Catcalling the 97%
I really have to stop responding to troll comments online, sometimes they just make it so easy though and with a broken wrist, time off work and a never ending lockdown....realistically what else am i going to do with my time?
So i made some videos on tik tok (yes.....i fell down the millenial tik tok hole) about the 97% statistic and on sexual harassment in general. From seeing videos and reading comments i can see that there are a lot of people who don’t understand what SH actually is or why something they (men generally) consider innocuous could be so threatening to women. So on an app with the highest population of trolls in social media history...i engaged.
A comment i received on a video yesterday went something like this....”why can’t women just take a compliment? I mean you don’t have to say thanks...just carry on with your day and stop crying about it”. Yes, he was talking about catcalling. So when i read comments like this from user123456789 with no profile picture or followers or bio....i think to myself, are they just a bored troll seeing how much trouble they can cause, do they genuinely believe the idiocy they are spewing, or is it both? Either way, i couldn’t pass up the opportunity to reply to this one (against my better judgement...again, i am very bored)
I obviously didn’t manage to have a serious conversation with this dude because he was an ignorant pig, but i made a video in reply to his comment explaining what catcalling is really about and why it is quite so disgusting/threatening. It constantly surprises me how many people know nothing about the experiences of women, some because they don’t want to and i guess others because they aren’t in a relationship where these experiences are shared (unlike my poor husband who has my experiences and feminist take on life shoved down his throat on a daily basis).
I asked my husband recently if he considered that he had ever sexually harassed anyone and to my surprise he very quickly responded with a clear “yes”. As with most men, his intention wasn’t to harass or intimidate women, rather to have a laugh or act the big man in front of the group. I don’t believe that any man really thinks that catcalling will get him the girl, my husband says that if he was genuinely interested in someone then it would never have been the way he went about it. It is a demonstration of “masculinity” mostly, its “banter” and in some cases its a power display and yes....a way to intimidate women.
Catcalling itself is a bizarre behaviour - shouting shit at random people on the street isn’t generally acceptable social behaviour, but why is it sexual harassment rather than just a weird behaviour that some (a lot) of men perpetrate? Someone (yes...a man) said to me yesterday online that what makes an act harassment is not the consequence but the intent and i could not disagree more. By this logic someone could commit any number of crimes and be absolved depending on their intent.
What is the compliment that has most stuck with you? For me personally i don’t want to be complimented on my looks or body, a compliment that will stick with me will likely be about intelligence or achievement, things that i have worked hard for. Someone shouting at me in the street about how i look is certainly NOT a compliment.
We have all experienced it and most of us a lot worse. So going back to the comment this neanderthal made on my video....most women DO ignore this kind of behaviour, however much we may want to tell them to go fuck themselves, the majority of the time we ignore it...put our heads down, cross the road and speed up. Why? Because to do otherwise has the potential for danger for us as women. Lets face it, even when we do ignore it they often continue to shout at us or even follow us down the street. Most women have had experiences with either sexual harassment or sexual assault and so how do they expect us to react when they start yelling this crap at us in the street? It is NOT a compliment and it IS harassment. It is scary, demeaning, intimidating and often insulting. It makes us feel uncomfortable and it changes the way that women behave in public.
A few years ago i had a conversation with my husband about “walking while female”. He had no idea the way in which women adapt their behaviour to promote their own safety in public. Simple things that men take for granted - walking with both earphones in, walking at night, not having to be hyper aware of their surroundings, not crossing the road when they see someone walking towards them and not having to plan their route according to which route they will be less likely to be attacked on. These are things that girls and women do almost without thinking about, it is an ingrained behaviour....something we don’t remember being taught ourselves but we certainly remember the sad day we have to teach our daughters the same lessons.
If men could stop being defensive for a minute and listen to the experiences we have had our entire lives maybe they could understand why a stranger screaming judgement on your looks/body on the street would trigger our fight or flight response. Of course there are men that look for this exact reaction, they love the power they have over women and live to incite fear. I have to believe that this is the minority though and what these defensive men don’t seem to realise is that it is those men they are defending when they defend this behaviour.
That someone (even a tiktok troll) would suggest that women stop crying and just ignore the behaviour rather than advocating for men to stop and understand how destructive this behaviour is proves to me how strong the band of brothers is. The irony is that they are the ones screaming not all men at the top of their lungs while mansplaining how women’s experiences are invalid...thus making them...one of “those” men.
I have never before experienced this level of determination to not listen...it brings women down to the point of not wanting to talk about their experiences. It is an excellent silencing technique. Unfortunately i think most men don’t realise that this is the intention and they genuinely feel like they are being victimised.
And how the fuck are we supposed to grow as a society when the perpetrators are so convinced that they are the victims?
