Along the way she is complimented and greeted by many men (some 27 by my account, not nearly the 100 claimed.) Some of them even express their own insecurities, one gentleman asked, “do you think I’m ugly? I’m ugly right?”
Another walked alongside her hoping to catch her attention, she pays him no heed.
Not seen:
-Not once was she touched.
Some questions to consider:
Do people have the right to occupy public space without sharing it with other people?
IF you share public space with others, do they have the right to look at you? To greet you? Even to compliment the way you look?
I watched the 2-minute version that was posted. Presumably the 100 figure comes from the full ten hours. A couple guys were fairly aggressive. The guy walking right at her elbow for several minutes, for example, was being passive-aggressively dickish, and I absolutely understand her feeling threatened by it. Shouting “Smile!” at someone is assholish. Continuing to shout “Someone complimented you!” as though she owes you a response is even more assholish. The “Day-um!” and “hey mami!” comments are obnoxious.
Now. All that said, the majority of them shown weren’t, to my mind, being out of line. It’s hard for me to consider “Have a nice evening” as being a threat, when it stops there and isn’t accompanied by a leer or pinch or grope. The article itself labeled everything as “horrible harassment” and that seems way over the top to me. The comments in the thread itself were much worse than anything on the video, and that itself is a problem.
And all that said, I’m a straight white male. I fully understand that it’s difficult for me to put myself in her shoes, and I’m not trying to downplay her experiences that led her to make this video in the first place. But I do think if you’re going to present this topic with an attention grabbing headline, you may want to consider whether your content matches your title. From the headline, I expected explicit propositioning, slurs, gropes, and the like. What I saw was nowhere near there.
I don’t think anyone has the right to expect that no one talks to them as they walk down the street. I get asked for change, directions, the time, smokes, etc. all the time. So does everyone. Unless a reasonable person would find the request objectionable (“Sit on my face!”), then it doesn’t seem worth complaining about.
I watched that video (female here), and I had very mixed feelings. On the one hand, if you can’t deal with a stranger saying “have a nice evening, miss” in a friendly tone well outside your personal space, you need to not be in New York. On the other hand, the dude who walked right next to her like a close friend for five freaking minutes was fucking creepy as hell. Likewise all of the men who gave her shit for refusing to talk to them.
But I think the point of the video was that this shit happens all day long, all the damn time. There’s some guy on every block who wants to say “how you doin’?” and then gets pissy if you ignore him. Every one of these interactions demands that you put energy into your social shields and spend time and stress evaluating wether this particular loser is a threat. It’s exhausting.
It’s not about “rights,” as you put it in the OP. You can be an asshole, be intimidating, be inappropriate. It might be your “right” to do so, but it doesn’t make your actions unquestionable.
None of those comments towards her were compliments. They were all male attempts at asserting dominance over a female stranger. They are jerkish, threatening comments to their very core, and her response (or lack thereof) was not rude in the least. It was the only way to ensure her own comfort, and not engage with strangers who were attempting to enter into a power play with her.
I meant to post a thread on this question a while ago, and reading about this earlier in the paper reminded me again to ask:
I’m not trying to shift the blame here (well not a lot of it, anyway) but a lot of men seem to think talking to random women, with really fake-sounding friendliness (at best) is a winning strategy. Are all these men both horribly misguided and freakishly committed to this strategy, or does it actually work on some women, encouraging the men to continue?
Fortunately for you, The Daily Show performs a public service to educate folks such as yourself who are uncertain about how to behave in civil society in similar circumstances. Please watch and take notes.
Just like you’re ignoring me, I hope you’re ignoring the street walker too. She wants your attention, she wants you to think this is a big issue, don’t feed the street walker troll.
Exactly. Context makes it clear that it’s more than likely that “Have a nice evening,” is not just a guy being friendly to a stranger, but a guy targeting a woman he finds attractive in order to engage with her in a purely selfish, self-centered way.
And you never know how any given guy is going to react, no matter your response. I’d guess that probably 90+% of men would say “Have a nice day,” and on receiving a “Thanks, you too,” would just get on with their lives.
It’s the others, who take any response as an invitation to escalate the creep factor and follow along or whatever, who cause a lot of us to just ignore anything said to us that way. And then ignoring causes the insults and again, upping the creep/nasty factor. There’s no winning.
This type of harassment is in the eye of the harassee. You may not feel this was harassment, and I may not feel it was harassment (I think most, but not all was) but that doesn’t count for anything. What counts is how the person walking down the street feels about it.
Do you feel that someone just walking by owes you a response if you say something to them? Or do you think in this case it might have made the men think she was showing interest in them and they should pursue her more.
And “street walker”? Really? Talk about poisoning the well…
Mark
Why do you keep calling her a street walker? Why the need to insinuate that she is a prostitute? Are you that threatened/offended by the idea that women do not owe you an interaction whenever you want one?
As a 39 year old man, I have been catcalled once in my life (by a drunk woman) and given an out of the blue physical compliment by a stranger once (sober older man, presumbly gay). Neither of these were very disturbing, but that is 2 incidents in almost 40 years. And in both cases I had zero concern for my safety. I can’t imagine having it happen 10 times an hour, every where I go.
I have done customer servcice jobs. Being friendly to random strangers you would rather not interact with is eshausting and annoying enough when you are being paid for it. Having to do it just to walk down the street would get old fast.
