The other night while eating clam strips and fries at a baseball game with my mom, sister and one of my oldest friends, the topic of one of my ex-boyfriends came up. Psycho-Boy, as my friend and I affectionately refer to him, actually dated me for less than a month. However, the sending of presents and calling and talking to my father about how I wasn't giving him a chance, and he just loved me so much, why did I have to be that way went on for months.
When this came up, I looked at my Mom and said, "I cannot believe that in any way, shape or form Dad did not realize exactly how fucking creepy this guy calling HIM up to try to get me to give him another chance really was." But my Dad didn't get it. And I think it highlights a problem with the way our society, and the different genders, view stalking.
For starters, Hollywood constantly reinforces the idea of stalking as romantic, when men do it. Some Kind of Wonderful, Twilight, Management, The Graduate, There's Something About Mary, and a whole host of other movies with the determined, persistent, usually somewhat nerdy guy pursuing the girl of his dreams. However, when women do the stalking, we get Single White Female, Fatal Attraction, Swim Fan, The Hand that Rocks the Cradle and Obsessed, where the crazy bitch destroys the life of the object of her attentions, or tries to.*
So, we have this constant media barrage telling us that when guys stalk you, it's romantic, it's a compliment. However, in reality, it's anything but. In real life, women are stalked more frequently than men, and when stalked, women are far more likely to be attacked by their stalkers (same citation). Men are as likely to be stalked by other men as by women, but are far less likely to actually be attacked. Is it any wonder my Dad, living protected by his male status, had no idea how very creepy I found the idea of this guy calling and asking him to intercede on his behalf, driving the FOUR HOURS to leave presents on my doorstep so I would find them when I left for school at seven in the morning, or even just refusing to honor my request to not contact me or my family?
And another thing is, Psycho-Boy didn't LOOK like most people assume stalkers look. He was hot. Really hot. Built, tall, blonde, good-looking. He was a cop. Drove a hot car, came from a wealthy family. In no way did he resemble either the nebbishy doofuses of Hollywood rom-coms, or the creepy, poorly socialized weirdo loner of the popular imagination concerning what "real" stalkers look like. You know, kind of like how people look at attractive rapists and think, "He doesn't need to rape anyone." You never would have looked at this guy and thought "Total stalker."
Yet, after two years of NO CONTACT WHATSOEVER, when a mutual friend talked to him about me, his first question was, "Does she want to see me?"
Now, I've been stalked twice. Once by Psycho-Boy, and once by someone unknown. I have my suspicions, but the police never caught the person who attempted to break into my house on more than one occasion, kept unscrewing the lightbulb on my backporch and stole my underwear off my clothesline.
Stalking is terrifying, particularly if you're living alone. During the second stalking incident, which lasted well over a year, I didn't sleep more than two or three hours a night. I bought a gun and spent hours at the gun range. I had to sit in my car after pulling up to my house after dark, and psych myself up for the twenty foot dash to my front door, while studying the area around my house with the headlights on. On more than one occasion, I had a male friend come over and crash on my couch just so I could get SOME sleep. Unfortunately, at the time the dryer was broken, so I had to dry my clothes on the line in the backyard, but I quit hanging them up before I left for work with the intent of pulling them down when I got home.
After I moved back to Seattle and into an apartment with my husband who worked nights, I spent the next several months jerking awake at every sound in the hallway or outside our windows. I would get up three or four times a night to make sure the deadbolt was thrown. Thankfully, we were on the second floor so entrance through the windows was unlikely, but still...
Stalking is anything BUT romantic. At best, it's someone ignoring a woman's right to make her own decisions about with whom she wants to associate. At worst, it's someone hunting her like she's a prey animal and ends in violence. Either way, it has misogyny at its roots, and it needs to fucking stop. And Hollywood needs to quit romanticizing it.
*I can only think of a couple of movies with male stalkers that aren't serial killer movies: Cape Fear, Enough, these are the only two I could come up with off the top of my head.
Edited to Add: Someone on my personal blog recommended that I include a link to Gavin de Becker's Gift of Fear, which is a really great book on the topic. I've read it at the suggestion of a friend of mine, and in spite of the sort of self-help-y title, it's well worth a read.
Mickey Schulz is a guest author for the California NOW blog; her opinions are not necessarily those of California NOW. Copyright Mickey Schulz, with permission granted to California NOW for use on this site.
Comments