Ok, maybe not really; street harassment is an actual issue, but Hollaback, in itself, is something that is banking on the Feminist ideal that men cause street harassment.
I did some research… I went to their website (I’m sorry I lied to you). They take donations, though they have people who already donate them money. JESUS, a shirt that they have on their website says “Hot pussy is no way to say hello” t-shirt for 40$ (Why are you staring at my chest?)!
Does the money go to a charity?
Does the money go to a women’s shelter or rape treatment center?
It goes to more spreading awareness and “training more staff”. It also pays for the people who started the movement to travel across the country and go to a retreat. It does nothing but spread awareness.
What about the app that you can put on you phone?
The app just takes you to the website where you can see where other people have experienced “harassment” and share “your story of harassment”.
What’s Your Point Fuck Face?
If you have read this far, you probably think that I am part of this “rape culture” where I “condone rape (the “unfriendly hello”) and hate women”. Other than “rape culture” not existing, I acknowledge that harassment happens and that we do not need hollaback to promote the awareness of street harassment.
For example, the “ALS Ice Bucket Challenge” is a prime example of how the internet is amazing at promoting awareness for a particular issue. SHIT, even the video for Hollaback has reached over a million hits on Youtube alone.
It does feed on the Feminist ideal that men do not know what is sexual harassment is or that men just like to harass women, but in actuality there are just bad people out there in the world.
What got me mad is that the video that Hollaback made only shows 24 men in a 10 hour time period (day and night), in New York City (Population: 8 million+). These range from someone saying “How are you today; god bless” to a guy following the woman for several minutes. And to top it all off, at the end of the video it says, “and we couldn’t document the hundreds of winks and whistles guys made”.
1) “God bless” and “how are you today?” are not cases of sexual harassment.
2)These men were cherry picked.
3) How can we take the “hundreds of winks and whistles” without evidence? It is New York City, the taxi cab epicenter of the country (they aren’t whistling and hailing Hitler folks). Hundreds of winks? How do you rate that? How am I, the viewer supposed to “just take your word” on that? The point of you filming is to convince ME that this is a problematic issue through evidence.
4) FOUR THINGS! Why not pay attention to all the men who just walked past her without doing anything? There were probably hundreds or thousands of guys who didn’t really pay any attention to her at all.
It gave an unbalanced and unreal feel of what street harassment is and it makes ALL men look bad. Spread the word about street harassment with video, online posts, and word of mouth, but leave Hollaback out of it.
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