Funny… I just finished writing an article about street harassment and the media in which I made the case that mainstream media is largely shifting its coverage of street harassment from saying it’s a compliment to portraying it as a serious issue. Well, FOX News just made itself an outlier.
“Fox News hosts defended the practice of catcalling, insisting women should “let men be men” and downplaying the harmful impact widespread street harassment has on women.
On the August 28 edition of Fox News’ Outnumbered, hosts highlighted a New York Post opinion article that suggested women “deal with” “flattering” catcalls. Co-host Kimberly Guilfoyle defended street harassment saying, “let men be men,” and, “look, men are going to be that way. What can you do?” Guest host and Fox contributor Arthur Aidala reenacted his personal signature “move” — aiming a slow round of applause at women on the street, which one host said she’d find flattering.”
I know FOX is kind of a ridiculous “news” source, but they do have a large viewership, so this disturbs me.
I feel like a broken record explaining why FOX is wrong. So I’ll just say this much:
1 – Street harassment is not a compliment or flattering. It’s disrespectful, it’s objectifying, it’s someone speaking about you without your consent in a public space.
2 – It’s also often scary or unsettling. Almost half of all women have experienced some kind of physically aggressive form of street harassment in public places in the USA and that can make seemingly “harmless” catcalls feel scary too… we don’t know when someone will escalate into something worse.
3 – Street harassment is not just men saying “hey baby” to a pretty woman. Street harassment is the manifestation of systems of oppression, be it sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ablism, racism, classism, etc. Anyone who is discriminated against in other arenas of life has probably been harassed on the street.
4 – Street harassment begins for most people when they’re teenagers. By adult harassers. How creepy is that?
5 – Sexual harassment/street harassment is NOT “natural” for men. It’s learned behavior. One obvious piece of proof is that many — maybe even most — men do NOT street harass.
It’s NOT a compliment.
