“‘At Notting Hill Carnival yesterday a man in the crowd grabbed my arse. When I told him not to he did it again. I pushed him away, exercising my right to tell a man to stop touching my body without my permission, so he took a swing at me and punched me in the face…

A woman should be able to leave the house without fear of being sexually assaulted. And she should be able to defend herself without being put in hospital.” – Mary Brandon in the UK.

She was in the hospital for 9 hours after the attack. Read more here.

One of the many reasons why we need to pay attention to street harassment and not just dismiss it as a compliment, no big deal, or, as Fox News recently said, “let men be men” is that it can escalate into something worse. Particularly if the men don’t like women’s responses to their harassment.

I saw this when I conducted focus groups for the SSH national study. For example, in Brooklyn two women shared scary retaliation stories. One said, “I’ve seen a guy knock a girl’s head into a brick wall that she was leaning on behind them because she did not want to talk to him. She was gushing blood. It’s unacceptable.” Another woman said, “My cousin’s friend got shot in the back as she walked away because she didn’t want to talk to the guy.”

We saw this recently too when a man in Philadelphia told harassers to watch what they were saying to the women and one got out of his vehicle and punched him. He hit his head on concrete and went unconscious and had to be hospitalized.

It’s past time to start taking this seriously.

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.

Via Media Matters:

“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.