29 October 2014

"Catcalling." What it's like being a girl in New York City


This young woman volunteered to walk around the streets of New York for ten hours, walking behind a companion who had a GoPro camera mounted on his backpack.  She is holding a microphone in both hands to record the comments directed at her during her walk, which have been clarified with captions in the 2-minute video.  The video is edited; she received about ten unsolicited comments per hour of walking.

Via Reddit, where the discussion thread focuses on the creepy guy who walks beside her for five minutes silently.

Addendum:
In an interesting test of the “boys will be boys” hypothesis, the New Zealand Herald decided to re-create the Hollaback video on the streets of Auckland, recruiting a model named Nicola Simpson to star. As in the New York video, Simpson walked around the city for 10 hours behind a hidden camera chronicling her trip. And guess what happened? She received zero catcalls. None. Not one.
Video at the link.

20 comments:

  1. Yup. Just watching this makes my stomach hurt.

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  2. I feel a little ill.

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  3. And now she is receiving rape and death threats, because Of Course. UGH.

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  4. I'm a guy but I never have figured out where the guys who think that sort of behavior is normal/OK come from... they crawled from under a whole different rock than I did.

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  5. Prey. It makes one feel like prey.

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  6. FOX says it's... GREAT!

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/29/catcalling-fox-news-outnumbered-sexist_n_5731174.html

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  7. Most are just compliments and good wishes. I get that it can be annoying, but let's not call everything harrassment and instead focus on the idiots who feel entitled to a response.

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    1. I am a woman. But let's focus on the men that will not take ignore for an answer. Men responding to good looks does not equal evil.

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    2. ("So stupid. You are not a woman. How are we to know which ones will turn out to be dangerous?" was more or less Rosa's comment I responded to.)

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    3. The end of the video made me feel ill. Some of those really polite "Hello" & "Good evening" comments were all vocal harassment??

      I guess this explains why sometimes when I have a normal interaction with a stranger (eg: grocery store clerk) and say "Hi, how are you?" they look at me like I just killed their mom. I am in no way hitting on them or even interested as a married man. Ughhh.

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  8. This is why feminist statements are so hard to believe. Catcalls? Harassment? It's just not true. But, hey, if it gets you in the news, do it anyway, right? If it makes men look like pigs for doing nothing more than trying to get the attention of a pretty woman, do it anyway, right?

    Yes, those insistent men who followed along or said something other than a general sort of "good day," were in the wrong. But if a man is somehow wrong for simply calling out to a woman that appeals to me--and not doing it in any sexually charged way--then I guess pretty much all men (except that gay ones, apparently) deserve to die.

    I, for one, will NOT be turned back because some stick-in-the-mud woman wants to paint any sort of generic comment as a catcall or such. What's wrong with a man simply saying hello or calling out? If she's not interested, she can (and did) walk on without any further ado (with the exceptions mentioned above). If she does give the fellow a smile, good for them both.

    We need to re-title this as "I Walked Around New York for 10 Hours, But Only Three Men Did Anything Remotely Unseemly."

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    1. I'll assume you're a male. Since you mentioned gay men, let me ask... when you walk down a street, if gay men call out to you "hey, sweetie, you're looking cute today," would you feel flattered? If they're "just trying to get the attention of a pretty man," then that's o.k. with you?

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    2. It's too long to re-post here, but I suggest you go to the reddit thread and ctrl+f for the comment from neuHampster. She relates two interactions with someone greeting her in a seemingly innocuous way. One turned out fine, the other did not.
      Sometimes it's blatant who's giving you a compliment and who's trying to assert themselves over you. Other times it can be very hard to tell. In this video, you can't see the leering in their eyes or smiles as they call out to her because the faces are blurred. And that won't always come through in their tones if they're try to hide it to get you to respond. Asserting that most of these guys are simply giving compliments based on words alone is naive.

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  9. Anonymous, well, not being gay, I would be uncomfortable. But being straight, I would LOVE IT if women actually said something like that to me!

    Context, my friend, context.

    It is perfectly in order for a man to demonstrate INTEREST in a woman. If she responds, fine. If not, well, you saw that most of the men said just some innocuous statement and let it go.

    We should all be so fortunate as to attract the kind attentions of others. Had these men made rude statements or overdid it (as some did), I would absolutely agree. As it was, it was nothing...unless you were looking for feminist fodder.

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    1. You pretty much implied it yourself---you would be uncomfortable with a gay guy catcalling you because you're not into them like they're into you. Attracting attention like this (not each individual comment, but the sheer number of them and the proportion which aren't completely innocent that make you fear the rest) is NOT a fortunate thing to have to deal with. Seriously...when multiple people hit on you in creepy ways, you start going into defense mode every time someone compliments you because you feel like you have to to be ready to respond if one guy gets a little too invasive.
      No, it's not fair to the guys that really mean them as compliments. But I'd rather do what I can to stay safe than care about hurting some random dude's feelings. Instead of fussing at us for doing what we're forced to do to protect ourselves, you should be railing against the creeps who turn your compliments into potential threats in the eye of the receiver.

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    2. I hear you, Lady Arite. However , I would have been much more impressed with the film if it hadn't tried to paint every comment as harassment or sexist. False accusations (or, in this case, highly exaggerated ones) makes everything else lose credibility.

      Indeed, men should NEVER make a woman uncomfortable. And I imagine that if most of them discerned that they were making the young lady uncomfortable, would have foregone their comments. There are always going to be those few, however, that deserve all the shaming they get.

      Again, it's not that the woman didn't indeed suffer some negative comments. It's that the film did not distinguish between what, really, were just admiring and acceptable comments vs. harassing ones.

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  10. Anyone belittling this woman or wishing her ill because she "dared" to be in the video is among the lowest of the low.
    I 'd agree a few of the men are not being vile, some of them I suspect made eye contact briefly and felt they had to say something to avoid looking like a creep but for many they were engaging for their advantage alone.
    There's also a difference in society that many men out there don't get, a man engaging with strangers isn't violatign any taboos in the U.S. and while we claim that isn't the the case for women that is simply untrue (as seen by many horrible comments on the internet); we live in a culture where many people still think women cause themselves to get raped by lack of character or misadventure. Putting yourself "out there" is socially and physically dangerous to far too many women.

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  11. For an extended discussion of this topic with a multitude of viewpoints, see the post "Catching Catcalls on Camera, Ctd." at The Dish -

    http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/10/31/catching-catcalls-on-camera-ctd-4/

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  12. The unsolicited attention seems to be mostly from idle men with nothing but time on their hands.

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  13. https://medium.com/message/that-catcalling-video-and-why-research-methods-is-such-an-exciting-topic-really-32223ac9c9e8

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