Catherine has written regularly about the harassment she faces from random assholes on the street–guys cat-calling or yelling out all sorts of sexually explicit, aggressive, and violent things at her as she walks around. Her experience, sadly, is far from unusual–it happens to women all the time. It happens often enough when I’m walking with a female friend (or even in a group with both genders), at any time of day, in any populated area. I shudder to think about how it goes for women alone in sketchy areas at night. It’s not just winos in alleys (although it is them); it’s not just construction workers (them, too); it’s not just drunk teenagers and college students (although man, it seems like they comprise the gross majority of harassers); it’s dickheads from all walks of life.
If I were a woman, the prospect of being subjected to this kind of abuse (or, worse, the kind of abuse it forebodes) would scare the hell out of me. I wouldn’t feel safe. And the fact that for half of my friends and family this is not idle, hypothetical speculation–that it is, for all women, a very real problem–that really horrifies me.
This is all compounded, in Catherine’s case and that of other people who’ve written about this on their blogs, by the seriously idiotic harassment of misogynist commenters who swing by just to essentially reinforce the impression that men, especially men masked by anonymnity, are clueless and/or malicious jerks.
The internet commentary runs the gamut from well-meaning (e.g., “you should take it as a compliment–they think you’re attractive” or “dealing with the occasional jerk is par for the course in a big city”) to ignorant (“This is caused by a small minority of men“) to delusional AND misogynistic (“Now if she really wanted to teach this kid a lesson she would have walked up to him and said if you ever want to see, and touch big beautiful breasts like mine you better learn how to talk to a woman properly, saying nice titties will not get you the titties.“).
There are plenty more examples out there–the ones I linked came from a more or less random scan of this Yglesias post (some fun comments also available at an earlier post of Catherine’s here. What I find most amazing about the comments that attack or undermine the suggestion that street harassment is a serious problem is: how can anyone seriously argue that? Sometimes it’s relatively mild (a whistle or a suggestion that a woman “smile!”), sometimes it’s vile (“nice tits” or much worse), but in every case it’s objectifying, childish, insulting, and shameful. It reflects so poorly on men that this kind of behavior seems acceptable (or even admirable) to any of us–and it’s so much worse that the general reaction online from men seems to be condescension or an echo chamber of chauvinism.
I mean, I’m hardly the most sensitive guy in the world, and this stuff makes me crazy. I think of my female friends, and how much bullshit they have to put up with because this behavior is generally tolerated, and now I go online and read about how it’s women’s fault because they aren’t coming up with good enough ways of repelling it? That is seriously fucking stupid, my internet friend.
I don’t know how to fix street harassment. But I think that writing about the phenomenon, over and over and over again, does at least confront people with the fact that it’s not a rarity, it’s not limited to bad neighborhoods, it’s not women’s fault, and it’s not okay.
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