful to abusive. Every human being does. Either you let them push you around or you don’t, and anyone who suggests women should not stand up for themselves is, whether they mean to or not, suggesting that women should just take crap.
I don’t think anyone should take crap, and when we find non-violent ways of scaring off even the most abusive personalities, how wonderful is that?
October 11th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
Some people are just natural fighters. One sister and I naturally stand up for ourselves – we’re ornery and stubborn, while our other two siblings are more retiring. (Also, I’m not good at thinking on my feet, so I tend to just dig in to start with when confronted.)
I recently started going barefoot full time, fed up with shoes hurting my feet, and I am continually surprised by barefooting men on the internet commenting on how they put flip flops or moccasins on whenever anyone confronts them. I refuse to carry anything to put on, since I’d hate walking in them, and when I’m confronted, I talk my way through it. A lot of people give in too quickly and it makes it harder for them in the long run because it sets a precedent.
Standing up for yourself seems to have nothing to do with gender. Unless men are less good at it because they have less practice?
October 11th, 2009 at 10:56 pm
Some people are just natural fighters.
Maybe so. I tend to focus on nurture rather than nature (how we are products of our experience), but I guess genes most likely have some say in our personalities and how we tend to react. In other words, that two people with identical life experience might react differently to something at some point.
Standing up for yourself seems to have nothing to do with gender. Unless men are less good at it because they have less practice?
I believe we need challenges to grow and develop character. I often think privilege actually harms its recipients by enabling them to skip learning survival skills.
October 12th, 2009 at 10:35 am
I don’t think that I meant assertiveness was genetic (although yes, there may be some genetic components). I guess I didn’t realize how the expression sounded. I suspect that attachment and favouritism in early childhood has a lot to do with it. My less assertive siblings were the family favourites. And I’ve read that less favoured sibs tend to be more ambitious, so they’d be more likely to stand up for themselves, too.
But at the same time my more assertive sister and I are bigger boned, and there’s a relationship between body type and personality too.
Regardless, it can show up very early in a person’s personality. I guess that’s what I meant by natural.
October 13th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
I agree with you on so many levels. It doesn’t always happen, but once in a while I am glad that I hadn’t always had an easy life. And it teaches me empathy with those who are less privileged than I.