[lisarea]

That's one of the reasons I love those seemingly repetitive user-contributed things about street harassments and everyday sexisms, and why I will always always signal boost them when and wherever I get a chance.

Whenever I'd try to tell someone about the type of harassment that I'd experienced somewhere, I'd run into people who were skeptical at least. Either they thought I was making things up or exaggerating them, or that I was somehow doing something to cause it. Not just from men, as expected, but also from women who hadn't had those experiences for whatever reason.

You can't really conclude a whole lot about 'American culture.' That's like talking about 'European culture.' We have a bunch of different cultures and climates in the US, so things that happen in New York City might not make sense to someone from Salt Lake City, and vice versa. Different sexisms, different racisms, different classisms. And just your regular routine makes a big difference too. In the same geographic area, I'd have very different daily experiences when I was working in an isolated area, commuting by car vs. when I was working in a downtown area and taking public transportation and walking.

AND OMG also with microaggressions like that lavaballing or that thing where dudes will just move you like you're an inanimate object. I just stopped even telling people about that sort of thing at some point because nobody ever believed it. That incredulousness is a pretty good technique for getting people to shut up and to internalize the problem.

People are always going to be skeptical and dismissive of things that fall outside of their experiences. That's just human nature. So the only way to get people to see and understand that other people really are dealing with those sorts of things is by having people tell their stories over and over again until they finally start to become one of those things that everyone knows about, sort of the way people "know" things about living in NYC or Los Angeles even if they've never been there.