March 14, 2020 • 51 mins
Why do some men yell at women on the street? In this classic episode, Cristen and Caroline discuss why catcalling happens and women's century-long fight against street harassment.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Danny and Samantha, and welcome to stuff.
I've never told your protection of I Heart Radio. So
as listeners may know, we were recently in l A
in California. I'm like, well, there probably is another l A.
(00:26):
But I don't know why I felt any but yes,
l A in California. Yes, and um, we had a
really really great time. I spoke about a little gut
to ride and ride it Disneyland. I really want to ride. Um.
But while we were there, Samantha and I were cat
called right honestly, and this is the sad state of
(00:47):
affairs for good that that happened. Yeah, until you and
I started talking about it, I was like, oh my god,
Yeah they did, didn't they. It was a weird thing
because while we were being cat called, it was very
specific to whatever we were wearing, whatever we were doing,
and it was kind of randomly done. But yeah, I forgot. Yeah,
and not only did you forget, which is kind of troubling.
(01:07):
I immediately thought to myself, but we're with a man, right.
So we had a friend come with us at that point,
and he was in the middle and talking to us,
and I thought the same thing. I think I turned
around and looked at you and said, he's here. I
can't believe they ever do that with him here. And
it was obvious that, you know, we were very close
to him, like we were just hanging out together. So
(01:28):
it was kind of like, wow, I'll have the audacity,
well even the thought though, the fact that that occurred
to me at all, But if that should have been enough, right,
if I have a man with me, then I won't
be harassed. That is a problematic thought, right, And that's
also just a problematic thought in general that oh men
wouldn't understand because that is also probably they don't realize
(01:49):
this happens that often a b. But the fact that
they're that hey about my friend Joe. He looked at
us and kind of kind of shocked, like, am I
not here? Yeah? I think he was just to surprise
as we were out of card. Yeah. One of the
most interesting, I don't know a great word for it,
but enlightening maybe conversations I've ever had with a male
(02:11):
friend of mine where I was shocked at how shocked
he was because I was. We were walking down Pontsta
Leon together to the street here in Atlanta, and it's
I walk it pretty frequently, and I would be like, okay,
let's up here and cross the street. And he said
why and I said, well, if I'm gonna get called
if we stay on this side, so we need to
cars stup it here. And he's like wait what yes,
(02:33):
and he was asked. He just had so many fall
up questions like okay, so you know what side of
the street. Oh yeah, these are things. It's impacted the
way I walked to work. Um, like it changes on
certain days too, and it's so frustrating. It's one of
those things that I really don't want to have to
deal with this, right, the fact that we have to
strategize just a walking pattern or just trying to get
(02:56):
to the grocery store. And you know, if you see,
like it's certain areas where you've consistently had someone yell
at you and or this type of environment. So whether
it's you went to Marty Grass and it's an automatic
freedom to yell or harass you, it's kind of like, okay,
I'm going to go into this area to make sure
I have to deal with that less. Yeah. And after
(03:17):
this happened to as in l A, we had a
very brief conversation about we don't want to model that
that's okay for younger people, But there is that moment
of do I want to engage in this and it
could be dangerous. And a couple of weeks ago, I
was walking to the grocery store and a man cat
called me and I had my headphones and had sunglasses on,
(03:40):
which is another strategy that a lot of women knew,
and he followed me into the grocery store, yelling at
me that I did not respond to his cat call. Right.
I think oftentimes when I'm cat called, I will at
least respond in a friendly manner and hopes that I
can diffuse the situation. But that's a problematic thing because
we were again, I feel like I'm feeding into yeah,
(04:00):
well what it will be a habit and accepted as
this is okay because at least you responded it. But
oftentimes I'm like no and walk away. But just responding
alone engages. Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely a tricky situation because
you don't want young girls to see that and think okay,
our boys, uh yeah, that's okay. Yeah. At the same time,
(04:22):
there are these other levels of things happening. So that's
been on our minds, and that is why we brought
back this classic episode on cat calling. Welcome to Stuff
Mob Never told you from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello,
(04:45):
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 lots of conversations
going on these days about cat calling and street harassment. Yeah,
(05:06):
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 facing numerous cat calls
and street harassment from men on the street. The video
itself attracted a lot of controversy because of the way
(05:28):
it was edited to edit out a lot of white
men who were doing cat calling in various street harassment
things um to feature mostly men of color. But that
being said, the video itself sparked a huge conversation online
between and among men and women about what is street harassment?
(05:48):
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 first talked about street harassment
on the podcast when Holliback was first gaining a lot
(06:11):
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 is harassment, and also give
people tools to fight back and also connect with other
(06:35):
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
euphemistically call cat calling. And speaking to that viral video
as well, I mean, the response to it just highlighted
(06:59):
probably is 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,
they'll know who she is when she calls. Yeah, And
(07:20):
to me, that's I mean, not to get off on
a tangent, but there's echoes of what's happening with a
need of sarches in there too, in terms of like,
so you you call out a problem, people say, no,
it's not a problem, but I'm going to threaten to
kill you or Raypio or Raypio. Yeah exactly. And so
another issue, of course with things that this video sort
(07:43):
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 making it more about
the woman and it being her problem than it being
(08:04):
a social problem at large. It's just a compliment. Learn
how to take a compliment, um And and if you're
curious on the difference between cat calls and compliments, you
can go to stuff I've Never Told U's YouTube page
and watch the video if cat calls for Compliments, in
which you'll get a lot of examples of the differences
between the two. So first up, though, let's define street
(08:26):
harassment and also offers some statistics so 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 Hollaback. So street harassment, to define
it is the sexual harassment of typically CIS and trans
women in public spaces by typically men who are strangers,
(08:51):
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.
Let's see you smile. So how common is it? There
was a nationally representative study sponsored by Stop Street Harassment
(09:13):
which found that sixty 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 been
forced to do something sexual. I think that is a
different way of saying sexual assault. Um LGBT identified respondents
(09:34):
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 it
also happens around the world. Yeah um. The site medium
(09:56):
got into this by assigning diaries a cent lee two
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 in Singapore um and based on
these women's experiences, they found that the woman in Mexico
(10:18):
City experienced the worst cat calling. She had a high
of twenty nine cat calls in a single week, versus
Tel Aviv in Los Angeles, which tied for the least
cat call heavy locations with just two each. And there
were a lot of common hallmarks for this kind of behavior. UM.
It tended to happen most often during commute time, specifically
(10:40):
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 smile.
Care Lorne. Yeah, I used to get this UM all
(11:01):
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 man in a business suit. I always got
it from homeless men who were hanging out at the
(11:23):
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 socio economic intersections with this,
because it's a lot about not compliments, obviously, but it
(11:44):
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 so actually marginalized to assert their
power and so, in speaking to the BBC about why
(12:08):
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 on is the dynamic among men, and
(12:29):
in that it's so it's so crucial to this conversation
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.
(12:50):
I mean, 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 nineteen seventies, and
it definitely has roots much much deeper, and that go
back much much farther when women first left the home
(13:10):
to begin with. 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 self 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
(13:30):
when it comes to cat calling, I thought this was
really interesting. The term comes from theater. It goes back
to the mid seventeenth century form 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 and into the early
(13:54):
twentieth century, it went by a different name. It wasn't
so much cat calling but mat ashing 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 spaces
(14:17):
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, in eighty two a theater
guide to find mashers as quote masculine theater goers whose
(14:38):
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 the cultural history of female friendship.
And around the same time too, you would describe having
intensely strong, like platonically passionate feelings for a girlfriend as
(14:59):
a smell ash, 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
(15:21):
newspapers and editorial cartoons as well dressed white men whose
behaviors were more irritating and comical than menacing. And there
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
(15:43):
snappy dressers. Um. And there was also the Parisian version
of the fleneur, 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,
(16:03):
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
are snappily dressed gentlemen they're they're mostly harmless ladies. They're
(16:28):
just they're just offering you a quirky kind of compliment.
They're 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 picture.
At the time, of course, like even black men making
(16:49):
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 or
(17:09):
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 a young woman who was too young to consent
or doing this mashing, when in reality, Freedman talks about
(17:31):
it 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
(17:53):
that 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 of other classes and backgrounds. So suddenly white,
(18:18):
these white men that were talking about these mashes 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 race all interacting
and encountering one another in new ways for the very
first time. And along with this, not only do you
(18:39):
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 open, those low level clerical jobs being open more
and more to women. And so meanwhile you have mashing
(19:04):
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
it nonetheless received national press attention right as can be
seen in the nineteen o six Chicago Tribune headline what
can be done to rid the Palmer House block of mashers?
(19:27):
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 to enter
and exit their buildings. Well in women's magazines also started
advising lady readers to avoid eye contact with men on
(19:49):
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 an article in the New York Times 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
(20:11):
women's faces on the subways were there quote armor against
the offensive stairs of the New York masher I actually
out loud when I read that, said, oh yeah, 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.
(20:34):
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 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
(20:55):
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 or whatever, I'm opening
myself up to entering into an interaction that 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
(21:20):
women really started hollying back in the United states, at
least in the nineteen tens. And we're going to talk
about some of the ways that they started fighting back
against the matcher, smashing the masher when we come right
back from a quick break, and now back to the show.
(21:44):
So picking up in the nineteen tens, when women start
hollowing back, as Kristen said, um, they really were not
going to stand for these distasteful mashers on the street anymore,
and they took matters into their own hands. Initially, however,
(22:05):
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
want my greater mobility. I want my access to work
and leisure 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
(22:28):
to take self defense classes, and as evidence by a
photo that I found of a woman poking a man
with her hatpin, I'm gonna learn how to defend myself
in general. Yeah. In nineteen ten, the Women's Equal Suffrage
Association sought to confront mashers or male flirts or as
(22:49):
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 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
(23:13):
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 up
exercise because this was also the early days of physical
exercise becoming part of you know, the the healthy person's regimen.
But some women also took boxing lessons to protect themselves
(23:36):
against mashers. One Mrs Frank Gilbert in Cleveland took boxing
lessons and ended up clocking a streetcar masher, and 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 met because
(23:58):
no one even knows her first name. Em Well. And then,
speaking again of hat pins, we get other stories of
women and girls actively defending themselves against mashers. And these
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
(24:22):
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 awful mashes on the street corner.
You need to defend yourself. And by y around three
hundred female police officers had been hired around the country
(24:43):
at larger municipal police forces, specifically to deal with this
masher problem, which makes me realize that we have not
done a podcast on women and police officers. But hey,
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.
(25:05):
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
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
(25:26):
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 for black women to prosecute 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 a rape
(25:47):
in the United States, how all of the focus on
mashers was more concerned and it really exclusively concerned over
the safety of white women on the streets, because this
is when we have the prevailing idea that, well, sexual
assault can't really happen to black women because they're hyper
sexualized to begin with. And you also still have, you know,
(26:08):
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
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
(26:31):
imagine at the time being a black woman bringing a charge,
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 the vote with
the nineteenth Amendment in and with the end of World
War One, we see the anti masher movement died down.
(26:55):
I mean, it really reached this fever pitch and then
fay ned's away as if it never happened. Almost. Yeah,
but it's I mean, the context of it fading away
is sort of ikey, because you you lose that whole
idea of chivalrous masculinity and men enlisting men to help
(27:16):
protect women from guys like that to the assertion of
a more aggressive ideal of manhood. Around the same time
that female flirtation becomes more popular and popularly depicted by
actresses on screen light Clara Bow and so you get
this sentiment, this this prevailing notion that things like cat
(27:42):
calling and street harassment are almost just more comical and
normalized because hey, 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
sexuality starting to kind of become slightly more uh normalized
(28:03):
in terms of women expressing it as well as men.
And so with that though, it is that idea of
well you want this, 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
(28:25):
actively flirting with men, well then why are you Why
don't you want to be talked to and yelled out
on the street? And a still Friedman 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
(28:47):
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. Tributes to self
defense suffer just 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.
(29:12):
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 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
(29:33):
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 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
(29:56):
why why now this sort of of twenty one century
antimash or movement revival UM. I think a lot 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 nineteen seventies, Second Way feminists absolutely
(30:18):
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 more
women entering the public and male dominated spaces of women,
you know, sort of the revived idea of hey, we
can go get jobs perhaps, um. But then again it
(30:40):
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
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
(31:03):
and saying I'm not going to put up with this.
I'm gonna 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 of
the woman who inspired Hollyback efforts, she snapped a cell
phone picture of a guy who was publicly masturbating while
staring at her, which she was then able to use
(31:25):
successfully in his prosecution. Yeah. Because while while cat calling
is not illegal in New York City, it is in
fact illegal to masturbate in public just f y I um.
But by taking on street harassment from the social media approach,
it has empowered men and women to identify and call
(31:45):
out their harassers. And Emily may has talked before about
how um the idea evolved to not just from uh,
that initial cell phone photo, 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
(32:06):
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 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?
(32:28):
But the fact that it typically happens when you are
isolated or possibly with other women. I don't think I've
ever gotten yelled at when I've been with a male
friend or a boyfriend, or 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
(32:52):
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 woman felt reported that she felt
such relief at being invisible for once, at just being
able to freaking walk down the street from point A
to point B. Whereas the man who was wearing fake
(33:15):
breasts and everything, I mean, he was dressed as a woman. Uh,
found himself putting on his jacket to avoid to try
to deflect people 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 from a gay guy not too long ago
(33:35):
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 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
(33:58):
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 if you've experienced this before, Caroline, but um,
I'll never forget being in Bushwick in New York once
(34:18):
with a girlfriend of mine and we were walking somewhere
and we were followed for a few blocks and it
was terrifying. We eventually ducked into a bar we happened
to run across just to be around other people. Um,
And and he talked about this guy, this listener in
his letter talked about how afterwards he was just so confused,
(34:41):
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 that's where that's where I mean what
you just said, where it's evident that this is a
(35:02):
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 allowing people to just exist, allowing
(35:26):
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 for being at risk of
street harassment, but outright violence and attack in public spaces
(35:49):
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, an actual model,
go out on the street and walk around in a
(36:09):
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 a 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, 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
(36:33):
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, that separates the sexes completely. So a
man who would be harassing someone when he does see
(36:55):
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 sexual harassment more generally speaking. UM,
I thought it was really interesting that in two thousand eleven,
(37:16):
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 should a street harassments euphemistically
known as eve teasing, and uh, the courts did away
with that in Bangladesh to categorize it as a form
of sexual harassment. And also in Nepal there was a
(37:39):
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
questions too in the US about laws regarding public harassment,
(37:59):
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,
but not so on the streets. Yeah, and so this
(38:20):
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.
They actually got their start as a way to essentially
(38:41):
prevent 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
harassment and the language used when people do harass people
on the street. Yeah. I mean, I have a feeling
(39:03):
that that's probably never going to 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,
there are plenty of people who aren't men who also say, oh,
(39:24):
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 Lawaq, who kind of
became the poster gal of pro cat collars when she
wrote an op ed in The New York Post that
went viral for kind of all the wrong reasons because
(39:48):
it was headlined, hey, ladies, cat calls are flattering, deal
with it. And I'm not going to waste my breath
going over um 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 looking closer at the context of cat calling
(40:10):
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 kinda like it. I gotta like hearing that I
look good. Yeah, And there were, for instance, there were
a lot of comments under the video of the actors
who was walking through New York. There were a lot
(40:31):
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 it's like, whoa. These are different things,
but it is important to discuss context well. And also, Caroline,
(40:55):
there's the risk of forgetting to smile some days if
people don't tell you too. You know, I forget all
the time. It's not until I walk into work and
Kristin yells at me from across the room to smile
that I even remember. Yeah, I'm just trying to compliment
you girl, I know. But yeah. So this this study
that Kristen is talking about found that lower contextual threat
(41:18):
levels do have a bearing on how women perceive the
cat calling, the harassment, the the eye contact, whatever it
may be. Yeah, because there's this whole thing of harassment
is in the eye of the beholder in terms to
how um threatening it feels. And so this study conducted
(41:41):
a lot of experiments and highlighted perception variables. In other words,
the key things it's sort of influence that threat level,
and that includes age, marital status, sex, attractiveness, familiarity status,
job status of the perpetrator, demograph effect, sexual identity and
(42:01):
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 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
(42:24):
or with friends as the major context factors for how
fearful a woman was at the prospect of these different
street harassments scenarios they were presented with, because there is
a sticky question of well, 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
(42:47):
mix and match all of these perception variables, I mean,
that has a lot to do with it. I don't
care how hot the guy is, if he is like physically,
if he is following me down the street yelling at me,
I mean, that's still going 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
(43:09):
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 if he's driving
a Bentley or whatever, um as opposed to if he's
a guy sitting sitting on 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
(43:31):
was the thing too in all of these studies that
they conducted, even when sort of playing around with those
different variables, it never 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
(43:54):
perfect scenario when it was like a guy saying something
lud or threatened or inappropriate and the recipient was like,
and I feel great, 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
(44:14):
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 are said on or even just the lewd
implications that are made in very benign statements UM and
(44:36):
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 many ways, how sexually backward our society is when
this kind of sexual communication in a public space is
(44:59):
often deemed complimentary and benign, whereas we still can't get
sexual consent in communication between two people in private spaces,
like straightened out, Like why is that? I mean, there's
so 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,
(45:20):
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 the most coveted
kind of compliment a woman can receive in our society
to their lots of layers to this, So, I mean, yeah, exactly,
(45:41):
And 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 actually not well, because it's not about compliments. It's
about power. It's all about power in the same way
(46:04):
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 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
(46:26):
was just like, gosh, darn it, you guys. I just
want the world to be a happier place at this train,
say more smiles. Yeah. And and so I mean when
you when you look at that, look at things in
the context of that, I think that says a lot too.
And so it's really important to not just have this
(46:46):
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 going to so
many gruci details, perhaps, but to discuss issues of consent
and what is and is not appropriate. And we want
(47:08):
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 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
(47:29):
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
how stuff works dot com is our email address. You
can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast and messages
on Facebook, and we've got a couple of messages to
(47:49):
share with you right now. So I've got a letter
here from someone who would like to remain anonymous about
our episode on Lady Lawyers, and she writes, 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
(48:11):
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 partners who
I worked with ever made a comment about it. At
the end of the hearing, a thirty to forty five
year old male Department of Justice attorney walked around to
(48:32):
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 vowed that I would
never again wear anything but black or gray to court.
While 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
(48:53):
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 think
most lawyers would gladly alter their appearance or exaggerate a
disability to sway the jury or the judge in their
(49:14):
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 and don't go to court so often. So
thanks for that insight. So I have a letter here
from Lauren uh in response to our Lady lawyer's dress
code episode, and she might not agree with the author
(49:34):
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 to court.
I'm a Midwestern, middle class raised gal, but at thirty five,
I became a named partner in 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,
(49:56):
much more than our male counterparts. However, this is 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 read. 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,
(50:18):
and I always wear stiletto heels. Ask anyone in my
court house and they will tell you I am a
force to be reckoned. With lots of love to you, ladies,
and if any lady lawyer or hopeful lady lawyers in
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
(50:40):
for links to 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 mashows. Head on
over to stuff Mom Never Told You dot com for
more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
(51:02):
how stuff works dot com. M
Hey, this is Danny and Samantha, and welcome to stuff.
I've never told your protection of I Heart Radio. So
as listeners may know, we were recently in l A
in California. I'm like, well, there probably is another l A.
(00:26):
But I don't know why I felt any but yes,
l A in California. Yes, and um, we had a
really really great time. I spoke about a little gut
to ride and ride it Disneyland. I really want to ride. Um.
But while we were there, Samantha and I were cat
called right honestly, and this is the sad state of
(00:47):
affairs for good that that happened. Yeah, until you and
I started talking about it, I was like, oh my god,
Yeah they did, didn't they. It was a weird thing
because while we were being cat called, it was very
specific to whatever we were wearing, whatever we were doing,
and it was kind of randomly done. But yeah, I forgot. Yeah,
and not only did you forget, which is kind of troubling.
(01:07):
I immediately thought to myself, but we're with a man, right.
So we had a friend come with us at that point,
and he was in the middle and talking to us,
and I thought the same thing. I think I turned
around and looked at you and said, he's here. I
can't believe they ever do that with him here. And
it was obvious that, you know, we were very close
to him, like we were just hanging out together. So
(01:28):
it was kind of like, wow, I'll have the audacity,
well even the thought though, the fact that that occurred
to me at all, But if that should have been enough, right,
if I have a man with me, then I won't
be harassed. That is a problematic thought, right, And that's
also just a problematic thought in general that oh men
wouldn't understand because that is also probably they don't realize
(01:49):
this happens that often a b. But the fact that
they're that hey about my friend Joe. He looked at
us and kind of kind of shocked, like, am I
not here? Yeah? I think he was just to surprise
as we were out of card. Yeah. One of the
most interesting, I don't know a great word for it,
but enlightening maybe conversations I've ever had with a male
(02:11):
friend of mine where I was shocked at how shocked
he was because I was. We were walking down Pontsta
Leon together to the street here in Atlanta, and it's
I walk it pretty frequently, and I would be like, okay,
let's up here and cross the street. And he said
why and I said, well, if I'm gonna get called
if we stay on this side, so we need to
cars stup it here. And he's like wait what yes,
(02:33):
and he was asked. He just had so many fall
up questions like okay, so you know what side of
the street. Oh yeah, these are things. It's impacted the
way I walked to work. Um, like it changes on
certain days too, and it's so frustrating. It's one of
those things that I really don't want to have to
deal with this, right, the fact that we have to
strategize just a walking pattern or just trying to get
(02:56):
to the grocery store. And you know, if you see,
like it's certain areas where you've consistently had someone yell
at you and or this type of environment. So whether
it's you went to Marty Grass and it's an automatic
freedom to yell or harass you, it's kind of like, okay,
I'm going to go into this area to make sure
I have to deal with that less. Yeah. And after
(03:17):
this happened to as in l A, we had a
very brief conversation about we don't want to model that
that's okay for younger people, But there is that moment
of do I want to engage in this and it
could be dangerous. And a couple of weeks ago, I
was walking to the grocery store and a man cat
called me and I had my headphones and had sunglasses on,
(03:40):
which is another strategy that a lot of women knew,
and he followed me into the grocery store, yelling at
me that I did not respond to his cat call. Right.
I think oftentimes when I'm cat called, I will at
least respond in a friendly manner and hopes that I
can diffuse the situation. But that's a problematic thing because
we were again, I feel like I'm feeding into yeah,
(04:00):
well what it will be a habit and accepted as
this is okay because at least you responded it. But
oftentimes I'm like no and walk away. But just responding
alone engages. Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely a tricky situation because
you don't want young girls to see that and think okay,
our boys, uh yeah, that's okay. Yeah. At the same time,
(04:22):
there are these other levels of things happening. So that's
been on our minds, and that is why we brought
back this classic episode on cat calling. Welcome to Stuff
Mob Never told you from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello,
(04:45):
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 lots of conversations
going on these days about cat calling and street harassment. Yeah,
(05:06):
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 facing numerous cat calls
and street harassment from men on the street. The video
itself attracted a lot of controversy because of the way
(05:28):
it was edited to edit out a lot of white
men who were doing cat calling in various street harassment
things um to feature mostly men of color. But that
being said, the video itself sparked a huge conversation online
between and among men and women about what is street harassment?
(05:48):
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 first talked about street harassment
on the podcast when Holliback was first gaining a lot
(06:11):
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 is harassment, and also give
people tools to fight back and also connect with other
(06:35):
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
euphemistically call cat calling. And speaking to that viral video
as well, I mean, the response to it just highlighted
(06:59):
probably is 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,
they'll know who she is when she calls. Yeah, And
(07:20):
to me, that's I mean, not to get off on
a tangent, but there's echoes of what's happening with a
need of sarches in there too, in terms of like,
so you you call out a problem, people say, no,
it's not a problem, but I'm going to threaten to
kill you or Raypio or Raypio. Yeah exactly. And so
another issue, of course with things that this video sort
(07:43):
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 making it more about
the woman and it being her problem than it being
(08:04):
a social problem at large. It's just a compliment. Learn
how to take a compliment, um And and if you're
curious on the difference between cat calls and compliments, you
can go to stuff I've Never Told U's YouTube page
and watch the video if cat calls for Compliments, in
which you'll get a lot of examples of the differences
between the two. So first up, though, let's define street
(08:26):
harassment and also offers some statistics so 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 Hollaback. So street harassment, to define
it is the sexual harassment of typically CIS and trans
women in public spaces by typically men who are strangers,
(08:51):
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.
Let's see you smile. So how common is it? There
was a nationally representative study sponsored by Stop Street Harassment
(09:13):
which found that sixty 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 been
forced to do something sexual. I think that is a
different way of saying sexual assault. Um LGBT identified respondents
(09:34):
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 it
also happens around the world. Yeah um. The site medium
(09:56):
got into this by assigning diaries a cent lee two
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 in Singapore um and based on
these women's experiences, they found that the woman in Mexico
(10:18):
City experienced the worst cat calling. She had a high
of twenty nine cat calls in a single week, versus
Tel Aviv in Los Angeles, which tied for the least
cat call heavy locations with just two each. And there
were a lot of common hallmarks for this kind of behavior. UM.
It tended to happen most often during commute time, specifically
(10:40):
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 smile.
Care Lorne. Yeah, I used to get this UM all
(11:01):
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 man in a business suit. I always got
it from homeless men who were hanging out at the
(11:23):
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 socio economic intersections with this,
because it's a lot about not compliments, obviously, but it
(11:44):
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 so actually marginalized to assert their
power and so, in speaking to the BBC about why
(12:08):
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 on is the dynamic among men, and
(12:29):
in that it's so it's so crucial to this conversation
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.
(12:50):
I mean, 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 nineteen seventies, and
it definitely has roots much much deeper, and that go
back much much farther when women first left the home
(13:10):
to begin with. 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 self 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
(13:30):
when it comes to cat calling, I thought this was
really interesting. The term comes from theater. It goes back
to the mid seventeenth century form 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 and into the early
(13:54):
twentieth century, it went by a different name. It wasn't
so much cat calling but mat ashing 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 spaces
(14:17):
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, in eighty two a theater
guide to find mashers as quote masculine theater goers whose
(14:38):
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 the cultural history of female friendship.
And around the same time too, you would describe having
intensely strong, like platonically passionate feelings for a girlfriend as
(14:59):
a smell ash, 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
(15:21):
newspapers and editorial cartoons as well dressed white men whose
behaviors were more irritating and comical than menacing. And there
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
(15:43):
snappy dressers. Um. And there was also the Parisian version
of the fleneur, 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,
(16:03):
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
are snappily dressed gentlemen they're they're mostly harmless ladies. They're
(16:28):
just they're just offering you a quirky kind of compliment.
They're 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 picture.
At the time, of course, like even black men making
(16:49):
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 or
(17:09):
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 a young woman who was too young to consent
or doing this mashing, when in reality, Freedman talks about
(17:31):
it 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
(17:53):
that 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 of other classes and backgrounds. So suddenly white,
(18:18):
these white men that were talking about these mashes 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 race all interacting
and encountering one another in new ways for the very
first time. And along with this, not only do you
(18:39):
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 open, those low level clerical jobs being open more
and more to women. And so meanwhile you have mashing
(19:04):
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
it nonetheless received national press attention right as can be
seen in the nineteen o six Chicago Tribune headline what
can be done to rid the Palmer House block of mashers?
(19:27):
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 to enter
and exit their buildings. Well in women's magazines also started
advising lady readers to avoid eye contact with men on
(19:49):
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 an article in the New York Times 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
(20:11):
women's faces on the subways were there quote armor against
the offensive stairs of the New York masher I actually
out loud when I read that, said, oh yeah, 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.
(20:34):
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 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
(20:55):
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 or whatever, I'm opening
myself up to entering into an interaction that 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
(21:20):
women really started hollying back in the United states, at
least in the nineteen tens. And we're going to talk
about some of the ways that they started fighting back
against the matcher, smashing the masher when we come right
back from a quick break, and now back to the show.
(21:44):
So picking up in the nineteen tens, when women start
hollowing back, as Kristen said, um, they really were not
going to stand for these distasteful mashers on the street anymore,
and they took matters into their own hands. Initially, however,
(22:05):
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
want my greater mobility. I want my access to work
and leisure 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
(22:28):
to take self defense classes, and as evidence by a
photo that I found of a woman poking a man
with her hatpin, I'm gonna learn how to defend myself
in general. Yeah. In nineteen ten, the Women's Equal Suffrage
Association sought to confront mashers or male flirts or as
(22:49):
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 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
(23:13):
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 up
exercise because this was also the early days of physical
exercise becoming part of you know, the the healthy person's regimen.
But some women also took boxing lessons to protect themselves
(23:36):
against mashers. One Mrs Frank Gilbert in Cleveland took boxing
lessons and ended up clocking a streetcar masher, and 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 met because
(23:58):
no one even knows her first name. Em Well. And then,
speaking again of hat pins, we get other stories of
women and girls actively defending themselves against mashers. And these
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
(24:22):
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 awful mashes on the street corner.
You need to defend yourself. And by y around three
hundred female police officers had been hired around the country
(24:43):
at larger municipal police forces, specifically to deal with this
masher problem, which makes me realize that we have not
done a podcast on women and police officers. But hey,
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.
(25:05):
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
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
(25:26):
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 for black women to prosecute 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 a rape
(25:47):
in the United States, how all of the focus on
mashers was more concerned and it really exclusively concerned over
the safety of white women on the streets, because this
is when we have the prevailing idea that, well, sexual
assault can't really happen to black women because they're hyper
sexualized to begin with. And you also still have, you know,
(26:08):
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
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
(26:31):
imagine at the time being a black woman bringing a charge,
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 the vote with
the nineteenth Amendment in and with the end of World
War One, we see the anti masher movement died down.
(26:55):
I mean, it really reached this fever pitch and then
fay ned's away as if it never happened. Almost. Yeah,
but it's I mean, the context of it fading away
is sort of ikey, because you you lose that whole
idea of chivalrous masculinity and men enlisting men to help
(27:16):
protect women from guys like that to the assertion of
a more aggressive ideal of manhood. Around the same time
that female flirtation becomes more popular and popularly depicted by
actresses on screen light Clara Bow and so you get
this sentiment, this this prevailing notion that things like cat
(27:42):
calling and street harassment are almost just more comical and
normalized because hey, 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
sexuality starting to kind of become slightly more uh normalized
(28:03):
in terms of women expressing it as well as men.
And so with that though, it is that idea of
well you want this, 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
(28:25):
actively flirting with men, well then why are you Why
don't you want to be talked to and yelled out
on the street? And a still Friedman 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
(28:47):
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. Tributes to self
defense suffer just 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.
(29:12):
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 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
(29:33):
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 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
(29:56):
why why now this sort of of twenty one century
antimash or movement revival UM. I think a lot 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 nineteen seventies, Second Way feminists absolutely
(30:18):
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 more
women entering the public and male dominated spaces of women,
you know, sort of the revived idea of hey, we
can go get jobs perhaps, um. But then again it
(30:40):
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
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
(31:03):
and saying I'm not going to put up with this.
I'm gonna 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 of
the woman who inspired Hollyback efforts, she snapped a cell
phone picture of a guy who was publicly masturbating while
staring at her, which she was then able to use
(31:25):
successfully in his prosecution. Yeah. Because while while cat calling
is not illegal in New York City, it is in
fact illegal to masturbate in public just f y I um.
But by taking on street harassment from the social media approach,
it has empowered men and women to identify and call
(31:45):
out their harassers. And Emily may has talked before about
how um the idea evolved to not just from uh,
that initial cell phone photo, 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
(32:06):
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 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?
(32:28):
But the fact that it typically happens when you are
isolated or possibly with other women. I don't think I've
ever gotten yelled at when I've been with a male
friend or a boyfriend, or 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
(32:52):
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 woman felt reported that she felt
such relief at being invisible for once, at just being
able to freaking walk down the street from point A
to point B. Whereas the man who was wearing fake
(33:15):
breasts and everything, I mean, he was dressed as a woman. Uh,
found himself putting on his jacket to avoid to try
to deflect people 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 from a gay guy not too long ago
(33:35):
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 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
(33:58):
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 if you've experienced this before, Caroline, but um,
I'll never forget being in Bushwick in New York once
(34:18):
with a girlfriend of mine and we were walking somewhere
and we were followed for a few blocks and it
was terrifying. We eventually ducked into a bar we happened
to run across just to be around other people. Um,
And and he talked about this guy, this listener in
his letter talked about how afterwards he was just so confused,
(34:41):
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 that's where that's where I mean what
you just said, where it's evident that this is a
(35:02):
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 allowing people to just exist, allowing
(35:26):
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 for being at risk of
street harassment, but outright violence and attack in public spaces
(35:49):
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, an actual model,
go out on the street and walk around in a
(36:09):
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 a 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, 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
(36:33):
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, that separates the sexes completely. So a
man who would be harassing someone when he does see
(36:55):
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 sexual harassment more generally speaking. UM,
I thought it was really interesting that in two thousand eleven,
(37:16):
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 should a street harassments euphemistically
known as eve teasing, and uh, the courts did away
with that in Bangladesh to categorize it as a form
of sexual harassment. And also in Nepal there was a
(37:39):
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
questions too in the US about laws regarding public harassment,
(37:59):
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,
but not so on the streets. Yeah, and so this
(38:20):
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.
They actually got their start as a way to essentially
(38:41):
prevent 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
harassment and the language used when people do harass people
on the street. Yeah. I mean, I have a feeling
(39:03):
that that's probably never going to 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,
there are plenty of people who aren't men who also say, oh,
(39:24):
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 Lawaq, who kind of
became the poster gal of pro cat collars when she
wrote an op ed in The New York Post that
went viral for kind of all the wrong reasons because
(39:48):
it was headlined, hey, ladies, cat calls are flattering, deal
with it. And I'm not going to waste my breath
going over um 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 looking closer at the context of cat calling
(40:10):
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 kinda like it. I gotta like hearing that I
look good. Yeah, And there were, for instance, there were
a lot of comments under the video of the actors
who was walking through New York. There were a lot
(40:31):
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 it's like, whoa. These are different things,
but it is important to discuss context well. And also, Caroline,
(40:55):
there's the risk of forgetting to smile some days if
people don't tell you too. You know, I forget all
the time. It's not until I walk into work and
Kristin yells at me from across the room to smile
that I even remember. Yeah, I'm just trying to compliment
you girl, I know. But yeah. So this this study
that Kristen is talking about found that lower contextual threat
(41:18):
levels do have a bearing on how women perceive the
cat calling, the harassment, the the eye contact, whatever it
may be. Yeah, because there's this whole thing of harassment
is in the eye of the beholder in terms to
how um threatening it feels. And so this study conducted
(41:41):
a lot of experiments and highlighted perception variables. In other words,
the key things it's sort of influence that threat level,
and that includes age, marital status, sex, attractiveness, familiarity status,
job status of the perpetrator, demograph effect, sexual identity and
(42:01):
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 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
(42:24):
or with friends as the major context factors for how
fearful a woman was at the prospect of these different
street harassments scenarios they were presented with, because there is
a sticky question of well, 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
(42:47):
mix and match all of these perception variables, I mean,
that has a lot to do with it. I don't
care how hot the guy is, if he is like physically,
if he is following me down the street yelling at me,
I mean, that's still going 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
(43:09):
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 if he's driving
a Bentley or whatever, um as opposed to if he's
a guy sitting sitting on 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
(43:31):
was the thing too in all of these studies that
they conducted, even when sort of playing around with those
different variables, it never 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
(43:54):
perfect scenario when it was like a guy saying something
lud or threatened or inappropriate and the recipient was like,
and I feel great, 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
(44:14):
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 are said on or even just the lewd
implications that are made in very benign statements UM and
(44:36):
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 many ways, how sexually backward our society is when
this kind of sexual communication in a public space is
(44:59):
often deemed complimentary and benign, whereas we still can't get
sexual consent in communication between two people in private spaces,
like straightened out, Like why is that? I mean, there's
so 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,
(45:20):
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 the most coveted
kind of compliment a woman can receive in our society
to their lots of layers to this, So, I mean, yeah, exactly,
(45:41):
And 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 actually not well, because it's not about compliments. It's
about power. It's all about power in the same way
(46:04):
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 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
(46:26):
was just like, gosh, darn it, you guys. I just
want the world to be a happier place at this train,
say more smiles. Yeah. And and so I mean when
you when you look at that, look at things in
the context of that, I think that says a lot too.
And so it's really important to not just have this
(46:46):
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 going to so
many gruci details, perhaps, but to discuss issues of consent
and what is and is not appropriate. And we want
(47:08):
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 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
(47:29):
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
how stuff works dot com is our email address. You
can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast and messages
on Facebook, and we've got a couple of messages to
(47:49):
share with you right now. So I've got a letter
here from someone who would like to remain anonymous about
our episode on Lady Lawyers, and she writes, 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
(48:11):
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 partners who
I worked with ever made a comment about it. At
the end of the hearing, a thirty to forty five
year old male Department of Justice attorney walked around to
(48:32):
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 vowed that I would
never again wear anything but black or gray to court.
While 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
(48:53):
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 think
most lawyers would gladly alter their appearance or exaggerate a
disability to sway the jury or the judge in their
(49:14):
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 and don't go to court so often. So
thanks for that insight. So I have a letter here
from Lauren uh in response to our Lady lawyer's dress
code episode, and she might not agree with the author
(49:34):
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 to court.
I'm a Midwestern, middle class raised gal, but at thirty five,
I became a named partner in 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,
(49:56):
much more than our male counterparts. However, this is 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 read. 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,
(50:18):
and I always wear stiletto heels. Ask anyone in my
court house and they will tell you I am a
force to be reckoned. With lots of love to you, ladies,
and if any lady lawyer or hopeful lady lawyers in
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
(50:40):
for links to 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 mashows. Head on
over to stuff Mom Never Told You dot com for
more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
(51:02):
how stuff works dot com. M
Stuff Mom Never Told You News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Samantha McVey
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.