Street Harassment: It’s All in Good Fun!

    So I realize that the issue of street harassment is a frequently visited topic; there’s been plenty of discussion about it’s meaning, what it symbolizes, and how to deal with it. This past weekend, however, a comment was made to me on the subject that I hadn’t heard before. I was talking with a family friend, and the concept of cat-calling came up. I rolled my eyes, and mentioned something about how it generally bums me out–frankly I didn’t really feel like talking about it. Anyway, the guy who brought it up suggested that while he’s never been on the giving end of street harassment, he has always thought of it simply as a form of complimenting women. He said he thinks men do it because they honestly think women enjoy being acknowledged for their looks this way. This comment came from a genuine guy; I believe he truly thought this was the reason for street harassment- but he couldn’t have been farther from the truth.

Anyway, our conversation urged me to write this post in order to clear a few things up. First, let me just state for the record that there is nothing I’d like less than for some guy to holler obscenities at me while I’m minding my own business. I recently moved downtown, and while the house itself is awesome, the surroundings leave something to be desired. I live on a busy street corner, and lets just say it’s not uncommon for me to get verbally harassed during my daily walk to campus. In NO way do I welcome being yelled at by complete strangers. There are plenty of ways to compliment me that don’t include screaming at me from a car window that have a nice ass or that you would like me to “sit on your face” (so far that’s been my favorite).

Clearly, getting verbally harassed is far from complimentary. But there’s another more serious issue I had with our conversation. Using the word “compliment” to describe street harassment suggests that it’s really all in good fun; it’s harmless, and if women are offended by it then they’re taking it too seriously. I’m calling bullshit on this because you can’t brush something off as harmless when there’s a serious reality behind it. What I mean is that (for example) there’s an outrageously large amount of women raped every year, and verbal harassment is a direct representation of that. Basically, it’s pretty uncool to disregard the implication of street harassment when so many women are affected negatively because of it. Furthermore, pinpointing those women who are offended by it as “too serious” suddenly puts the blames them; it becomes their problem that they’re so displeased by it, when in reality they have every right to be.

Lastly, I feel the need to point out that street harassment is a means through which men claim ownership of the public sphere. If it were really a mere method of complimenting women, it wouldn’t leave it’s targets feeling powerless and uncomfortable. Now I’m not hating on men in general, here- but rather I’m critiquing the systematic functions of patriarchy that allows for street harassment to happen in the first place. Overall street harassment (and harassment in general) is an exercise of male power, and is not to be taken lightly.