The video we've all seen this week.
A few days after this came out, I got an email from a friend asking me to explain the problem that this video is pointing to. They didn't get why these men hitting on this woman was a bad thing, or why Hollaback! is calling for this type of behavior to become illegal. So they asked me for my opinion. When I got the email, I blinked, stared at the wall, felt a lot of feelings, and had no words to explain what I was feeling. It's just a feeling you get! But after thinking it through, this is the response that I gave...
::start of email::
Why is this street harassment? Why, over the years, has saying "Have a nice night, miss" gone from being an accepted courtesy to an intimidating harassment that people are trying to call illegal? Why is this type of behavior called street harassment largely on the east and west coast, but not as much in the mid-west? What about our culture in this part of the world makes this unacceptable? I believe it is truly an anthropological question and I do not know the complete answer. But I do know something.
What I do know is that myself and other women who live in women-forward, anti-patriarchal, liberal settings feel a number of things when this behavior happens repeatedly... We feel creeped out, sexualized instead of respected, made to feel like we need to hide our beauty so we don't have it pointed out in public, we feel physically intimidated, we get yelled at for not responding in the way that the "harasser" wants us to respond, we are told that we need to smile and appreciate their unwelcome sleazy comments... For women who have been attacked, raped, grabbed on the street, molested on the subway or any other place, this type of behavior is very intimidating and you never know where it is going to lead. Some men are downright mean when you don't play into the script in their head. But in no way is this behavior respecting who the woman is, what her power is, her intelligence, and what her story is.
Some of the comments seem innocent enough, as the first scene in this video shows. "How are you doing today?" is the first comment she gets. There doesn't seem anything wrong with that, except for the comments that come directly after that, which narrate the intent of the first call. These comments make women feel really on edge, uncomfortable, being demanded of... it makes her feel like no matter how she is feeling, she needs to smile in order to please these men's moods. Why is it that someone telling me to smile pisses me off? Because it is ok for me not to be in the mood to smile because I have my own thoughts/feelings running through my head. These men don't ever tell other men on the street to smile. They don't call out anything to other men. There is a parody video to this original video, which exaggerates the respect, admiration, and privilege of men in our society. I'm not going to include it here because that can open a whole separate conversation, but I mention it because men showing respect looks different than how men cat call these women. Catcalls are not the kind of respect or attention that these women want, including myself.
Zooming out a bit, this behavior still falls into the story that women need to please men's wants whenever they are told to. And women are rebelling against that, and against the patriarchy that envelops that ideology. Men take it upon themselves to assume power in a relationship. "Smile." "You should be grateful when someone says you're pretty." All of this is demanding and points to their wants/desires, and has nothing to do with meeting women on an equal playing field, treating her like an equal human who has her own complex thoughts, talents, desires, fears, and lifestyles. And when I think of the progressiveness of the coastal cities, and the movement to even the playing fields between men and women in those cities, it makes sense that women living in progressive areas are finding this offensive, while people living in more conservative, patriarchal landscapes think it is the norm.
A lot of the comments in the video (and in real life) over sexualize the relationship between the man and the woman. And even when they seem innocent, that feeling of being sexualized is creepy. And by creepy, I mean it is unwanted pointed attention. If a man I liked romantically told me that my ass looked hot, I'd be way into that. But a stranger on the street saying that is completely unwelcome. I am so much more than my ass and I don't want the start of any interaction with a man to be that sexualized.
In response to you saying that they are simply hitting on her... This is not a safe way of hitting on someone. I don't know quite the words to describe it. Because of course it's nice to be called beautiful in some circumstances, but when it comes to walking around the streets, being gawked at, looked up and down by strangers, commented on... its embarrassing, unwanted, and it makes us want to hide.
The history of this kind of argument has been repeated in other settings. While I was talking with Patricia about this topic this morning, she pointed out that workplace sexual harassment used to be dismissed as well. Women were told to "get over it" when their butts were grabbed in the office or men made comments about their boobs, and were told that they should be grateful for the compliment. The conversation around workplace sexual harassment started with voices speaking up and ended with that behavior being called illegal. Will that happen now? The conversation has started. How do we want to respect one another? What kind of future do we want our daughters to live in? Each generation of feminists finds their own fight to fight, building off of the one before it, or knocking it down and rebuilding it another way. This video has gone viral because it resonates with so many and baffles so many others.
The woman shown in the video has already received rape and death threats from men all over since the posting of the video. This was unfortunately not unforeseen, as it is the case that when you speak up after you are hurt, the one who hurt you hates you more. This is a textbook pattern for all sexual harassment and is the case again today. Do we cower, too scared to have our voice heard because of the repercussions or do we speak up even when our voices shake?
....and that is my answer. I hope it helped at least a little.
::end of email::
I then hopped back on the internet and this video scrolled by me. It is a video of a man telling a women about how they should feel about being catcalled on the streets. This is called "Mansplaining" where I come from.
And if you are really interested in the video called "10 hours of walking in NYC as a white man," you can find it here:
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/8aeb78deb2/10-hours-of-walking-in-nyc-as-a-man
