What 10 hours of street harassment looks like - CNN.com
Now some of it is outright harassment, but is all of it?
Please watch the rather short video.
From websteronline:
Full Definition of HARASS
transitive verb
1
a : exhaust, fatigue
b (1) : to annoy persistently (2) : to create an unpleasant or hostile situation for especially by uninvited and unwelcome verbal or physical conduct
2
: to worry and impede by repeated raids <harassed the enemy>
It's not that each and every comment or wolf whistle was in and of itself vulgar or hostile, it's the annoying repititiveness of the comments (whatever the comments may be), like the definition above says. It is, as the definition states, uninvited and unwelcome verbal or physical conduct.
As a woman, I know what this is like. I've had things said to me by strangers that no man has ever experienced or will ever experience.
I used to smoke. I had an older man walk up to me and give me lecture on smoking, even though I was clearly an adult. Who invited him to approach me, a stranger, and lecture me on what I should do? He wouldn't have done that to a man. (I just told him that, well, maybe one day I would be perfect like him. He looked shocked! I don't know why. Maybe women don't typically speak back when he approaches them to lecture.)
I've had the following said or happen to me:
Hey...you! You shore are beeeeyuuuutiful!!!! (Hanging out a truck window from half a block away, as I walk into the grocery store.)
You're ugly. (Said to me by a man as I walked into a convenience store.)
Look at that ass. Mmmmm. Mmmmm.
Woo Woo!
Drive up behind me as I'm walking down the street (dressed conservatively), and honk repeatedly to scare me. Then yell at me as they pass, laughing.
Hang out the window of a car, as I sit at a light and they're turning by me....hang out and do their lips "SMACK SMACK SMACK...SMOOCH SMOOCH SMOOCH. YEAH BABY!"
And of course, the much used, "*****!"
It's the repetitiveness of it. It's not WHAT they are saying. It's that I don't know them, I'm not inviting them to speak to me, I'm not speaking to them. They just feel they have a right to accost me verbally as I go about my business, minding my own business. It's not something a man experiences.
A gay male friend once told me when I was complaining about having to walk somewhere by a construction site (we all know what that can be like), well, they'll probably give you catcalls, and that's great. Doesn't it make you feel good that if they like the way you look? Men just don't get it. I don't CARE what the construction workers think about me. I don't know them. And if I care whether they think I look good, then it follows that I'd care whether they don't like the way I look. And the fact is...I don't care either way. It's that I have a right to walk somewhere in peace, without being verbally assaulted.
Oh, and there was the time a guy followed me to the grocery store in his car, and parked next to my car, and waited for me to come out of the store. At which point I could see that he had his pants pulled down & was masturbating right there by my driver's door, for my benefit.
Oh, and there was the time I went to work on a Saturday, alone in the parking garage, and what should appear before my wondering eyes? No, not a reindeerr. But a fully naked guy walking back and forth, for my benefit, one level up. It was planned so that the cement bar covered his face, so I could only see from his chest to upper thighs. Scared me to death...I was alone in a dark downtown garage with a naked man who had planned things this way. Funny thing is...when I reported it to security in my building, they called the police, and then asked me what he looked like. They smiled when I had to admit that I couldn't exactly describe his FACE. :3oops: