The Hatpin Peril (2014)

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/hatpin-peril-terrorized-men-who-couldnt-handle-20th-century-woman-180951219/

by danbolt • 6 years ago

39 69 6 years ago

"When he lifted his arm and draped it low across her back, Leoti had enough. In a move that would thrill victim of modern-day subway harassment, she reached for her hatpin—nearly a foot long—and plunged it into the meat of the man’s arm. He let out a terrible scream and left the coach at the next stop."

Although what the man did is inappropriate, stabbing him seems excessive. She could've first asked him to stop.

"A Chicago showgirl, bothered by a masher’s “insulting questions,” beat him in the face with her umbrella until he staggered away."

Again, seems excessive. Why not just tell him off and walk away?

"Such stories were notable not only for their frequency but also for their laudatory tone; for the first time, women who fought back against harassers were regarded as heroes rather than comic characters, as subjects rather than objects. Society was transitioning, slowly but surely, from expecting and advocating female dependence on men to recognizing their desire and ability to defend themselves."

I would say this is more than self defense. The examples given are overreactions that would be prosecuted as crimes under most circumstances.

quickthrowman• 6 years ago

You do understand that women were not allowed to vote during the hatpin panic, right?

Perhaps that fact will provide some context as to why women were stabbing men with hatpins for sexually assaulting them. They didn’t have the same rights that men did!

epicureanideal5• 6 years ago

Yes, but that doesn't make it any more reasonable to beat someone in the face with an umbrella for saying something you don't like...

Also, as a separate point, it was only in 1868 that all men were able to vote in the United States, although it seems most men could vote by the 1820s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_voting_rights_in_t...

Would it have been acceptable for a non-property-holding white male in 1820 to beat another man with a stick if the other man offended him, on the basis of the first man lacking voting rights?

jschwartzi3• 6 years ago

You're assuming that women and men are on equal footing, physically. When you politely ask someone to stop invading your space, it's backed by your ability to push them out of it.

If you're 6'2" and the other guy is 6'2" you're on pretty even footing. But if you're 5'1" and the guy is 6'2" you're not on even footing and shouldn't be expected to act like you are.

This is to say nothing of how physically intimidating it is for someone to just enter your personal space like that. And when you're in an enclosed space like a carriage, you have no escape route. So in my mind stabbing the guy in the arm was pretty mellow. There's no telling where things would have gone from there.

If you're at all concerned about getting stabbed in the arm, maybe get to know the other person before you invade their space.

epicureanideal5• 6 years ago

I think stabbing someone has a very high chance of making the situation far more dangerous than just asking the person to stop.

Also, it has been true for centuries that a woman screaming "help!" would draw the attention of all the men in the area (for example the carriage driver in this case) who would be eager to beat the other man to a pulp if he didn't stop harassing her.

Women and children first into the lifeboats, remember? Most men do care about women as a class and even elevate their care for them above their concern for themselves.

Also, although people might give a 5'1" man some leeway regarding using a stick against a 6'2" man if the 6'2" man attacked him first, I don't think anyone would find it acceptable for the 5'1" man to INITIATE the violence using a weapon merely because of the POSSIBILITY that the larger man might attack him.

If you're in a bar and a large man says something insulting to you, do you just skip to attacking him because, if you say something insulting back he might attack you? If you do, I'm pretty sure you're the one who will be charged with a crime.

You know, sometimes people who ask for directions then demand your wallet. Should I just attack everyone who approaches me for directions, because they might be a thief?

Sniffnoy• 6 years ago

You're assuming that women and men are on equal footing, physically. When you politely ask someone to stop invading your space, it's backed by your ability to push them out of it.

Disagre; it's generally backed by one's ability to raise a stink and possibly even call the police. That is to say, it relies on the force you can summon from having people (whether bystanders or professionals) recognize that you're in the right and rally to join you, not your own personal capacity for force.

Igelau4• 6 years ago

an enclosed space like a carriage, you have no escape route

You make it sound like she was cornered and in mortal danger. The carriage was crowded with people. Yes, he was (likely) a creepy dirtbag who deserved to be punished. STABBING SOMEONE WITH A FOOT OF SHARP STEEL IS NOT "MELLOW"! It's nuclear. You either have a frightfully diminished understanding of the potential lethality of stabbing someone, or you have a psychotically draconian image of justice.

crooked-v2• 6 years ago

Why not just tell him off and walk away?

It's very simple to find many, many anecdotal cases where doing this does exactly zilch to actual stop harassment, and sometimes instead results in a man aggressively insulting and harassing the woman for daring to refuse his attention.

epicureanideal5• 6 years ago

Okay, but it's reasonable to at least attempt it before bashing or stabbing someone, right?

The same thing could be said about many circumstances.

Just because a non-violent attempt to defuse the situation doesn't work in 100% of cases doesn't mean it is okay to skip attempting it, and jump straight to stabbing or bashing someone.

mlthoughts20183• 6 years ago

Responding by STABBING someone, as a measure of first defense, is ludicrous, disproportionate, and far more immoral than the harassment leading to it.

The harassment is ALSO TERRIBLE. Just not STABBINGLY so.

jschwartzi3• 6 years ago

You should consider it from the point of view of someone who is very vulnerable to assault, who is not at all on an even footing with her potential assailant, and who is in a confined and semi-private space with her assailant. Stabbing someone who invades your personal space slowly over the course of the trip, culminating in putting their arm around your shoulders. As a man I would start throwing elbows, but stabbing the guy with a hat pin seems pretty understandable in those circumstances too.

Igelau4• 6 years ago

Considering the state of medicine in 1903, there's a good chance he lost the arm or died.

CarbyAu5• 6 years ago

We have no concrete knowledge so we're both guessing.

But have a look at history and you'll see that not every kid who skinned a knee got some horrendous complication. Chances are he didn't either.

Also, he didn't get stabbed with a broadsword, it was a hatpin. While we don't know, chances are he was fine.

lolc2• 6 years ago

The problem at the time was that those behaviours were acknowledged to be inappropriate but addressing them verbally did not stop the perpetrators from repeating. The threat of unmediated violence changed the risk profile of the action.

Also, you may not have this expectation yourself, but society at the time would not be surprised to see a male in a similar situation react with at least the threat of violence. In this view females just normalized their behaviour in public.

jasonv• 6 years ago

I don't read the article as necessarily defending the practice -- it talks about the mores of the time and why this might have been happening with more frequency for a spell. The article also notes that the practice dissipated as daily fashion trends shifted.

oh_sigh2• 6 years ago

She could've first asked him to stop.

Maybe the masher could have just asked her to stop stabbing him instead?

save_ferris• 6 years ago

She could've first asked him to stop.

Sure, she could've. But how many times do you think she'd tried that in other circumstances with success?

If you intentionally violate someone else's personal space, particularly with sexual intentions directed at a member of the opposite sex, you really have no right to assume an equally measured response, especially if you're the physically dominant one.

The moment you decide that it's OK to touch someone inappropriately, you really have no standing to argue over the severity of the response. Let the court decide that one.

fxtentacle4• 6 years ago

Wow, this comment got downvoted into oblivion really quick. It doesn't read as insensitive or provocative to me. I was hoping that people on HN would have the mental ability to tolerate an opinion that they disagree with and engage it with counter-arguments. But apparently, we're canceling unwanted ideas instead.

If I remember correctly, a downvote is for spam, attacks, or other things unrelated to the discussion, not for disagreeing with someone.

cosmojg2• 6 years ago

There are other communities with very similar content that have fixed this problem.

See: https://lobste.rs/ and https://tildes.net/

oska• 6 years ago

You're applying the standards of today to the past i.e. 100+ years ago. That never works. "The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there." The only standard you can use is how behaviour was judged contemporaneously.

deeblering4• 6 years ago

Reminds me of a comedian who said “if I have $1000 dollars in my pocket while walking home at night, I have something that another man wants to take from me and it makes me feel scared. This is how it must feel to be a woman all the time, always having something that another man wants to take from you.”

I’m paraphrasing, but I thought this was an interesting perspective into a kind of vulnerability that a lot of men probably hadn’t thought about.

ramoneguru• 6 years ago

Dave Chapelle - Bird Revelation.

I used to do shows for drug dealers that wanted to clean their money up. One time I did a real good set, and these motherf--kers called me into the back room. They gave me $25,000 in cash […] I jumped on the subway and started heading towards Brooklyn at one o’clock in the morning. Never been that terrified in my life. I’d never in my life had something that somebody else would want. I thought to myself, “Jesus Christ, if motherf--kers knew much money I had in this backpack, they’d kill me for it.” Then I thought: “Holy s00t, what if I had a pu--y on me all the time? That’s what women are dealing with.” […] If those same drug dealers gave me a pu--y and said, “Put it in your backpack and take it to Brooklyn,” I’d be like, “Ni--a, I can’t accept this.”

CarbyAu5• 6 years ago

While a good metaphor it still misses out easy identification. Women are often easily identifiable as such. Take that $25000 and strap it to the front of your chest...

not2b• 6 years ago

I'm sure than in almost all of these cases, the woman had already led the man know that she objected to his attacks (and groping a woman without permission is an attack), either verbally, nonverbally, or both, and the idiot persisted. I'm all for the "hatpin girls".

rimjongun2• 6 years ago

You’re sure? No you’re not. You couldn’t possibly be sure. Try again.

Igelau4• 6 years ago

Are you all for this?

https://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=SFC19030822.2.48&e=-...

dr_dshiv• 6 years ago

It was true, as social worker Jane Addams lamented, that “never before in civilization have such numbers of young girls been suddenly released from the protection of the home and permitted to walk unattended upon city streets and to work under alien roofs.”

Wow.

rimjongun2• 6 years ago

Maybe she was right

fxtentacle4• 6 years ago

This appears to be a topic that the HN community is unwilling to discuss neutrally.

danbolt• 6 years ago

What do you feel the ideal neutrality for this topic looks like on HN?

fxtentacle4• 6 years ago

For example, engaging epicureanideal's post with arguments showing his opinion to be wrong, instead of just hiding it with hundreds of downvotes. That post and its replies was like 90% of the discussion when I first checked, and now it's one light gray row at the bottom. As is, there isn't much of a discussing left in here.

itshardbeing• 6 years ago

In response to some comments:

If someone breaks down your door and enters your house, I (and I think most others) see nothing wrong with you defending yourself.

Why is it different here? It doesn't matter if their intention is to rob you or not.

scarmig2• 6 years ago

If an aggressive homeless person approaches me on the street and I'm not sure of his state of mind and intentions, should I be allowed to stab him?

nine_k2• 6 years ago

If you had a serious reason to see his actions as an attack that puts your life or health at risk, serious enough for the jury to believe you — well, yes. It's self-defense, and it does not matter whether the attacker is homeless.

totetsu• 6 years ago

Hat pins have some advantages, decent stats, light weight (don't need a special scabbard and you'll have one on you anyway to keep your hat on when flying) but they are of misc class, and your far better spending you EXP on another combat branch. https://dwwiki.mooo.com/wiki/Hatpin

mc32• 6 years ago

Obviously that was a sign of the times, so people found a way (people moving amongst semi anonymous crowds and policing not having caught up).

I think we are missing something in that today this kind of action would lead to a case in favor of the "people" (ie the complainant). But there are so many things that can be better handled by people defending themselves without having to fear a case against them. Like a home invader suing homeowners for something)

Obviously in a civilized society we expect people to behave so we have these tools of justice available to us, but in some cases, like these, I think this kind of action would serve to better deter uncivil behavior.

The Hatpin Peril (2014)

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