Hey, remember that time I got mistaken for a hooker?
http://judgybitch.com/2012/12/04/slouchy-hats-for-hookers-5/
So yesterday afternoon, I was walking to the shopping district, not right along the strip but a few streets over because I wanted to cross a little footbridge and stop to admire the river frozen in an embrace of willows crusted with snow.
It’s so pretty!
At the far end of the footbridge, I came across a young woman collapsed unconscious in a bank of snow. She was wearing jeans and trainers, a light grey bomber jacket and a hoodie. No mittens and no hat. Dressed marginally, but not appropriately for the weather. Oh, she was also clearly part of racial group that doesn’t get a lot of good press around these parts.
How did she come to be in the snow? I have no idea. It looked like a substance abuse issue, but I left the house without my toxicology kit, so I couldn’t be sure. Maybe she was hit by a car and had been tossed into the snow. Maybe she had some kind of health issue and had come to see the pretty river, just like me, and had collapsed. Maybe she was seriously injured under that bomber jacket. I couldn’t tell.
And neither could the other three people who walked by me, looked at the woman in the snow, and just kept walking.
Jesus Christ, people! This isn’t Manhattan! This is a small town, where we supposedly care about each other!
The probability is that the young woman was drunk or drugged out of her mind, she was dressed lightly because she is a sex worker on the strip and she had passed out in the middle of the day. Regardless of any of the above, do you know what happens when people fall unconscious into snow?
THEY FREEZE TO DEATH.
I called for an ambulance, obviously. And I stayed beside her, waiting. She was too big for me to move out of the bank and onto the footpath, and I didn’t think that was a good idea anyways, in case she was injured. After a few moments, a large black SUV pulled up and two uniformed police officers got out, and they asked me if I had made the call.
“Yes,” I told them, “but I called for an ambulance, not the police!” Turns out that someone else had seen the woman in the snow and had called the POLICE and then just left her there.
Let’s see. A young woman has collapsed into a snow bank, she is unconscious and at a very real risk of dying from hypothermia and YOU CALL THE POLICE and then just walk away?
I hate when people say “never judge someone else until you have walked a mile in their shoes”. Oh, bullshit. I can judge everyone and everything, and I do, obviously.
Watch this: whoever saw a young, inappropriately dressed young woman passed out in the snow, called the POLICE and then walked away: YOU’RE AN ASSHOLE. I don’t give a shit what you’ve been through.
Judging other people for the stupid, thoughtless, selfish, cruel, idiotic things they do doesn’t come at the expense of their humanity. No matter who you are, and what you’ve done, I will pretty much assume it doesn’t warrant a death penalty (I don’t think ANYTHING warrants a death penalty, but that’s another story) and if I come across you in a snowbank, I will call an ambulance. And I will stay beside you until I know you are safe.
So what happened? Why did normally caring people turn into a pack of heartless bastards when they saw this woman? Her racial background had something to do with it, I’m sure. The assumption (probably reasonable) that she was a hooker had even more to do with it. Add to that the guess that she was either drunk or high and suddenly no one gives a shit if she lives or dies.
That’s a lot of issues all tangled up together. Her racial identity, her occupation, her addictions. Just another dead hooker.
The common narrative around sex workers is that they are victims in need of rescuing, and plenty of sex workers are pushing back against that description. “Nothing for us without us” is the rallying cry. I’ve argued before stigma is what really hurts sex workers, and that addicted, trafficked, poor sex workers are a problem because they are addicted, trafficked and poor, not because they are sex workers.
http://judgybitch.com/2012/11/11/can-we-please-stop-confusing-prostitute-and-drug-addict/
It turns out that sex workers ARE victims. Victims of a society that doesn’t care if they live or die. Victims of cruel contempt, and utter indifference. They live in a world that will walk past them on a cold, snowy day and leave them to freeze. And that sword is double edged. When the world stops caring about the most vulnerable among us, we have shattered ourselves.
Your own soul is nourished when you are kind; it is destroyed when you are cruel.
King Solomon
Calling out people for being idiots, as I do on this blog isn’t cruel. Walking past a young woman freezing to death in the snow? That’s cruel. And yes, I’ll judge you for that, and not in a nice way, either. I’ll be a right bitch about it.
Lots of love,
JB
judgybitch 
Something like this happened to me a few months back.
I was walking home from work at about 3 AM in a major Southern US city. The evening was warm enough that I didn’t even bother with a jacket. Some construction issues forced me to walk down a darkened street I had never been on before. I happened upon an unconscious half-naked white girl, about 25-ish, half on the sidewalk and half in the street. Her body was wrapped around the right front tire of a new, shiny cranberry Suburu in such a fashion that, had someone driven off in the car, her legs, pelvis and skull would have been crushed. A set of Suburu car keys rested on the sidewalk about a foot from her exposed ass.
She was well fed and looked healthy and what little clothing she had on looked new, so she was likely no more of a hooker than the average attractive woman her age. So, hooker.
For a man to assist a woman in her condition the dangers were quite real to me – what if she woke up and started screaming rape as the cops were walking up? What if she were a feminist performing some sort of slut-walk street theater to “educate” men on why they shouldn’t notice naked, helpless women?
Nevertheless, I’d rather feel like a fool than a shitheel, so I managed to flag down the lone car driving on the street (a taxi cab), borrowed the driver’s cell (he was likely an illegal African immigrant and didn’t want to involve himself with the police), and called for help.
The police arrived within 5 minutes (we were about 6 blocks away from a police substation). The first thing they tried to do was size me up as a VAWA batterer – “are you with this woman?” No sir, never saw her before, I happened upon her as I was walking home. Despite his misgivings, the cab driver had also stayed, and even vouched for me to the cops.
The police managed to rouse the girl, who was too fucked up to do more than grunt in response to their questions. I gave the police my work and home contact information, and they allowed me to complete the short walk home.
The next day at 9 AM as I walked back to work, the cranberry Suburu was gone. I’ve had no further contact with any of the other people in this account.
Now, if I had somehow magically known that the girl was a feminist who advocated the killing of men, regularly filed false rape charges against them, enjoyed bilking them out of their money and detested even so much as riding in an elevator with them, should I have still called for her aid?
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who cares? i think lot of those rich feminists can come (may be gloria steinam/ariana huffington.writers on hupo/jezebel ) and help their sisters..or may be divorce lawyers,govt workers,feminist judges,senators,congressmen ,journalists can come and help…i mean to say i am always villianized because i am male…why do i care?nobody cares for me…not the media,govt,law,cops….
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Yes. Always. Sometimes you have to be the better person, and you do it because it’s how you know you’re human.
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No way. I can’t agree with this. While institutions may not care, most individuals on the street will and SHOULD help you if you are obviously suffering.
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We’ll have to agree to disagree on this one, JB. Although I would feel like a shitheel for abandoning her, after a certain number of brutal betrayals, it is natural and appropriate to decide to decline aid to a betrayer. Feminism has shattered the social contract, and maintaining the old, dead social obligations just because it used to be the right thing to do makes less and less sense every day.
Let’s say that as a result of stopping to help me aid that woman, the African cabbie was arrested, separated from his family, deported and killed, and perhaps his family perished as well. Judging him harshly despite what he and his kids were facing seems like male disposabilty written with large, bold type. At some point the stupid lack of responsibility by a drunken, privileged girl has to be considered, too.
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JB, this is why I hate people (though I don’t hate individuals).
That’s right. I hate people. And I’m a nurse. But I’m a good nurse (well, when I was nursin’ obviously, which isn’t right now), who treated every patient like a human being with a right to proper care.
The rest of the story you didn’t see: She probably went into the hospital and was treated like absolute crap by the medical staff for your aforementioned reasons.
Reminds me of the first patient I had who was a drug addict with cellulitis, contracted from using saliva in his or her (anonymity, that) injection site. When I got my report, I received the ‘low down’: “this person got cellulitis this way I have no sympathy…I have people with real problems….blah, blah, blah.”
90 percent of all patients “create their own problems”. Almost always, they eat too damned much. Ssid nurse would have sympathy for a 36 year old female so fat she brought on her own diabetes and so lazy with her own treatment she was a double amputee already, but not a drug addict. Wash, rinse, repeat the last situation and put it in another context with another similar person…ad nauseum ect. for years. I’ve worked in rehab, the ER, the medical/surgical unit it’s always the same. Occasionally you get a good medical professional who doesn’t offer a personal judgement but it’s rare.
People suck.
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Ok. Maybe. But this was no privileged white girl. She was considered disposable, too. Already so harshly maligned by society and quite literally left by both men and women to die in a snowbank.
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Hey, I’m OK with the judgement. Judge away. But do your job.
I don’t mean you, personally, Liz. Sounds like you did your job without the judgement either.
Now that’s rare indeed.
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Thanks JB. And thanks for letting me rant.
And (seriously) thanks for saving that poor girl. Hopefully things will turn around for her…you did the right thing either way.
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Wouldn’t really blame the caller, police are “first responders”, and it could have been a crime scene. And ultimately the dispatcher decides what is appropriate. Would waiting have been nicer? Maybe…personally if I was passed out I’d rather not have random people hanging around
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Sounds a lot like what psychologists call the bystander effect to me. There was the story of a woman who was raped and stabbed to death back in the 60s while over thirty witnesses stood by and watched. Not one of them tried to intervene or call the cops. One psychologist theorized that in modern society when groups get big enough people assume that another person will take care of it. So they never end up being “that guy” who steps in to take action.
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OK, you can call yourself a JudgyBitch, but I think you are what it means to be a real human being. You have the courage to show compassion when it belongs and thrust your face into anyone who deserves to have his chain yanked. Good on ya!
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You, lady, are fucking awesome.
And cute!
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Ok, I have a question. Is there a specific number for ambulances? I’ve always thought you just call 911 and ask for an ambulance. And, was the girl alright?
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You’re thinking of kitty Genoese, and it didn’t happen that way. She was in an alley, and early in the attack she was stabbed in the lung and wouldn’t have been able to make much noise.
Regardless, although I don’t agree with any of that white privilege bullshit, you do have the advantage of being educated and safe and law abiding, and you do t really understand what society is putting up with while this girl walks the streets.
The reason others ignored this girl is because she is a parasite on society and she will turn on you the second you let her.
Most people here in Canada support the death penalty because part of intelligence and behaviour is genetic, and wiping out those leaches makes for a healthy law abiding – oh wait – kind of like the society the west mostly has right now, which is getting shittier because of immigration by people who aren’t as law abiding or nice.
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So? That justifies leaving someone to freeze to death in a snowbank?
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