This morning the well-known DJ trio on one of our local radio stations treated us to an escapade suffered by one of them.
It seems he and his wife were by the car yesterday loading something into the trunk, when, as he put it, "everything just suddenly stopped" and his wife's eyes "went dead, like a shark's." She was staring down a nearby alley... then, he said, "suddenly the birds came out-- both of them." (I.e. middle finger salute, in stereo) While he was still registering this shock, he told us, there was a squealing of tires and two guys in a car came back out of the alley in reverse at a high rate of speed, and confronted them.
"What are you doing???" he yelled at his wife. "Are you nuts, starting it with two roughnecks like these???" and grabbed her by the arm and literally stuffed her into their car. "They looked at me," she said.
And all the DJs verbally shook their heads in disbelief on the morning show. "That's what guys do," they said. "They see a good-looking woman, they look at her."
And I was amazed at this utter and complete cluelessness on their part. There's only one 'look' that can cause a woman's eyes to "go dead, like a shark's": That Look.
How can I describe That Look? There's no word in the English language for it. We have the word "leer", but it doesn't fully express the impact it has on us. "Leer" implies "shady", but also "boys will be boys" to some extent.
That Look is nothing so innocent as the look of appreciation from the cute guy in the coffeeshop. When the cute guy admires you, there is at least the crinkle of a friendly smile about his eyes, if not a smile outright. That Look is nothing so respectful as the look your husband gives you when you don that new nightie (at least, if you have a healthy marriage).
No, That Look says: "I think you are scum," and adds a fillip of sexuality that promises to drag you, your sexuality, your very identity as a woman through sewage; to humiliate and degrade you, to grind you down into the slime until you can never stand up straight as a human being again. It is a dehumanizing look. It is the facial expression that goes with rape. Indeed, it's an expression that says, "I would like to rape you and abominate your sexuality so that you can never enjoy sex again, so that you will always feel filthy at the thought of sex."
So, for lack of a term at all, let alone a better term, I shall dub it "The Rape Eye".
Perhaps this is why rape was invented-- a tool to destroy women's love of sexuality (and themselves) in order to render them "chaste" (as if that were a rule that such men ever observed for themselves). I'm sure I'm ploughing over old ground that feminist philosophers have harrowed very thoroughly already, but the logic presents itself to me, so I must point it out.
And some will say to that, "oh, you're having an Andrea Dworkin moment." And I will say, "Behold, Andrea Dworkin-- Exhibit A that proves my point." For a perusal of her Wikipedia entry will reveal that this is precisely what happened to her. She was raped, beaten, terrorized, hunted and hounded all over Europe by her "boyfriend", until she was so traumatized at the thought of men, and sexual intercourse, that she concluded all sex was rape. I don't agree with her on that, and I think that it is tragic that the very idea of kind, loving sexual intercourse was so thoroughly extinguished in her. She was effectively castrated. And I think that's what rape is for-- a tool to break, shatter, castrate and emotionally cripple a woman.
And "the Rape Eye" is a nonverbal promise, or at least proposal, of such an act. Small wonder that the DJ's wife, raised in a generation of strong, fully equal women, should have flipped the bird to these guys. The DJ should thank his lucky stars she didn't have a gun.