Emily Gillingham, Washington, DC, USA, Blog Correspondent
A lot of the conversation around street harassment focuses on harassment in cities. But this post is about street harassment in rural America, from three people who grew up there.
I grew up in a rural, conservative Michigan town. When I say “rural,” I mean that my township’s claim to fame is that it is the self-proclaimed “Kohlrabi Capital of the World.” And when I say “conservative,” I mean that when I knocked doors for Obama in 2008, a guy showed me his gun to emphasize that 1) he supported gun rights, and 2) I needed to get off his property immediately.
I remember the first time I experienced street harassment. I was fourteen years old. My mother and I had just moved closer to my high school. It was the first time I had lived in a place with sidewalks in my neighborhood, and I got in the habit of taking a bike ride downtown after school. “Downtown” consisted of a dozen or so shops, offices, and restaurants and a park. One day, I was biking home and a pickup truck headed towards me suddenly gunned it. Instinctively, I looked up- just in time to see the boy a few years my senior in the passenger seat lean out the window, make a ring with the fingers of his right hand, and vigorously stab his left index finger through it, screaming wildly.
I asked two young men who grew up in rural America, Chris and Tyler, what that was all about. Chris, who is originally from rural southeastern North Carolina, said, “Either he was crudely trying to hit on you, or he was mocking you with a douchey high school boy gesture.”
Why would someone take their time to do something like that? Chris pointed out that in the middle of nowhere, there’s nothing better to do. He told me about the form that street harassment took where he grew up- cruising. Chris said, “You take your pimped out car, and you cruise through town at slow speeds, just circling around. If you see an attractive female, you say something to her, like ‘hey, baby.’” I asked Chris if this something people do with friends, and he said, “Yeah, it would be creepy if someone was alone.”
I asked Chris if he had ever catcalled anyone or gone cruising. He said no, since he’s scared to talk to women in general. He also said it’s “disrespectful” and “weird” to talk to strangers on the street.
Tyler grew up in rural Maryland. I asked him what sort of catcalling he saw growing up. He explained that he never saw any, and when I pressed him as to why, he said that a lot of the places he went growing up were nicer, “family kinds of places where you didn’t do that kind of stuff.” I asked Tyler if he had ever catcalled someone, and he said, “I don’t even like people when I talk to them normally. I think you need to have a bit of an ego to think you’re the star and everyone needs to be looking at you.”
So what are the lessons here? First of all, I think it’s worth saying, explicitly, that street harassment isn’t just a city problem. It’s something that happens everywhere, between all kinds of people. But it definitely takes different forms in different places. I think that Chris was on to something when he said street harassment in rural America is just a way to pass the time. And after spending a few weeks asking my friends if they’ve ever catcalled someone and not getting a single “yes,” I think that there is a social element to it, too. People who catcall, particularly in rural areas, hang out with other people who catcall. And there seems to be a different social group that doesn’t catcall. And somehow, having a bachelor’s degree in Women’s and Gender Studies, I’m not surprised that I would up with a bunch of friends who say they’ve never catcalled anyone.
Emily is a 3L at Michigan State University College of Law, and the president of her school’s chapter of LSRJ. Follow her on Twitter @emgillingham.
