I Feel Like a Man in a Lingerie Store
By: Stark Raving
Tags: Urbanism, Relationships, Women, Feminism, Equality

I Feel Like a Man in a Lingerie Store

In Most Public Space, women are made to feel out of place, judged, excluded.

Photo by Ron Jake Roque on Unsplash

My former boyfriend never fully understood what I meant when I said that I, like many women, am made to feel out of place in vast portions of public space. From streets where I am catcalled, to gyms where I am mansplained, to offices where I am interrupted, he didn’t see the mechanisms at play to remind women they are not where they “should” be.

And then, I took him bra shopping. I wasn’t intending to make him uncomfortable, but considering he had a vested interest in my sexy lingerie I thought he wouldn’t mind tagging along. Generally, his attitude in front of bras is a positive one, although sometimes removing them stumps him to such an extent I feel like I have put him in front of a wooden puzzle box that requires 160 individual moves to reveal its contents.

Yet in that bra shop, both of us were taken aback by how bad he felt. Self-conscious, like all eyes were on him, like everyone was looking at him and thinking he shouldn’t be there.

This was the first time when I could get him to understand, though on a far lesser level, how I feel so often when I’m out and about the town.

Geographers have studied how both genders feel and behave in public space, and it is revealing just how ingrained the idea is that women’s place is in the home — how deeply etched it is into our towns and outside spaces.

Yves Raibaud, a geographer specialized in male and female inequalities in the urban space, explained to me that women and men don’t use the town in the same way. Men are to be found in cafés, sports stadiums, in streets, and spend a lot of time lingering. Women come and go to specific places, for specific errands: shops, supermarkets, schools or playgrounds.

“Of course, many women are now demanding a different use of the city, and occupying space more freely, but its is done at their own risk and peril, because the urban space is still controlled by men and can be hostile, or even dangerous.”

Taking one example, Raibaud explained how street harassment marks the outside space as masculine, sending women the message that they do not belong.

“Street harassment isn’t just a few sexually frustrated individuals, it’s a masculine culture that has deep roots. Often, parents anticipate urban violence and warn their adolescent girls about the dangers they face. Sometimes they even exaggerate the actual risks. Which means when a woman gets attacked in the street, a lot of people assume she wasn’t careful, that she was looking for it.”

I was glad that my bf could finally get a tiny glimpse of how I feel everyday — but of course, the bra shop analogy is limited. The difference, of course, is that it has very little impact on the lives of most cis-men if they chose not to enter bra stores. If I opt-out of going to all the spaces I am made to feel uncomfortable in … well, let’s just stay thank god for Netflix, cos that would be a lot of time indoors.

Plus, many of the ways in which we are excluded from public space are openly violent: cat-calling, harassment, risk of rape.

It’s not quite the same as a vast quantity of lace sending my bf the message that he doesn’t quite belong.