It’s a Scary Time for Men
Melbourne has been named the world’s most liveable city four years running. Liveable for who exactly?
A collaboration by two female graduates from the University of Melbourne: Maddie Spencer and Gabby Parker Capes
Rarely a month escapes without the name and face of yet another Melbournian woman killed in a senseless act of violence and dumped in a city parkland sprawls across the headlines. We’re talking about Masa Vukotic, Eurydice Dixon, Aiie Maasarwe, Natalina Angok and more recently, Courtney Herron.
Now a forum detailing the grooming methods enlisted by Melbournian men to lure “targets” and “jailbaits” as they have been referred, has surfaced.
The moderator of the predatory thread, aliased as “Sonderho”, compiles a carefully curated list of spaces he recommends consistently approaching women based upon his experience living in Melbourne’s CBD. Beneath each location, he derives an average rating out of ten for the appearance of the women who frequent those spaces.
Passive Daygaming is defined by Sonderho as “reading a book or doing work on your laptop in a cafe/library and only approaching when you see a target nearby.”
Meanwhile, Proactive Daygaming is where “you walk around until you find a target to open.”
Plan International Australia, alongside the XYX Lab have highlighted exactly how unsafe Australian women feel in their cities through their “Free to Be” project. Since the website reached our shores in 2018, “Free to Be” has obtained geographic data from Sydney and Melbourne based upon pinpoint locations marked by women as either safe or unsafe, with comments suggesting why they felt this way.
The crowdsourced 21,000 testimonials demonstrate that in venues with constant, heavy foot traffic such as public transport hubs, females experience heightened levels of distress and vulnerability. In Melbourne, these spaces are also synonymous with higher levels of harassment and abuse.
On a globalised scale, the “Free to Be” project substantiates that young Australian women feel more unsafe in their cities than their metropolitan counterparts living in Egypt, India, Pakistan and Nicaragua.
It’s easy to diminish forums such as these as innocent attempts for men to learn how to talk to women. In this case, however, the dialogue conveys a much more sinister undertone where women are dehumanised as animals. The moderator encourages men to situate themselves in crowded Melbourne venues to “stalk their prey”. Meanwhile, his conversational use of “daygaming” implies a hunting technique be exercised towards women on the streets; stalking out, assessing and finally pouncing on their prey. If the target escapes, the wild is full of others just like her; just keep trying “every five to twenty minutes”.
Comments defending the thread are remarkably patronising because they assume that women are incapable of critical thinking, specifically, that we are unable to make a distinction between harmless flirting from an awkward man with no game and more sinister harassment.
One commenter mockingly warns the original poster that it won’t be long before a “white knight” — a man who stands for gender equality and will swiftly defend a woman in need — comes to hunt him down.
This terminology proliferates outwards from the moderator’s initial post, and while heavily applauded within the forum, remarks such as these perpetuate a need for men to exude alpha-male tropes in order to be deserving of a woman’s attention. Alongside the “white knights”, the “cucks” and “betas” are listed as other types of men responsible for hunting all the good “game”. The same commenters herald football players for having women fawn over them at all times. Many of the thread’s contributors are rendered insecure and fragile owing to this distorted assertion of what it means to be masculine.
This vocabulary diminishes any sense of female agency, particularly the right for a woman to turn down flirtatious advances and say “no”. Agency, power and control are not inherent to the animals being hunted. But they are integral to the hunters.
To offset the distorted messages surrounding gender, the forum is equally as riddled with racially charged undertones. The moderator categorises women based upon their race, encouraging an onslaught of prejudice follow-up comments such as “the great Chinese buy up of the CBD is biting. The Euro-Anglo social scene is gone”. One commenter “JekyllandHyde” replies that the CBD is a goldmine for men seeking Asian FOB’s — an alliteration referencing immigrants Fresh Off the Boat.
Unnervingly, “JekyllandHyde” alludes to the gothic novella of the same name about a seemingly friendly scientist, Jekyll, and his mysterious and violent alter ego, Hyde. The term enters common vernacular with reference to individuals who possess an unpredictably dual nature: pleasant on the surface, and underneath, shockingly evil.
The University of Melbourne is referenced constantly throughout the thread. Popular studying hotspots including; the Baillieu Library, the Arts West Library, the Architecture Library and the Brownless Biomedical Library are cited as premium locations to target hordes of unassuming young women. The Gymnasium and Professors Walk Cafe were recognised among other, more recreational on-campus spaces.
“If you have an hour to spare, you can literally stay in the same spot during peak times and open a girl 5/10 or over every five to twenty minutes, with a low risk of running into the same girl you opened earlier. Just keep your eyes peeled in the event she backtracks and wait a little bit before opening the next girl”.
Interestingly, the thread is riddled with resentment towards many of the young women being pursued. While the moderator states that the University of Melbourne is the most “reliable area” to engage with women aged 18–24, this age group is “generally unreceptive to the cold approach, particularly local Australian girls.”
And who can blame them? Amongst the highly publicised attacks on women in Melbourne, it’s no wonder that local students are reluctant to engage in amorous conversation with strangers on campus.
Even the tangible spaces that young women operate within to study are objectively unsafe for women. University campuses across Melbourne are impaired by narrow alleyways that limit the flow of natural light, sporadic and dimly lit lamp posts and confusing signage that automatically puts female students on their guard. Women staying back late on campus to study (or indeed attending classes during the day) are already confronted by a magnitude of barriers that prevent them from feeling at ease. And this is without the knowledge that they are actively being preyed upon by the men around them.
The palpable sentiment of danger and fear amongst women in urban environments has been intensified by the recent shocking death of Courtney Herron, without the knowledge that forums such as this exist and attract large cult-like followings. The aforementioned locations are areas of Melbourne’s CBD that women frequent every day; shopping centres, universities and supermarkets. How are we supposed to feel safe when we are now aware of men lingering in these spaces? Judging, stalking, and waiting to prey on us?
One commenter provides an unintentional suggestion; reminding fellow hunters to check if their target is adorned with a wedding band or engagement ring before approaching.
Somewhere in Melbourne, a woman walks home late at night. Her house key wedged between her fingers, pushing against a fake engagement ring adorned for her own safety. ‘It’s just fake wedding jitters’ she convinces herself.
Wincing in anticipation while rounding a blind corner… ‘It’s a scary time for men’ she exhales.
[While writing this article in an airport café, I had not one but two men separately peer over my shoulder and ask to read it. Upon learning that it was merely a sarcastic title, they immediately became disinterested].
