May 8, 2017 • 46 mins
Why do some men yell at women on the street? Cristen and Caroline discuss why catcalling happens and women's century-long fight against street harassment.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mob Never told you. From how Supports
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline, And today we are revisiting a topic
that we talked about in two thousand eleven, but we
absolutely need to talk about it again because there are
(00:25):
lots of conversations going on these days about cat calling
and street harassment. Yeah, because I'm sure you guys are
familiar with the Hollaback video that just came out not
too long ago, featuring a woman she's an actress, walking
through the streets of New York for ten hours and
(00:46):
facing numerous cat calls and street harassment from men on
the street. The video itself attracted a lot of controversy
because of the way it was edited to edit out
a lot of white men who were doing calling in
various street harassment things um to feature mostly men of color.
But that being said, the video itself sparked a huge
(01:10):
conversation online between and among men and women about what
if street harassment? When is it just complimenting, when is
it something scary? And what does it mean for all
of us at large? Yeah, and speaking of Hallaback, which
is the nonprofit that UM produced that viral video. We
(01:32):
first talked about street harassment on the podcast when Halliback
was first gaining a lot of media attention. UM it
was founded in two thousand five by Emily May and
it was started specifically to attract more attention to the
issue of street harassment and to facilitate bigger conversations about
the frequency of street harassment and how it very much
(01:56):
is harassment and also give people tools to fight back
and also connect with other people on this issue. And
the fact that pretty much any time a woman says gender,
transgender and gay men as well leave their houses and
walk down the sidewalk a lot of times that means
dealing with what we youphemistically call cat calling. And seeing
(02:22):
to that viral video as well, I mean, the response
to it just highlighted problems on top of problems. For
the very fact that Shoshana Roberts, who is the actress Senate,
immediately received rape threats. She has alerted the police in
the neighborhood she lives in that this is what's going on.
These are the threats she's received, so in case something happens,
(02:44):
they'll know who she is when she calls. Yeah, and
to me that's I mean, not to get off on
a tangent, but there's echoes of what's happening with the
nat of Sarkese in there too, in terms of like,
so you you call out a problem, people saying no,
it's not a problem, but I'm going to threaten to
kill you or rape or a rape. Yeah, exactly. And
(03:06):
so another issue of course with things that this video
sort of dug up is the fact that a lot
of people's response to it is just women, this is
your problem. I'm just trying to give you a compliment.
You're playing the victim role. You just want to be
the victim. You just want attention, and you know, making
(03:28):
it more about the woman and it being her problem
than it being a social problem at large. Yeah, it's
just a compliment. Learn how to take a compliment. Um.
And if you're curious on the difference between cat calls
and compliments, you can go to stuff I've Never Told
Us YouTube page and watch the video if cat calls
for compliments, in which you'll get a lot of examples
(03:49):
of the differences between the two. So first up, though,
let's define street harassment and also offer some statistics that
we can get a grasp of how often this is happening.
This is not just something happening to Shoshana Roberts when
she is making a video for Hollow Back. So street harassment,
to define it is the sexual harassment of typically sis
(04:12):
and trans women in public spaces by typically men who
are strangers, and that includes both verbal and nonverbal behavior.
It tends to be comments on the woman's physique and
her very presence in public A lot of the time.
It also has to do with smiling. Hey, woman over there, smile, smile.
(04:33):
Want to see you smile? So how common is it?
There was a naturally representative study sponsored by Stop Street
Harassment which found that six of all women and of
all men had experienced it, and among the women had
been sexually touched, had been followed, and nine percent had
(04:55):
been forced to do something sexual. I think that is
a different way of saying sexual assault. UM. LGBT identified
respondents were also likelier to experience it. One statistic they
highlighted was it by age seventeen, seventy percent of LGBT
individuals experienced street harassment compared to of heterosexual people. And
(05:17):
it also happens around the world. Yeah. Um, the site
Medium got into this by assigning diaries essentially to women
in cities all around the world, in New York, San Francisco,
Los Angeles, Mexico City, Berlin in Italy, in Mongolia, in
tel Aviv, Nairobi, and Singapore um and based on these
(05:41):
women's experiences, they found that the woman in Mexico City
experienced the worst cat calling. She had a high of
twenty nine cat calls in a single week, versus Tel
Aviv and Los Angeles, which tied for the least cat
call heavy locations, which just to each and there were
a lot of common hallmarks for this kind of behavior. UM.
(06:04):
It tended to happen most often during commute time, specifically
when women were alone, although men doing the cat calling,
we're just as likely to be alone as with other
men UM and the most common form of it just
commanded a smile. They just want to see a smil
(06:25):
carel line. Yeah. I used to get this um all
the time when I took public transportation to work. Not
that I would not continue too, It's just I moved
and blah blah blah. I just don't want you to
think poorly of me. I wish I could take it anyway, UM, yeah,
I used to get this all the time. And what
was so weird is I never got it from a
(06:45):
man in a business suit. I always got it from
homeless men who were hanging out at the train station.
I mean that's my personal experience. I know everyone has
different experiences, but and speaking to that experience, some people
have talked about the socioeconomic intersections with this, because it's
(07:08):
a lot about not compliments obviously, but it has a
lot to do with power and power over public spaces
and cat calling and street harassment. I should say, is
often used as a tool by people who might feel
more economically and socially marginalized to assert their power. And so,
(07:33):
in speaking to the BBC about why some men do this,
Katherine Zipple, who is a sociology professor at Northeastern University,
said quote, oftentimes it's not really about the women. It's
just about the men performing masculine acts for each other
and establishing a pecking order amongst themselves. What's really going
(07:53):
on is the dynamic among men, and in that it's
so it's so crucial to discoverse Asian to understanding it
that this is the dynamic among men that's happening in
public spaces, right because, and I mean this goes back
forever as far as the conflict that occurs and has
always occurred when women enter a public sphere. I mean,
(08:18):
this is not cat calling and street harassment is not
a new conversation. Kristen and I read one article that
was like, oh, this is a problem that goes all
the way back to the nineties seventies, and it definitely
has roots much much deeper, and that go back much
much farther when women first left the home to begin with.
(08:38):
Exactly pretty much as soon as we began entering the
public sphere on a day to day basis, this issue arose.
And a lot of this information is coming from a
sealf Freedman, who is a scholar in Stanford's Claimant Institute
for Gender Research, and she also wrote the book Redefining Rape,
And just speaking of some etymology when it comes to
(08:58):
cat calling, I thought was really interesting. The term comes
from theater. It goes back to the mid seventeenth century,
a combination of cat and call, originally denoting a kind
of whistle or squeaking instrument used to express disapproval. Now,
when we get into street harassment, in the nineteenth century
(09:20):
and into the early twentieth century, it went by a
different name. It wasn't so much cat calling but mashing
and the masher, both of which also have theatrical roots. Yeah, this,
Kristen and I got so caught up in this reading
about the masters. It is fascinating stuff and it is
just further proof that the harassment of women in public
(09:44):
spaces is definitely not a new thing. So the term
mash comes from nineteenth century theater slang meaning a sweetheart
or a crush, typically of a male audience member on
a female actress, and for example, an teen eight two
a theater guide to find mashers as quote masculine theatergoers
(10:05):
whose wild ambition is to attract and hold female attention. Now,
the first time I heard about mashing was actually um
in reading about sort of cultural history of female friendship.
And around this same time too, you would describe having
intensely strong, like platonically passionate feelings for a girlfriend as
(10:27):
a smash, and they would also they would exchange these
um mash notes to each other. But outside of that
realm and outside the theater world, mashers became known in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth century as the aggressive
male street flirt who quote were usually depicted in newspapers
(10:50):
and editorial cartoons as well dressed white men whose behaviors
were more irritating and comical than menacing. And they were
also men who viewed themselves as lady killers along the
lines of a Don Juan and other Natalie dressed gentlemen,
because that was another thing. They were often very very
(11:10):
snappy dressers. Um. And there was also the Parisian version
of the flneur, which is the detached male spectator of
the urban crowd. Yeah, basically men whose quote unquote job
it is to stand around and just watch women and
provide their commentary as if they are at the theater,
(11:30):
and also attract their attention through their through their fashionable
clothes like Dandy's. And I think it's key to note
though that in popular culture at the time, like those
editorial cartoons that Kristen mentioned, it is important to mention
that they were depicted as white. That's key because these
(11:50):
are snappily dressed gentlemen. They're they're mostly harmless ladies. They're
just they're just offering you a quirky kind of compliment.
Are just kind of annoying. It's no big deal because
at the time, the perception of black men interacting with
society white society ladies was painted in an entirely different
(12:13):
picture at the time, of course, like even black men
making direct eye contact with a white woman would have
been considered outright sexual assault. And so when you code
non violent mashers as white it says a lot about
sort of racial divisions at the time. Yeah, because um,
really it was age of consent campaigns and these antimash
(12:37):
or initiatives that were mostly focused to white men, whereas
black men were considered violent sexual creatures, they were the rapists.
White men were only to be feared for perhaps whisking
away young woman who was too young to consent or
doing this mashing, when in reality, Freedman talks about it
(12:59):
was native born white men because new immigrants to the
country were also lumped into this as well and considered
more deviant and more of a danger to um white
American women, whereas it was often the white men who
were the worst when it came to street harassment, since
they claimed the streets as their territory. Which does that
(13:21):
sound familiar, Yeah, exactly, And so I mean what's going
on here the social context that we're talking about, Like
Kristen said, I mean, here are white men who have
you know, quote unquote been in charge. Then you have
this influx of women who have always been at the home, immigrants,
where did they even come from? And people just have
(13:41):
other classes and backgrounds. So suddenly white, these white men
that were talking about these matters are having to assert
their perceived dominance over everyone around them all of a sudden,
for the first time in these urban spaces, you have gender, class,
and ray all interacting and encountering one another in new
(14:03):
ways for the very first time. And along with this,
not only do you just have generally women entering the
public sphere, but you also have the rise of department stores,
this whole consumer culture that would get wealthy women out
of their homes to go shopping. But also you have
female clerks who would be working at the department stores
and other jobs being opened, those low level clerical jobs
(14:25):
being open more and more to women. And so meanwhile
you have mashing sort of being placed on the more
benign and of the sexual assault spectrum at the time
because it was less criticized and say underage sex and
coercive seduction, but nonetheless received national press attention right as
(14:47):
can be seen in the nineteen six Chicago Tribune headline
what can be done to rid the Palmer House block
of mashers? And I mean this was, this was There
was a lot of editorial space dedicated to drawing attention
to these, you know, men who stood on street corners
and hollered at women and made it difficult for them
(15:08):
to enter and exit their buildings. Well in women's magazines
also started advising lady readers to avoid eye contact with
men on the street and from doing anything to call
attention to themselves, which also sounds awfully familiar to advice
that we still here as women today. Um. And there
was a nineteen o nine article in the New York Times,
(15:30):
um supposedly written by a working girl from Detroit, or
maybe it was a letter to the editor, um, And
it noted how she figured out that the blank looks
on women's faces on the subways were their quote armor
against the offensive stairs of the New York masher. I
actually out loud when I read that, said, oh yeah,
(15:50):
oh yeah, oh yeah, because don't you don't you feel
your face go dead? Well, you kind of do put
on your armor sometimes when you when you know you're
about to go into a public space. I do it
any time. I'd start as soon as I exit my driveway,
when I'm jogging and hit the main thoroughfare, it's sort
of like, all right, here we go and the music.
(16:11):
I mean, I'm going to be completely honest here and
say that I'm not putting on my dead face because
I think I might encounter some annoying women on the
train or some annoying women at the mall or wherever.
I'm putting on my dead face because I know that
if I make eye contact with a man in a
confined space, whether that's on a train, in an elevator, whatever,
I'm opening myself up to entering into an interaction that
(16:32):
I might not want to be a part of. Yeah,
and we talked about how there was that Guardian article
we saw that said women have been fighting against street
harassment since the nineteen seventies with the Reclaimed the Night movement,
but women really started hollying back in the United States
at least in the nineteen tens. And we're going to
(16:55):
talk about some of the ways that they started fighting
back against them. Asher smashing, the masher when we come
right back from a quick break and now back to
the show. So picking up in the nineteen tens, when
women start hollowing back, as Kristen said, um, they really
(17:22):
were not going to stand for these distasteful mashers on
the street anymore, and they took matters into their own hands. Initially, however,
the press had enlisted men to help protect women, but
women were like, no, listen, I'm busy fighting for the
vote and fighting for equal space and society, and I
(17:43):
want my greater mobility. I want my access to work
and LEAs your activities. I'm not going to let men
interfere with my ability to give from point A to
point B. And so I'm going to take boxing classes.
I'm going to take self defense classes, and as evidenced
by a photo that I sound of a woman poking
a man with her hatpen, I'm gonna learn how to
(18:05):
defend myself in general. Yeah. In nineteen ten, the Women's
Equal Suffrage Association sought to confront mashers or male flirts,
or as they called them, obnoxious all glows, and they
wanted to appoint special agents as female policemen to patrol
for mashers and This was actually how some of the
(18:27):
very first female police officers were hired in the US.
I didn't know that. That's when my brain exploded, Carol,
including one here in Atlanta. Yeah, but it was all
because women really wanted other women to help guide them
through the streets and keep their eyes peeled for the mashers.
But in the meantime, a number of women began taking
(18:49):
up exercise because this was also the early days of
physical exercise becoming part of you know, the the healthy
person's regimen. But women also took boxing lessons to protect
themselves against mashers. One Mrs Frank Gilbert in Cleveland took
boxing lessons and ended up clocking a streetcar masher, and
(19:13):
she told the press that she wanted to form a
self defense quote Society for the Suppression and annihilation of mashers.
Don't mess with Mrs Frank Gilbert. She's probably mad because
no one even knows her first name. Well. And then,
speaking again of hat pins, we get other stories of
women and girls actively defending themselves against mashers. And these
(19:38):
really were pressed darlings. These stories people loved reading about them,
and what was so great and what I think we
need more of today? If we're continuing themes today. The
fact that the tone was respectful, it was admiring, it
was supportive. That the general overall theme of these stories
was like, yeah, good for you. Women. Don't take that
awful mashing from those full masters on the street corner.
(20:01):
You need to defend yourself. And by nine around three
hundred female police officers had been hired around the country
at larger municipal police forces, specifically to deal with this
mash your problem. Which makes me realize that we have
not done a podcast on women and police officers. But hey,
(20:22):
now we have our jumping off point for that. And
I mean, speaking of legal issues, women who were victims
of street harassment were strongly encouraged to prosecute their tormentors.
There were a few brave souls who really stepped up
and said, no, I'm taking this guy to court, even
though it could mean dragging your good name through the mud,
even though people could perceive it as being some type
(20:43):
of scandal, or you sort of speaking out of your
feminine womanly turn. Um. There are just a lot of
women at this time saying, look, you guys, you won't
give me the vote. Well that was earlier, but I mean,
I'm not going to stand up for this stuff anymore. Well,
it was especially radical all for black women to prosecute
(21:04):
men in court as well, because up to this point,
I mean and still with this too. And we talked
about this in our episode on the history of rape
in the United States, how all of the focus on
mashers was more concerned and really exclusively concerned over the
safety of white women on the streets. Because this is
(21:25):
when we have the prevailing idea that while sexual assault
can't really happen to black women because they're hyper sexualized
to begin with, and you also still have, you know,
the construct of the black man as the violent rapists
targeting white women. But there was a lot of conversation
around street harassment in um, particularly in black newspapers, of
(21:49):
women talking to other women about this, and so by
the twenties you do start to see more black women too,
getting more directly involved in this because can you imagine
at the time time being a black woman bringing a
charge and a master charge against a white man. That
would have been I mean, I'm sure that would have
been scandalizing for some people. But then after women get
(22:13):
the vote with the nineteenth Amendment in and with the
end of World War One, we see the anti masher
movement died down. I mean, it really reached this fever
pitch and then fades away as if it never happened. Almost. Yeah,
but it's I mean, the context of it fading away
(22:34):
is sort of ikey, because you lose that whole idea
of chivalrous masculinity and men enlisting men to help protect
women from guys like that to the assertion of a
more aggressive ideal of manhood. Around the same time that
(22:54):
female flirtation becomes more popular and popularly depicted by actresses
on Green Light Clara bou and so you get this sentiment,
this this prevailing notion that things like cat calling and
street harassment are almost just more comical and normalized because hey,
(23:16):
they want to flirt with me. Yeah. It's almost the
other side of the coin of we have the the
emergence of the new woman. We have a sexuality starting
to kind of become slightly more normalized in terms of
women expressing it as well as men. And so with
that though, it is that idea of well you want this,
(23:38):
don't you. So here you go like why why would
it be strange at all? For me to comment on
your body. If you're wearing clothes that are more revealing
than ever before, and if you're wearing makeup like an
actress on the screen and you are actively flirting with men,
well then why are you? Why don't you want to
be talked to and yelled at on the streets? And
(24:01):
the self freedman sums up this this transition pretty well,
uh in Redefining rape, she writes, After the nineteen twenties,
the negotiation of urban space for the purposes of wage earning, shopping,
or flirtation increasingly took the form of individual resistance rather
than a social movement. For a short period, however, the
revolt against the masher provided a political response to sexual vulnerability.
(24:25):
Tributes to self defense, suffragious visions of police authority, the
willingness of black women to report white men to authorities,
and the reactions of black men all contested white men's
sexual entitlements. And I mean, I think that goes back
to what I was saying about how great it was
that newspapers back then we're cheering women on for taking
(24:46):
these men on. I mean, that's on the one hand, women,
you shouldn't have to defend yourselves against these men. It
shouldn't be happening. But the fact that they are being
vocal and active, physically active about standing up to these
guys and ended up being cheered on for it, I mean,
I think that's an amazing thing. Well, and it's just
so incredible to think and mind boggling to think about
(25:09):
the fact that we've been literally fighting for freedom in
a public space for a century plus now, since we've
been in a public space exactly. And so the question
then is why why now this sort of twenty one
century antimash er movement revival? UM. I think a lot
(25:33):
of it has to do with feminism and technology, kind
of the the perfect intersection of those two things, because
if you look in the nineties seventies, Second Way feminists
absolutely focused on street harassment. They started the Reclaim the
Night also known as Take Back the Night initiatives, UM,
which again you have the focus on street harassment as
(25:56):
more women entering the public and male dominated space is
of women, you know, sort of the revived idea of hey,
we can go get jobs perhaps, um. But then again
it sort of dies down a bit until two thousand five,
when Emily May starts hollow Back, which really started, I mean,
an incredible movement. Yeah, and this is it's such a
(26:21):
product of its time in terms of being a digital thing.
And you know, you go back to women who are
taking boxing classes at the turn of the twentieth century
and saying, I'm not going to put up with this.
I'm going to learn how to defend myself. And then
you fast forward to the two thousands and you have
women who are actually snapping cell phone pictures of the
guys who are verbally attacking them, or in the case
(26:42):
of the woman who inspired hallyback efforts, she snapped a
self one picture of a guy who was publicly masturbating
while staring at her, which she was then able to
use successfully in his prosecution. Yeah, because while while cat
calling is not illegal in New York City, it is
in fact only will to masturbate in public just f
(27:03):
y I UM. But by taking on street harassment from
the social media approach, it has empowered men and women
to identify and call out their harassers. And Emily May
has talked before about how um the idea evolved to
not just from uh, the that initial cell phone photo,
(27:23):
but also in conversations with guy friends of hers about
the experience of walking around, and one of them commenting, like,
you walked down a completely different metaphorically speaking sidewalk than
I do, just like they hadn't even realized before that
experience of what street harassment feels like. And I think
(27:46):
that's why a lot of times, in response to these conversations,
the knee jerk deflection is it's just a compliment. Why
are you victimizing yourself? But the fact that it typically
happens when you are I selated, or possibly with other women.
But I don't think I've ever gotten yelled at when
I've been with a male friend or a boyfriend, or
(28:09):
a brother or a father whoever. Um, it's very specific
in that kind of approach. It's intended to make you
feel vulnerable, right exactly, And I mean in terms of perspective.
There was the one kind of social experiment that we
read about where a woman dressed up like a man
and a man dressed up like a woman, and they
sent them on their way through the streets, and the
(28:30):
woman felt reported that she felt such relief at being
invisible for once, that just being able to freaking walk
down the street from point A to point B. Whereas
the man who was wearing fake breast and everything, I mean,
he was dressed as a woman. Uh found himself putting
on his jacket to avoid to try to deflect people
(28:51):
staring at him at his fake chest, um and wishing
that he had more clothes on because he just felt
so gross being stared up. Well, and we heard um
a gay guy not too long ago who wrote into
us um because he has long hair, he tends to
wear tighter jeans, and I believe we even read the
letter on a podcast episode a while back. But he
(29:15):
was walking down the street going home or going somewhere
and was aggressively yelled at by a guy in a
car who mistook him for a woman. And he said
that he was so it was so terrifying because the
person followed him for a little while and he finally
turned around and yelled back at him. But he had
never experienced that before. And the following I don't know
(29:38):
if you've experienced this before, Caroline, but um, I'll never
forget being in Bushwick in New York once with a
girlfriend of mine and we were walking somewhere and we
were followed for a few blocks. It was terrifying. We
eventually ducked into a bar we happened to run across
just to be around other people. Um. And and he
(30:02):
talked about this guy, this listener in his letter talked
about how afterwards he was just so confused, and I
was wondering what he had done to bring it on himself.
And the answer is nothing, because this is an issue
that has been going on in this fight for safety
and public spaces for so long. Yeah, And I mean
(30:24):
that's where that's where I mean what you just said
is where it's evident that this is a problem of individuals. Certainly,
it's a problem of the men who choose to harass people,
men and women on the street, but it's also part
of such a huge cultural issue of of women's not
only women's safety and and men's safety too, but of
(30:49):
allowing people to just exist, allowing people to go about
their business in public. Well, and we need to I
want to re emphasize as well the fact that a
lot of these conversations are focused on usually cis gender women,
but trans women are at much heightened levels not only
(31:11):
for being at risk of street harassment but outright violence
and attack in public spaces as well, and that's something
that you know needs to be addressed too, and it's
not just something that's happening in the US, even though um,
a New Zealand camera crew conducted the same kind of
social experiment as the Hollyback video where they had a model,
(31:32):
an actual model, go out on the street and walk
around in a busy place and she got a cat
called zero times. She got stopped once for someone like
asking her for directions, and so it raised the question of, well,
what's going on, what's the difference here? Um? And and
I don't I mean, honestly, I don't know the answer,
(31:53):
but I mean, it's certainly been an issue to the
point that there are now women only subway cars and
taxi services in places like India and Japan in order
to shield women from street harassment. But I mean, something
like that causes its own problems because okay, great, you're
in your woman only train car, You're you're not gonna
get groped, you're not gonna get harassed. But suddenly, um,
(32:17):
that separates the sexes completely. So a man who would
be harassing someone when he does see a woman, it's
an even rare occurrence, and he's even more likely to harass. Yeah,
I mean it's it's definitely been a huge problem in
Indian there's a lot of grassroots activism going on there
to tackle it as well as just the issue of
(32:37):
sexual harassment more generally speaking. UM, I thought it was
really interesting that in two thousand eleven, Bangladesh officially did
away with the eve teasing euphemism cat calling um was
known by and probably still is euphemistically known as eve
teasing or just a street harassment as ephemistically known as
eve teasing. And uh, the courts he did away with
(33:00):
that in Bangladesh to categorize it as a form of
sexual harassment. And also in Nepal there is a law
pass allowing police to immediately arrest someone suspected of street
harassment without a warrant. So clearly this is I mean,
it's not just something going on in American streets. This
is a global conversation that's happening, um. And there are
(33:21):
questions too in the US about laws regarding public harassment,
because the thing about street harassment is that the kinds
of horror, horrifying and sexually forward things that are yelled
at women. If you say that in a public space.
If you say that at a workplace or a school,
they're already laws in place to protect people against that,
(33:43):
but not so on the streets. Yeah, and so this
gets into the issue of what's called fighting words. Legally,
and in our country, we have protections against fighting words,
things like yelling fire in a theater or saying something
to another human being that will create an unsafe situation.
(34:04):
They actually got their start as a way to essentially
prevents guys from challenging each other to duels and then
killing each other over an argument. And so while that
legally has trickled down through the years, no such protection
exists to women or men when it comes to street
(34:24):
harassment and the language used when people do harass people
on the street. Yeah. I mean, I have a feeling
that that's probably never gonna happen, that the fighting words
action will be amended to that, but it definitely changes
the way I thought about how it operates in a
public space. Um. But the thing about it is, Caroline,
(34:47):
there are plenty of people who aren't men who also say,
oh my gosh, this is not harassment. It's still a compliment.
And before we close out the podcast, we do need
to address that um, there was a woman or is
a woman? She's not dead. Derrie Laak, who kind of
became the poster gal of pro cat callers when she
(35:08):
wrote an op ed in The New York Post that
went viral for kind of all the wrong reasons because
it was headlined, Hey, ladies, cat calls are flattering, deal
with it, and I'm not gonna waste my breath going
over all of her reasons why she enjoyed being cat
called um. But there was a study we found from
the journal Sexuality and Culture from two thousand and ten
(35:32):
looking closer at the context of cat calling to dig
into that question of well is it complimentary? Because you
do find like in pretty much anything you read about it,
there's always a subset of people saying, well, I gonna
like it. I gotta like hearing that I look good. Yeah,
And and there were, for instance, there were a lot
(35:53):
of comments under the video of the actors who was
walking through New York. There were a lot of comments um,
calling her a lot of dirty words and saying it's
women like this that are the reason that men are
afraid to come talk to me and tell me I
look nice, Like, what's wrong with a man uh coming
in saying hello and giving me his number whatever, and
(36:15):
it's like, whoa. These are different things, but it is
important to discuss context well. And also, Caroline, there's the
risk of forgetting to smile some days if people don't
tell you to. You know, I forget all the time.
It's not until I walk into work and Kristin yelled
at me from across the room to smile that I
even remember. Yeah, I'm just trying to compliment you girl,
(36:37):
I know. But yeah, So this this study that Kristen
is talking about found that lower contextual threat levels do
have a bearing on how women perceive the cat calling,
the harassment, the the eye contact, whatever it may be. Yeah,
(36:57):
because there's this whole thing of harass swinis in the
eye of the beholder in terms to how um threatening
it feels. And so this study conducted a lot of
experiments and highlighted perception variables. In other words, the key
things sort of influence that threat level, and that includes age,
(37:20):
marital status, sex attractiveness, familiarity status, job status of the perpetrator,
demographic sexual identity, and attitudes toward women of the observer.
So that's also looking at how we as outsiders perceived
the people watching the video of the woman walking through
New York for ten hours, how we perceive that and
(37:42):
whether that is or is not harassment. And it really
focused in on the attractiveness and age of the harasser,
as well as being alone or with friends, as the
major context factors for how fearful a woman was at
the prospect of these different read harassment scenarios they were
presented with, because there is a sticky question of well,
(38:05):
if he's young and hot, maybe maybe it's maybe it
is more of a compliment than harassment. Yeah, but I
mean when you when you mix and match all of
these perception variables, and that has a lot to do
with it. I don't care how hot the guy is,
if he is like physically, if he's following me down
the street yelling at me, I mean, that's still going
(38:28):
to be a high threat situation that I'm going to perceive.
You know. Yes, there are so many different variables to
take into account. But um and and I don't discount
that a lot of people will say, well, it's not
as threatening if he's good looking, or if he's rich,
or or if he's driving a Bentley or whatever. Um
as opposed to if he's a guy sitting sitting on
(38:49):
a stoop outside of his apartment. But there's still I
don't know, there's just so many contextual threat things to
take into account. Because well, that was the thing too
in all of these studies that they conducted, even when
sort of playing around with those different variables, it never
(39:09):
found like nothing completely mitigated all the negative impacts on
the recipient in terms of feelings of self objectification, feelings
of safety. There was never a perfect scenario when it
was like a guy saying something lude or threatening or inappropriate,
and then the recipient was like, and I feel great,
(39:34):
and I feel like a strong and powerful person walking
through the streets. There is there's no no way you
slice and dice it. Does it not have a negative outcome,
even if it's a small one. Yeah, exactly. And also
as I was reading all of this too and thinking
about the kinds of especially the more lewd things that
(39:55):
are said on or even just the lude implications that
are made in very benign statements, um, and even just
in the looks, you can just be looked up and
down and feel as violated as you would if a
guy propositioned you for sex right then and there. And
I feel like it says also so much about in
(40:17):
many ways, how sexually backward our society is when this
kind of sexual communication in a public space is often
deemed complimentary and benign, whereas we still can't get sexual
consent and communication between two people in private spaces like
straightened out, Like why is that? I mean, there's so
(40:39):
many there's so many layers. And also I feel like too,
the whole thing of well, if he's attractive, then it's
a compliment also leads to the question of well, why
is being called hot by a stranger, like the the best,
most validating thing for a woman, you know, Like why
is being called beautiful the most coveted kind of compliment
(41:03):
a woman can receive in our society too. There are
lots of layers to this, So I mean, yeah, exactly,
And I think that the historical context of all this
is so important to take into account, especially if you
do argue that cat calling is totally benign because it's
(41:23):
actually not well, because it's not about compliments, it's about power.
It's all about power in the same way that rape
is not about sex, it's about power. And and am
I saying that all men who tell women to smile
are rapists. No, but it's still it is a fact
of It's an issue of power. Yeah, because I have
(41:44):
a hard time thinking that the men who yelled at
me to smile, we're yelling at other men to smile.
I have a hard time believing that it was just like, gosh,
darn it, you guys, I just want the world to
be a happier place. At this train, seem more smile. Yeah,
And and so I mean when you, when you look
at that, look at things in the context of that,
(42:07):
I think that says a lot too. And so it's
really important to not just have this conversation with adults
and fellow people in the world who get cat called
and harassed on the streets in public against their will.
I think it's important to talk to kids about these
issues too, maybe not go into so many gruesome details, perhaps,
(42:28):
but to discuss issues of consent and what is and
is not appropriate. And we want to acknowledge to you
before we close out that this is we're talking about
a very slim minority of men who are doing this,
but the reaction of that slim minority behavior to the
(42:50):
you know, the majority's reaction to it says a lot. Yeah.
But now we want to hear from our listeners because
I have a feeling that lots of people have lots
of things to say, and we want to hear from
everybody on this because everybody has a stake in this,
because at some point we probably all exist in public spaces.
So mom Stuff at house stuffworks dot Com is our
(43:10):
email address. You can also tweet us at mom Stuff
podcast and messages on Facebook, and we've got a couple
of messages to share with you right now. So I've
gotta let her here from someone who would like to
remain anonymous about our episode on Lady Lawyers, and she writes,
(43:30):
as a practicing lawyer, I can tell you that shaming
does happen in court. Early in my career, I was
at a federal court hearing with senior partners, and because
I had forgotten to drop off my dry cleaning after work,
I had to wear a royal blue pinstripe skirt suit
to court. I was the only person not wearing black
or gray, while not a single one of the male
(43:51):
partners who I worked with ever made a comment about it.
At the end of the hearing, a thirty five to
forty five year old male Department of Justice attorney walked
around two our table to the opposite side where I
was standing, came up, stood right behind me, leaned in
and whispered nice suit. Needless to say, I vow that
I would never again wear anything but black or gray
(44:13):
to court. Well, I still wouldn't wear a royal blue
suit to federal court. There is a lot of theater
involved in going to court, and part of the show
is playing to your audience. I have friends who single
male colleagues put on wedding bands before trials because studies
have shown that juries trust married men more than single men.
Like Michael J. Fox's character on The Good Wife, I
(44:34):
think most lawyers would gladly alter their appearance or exaggerate
a disability to sway the jury or the judge in
their client's favor. In response to your question about how
big this problem is, it isn't a big problem because,
unlike TV, most lawyers don't go to court so often.
So thanks for that insight. So I have a letter
(44:54):
here from Lauren uh in response to our Lady Lawyer's
dress code episode, and she might not agree with the
author of that last letter Christian. In terms of staying
true to just black and gray, she says, as a
lady lawyer, I am very conscious of what I wear
at a court I'm a Midwestern, middle class raised gal,
but at thirty five, I became a named partner in
(45:15):
a Boston law firm through sheer, hard work and a
few smarts. As unfortunate as it is, women in the
courtroom do need to think about what they wear and
how they wear it, much more than our male counterparts. However,
this does not mean that women should shirk their individuality.
Wear a skirt suit that hits just below the knee
and a modest button up shirt, but make the suit red.
(45:36):
I've found that so long as the length and neckline
are appropriate and what comes from your mouth is intelligent,
judges and fellow lawyers will respect you. I never wear
black suits and I always wear stiletto heels. Ask anyone
in my court house and they will tell you I
am forced to be reckoned. With lots of love to you, ladies,
and if any lady lawyer or hopeful lady lawyers in
(45:57):
the Boston area, I would love to help her succeed
in any way. I can so thank you, Lauren, and
thanks to everybody who's written into us. Mom. Stuff at
how stuff works dot com is our email address and
for links all of our social media as well as
all of our blogs, videos, and podcasts, including this one
with links to our sources so you can read all
about the history of smashing the mashers. Head on over
(46:20):
to stuff mom Never Told You dot com for more
on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how
stuff works dot com
Welcome to stuff Mob Never told you. From how Supports
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline, And today we are revisiting a topic
that we talked about in two thousand eleven, but we
absolutely need to talk about it again because there are
(00:25):
lots of conversations going on these days about cat calling
and street harassment. Yeah, because I'm sure you guys are
familiar with the Hollaback video that just came out not
too long ago, featuring a woman she's an actress, walking
through the streets of New York for ten hours and
(00:46):
facing numerous cat calls and street harassment from men on
the street. The video itself attracted a lot of controversy
because of the way it was edited to edit out
a lot of white men who were doing calling in
various street harassment things um to feature mostly men of color.
But that being said, the video itself sparked a huge
(01:10):
conversation online between and among men and women about what
if street harassment? When is it just complimenting, when is
it something scary? And what does it mean for all
of us at large? Yeah, and speaking of Hallaback, which
is the nonprofit that UM produced that viral video. We
(01:32):
first talked about street harassment on the podcast when Halliback
was first gaining a lot of media attention. UM it
was founded in two thousand five by Emily May and
it was started specifically to attract more attention to the
issue of street harassment and to facilitate bigger conversations about
the frequency of street harassment and how it very much
(01:56):
is harassment and also give people tools to fight back
and also connect with other people on this issue. And
the fact that pretty much any time a woman says gender,
transgender and gay men as well leave their houses and
walk down the sidewalk a lot of times that means
dealing with what we youphemistically call cat calling. And seeing
(02:22):
to that viral video as well, I mean, the response
to it just highlighted problems on top of problems. For
the very fact that Shoshana Roberts, who is the actress Senate,
immediately received rape threats. She has alerted the police in
the neighborhood she lives in that this is what's going on.
These are the threats she's received, so in case something happens,
(02:44):
they'll know who she is when she calls. Yeah, and
to me that's I mean, not to get off on
a tangent, but there's echoes of what's happening with the
nat of Sarkese in there too, in terms of like,
so you you call out a problem, people saying no,
it's not a problem, but I'm going to threaten to
kill you or rape or a rape. Yeah, exactly. And
(03:06):
so another issue of course with things that this video
sort of dug up is the fact that a lot
of people's response to it is just women, this is
your problem. I'm just trying to give you a compliment.
You're playing the victim role. You just want to be
the victim. You just want attention, and you know, making
(03:28):
it more about the woman and it being her problem
than it being a social problem at large. Yeah, it's
just a compliment. Learn how to take a compliment. Um.
And if you're curious on the difference between cat calls
and compliments, you can go to stuff I've Never Told
Us YouTube page and watch the video if cat calls
for compliments, in which you'll get a lot of examples
(03:49):
of the differences between the two. So first up, though,
let's define street harassment and also offer some statistics that
we can get a grasp of how often this is happening.
This is not just something happening to Shoshana Roberts when
she is making a video for Hollow Back. So street harassment,
to define it is the sexual harassment of typically sis
(04:12):
and trans women in public spaces by typically men who
are strangers, and that includes both verbal and nonverbal behavior.
It tends to be comments on the woman's physique and
her very presence in public A lot of the time.
It also has to do with smiling. Hey, woman over there, smile, smile.
(04:33):
Want to see you smile? So how common is it?
There was a naturally representative study sponsored by Stop Street
Harassment which found that six of all women and of
all men had experienced it, and among the women had
been sexually touched, had been followed, and nine percent had
(04:55):
been forced to do something sexual. I think that is
a different way of saying sexual assault. UM. LGBT identified
respondents were also likelier to experience it. One statistic they
highlighted was it by age seventeen, seventy percent of LGBT
individuals experienced street harassment compared to of heterosexual people. And
(05:17):
it also happens around the world. Yeah. Um, the site
Medium got into this by assigning diaries essentially to women
in cities all around the world, in New York, San Francisco,
Los Angeles, Mexico City, Berlin in Italy, in Mongolia, in
tel Aviv, Nairobi, and Singapore um and based on these
(05:41):
women's experiences, they found that the woman in Mexico City
experienced the worst cat calling. She had a high of
twenty nine cat calls in a single week, versus Tel
Aviv and Los Angeles, which tied for the least cat
call heavy locations, which just to each and there were
a lot of common hallmarks for this kind of behavior. UM.
(06:04):
It tended to happen most often during commute time, specifically
when women were alone, although men doing the cat calling,
we're just as likely to be alone as with other
men UM and the most common form of it just
commanded a smile. They just want to see a smil
(06:25):
carel line. Yeah. I used to get this um all
the time when I took public transportation to work. Not
that I would not continue too, It's just I moved
and blah blah blah. I just don't want you to
think poorly of me. I wish I could take it anyway, UM, yeah,
I used to get this all the time. And what
was so weird is I never got it from a
(06:45):
man in a business suit. I always got it from
homeless men who were hanging out at the train station.
I mean that's my personal experience. I know everyone has
different experiences, but and speaking to that experience, some people
have talked about the socioeconomic intersections with this, because it's
(07:08):
a lot about not compliments obviously, but it has a
lot to do with power and power over public spaces
and cat calling and street harassment. I should say, is
often used as a tool by people who might feel
more economically and socially marginalized to assert their power. And so,
(07:33):
in speaking to the BBC about why some men do this,
Katherine Zipple, who is a sociology professor at Northeastern University,
said quote, oftentimes it's not really about the women. It's
just about the men performing masculine acts for each other
and establishing a pecking order amongst themselves. What's really going
(07:53):
on is the dynamic among men, and in that it's
so it's so crucial to discoverse Asian to understanding it
that this is the dynamic among men that's happening in
public spaces, right because, and I mean this goes back
forever as far as the conflict that occurs and has
always occurred when women enter a public sphere. I mean,
(08:18):
this is not cat calling and street harassment is not
a new conversation. Kristen and I read one article that
was like, oh, this is a problem that goes all
the way back to the nineties seventies, and it definitely
has roots much much deeper, and that go back much
much farther when women first left the home to begin with.
(08:38):
Exactly pretty much as soon as we began entering the
public sphere on a day to day basis, this issue arose.
And a lot of this information is coming from a
sealf Freedman, who is a scholar in Stanford's Claimant Institute
for Gender Research, and she also wrote the book Redefining Rape,
And just speaking of some etymology when it comes to
(08:58):
cat calling, I thought was really interesting. The term comes
from theater. It goes back to the mid seventeenth century,
a combination of cat and call, originally denoting a kind
of whistle or squeaking instrument used to express disapproval. Now,
when we get into street harassment, in the nineteenth century
(09:20):
and into the early twentieth century, it went by a
different name. It wasn't so much cat calling but mashing
and the masher, both of which also have theatrical roots. Yeah, this,
Kristen and I got so caught up in this reading
about the masters. It is fascinating stuff and it is
just further proof that the harassment of women in public
(09:44):
spaces is definitely not a new thing. So the term
mash comes from nineteenth century theater slang meaning a sweetheart
or a crush, typically of a male audience member on
a female actress, and for example, an teen eight two
a theater guide to find mashers as quote masculine theatergoers
(10:05):
whose wild ambition is to attract and hold female attention. Now,
the first time I heard about mashing was actually um
in reading about sort of cultural history of female friendship.
And around this same time too, you would describe having
intensely strong, like platonically passionate feelings for a girlfriend as
(10:27):
a smash, and they would also they would exchange these
um mash notes to each other. But outside of that
realm and outside the theater world, mashers became known in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth century as the aggressive
male street flirt who quote were usually depicted in newspapers
(10:50):
and editorial cartoons as well dressed white men whose behaviors
were more irritating and comical than menacing. And they were
also men who viewed themselves as lady killers along the
lines of a Don Juan and other Natalie dressed gentlemen,
because that was another thing. They were often very very
(11:10):
snappy dressers. Um. And there was also the Parisian version
of the flneur, which is the detached male spectator of
the urban crowd. Yeah, basically men whose quote unquote job
it is to stand around and just watch women and
provide their commentary as if they are at the theater,
(11:30):
and also attract their attention through their through their fashionable
clothes like Dandy's. And I think it's key to note
though that in popular culture at the time, like those
editorial cartoons that Kristen mentioned, it is important to mention
that they were depicted as white. That's key because these
(11:50):
are snappily dressed gentlemen. They're they're mostly harmless ladies. They're
just they're just offering you a quirky kind of compliment.
Are just kind of annoying. It's no big deal because
at the time, the perception of black men interacting with
society white society ladies was painted in an entirely different
(12:13):
picture at the time, of course, like even black men
making direct eye contact with a white woman would have
been considered outright sexual assault. And so when you code
non violent mashers as white it says a lot about
sort of racial divisions at the time. Yeah, because um,
really it was age of consent campaigns and these antimash
(12:37):
or initiatives that were mostly focused to white men, whereas
black men were considered violent sexual creatures, they were the rapists.
White men were only to be feared for perhaps whisking
away young woman who was too young to consent or
doing this mashing, when in reality, Freedman talks about it
(12:59):
was native born white men because new immigrants to the
country were also lumped into this as well and considered
more deviant and more of a danger to um white
American women, whereas it was often the white men who
were the worst when it came to street harassment, since
they claimed the streets as their territory. Which does that
(13:21):
sound familiar, Yeah, exactly, And so I mean what's going
on here the social context that we're talking about, Like
Kristen said, I mean, here are white men who have
you know, quote unquote been in charge. Then you have
this influx of women who have always been at the home, immigrants,
where did they even come from? And people just have
(13:41):
other classes and backgrounds. So suddenly white, these white men
that were talking about these matters are having to assert
their perceived dominance over everyone around them all of a sudden,
for the first time in these urban spaces, you have gender, class,
and ray all interacting and encountering one another in new
(14:03):
ways for the very first time. And along with this,
not only do you just have generally women entering the
public sphere, but you also have the rise of department stores,
this whole consumer culture that would get wealthy women out
of their homes to go shopping. But also you have
female clerks who would be working at the department stores
and other jobs being opened, those low level clerical jobs
(14:25):
being open more and more to women. And so meanwhile
you have mashing sort of being placed on the more
benign and of the sexual assault spectrum at the time
because it was less criticized and say underage sex and
coercive seduction, but nonetheless received national press attention right as
(14:47):
can be seen in the nineteen six Chicago Tribune headline
what can be done to rid the Palmer House block
of mashers? And I mean this was, this was There
was a lot of editorial space dedicated to drawing attention
to these, you know, men who stood on street corners
and hollered at women and made it difficult for them
(15:08):
to enter and exit their buildings. Well in women's magazines
also started advising lady readers to avoid eye contact with
men on the street and from doing anything to call
attention to themselves, which also sounds awfully familiar to advice
that we still here as women today. Um. And there
was a nineteen o nine article in the New York Times,
(15:30):
um supposedly written by a working girl from Detroit, or
maybe it was a letter to the editor, um, And
it noted how she figured out that the blank looks
on women's faces on the subways were their quote armor
against the offensive stairs of the New York masher. I
actually out loud when I read that, said, oh yeah,
(15:50):
oh yeah, oh yeah, because don't you don't you feel
your face go dead? Well, you kind of do put
on your armor sometimes when you when you know you're
about to go into a public space. I do it
any time. I'd start as soon as I exit my driveway,
when I'm jogging and hit the main thoroughfare, it's sort
of like, all right, here we go and the music.
(16:11):
I mean, I'm going to be completely honest here and
say that I'm not putting on my dead face because
I think I might encounter some annoying women on the
train or some annoying women at the mall or wherever.
I'm putting on my dead face because I know that
if I make eye contact with a man in a
confined space, whether that's on a train, in an elevator, whatever,
I'm opening myself up to entering into an interaction that
(16:32):
I might not want to be a part of. Yeah,
and we talked about how there was that Guardian article
we saw that said women have been fighting against street
harassment since the nineteen seventies with the Reclaimed the Night movement,
but women really started hollying back in the United States
at least in the nineteen tens. And we're going to
(16:55):
talk about some of the ways that they started fighting
back against them. Asher smashing, the masher when we come
right back from a quick break and now back to
the show. So picking up in the nineteen tens, when
women start hollowing back, as Kristen said, um, they really
(17:22):
were not going to stand for these distasteful mashers on
the street anymore, and they took matters into their own hands. Initially, however,
the press had enlisted men to help protect women, but
women were like, no, listen, I'm busy fighting for the
vote and fighting for equal space and society, and I
(17:43):
want my greater mobility. I want my access to work
and LEAs your activities. I'm not going to let men
interfere with my ability to give from point A to
point B. And so I'm going to take boxing classes.
I'm going to take self defense classes, and as evidenced
by a photo that I sound of a woman poking
a man with her hatpen, I'm gonna learn how to
(18:05):
defend myself in general. Yeah. In nineteen ten, the Women's
Equal Suffrage Association sought to confront mashers or male flirts,
or as they called them, obnoxious all glows, and they
wanted to appoint special agents as female policemen to patrol
for mashers and This was actually how some of the
(18:27):
very first female police officers were hired in the US.
I didn't know that. That's when my brain exploded, Carol,
including one here in Atlanta. Yeah, but it was all
because women really wanted other women to help guide them
through the streets and keep their eyes peeled for the mashers.
But in the meantime, a number of women began taking
(18:49):
up exercise because this was also the early days of
physical exercise becoming part of you know, the the healthy
person's regimen. But women also took boxing lessons to protect
themselves against mashers. One Mrs Frank Gilbert in Cleveland took
boxing lessons and ended up clocking a streetcar masher, and
(19:13):
she told the press that she wanted to form a
self defense quote Society for the Suppression and annihilation of mashers.
Don't mess with Mrs Frank Gilbert. She's probably mad because
no one even knows her first name. Well. And then,
speaking again of hat pins, we get other stories of
women and girls actively defending themselves against mashers. And these
(19:38):
really were pressed darlings. These stories people loved reading about them,
and what was so great and what I think we
need more of today? If we're continuing themes today. The
fact that the tone was respectful, it was admiring, it
was supportive. That the general overall theme of these stories
was like, yeah, good for you. Women. Don't take that
awful mashing from those full masters on the street corner.
(20:01):
You need to defend yourself. And by nine around three
hundred female police officers had been hired around the country
at larger municipal police forces, specifically to deal with this
mash your problem. Which makes me realize that we have
not done a podcast on women and police officers. But hey,
(20:22):
now we have our jumping off point for that. And
I mean, speaking of legal issues, women who were victims
of street harassment were strongly encouraged to prosecute their tormentors.
There were a few brave souls who really stepped up
and said, no, I'm taking this guy to court, even
though it could mean dragging your good name through the mud,
even though people could perceive it as being some type
(20:43):
of scandal, or you sort of speaking out of your
feminine womanly turn. Um. There are just a lot of
women at this time saying, look, you guys, you won't
give me the vote. Well that was earlier, but I mean,
I'm not going to stand up for this stuff anymore. Well,
it was especially radical all for black women to prosecute
(21:04):
men in court as well, because up to this point,
I mean and still with this too. And we talked
about this in our episode on the history of rape
in the United States, how all of the focus on
mashers was more concerned and really exclusively concerned over the
safety of white women on the streets. Because this is
(21:25):
when we have the prevailing idea that while sexual assault
can't really happen to black women because they're hyper sexualized
to begin with, and you also still have, you know,
the construct of the black man as the violent rapists
targeting white women. But there was a lot of conversation
around street harassment in um, particularly in black newspapers, of
(21:49):
women talking to other women about this, and so by
the twenties you do start to see more black women too,
getting more directly involved in this because can you imagine
at the time time being a black woman bringing a
charge and a master charge against a white man. That
would have been I mean, I'm sure that would have
been scandalizing for some people. But then after women get
(22:13):
the vote with the nineteenth Amendment in and with the
end of World War One, we see the anti masher
movement died down. I mean, it really reached this fever
pitch and then fades away as if it never happened. Almost. Yeah,
but it's I mean, the context of it fading away
(22:34):
is sort of ikey, because you lose that whole idea
of chivalrous masculinity and men enlisting men to help protect
women from guys like that to the assertion of a
more aggressive ideal of manhood. Around the same time that
(22:54):
female flirtation becomes more popular and popularly depicted by actresses
on Green Light Clara bou and so you get this sentiment,
this this prevailing notion that things like cat calling and
street harassment are almost just more comical and normalized because hey,
(23:16):
they want to flirt with me. Yeah. It's almost the
other side of the coin of we have the the
emergence of the new woman. We have a sexuality starting
to kind of become slightly more normalized in terms of
women expressing it as well as men. And so with
that though, it is that idea of well you want this,
(23:38):
don't you. So here you go like why why would
it be strange at all? For me to comment on
your body. If you're wearing clothes that are more revealing
than ever before, and if you're wearing makeup like an
actress on the screen and you are actively flirting with men,
well then why are you? Why don't you want to
be talked to and yelled at on the streets? And
(24:01):
the self freedman sums up this this transition pretty well,
uh in Redefining rape, she writes, After the nineteen twenties,
the negotiation of urban space for the purposes of wage earning, shopping,
or flirtation increasingly took the form of individual resistance rather
than a social movement. For a short period, however, the
revolt against the masher provided a political response to sexual vulnerability.
(24:25):
Tributes to self defense, suffragious visions of police authority, the
willingness of black women to report white men to authorities,
and the reactions of black men all contested white men's
sexual entitlements. And I mean, I think that goes back
to what I was saying about how great it was
that newspapers back then we're cheering women on for taking
(24:46):
these men on. I mean, that's on the one hand, women,
you shouldn't have to defend yourselves against these men. It
shouldn't be happening. But the fact that they are being
vocal and active, physically active about standing up to these
guys and ended up being cheered on for it, I mean,
I think that's an amazing thing. Well, and it's just
so incredible to think and mind boggling to think about
(25:09):
the fact that we've been literally fighting for freedom in
a public space for a century plus now, since we've
been in a public space exactly. And so the question
then is why why now this sort of twenty one
century antimash er movement revival? UM. I think a lot
(25:33):
of it has to do with feminism and technology, kind
of the the perfect intersection of those two things, because
if you look in the nineties seventies, Second Way feminists
absolutely focused on street harassment. They started the Reclaim the
Night also known as Take Back the Night initiatives, UM,
which again you have the focus on street harassment as
(25:56):
more women entering the public and male dominated space is
of women, you know, sort of the revived idea of hey,
we can go get jobs perhaps, um. But then again
it sort of dies down a bit until two thousand five,
when Emily May starts hollow Back, which really started, I mean,
an incredible movement. Yeah, and this is it's such a
(26:21):
product of its time in terms of being a digital thing.
And you know, you go back to women who are
taking boxing classes at the turn of the twentieth century
and saying, I'm not going to put up with this.
I'm going to learn how to defend myself. And then
you fast forward to the two thousands and you have
women who are actually snapping cell phone pictures of the
guys who are verbally attacking them, or in the case
(26:42):
of the woman who inspired hallyback efforts, she snapped a
self one picture of a guy who was publicly masturbating
while staring at her, which she was then able to
use successfully in his prosecution. Yeah, because while while cat
calling is not illegal in New York City, it is
in fact only will to masturbate in public just f
(27:03):
y I UM. But by taking on street harassment from
the social media approach, it has empowered men and women
to identify and call out their harassers. And Emily May
has talked before about how um the idea evolved to
not just from uh, the that initial cell phone photo,
(27:23):
but also in conversations with guy friends of hers about
the experience of walking around, and one of them commenting, like,
you walked down a completely different metaphorically speaking sidewalk than
I do, just like they hadn't even realized before that
experience of what street harassment feels like. And I think
(27:46):
that's why a lot of times, in response to these conversations,
the knee jerk deflection is it's just a compliment. Why
are you victimizing yourself? But the fact that it typically
happens when you are I selated, or possibly with other women.
But I don't think I've ever gotten yelled at when
I've been with a male friend or a boyfriend, or
(28:09):
a brother or a father whoever. Um, it's very specific
in that kind of approach. It's intended to make you
feel vulnerable, right exactly, And I mean in terms of perspective.
There was the one kind of social experiment that we
read about where a woman dressed up like a man
and a man dressed up like a woman, and they
sent them on their way through the streets, and the
(28:30):
woman felt reported that she felt such relief at being
invisible for once, that just being able to freaking walk
down the street from point A to point B. Whereas
the man who was wearing fake breast and everything, I mean,
he was dressed as a woman. Uh found himself putting
on his jacket to avoid to try to deflect people
(28:51):
staring at him at his fake chest, um and wishing
that he had more clothes on because he just felt
so gross being stared up. Well, and we heard um
a gay guy not too long ago who wrote into
us um because he has long hair, he tends to
wear tighter jeans, and I believe we even read the
letter on a podcast episode a while back. But he
(29:15):
was walking down the street going home or going somewhere
and was aggressively yelled at by a guy in a
car who mistook him for a woman. And he said
that he was so it was so terrifying because the
person followed him for a little while and he finally
turned around and yelled back at him. But he had
never experienced that before. And the following I don't know
(29:38):
if you've experienced this before, Caroline, but um, I'll never
forget being in Bushwick in New York once with a
girlfriend of mine and we were walking somewhere and we
were followed for a few blocks. It was terrifying. We
eventually ducked into a bar we happened to run across
just to be around other people. Um. And and he
(30:02):
talked about this guy, this listener in his letter talked
about how afterwards he was just so confused, and I
was wondering what he had done to bring it on himself.
And the answer is nothing, because this is an issue
that has been going on in this fight for safety
and public spaces for so long. Yeah, And I mean
(30:24):
that's where that's where I mean what you just said
is where it's evident that this is a problem of individuals. Certainly,
it's a problem of the men who choose to harass people,
men and women on the street, but it's also part
of such a huge cultural issue of of women's not
only women's safety and and men's safety too, but of
(30:49):
allowing people to just exist, allowing people to go about
their business in public. Well, and we need to I
want to re emphasize as well the fact that a
lot of these conversations are focused on usually cis gender women,
but trans women are at much heightened levels not only
(31:11):
for being at risk of street harassment but outright violence
and attack in public spaces as well, and that's something
that you know needs to be addressed too, and it's
not just something that's happening in the US, even though um,
a New Zealand camera crew conducted the same kind of
social experiment as the Hollyback video where they had a model,
(31:32):
an actual model, go out on the street and walk
around in a busy place and she got a cat
called zero times. She got stopped once for someone like
asking her for directions, and so it raised the question of, well,
what's going on, what's the difference here? Um? And and
I don't I mean, honestly, I don't know the answer,
(31:53):
but I mean, it's certainly been an issue to the
point that there are now women only subway cars and
taxi services in places like India and Japan in order
to shield women from street harassment. But I mean, something
like that causes its own problems because okay, great, you're
in your woman only train car, You're you're not gonna
get groped, you're not gonna get harassed. But suddenly, um,
(32:17):
that separates the sexes completely. So a man who would
be harassing someone when he does see a woman, it's
an even rare occurrence, and he's even more likely to harass. Yeah,
I mean it's it's definitely been a huge problem in
Indian there's a lot of grassroots activism going on there
to tackle it as well as just the issue of
(32:37):
sexual harassment more generally speaking. UM, I thought it was
really interesting that in two thousand eleven, Bangladesh officially did
away with the eve teasing euphemism cat calling um was
known by and probably still is euphemistically known as eve
teasing or just a street harassment as ephemistically known as
eve teasing. And uh, the courts he did away with
(33:00):
that in Bangladesh to categorize it as a form of
sexual harassment. And also in Nepal there is a law
pass allowing police to immediately arrest someone suspected of street
harassment without a warrant. So clearly this is I mean,
it's not just something going on in American streets. This
is a global conversation that's happening, um. And there are
(33:21):
questions too in the US about laws regarding public harassment,
because the thing about street harassment is that the kinds
of horror, horrifying and sexually forward things that are yelled
at women. If you say that in a public space.
If you say that at a workplace or a school,
they're already laws in place to protect people against that,
(33:43):
but not so on the streets. Yeah, and so this
gets into the issue of what's called fighting words. Legally,
and in our country, we have protections against fighting words,
things like yelling fire in a theater or saying something
to another human being that will create an unsafe situation.
(34:04):
They actually got their start as a way to essentially
prevents guys from challenging each other to duels and then
killing each other over an argument. And so while that
legally has trickled down through the years, no such protection
exists to women or men when it comes to street
(34:24):
harassment and the language used when people do harass people
on the street. Yeah. I mean, I have a feeling
that that's probably never gonna happen, that the fighting words
action will be amended to that, but it definitely changes
the way I thought about how it operates in a
public space. Um. But the thing about it is, Caroline,
(34:47):
there are plenty of people who aren't men who also say,
oh my gosh, this is not harassment. It's still a compliment.
And before we close out the podcast, we do need
to address that um, there was a woman or is
a woman? She's not dead. Derrie Laak, who kind of
became the poster gal of pro cat callers when she
(35:08):
wrote an op ed in The New York Post that
went viral for kind of all the wrong reasons because
it was headlined, Hey, ladies, cat calls are flattering, deal
with it, and I'm not gonna waste my breath going
over all of her reasons why she enjoyed being cat
called um. But there was a study we found from
the journal Sexuality and Culture from two thousand and ten
(35:32):
looking closer at the context of cat calling to dig
into that question of well is it complimentary? Because you
do find like in pretty much anything you read about it,
there's always a subset of people saying, well, I gonna
like it. I gotta like hearing that I look good. Yeah,
And and there were, for instance, there were a lot
(35:53):
of comments under the video of the actors who was
walking through New York. There were a lot of comments um,
calling her a lot of dirty words and saying it's
women like this that are the reason that men are
afraid to come talk to me and tell me I
look nice, Like, what's wrong with a man uh coming
in saying hello and giving me his number whatever, and
(36:15):
it's like, whoa. These are different things, but it is
important to discuss context well. And also, Caroline, there's the
risk of forgetting to smile some days if people don't
tell you to. You know, I forget all the time.
It's not until I walk into work and Kristin yelled
at me from across the room to smile that I
even remember. Yeah, I'm just trying to compliment you girl,
(36:37):
I know. But yeah, So this this study that Kristen
is talking about found that lower contextual threat levels do
have a bearing on how women perceive the cat calling,
the harassment, the the eye contact, whatever it may be. Yeah,
(36:57):
because there's this whole thing of harass swinis in the
eye of the beholder in terms to how um threatening
it feels. And so this study conducted a lot of
experiments and highlighted perception variables. In other words, the key
things sort of influence that threat level, and that includes age,
(37:20):
marital status, sex attractiveness, familiarity status, job status of the perpetrator,
demographic sexual identity, and attitudes toward women of the observer.
So that's also looking at how we as outsiders perceived
the people watching the video of the woman walking through
New York for ten hours, how we perceive that and
(37:42):
whether that is or is not harassment. And it really
focused in on the attractiveness and age of the harasser,
as well as being alone or with friends, as the
major context factors for how fearful a woman was at
the prospect of these different read harassment scenarios they were
presented with, because there is a sticky question of well,
(38:05):
if he's young and hot, maybe maybe it's maybe it
is more of a compliment than harassment. Yeah, but I
mean when you when you mix and match all of
these perception variables, and that has a lot to do
with it. I don't care how hot the guy is,
if he is like physically, if he's following me down
the street yelling at me, I mean, that's still going
(38:28):
to be a high threat situation that I'm going to perceive.
You know. Yes, there are so many different variables to
take into account. But um and and I don't discount
that a lot of people will say, well, it's not
as threatening if he's good looking, or if he's rich,
or or if he's driving a Bentley or whatever. Um
as opposed to if he's a guy sitting sitting on
(38:49):
a stoop outside of his apartment. But there's still I
don't know, there's just so many contextual threat things to
take into account. Because well, that was the thing too
in all of these studies that they conducted, even when
sort of playing around with those different variables, it never
(39:09):
found like nothing completely mitigated all the negative impacts on
the recipient in terms of feelings of self objectification, feelings
of safety. There was never a perfect scenario when it
was like a guy saying something lude or threatening or inappropriate,
and then the recipient was like, and I feel great,
(39:34):
and I feel like a strong and powerful person walking
through the streets. There is there's no no way you
slice and dice it. Does it not have a negative outcome,
even if it's a small one. Yeah, exactly. And also
as I was reading all of this too and thinking
about the kinds of especially the more lewd things that
(39:55):
are said on or even just the lude implications that
are made in very benign statements, um, and even just
in the looks, you can just be looked up and
down and feel as violated as you would if a
guy propositioned you for sex right then and there. And
I feel like it says also so much about in
(40:17):
many ways, how sexually backward our society is when this
kind of sexual communication in a public space is often
deemed complimentary and benign, whereas we still can't get sexual
consent and communication between two people in private spaces like
straightened out, Like why is that? I mean, there's so
(40:39):
many there's so many layers. And also I feel like too,
the whole thing of well, if he's attractive, then it's
a compliment also leads to the question of well, why
is being called hot by a stranger, like the the best,
most validating thing for a woman, you know, Like why
is being called beautiful the most coveted kind of compliment
(41:03):
a woman can receive in our society too. There are
lots of layers to this, So I mean, yeah, exactly,
And I think that the historical context of all this
is so important to take into account, especially if you
do argue that cat calling is totally benign because it's
(41:23):
actually not well, because it's not about compliments, it's about power.
It's all about power in the same way that rape
is not about sex, it's about power. And and am
I saying that all men who tell women to smile
are rapists. No, but it's still it is a fact
of It's an issue of power. Yeah, because I have
(41:44):
a hard time thinking that the men who yelled at
me to smile, we're yelling at other men to smile.
I have a hard time believing that it was just like, gosh,
darn it, you guys, I just want the world to
be a happier place. At this train, seem more smile. Yeah,
And and so I mean when you, when you look
at that, look at things in the context of that,
(42:07):
I think that says a lot too. And so it's
really important to not just have this conversation with adults
and fellow people in the world who get cat called
and harassed on the streets in public against their will.
I think it's important to talk to kids about these
issues too, maybe not go into so many gruesome details, perhaps,
(42:28):
but to discuss issues of consent and what is and
is not appropriate. And we want to acknowledge to you
before we close out that this is we're talking about
a very slim minority of men who are doing this,
but the reaction of that slim minority behavior to the
(42:50):
you know, the majority's reaction to it says a lot. Yeah.
But now we want to hear from our listeners because
I have a feeling that lots of people have lots
of things to say, and we want to hear from
everybody on this because everybody has a stake in this,
because at some point we probably all exist in public spaces.
So mom Stuff at house stuffworks dot Com is our
(43:10):
email address. You can also tweet us at mom Stuff
podcast and messages on Facebook, and we've got a couple
of messages to share with you right now. So I've
gotta let her here from someone who would like to
remain anonymous about our episode on Lady Lawyers, and she writes,
(43:30):
as a practicing lawyer, I can tell you that shaming
does happen in court. Early in my career, I was
at a federal court hearing with senior partners, and because
I had forgotten to drop off my dry cleaning after work,
I had to wear a royal blue pinstripe skirt suit
to court. I was the only person not wearing black
or gray, while not a single one of the male
(43:51):
partners who I worked with ever made a comment about it.
At the end of the hearing, a thirty five to
forty five year old male Department of Justice attorney walked
around two our table to the opposite side where I
was standing, came up, stood right behind me, leaned in
and whispered nice suit. Needless to say, I vow that
I would never again wear anything but black or gray
(44:13):
to court. Well, I still wouldn't wear a royal blue
suit to federal court. There is a lot of theater
involved in going to court, and part of the show
is playing to your audience. I have friends who single
male colleagues put on wedding bands before trials because studies
have shown that juries trust married men more than single men.
Like Michael J. Fox's character on The Good Wife, I
(44:34):
think most lawyers would gladly alter their appearance or exaggerate
a disability to sway the jury or the judge in
their client's favor. In response to your question about how
big this problem is, it isn't a big problem because,
unlike TV, most lawyers don't go to court so often.
So thanks for that insight. So I have a letter
(44:54):
here from Lauren uh in response to our Lady Lawyer's
dress code episode, and she might not agree with the
author of that last letter Christian. In terms of staying
true to just black and gray, she says, as a
lady lawyer, I am very conscious of what I wear
at a court I'm a Midwestern, middle class raised gal,
but at thirty five, I became a named partner in
(45:15):
a Boston law firm through sheer, hard work and a
few smarts. As unfortunate as it is, women in the
courtroom do need to think about what they wear and
how they wear it, much more than our male counterparts. However,
this does not mean that women should shirk their individuality.
Wear a skirt suit that hits just below the knee
and a modest button up shirt, but make the suit red.
(45:36):
I've found that so long as the length and neckline
are appropriate and what comes from your mouth is intelligent,
judges and fellow lawyers will respect you. I never wear
black suits and I always wear stiletto heels. Ask anyone
in my court house and they will tell you I
am forced to be reckoned. With lots of love to you, ladies,
and if any lady lawyer or hopeful lady lawyers in
(45:57):
the Boston area, I would love to help her succeed
in any way. I can so thank you, Lauren, and
thanks to everybody who's written into us. Mom. Stuff at
how stuff works dot com is our email address and
for links all of our social media as well as
all of our blogs, videos, and podcasts, including this one
with links to our sources so you can read all
about the history of smashing the mashers. Head on over
(46:20):
to stuff mom Never Told You dot com for more
on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how
stuff works dot com
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