I Feel Like a Man in a Lingerie Store
In Most Public Space, women are made to feel out of place, judged, excluded.
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.”
