Stop the catcalls

We’ve all heard them. Walking to class, coming home from the gym, carrying bags of groceries. Damn, beautiful. You got a number? Smile, you’re so pretty! What’s your name? Come on, I just want to talk to you.

Catcalling or hollering or whistling at a woman—whatever you want to call it, the truth is that it exists on every block of New York City.

Last week, the New York City Council held its first-ever hearing on the issue of street harassment with activists, experts, councilmembers, and citizens alike all in attendance. Perhaps the most alarming point to come out of the hearing was the fact that there are no actual statistics quantifying street harassment in this city. With the exception of an online questionnaire and a study conducted by the Manhattan borough president’s office in 2007, we have no concrete facts on what street harassment looks like in New York City today.

Individual experts have tried to find some reliable statistics. In a survey that sampled 200 women from New York City, about 90 percent said they had experienced street harassment. More than 80 percent had sexually explicit comments directed at them by men. By the age of 19, about 75 percent of women surveyed in New York City had been followed by men who were strangers to them. More than 50 percent had been groped, and 25 percent had been assaulted by strange men.

Some women were sexually harassed on the street beginning at the age of 12, but women in their “teens and twenties” seemed to experience harassment the most often. Another, separate survey specifically targeted 150 Barnard women: Every single one of them said that they had experienced street harassment.

Yet it’s not just random strangers on the street. This feeling of being unsafe in your own neighborhood is something that Barnard and Columbia women know all too well. Ask any woman here if she has ever felt uncomfortable when five men get into the elevator and leer at her. Ask her if she has ever called Public Safety because she had a bad experience walking from Butler to Cathedral Gardens. Ask any woman if she has felt safe walking in Riverside or Morningside Park after dusk. Or, you could just take just one look at all the Public Safety emails we get about female students who are assaulted at night (or even in broad daylight).

As sad as it is, the harsh reality is that women on our campus and throughout the city step outside their buildings with an attitude that public spaces are fair game to be objectified in. As one expert at the City Council hearing explained, “Because of street harassment, young…learn to limit the places they go, they try not to be in public alone, especially at night, and when they are alone, they stay on guard.”

Fortunately, people are addressing this issue. Panelists at the City Council hearing suggested establishing “harassment-free” zones around schools so that girls don’t have to experience street harassment at such a young age.

Alongside the council hearing last week, the Barnard Center for Research on Women hosted an event on campus, bringing in activists from New York City and Washington, D.C. to talk about the different ways that technology, mapping, and community organizing can be used to fight street harassment.

One of the organizations that was represented at this panel was Holla Back, a group that works to end street harassment using mobile technology. The organization boasts a new, “crowd-sourced initiative” that gives both men and women the power to stop street harassment by reporting it. Citizens can snap a picture of their harasser (or someone else’s harasser), text it to Holla Back, and even map the location where the incident occurred. They can share their story on the website and, quite literally, put the harasser on the map.

At the end of the day, though, there are still some people who maintain that women ask to get these “compliments” because they dress provocatively—miniskirts, dresses, shorts. But what is their excuse for a pregnant woman, or for a pre-pubescent girl? Regardless who they’re aimed at, catcalls are objectifying. They give young girls the idea that this is kind of language is to be expected, while simultaneously endorsing this language for young boys to use.

If these are our society’s “compliments,” I’d rather not be complimented at all. All I want is to be able to walk down the street in peace. Is that too much to ask?

Vaidehi Joshi is a Barnard College senior majoring in political science. She is the president of CU Chai Chat and a research assistant at the Barnard Center for Research on Women. Two Steps Forward, One Step Back runs alternate Wednesdays.