Sexual Comments Belong Exactly Where Sex does: Between People Who Have Given Explicit Consent

Guest Blog Post for International Anti-Street Harassment Week 2015

A few months ago, I began a social experiment where I post on Facebook each time I experience street harassment as I go about my days as a working professional, graduate student, and a woman living in Washington D.C.. My goal was to see how my group of Facebook friends may react to my stories and how the interactions made me feel violated as many others who experience it do.

Most of the time, I receive an overwhelming number of ‘likes’ on my post, friends and colleagues showing their support and sometimes sharing their own stories of harassment in their own cities all over the country. But, there are also times when the comments to the posts are not as supportive. People have asked me what I was wearing during these events, if I was in a supposed “bad part of town”, and have even commented about the dangers of walking around a city. But most interesting to me, one Facebook user took this time to make a joke about how upset he was that he never gets this kind of attention when he goes about his day. Multiple people liked his comment.

I created this series as a way to share with my community just how much of an issue street harassment is in my city. But also, as a way to share my own experiences as a way to start a conversation about what effect street harassment can have on the person receiving such attention. Through my own commentary, I shared how street harassment has made me lose confidence, has made me feel over-sexualized and in many cases unsafe about what the person who is yelling at me is willing to do to me if they feel so comfortable saying such things in public about me and my body. And in just one comment, a person was able to make my entire social experiment look like I was bragging about how many people think I am pretty as I walk to work.

I named this social experiment “Cat-Call Shaming”, and I did so as a way to ground the movement in such a way that takes the shame of being cat-called and put it back on the person who is willing to draw unwanted attention to a complete stranger. Just like with other forms of sexual violence, my belief is that society promotes an injustice upon survivors of street harassment by placing the blame on the receivers of these unwanted comments as if that person is responsible for how all people act towards them. Someone who has been sexually assaulted should never be blamed for that experience, so why should a person be to blame for receiving sexual attention from a stranger on the street?

What upset me most was not the person who made the comment, but the number of people both online and in person who had a similar reaction to my series. It upset me that these were educated people, individuals who sat through sexual assault awareness training at their universities just like I had. These were people who were taught to always ask first, to make sure their partners are able to consent to sex, people who I had discussions about my own stories of feeling intimidated or coerced by partners after I had already said no. Yet, these were people who didn’t seeing anything wrong with street harassment, who told me that I should feel flattered about how often it happened to me like it was a badge of honor to be harassed by strangers.

Why is it that these people understood the danger of sexual assault yet could not understand why street harassment wasn’t just as much a social issue? How can a person believe that it isn’t okay to coerce someone into having sex but thinks it is perfectly fine to make sexual comments towards strangers they are attracted they see walking down the street? One of the ways that consent is taught in colleges today is grounded in the idea that we as individuals should always respect the boundaries that other people have set for themselves because each person has the right to decide how or when they choose to engage in sex. Teaching about sexual harassment can be approached in the exact same way. It can be taught that someone’s words are just as powerful as their actions, and that when you draw unwanted sexual attention towards someone you are disregarding the boundaries that they have set up for themselves. Sexual comments belong exactly where sex does, between people who have given their explicit consent to be touched or talked to in such a way.

By teaching not to rape without teaching not to harass on the street, we are telling the next generation of adults that it is okay to objectify other people as long as you are not touching them and this completely disregards the emotional and mental negative effects that street harassment can have on the person getting yelled at near the bus stop.

Jen Stutman is a GW Alumna and Former GW Students Against Sexual Assault Member