Melissa McEwan on how for some women, not being harassed on the streets by assholes like they see happening to other women makes them question their own self worth, even though they’re fully aware that this harassement is not in any way desirable:
It’s a terrible predicament, this place of horrible and shameful “envy,” that most women (especially feminist women) probably experience at one time or another during their lives. An older woman finally free of being hit on and cat-called and told to smile may suddenly “miss” the harassment the despised, because its void is not born of a long-sought respect, but of a silent commentary on her diminished worth as a sex object per the Patriarchy’s horseshit standards. Two female friends of different races might alternately “envy” each other for the unique forms of objectification by which they’re respectively targeted: She gets harassed by people who ignore me because she looks like the Girl Next Door. She gets harassed by people who ignore me because she looks Exotic. Etc.