Laura Voth, USA, SSH Blog Correspondent

On my drive to work the other day, I caught a news segment in between pop songs. The hosts were two middle-aged individuals, one a man and the other a woman. They began chatting about the 90% statistic—that 90% of women worldwide report having experienced what the hosts referred to as catcalling. They defined catcalling as “whistling” and, more vaguely, “comments.”

The male host didn’t have much to say on the subject, but I was interested to hear the woman’s take. To my surprise, she said, “I wish someone would catcall me! It’s like I’m invisible since I got older! It would be a compliment.”

When I hear older women make claims such as this—that they miss being catcalled on the street—I always wonder what harassment they experienced when they were younger. Surely they never had obscene words and gestures thrown their way, as women do now. Surely they were never followed, grabbed, groped, or photographed by strangers.

I can’t speak to any woman’s experience other than my own, but I don’t think anyone truly takes a stranger’s yell of “come suck my d*ck!” as a compliment. And perhaps that’s the root of the generational disconnect where street harassment is concerned. Maybe today’s women were raised with the belief that they are deserving of respect not in spite of their gender, but because of their humanity.

The truth is that, whether or not street harassment is frightening, it is harmful and demeaning. It sends the message that women—not only the woman involved, but others—are not welcome in whichever space and that they do not deserve to be viewed as people. It reinforces the idea that woman’s worth is based on her perceived f***ability. If someone gets that message often enough, they will start to believe it.

The idea that women over a certain age aren’t worthy of being acknowledged—acknowledged, mind, not harassed—is a continuation of that idea. Once a woman doesn’t look a certain way, she almost disappears. And despite the negativity of the attention she once received, she might in a way miss the whistles and catcalls, because at least they affirmed that she had some kind of worth.

Would you rather be invisible or devalued? Unseen or disrespected? Knowing that you don’t matter to strangers, or aware that the men who pass you by don’t even think of you as a person?

We deserve to be afforded respect and recognition for who we are as people—for our actions, our strengths and weaknesses, and our humanity—not for our looks.

If women have come from a point when they weren’t able to take a stand against street harassment to today, when blogs like this one show that we feel comfortable with speaking out, there must be a way to get to a point where women’s bodies and selves are not seen as objects reduced to whether a stranger believes they are worthy of unsolicited commentary.

We all want to be seen as who we really are—people. A comment from a stranger on the street serves as a vicious denial of our personhood, and eventually we start to believe it. A little respect goes a very long way.

Laura is an emerging adult-slash-college student studying to enter a healthcare profession. In addition to studying and writing, Laura works at her university’s women’s center where she helps design and implement programs on all things lady. 

Ruth Mair, UK, SSH Blog Correspondent

I sometimes find myself wondering what kind of a person I would be, or how my view of the world would change, if I wasn’t always on my guard with strangers. I don’t mean this in a Hollywood rom-com dramatic sense of “I can’t let anyone in”, which is an entirely separate problem for some of us.

I mean it in the sense of how I actively avoid making eye contact with men that I don’t know in the street in case they interpret it as me giving them the “come-on.” I mean it in the sense that if I see a cute dog I smile at the dog, not the owner, in case they think the same thing (or in case they think that I am coming on to them, no buddy, I just want to pet your dog). I also mean it in the sense that if a stranger strikes up a conversation with me, in ANY situation, I am almost instantly put on my guard. Particularly if they are of the opposite sex.

I’m not talking about situations when I clearly do not want to be spoken to (there are some helpful diagrams on the internet about when to speak to strangers especially men speaking to ladies, addressing the culture of interrupting girls reading books or working in coffee shops to try and casually chat), I’m talking about EVERYTHING.

When it was the beginning of the second year of my master’s program, I had to give myself internal pep-talks about actively making an effort to converse with new people at uni, particularly if they spoke to me, because I have to try so hard to fight the assumption that strangers talking to me = bad, danger, harassment and any other number of alarm bells.

For me, this is inherently connected to the experiences I have had of street harassment, ranging from being under 16 and still in my school uniform and having adult men ask for my number on the bus (simultaneously having trapped me in to my seat), to me taking an earphone out whilst running because I thought someone was asking for directions (d’oh, silly naive me!) and receiving unsolicited sexual advances. These experiences have certainly changed my approach to the world, and I would be surprised if there were not others that feel the same.

See, I wonder, if there were no street harassment, would we be so guarded?

I fantasise about being perfectly happy to stop to give someone directions, tell them the time, even smile at them because it’s a sunny day and their dog looks really happy, without having to do the threat assessment of which you are probably familiar: deciding if you could out run them, deciding if they are stronger than you, and thinking about what pithy remark to spit out if they say something inappropriate.

In that world we might make friends more easily, without assuming that if a stranger on the street is talking to you they have an agenda or pose a threat, and without having these calculations leech away at your confidence in situations where you ARE actively socialising, and aiming to meet new people. I wonder if, in the same vein, I would look forward to summer more without having to worry about dressing in a way that won’t draw attention or if my life would be different if I didn’t have to psych myself up to go out of the house wearing lipstick.

Everyone has these different calculations to make, and although they are relatively minor for me as a cis-gender, white female, such calculations are still symptoms of the bigger problem, which is that on the streets, interaction with everyone else is dominated by a culture of unsolicited commentary which can come from any direction, and can range in threat-level.

I long for a world where such threat assessment before we walk out the door are largely unnecessary. However, whilst musing about this thought, I was reminded of an episode of the Simpsons’ Tree-House of Horror, where Lisa wishes for world peace, everyone throws away their nukes, and then aliens invade and they can’t defend themselves. And I do wonder, if were we not on our guards constantly, and did not have to contend with street harassment in all its various forms, there wouldn’t be another threat to calculate for, and defend ourselves from.

It is generally agreed that street harassment is but one symptom of patriarchal society so I am inclined to believe that if it were to be removed, something else would pop up in its place. But, as a result yet again of my own experiences of harassment, am I being cynical? Or is this just my own internalisation of harassers the world over, calling people like me feminazis?

It is this second guessing of oneself that remains, in my opinion, one of the most poisonous parts of street harassment and one of the reasons why even the most confident among us are left with a bad taste in their mouths when they are harassed.

The next step, and one which I have not yet been able to come up with a solution to although I think that many of us have been trying, is how to solve this problem.

Ruth is a human rights MA student finishing her MA dissertation on the legal and normative rights of terror suspects in the UK (spoiler alert: rights are being violated). She also plays bass in a band called Kinshot, sews as often as she can, and spends time getting annoyed at the cat sleeping on top of her computer.

Michelle Marie Ryder, USA, SSH Blog Correspondent

In the United States, 65% of women have been harassed in public. Each wolf-whistle, obscene gesture and violating touch has the power to transform our world. For many of us it’s hard to forget the first time we were harassed, as evidenced by a recent popular hashtag #FirstHarassed.

No matter how confident we might start the day, we struggle to keep an ocean of fear at bay the moment we step outdoors. Everyday we navigate a sea of uncertainty that limits our mobility and sense of safety. Short of a cure, we find ways to cope.

Personally, I never leave the house without putting on my best Wednesday Addams resting bitchface. I evade eye contact with strangers to avoid being perceived as flirty; my gaze is restricted, my interaction with the social world strained and limited, some of its richness lost.

When I feel safe enough I speak up, tempted by the peace of mind assured by an effective counterattack. The first time I did I shouted a simple, liberating FUCK YOU! – drawing in a deep breath of air between the two words for extra effect. That was really all it took to shut up a clot of men (who hang out in groups of five because they each have one fifth of a personality, jokes comedian Eddie Izzard, who is frequently harassed in public for cross-dressing). At the time I had been walking alone, but thankfully had the anonymity of a crowd to slip into for protection.

But there are times when our friends, family members or lovers are with us, putting them in the awkward position of wanting to defend us but also being well aware of the threat of violence, of how easily catcalls can escalate into something more serious. So they, too, often feel compelled to suppress their anger and frustration.

Renowned slam poet Andrea Gibson speaks to these feelings of powerlessness with high-octane eloquence in her poem “To The Men Catcalling My Girlfriend as I’m Walking Beside Her.” Co-performed with Katie Wirsing, Gibson addresses the subject of the poem, the street harasser, directly, making this quite possibly the finest the-reason-you-suck-speech to ever grace the earth.

Gibson says this is the first poem she’s ever written that’s meant to be “used in the real world.” Carried like a weapon in our consciousness is what I imagine she meant by that. Carried like “Wolverine keys” girded for battle between clenched fists, “because what men fear most about going to prison is what women fear most about walking down the sidewalk,” proclaims a popular #YesAllWomen tweet.

Whether we’re carrying mace, a rape whistle, switchblade or scythe (I’ve considered them all), these weapons, like Gibson’s dagger-sharp wordplay, are symbols of the violence women face daily. They evoke with forceful lucidity our second-class citizenship. There is significant risk in defying this system, in defying the will of the harasser, even for those who might try to intervene on our behalf.

A 31 year old San Franciscan man, Ben Schwartz, was savagely attacked in 2014 when he asked a catcaller to stop making lewd comments to his girlfriend. He was stabbed nine times, the knife narrowly missing his major arteries and spinal cord. Michael Tingling, a Chicago father, wasn’t so lucky. He was killed shielding his 15 year old daughter from sexually degrading treatment on the street after picking her up from school.

Street harassment is not flattering, it is frightening. It is a barrier to true equality and a denial of liberties, writes Holly Kearl, founder of Stop Street Harassment. But the good news is there’s a lot we can do to fight back, to stop from sinking in the ocean of fear that greets us daily. From speaking up to taking to the streets to pressing for policy change, the fight is only just beginning.

Michelle is a freelance writer and community activist. She has written for Infita7.com, Bluestockings Magazine, and The New Verse News on a range of social justice issues, and shares her poetry regularly at poetrywho.blogspot.com.