I’m not suggesting you follow women around, I’m suggesting you, I don’t know, post on message boards stating you don’t catcall and think it’s gauche. Which you’ve done, so thanks. Raise your sons to respect women and your daughters to think themselves worthy of respect. Tell your friend at the bar he’s being an asshat if he harasses a woman there.
I don’t think most men are dicks. I think most men don’t see it. Part of that is because asshats tend to do this less when good men are around, but part of it is because of things like this:
People “accidentally” brush up against boobs when they reach in front of you in the produce section for a tomato in front of you instead of in front of them. They “accidentally” brush up against your ass when they’re following too close on the stairs. They “accidentally” touch women’s squishy bits in all sorts of ways they needn’t, in all kinds of ways.
Videos like this help you see it. Sharing them helps other men see it. When y’all start seeing it in real life is when you’ll develop better ideas for how to combat it.
If I’m walking down the street, or in a store, or waiting for a bus or wherever, and I make eye contact with someone, I’ll smile, or nod at them, or say “Good [CURRENT_TIME_OF_DAY]” to them, because I’ve been raised to understand that that’s a common courtesy that polite human beings pay to one another.
I never knew that I was harassing them by doing so.
Me neither, and yet it happens to every woman, apparently all the time. Again, that’s exactly the point.
You mean aside from the parts shot in midtown Manhattan, literally the most densely populated place in America? Or SoHo, which is basically Yuppieville?
The closest thing to low-rent in the video was the part of Harlem around the Apollo Theater, but as I’ve said that’s far from some slum; half the country has a lower median income than that zip code. (Awesome map from the Washington Post. Very entertaining.)
I’ve been to a lot of “world cities,” and there is a strong correlation to how much bullshit I get on the street and how that society treats women in general.
It’s not a coincidence that Delhi, Istanbul and Guatemala City are epicenters of both “guys yelling dumb stuff on the street at women” and “damn it sucks to be a woman here”, while Helsinki and Amsterdam tend not to have those problems as much. I have female friends in Istanbul who barely feel comfortable walking to the store due to the harassment. The shit happening in NYC is on that same continuum.
I lived in Cameroon, where a similar thing happens, and you can bet your buppy it annoys the hell out of the women there and when they get together, they complain about it. “Averting your gaze and not acknowledging” something is what you do when something is bothering you but there isn’t much you can do about it.
I would guess she finally chewed out the homeless guy because she knew he was likely to back down rather than escalate the situation or assault her.
Seriously, do you not have any empathy at all? Can you not imagine how annoying it must be to have five assholes making kissy noises at you while you are just going about your business?
Of course I don’t walk down the street sideways. But it’s easy for a guy to walk closer than is necessary and swing his arms and in so doing graze your ass with his hand. Oops, so sorry. Except a minute later, something brushes your ass again. And again. It’s also very easy to stand closer than is necessary in a crowd and oops, my arm just rubbed up against your breast. Oops, it just did it again. Sorry bout that. Or they stand behind you in a crowd and “stumble” so that their pelvis is against your ass. Or, as WhyNot says, they need to reach across you for something, and gosh darn it they have such bad depth perception. Didn’t mean to brush up against your chest like that. My bad.
The comments are more often something they say fairly low-pitched when there aren’t other people right up on the two of you. I mean, how easy it is to understand what someone’s saying five or ten feet away from you if they’re not speaking up? I’ve heard all kinds of nasty shit, ranging from “Go down the steps faster, I like watching your tits bounce” to “I could eat a meal off that ass.” When I was a teenager, some customers at work were asking if I was married or wanted to be, and when I said I was too young for that kind of thing, one of them said “Oh, it’d only be for about 15 minutes,” then leaned out of his booth, craned his neck at my butt, and added “Actually, make that half an hour.”
ETA: Every last one of the guys who have said shit like that to me was white, and most of them looked to be middle-class. The only black guy I’ve ever been hassled by never got any more disrespectful than calling me a racist because I wouldn’t go out with him.
Men and women brush up against me all the time. There’s a mutual “sorry” and we move on. While I have no doubt there are perverts out there who do this it’s not a great thrill to touch someone’s ass or boob .
Not sure where it took place but seems like there were a bunch of guys just standing around. Not waiting on a bus or the crosswalk light to change, just standing around. And I just can’t imagine someone deliberately pestering a woman by following her for 5 seconds let alone 5 minutes. That’s seriously messed up.
What’s interesting is that while I’m typing this a show just came on TV called Family Time. It’s on the Bounce network which is a black oriented network that bills itself as “TV our way”. The show starts with a black man sexually harassing another man’s wife right in front of him. It was the video in question all over again played back as a comedy. It could just as easily been the show 2 Broke Girls or a host of other comedies based on people with poor social skills.
Isn’t some of this hyper-awareness going to cause all kinds of attribution problems though (paranoia basically). I am a 41 year old suburban white guy and people brush up against me all the time at work and otherwise. I would have to be severely flattering myself if I chose to think that there is anything sexual about it rather than someone being rude or just in a hurry to get things done.
I don’t deny there are many men that are flat-out perverts but they are in the minority. I have been sexually harassed myself by a gay boss when I was in college although I didn’t take offense by it. My entire interview consisted of me walking, bending over and twirling while he commented on my moves. I got the job, an excellent one catering exclusive weddings that paid a whole lot more than anything else I could have gotten at the time. All I had to do was do my job and then go out with him and his friends after it was over all paid for. I am not gay in the slightest but I can be a semi-whore if the money is right. All I had to provide good company and endure a few drunken attempted kisses and an occasional crotch grab to make it work. It sounds terrible but it really wasn’t. I thought it was funny at the time and I became really good friends with the New Orleans gay aristocracy at the time. I would never touch another guys dick outside of a medical emergency but I got to hear over and over what they wanted to do to me and it was a serious offer sometimes with cash payments. I passed on those and no harm, emotional or otherwise was done.
That is the thing that rubs me the wrong way with this video. She sets herself up to be a victim and then claims some type of damage from it. Strong women don’t do that. Both my mother and ex-wife travel the world freely. Of course they have been hit on but they take care of it easily and with confidence. My ex-wife used to pile Hispanic warehouse workers into the back of her BMW to take them to the bus stop every night. They might be harassing every other female around but it wasn’t her. I have two daughters and I am raising them the same way. I will defend them if I need to but it has never come up.
The other problem with this video is a basic safety issue. The only one in the video that was a true threat was the one that followed her for several minutes. It is just basic Safety - 101 that you don’t allow that to happen no matter who you are. There was nothing especially sexual in the making. He may have just wanted to rob somebody that day. Ignoring a person is a good first step but, if you are being followed like that, you really need to duck into a store or associate yourself another random person on the street. It doesn’t make good video but she did the wrong thing there.
As I said in the other thread, the only guys who have catcalled me on the sidewalk have been black guys.
White guys tend not to go that route, in my experience. They are more likely to pull alongside me from their car and ask if I want a ride. While wearing a smile that communicates what kind of ride they are really talking about.
I also had a white guy flash me on the way to work a few years ago. Which freaked me out a whole lot more than hearing “hey shortie!” from across the street, I’ll tell you what.
And I work with a white guy who does everything short of catcalling me. If he doesn’t retire soon, I predict another female employee will file a complaint against him. Every day he becomes more disinhibited. It makes me uncomfortable to be around him sometimes, but I don’t want to be “that woman”.
It is maddening that race is being interjected into this conversation.
Not necessarily. Drunken bar crowds aside hooting out loud at women randomly walking down the street during the afternoon is not something you are likely to see in the United States unless you are
1: In a neighborhood where a fair number of people are hanging out on the street during the day (ie unemployed or under employed) which are usually poorer neighborhoods.
2: The cat calling men have to feel comfortable enough in the context of the neighborhood to think that the shout out will be OK and tolerated or encouraged. Even if they are inclined to shout outs they will generally keep their mouths shut if they are not in their familiar neighborhoods.
If you live in a neighborhood that is not underclass and you don’t mingle with groups that get inebriated for recreation your chances of seeing a white man doing a random shout out to a strange woman passing by on the street is going to be very small.
White men are usually (not always) more surreptitious and passive aggressive with their harassment. One silent and furtive glance from them and a woman knows she has been evaluated and judged. Does his gaze “linger over the curves” of her body or is she just furniture to be dispassionately polite to? Everything that she is, was, or will be summed up and pinned somewhere in their consciousness like a collected butterfly. These furtive, assessing looks are more infuriating for some women than the up front street shout outs because of the quiet objectification.
Is it so outside the realm of possibility that women will have different experiences than you? And if people are telling you this happens to them, why do you assume you know better? Because no one brushes up against you with sexual intent, it doesn’t happen?
OK…this is relevant, how? Because you didn’t take offense, no one else gets to complain when they’re harassed? You and the strong women in your life may not feel bothered by this behavior. It doesn’t make others who find it harmful and offensive weak.
You were in the Pit thread. You saw the people arguing that you shouldn’t even give a greeting at all. I’m guessing the poster didn’t bother to read this thread, and realize it has nothing to do with that.
Yeah, the only time I’ve ever encountered it was in college… Where I live, people drive rather than walk around like in a big city.
I’m actually not entirely sure I did encounter it in college. I did encounter pretty vocal, likely drunk people, but I don’t know if I’m conflating memories from TV. I just know college is the only time where I spent any significant amount of time walking around outside where I would regularly run into lots of people.
It takes 2 to furtively look at each other. Read your post again from the other perspective. I could repeat it verbatim with a “looking for Mr Goodbar” angle. I’ve watched women pick up men in bars. Nothing new.
Last night I kept catching a woman looking at me. She was one of many wearing some kind of sexy Halloween costume. She probably wanted to see how many guys noticed. I didn’t assume I was being judged and if I was good luck with that. Don’t care. She was clearly looking right at me every time I glanced around. But if she felt she was being judged then that’s on her.
While I disagree heavily with Shagnasty on this subject, you seem to be reading things into what he said that aren’t there.
His argument is that people will genuinely accidentally bump into you all the time. If you assume that it’s for nefarious intent, you’ll wind up upset at a lot of people who didn’t to anything wrong.
The appropriate counterargument is that, when a disproportionate number of “bumps” just happen to be in certain areas, you kinda get an idea of the intent. Plus, if you can read body language, you can kinda tell when someone genuinely didn’t mean to bump into you. For one thing, there’s a flinch that is missing on people doing it intentionally.