Street Harrassment.!!!

A woman who designed an experiment aimed at attracting the attention of others supposedly received said attention? Shocking. I didn't know you considered a single sketchy case study a reliable form of evidence.

So you think the comment "Well, hello there!" is so devastating to a woman that it merits some sort of serious action. Is your opinion of women so low that you feel the patriarchal need to protect them from even the slightest form of imagined discomfort.

So now men shouldn't travel in the same direction as women? This is getting ridiculous.

 

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I didn't see that in the video. Supposedly this woman walked around the street for 10 hours, and then showcased 2 minutes of the most egregious catcalling, which included one man saying "God Bless you", and another referring to himself as 'ugly'. Oh the horror! Call the National Guard, we have a crisis on our hands here!

 

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The clammy creepiness of the men is tangible - individual comments are, in some respect, unexceptional since each man making the comment observes the subject once each. Still, the sheer frequency of the comments suggests that this is common for women in NY; assuming the makers of the film are honest in their reporting, this implies an impressive frequency per capita for women, or at least in NYC.

And there is a crisis here. Rape, sexual belittling, glass ceilings, general misogyny. This is part thereof: the visualisation of women as sex objects without respect of either individuality or basic rights to dignity. Or more simply: sure, if a woman is wearing revealing clothes, people probably will sneak a peek. That's human nature, although not precisely honourable. What is much more egregious is the constant hitting-on by passersby. Take your position: oh no, she got chatted at as she walked around in tight clothes. All right: multiply that across distance traveled. A leering comment - and "smile, baby" is a pretty sleazy way to introduce yourself - every six minutes. So what's the average commute time of a New Yorker? 48 minutes, apparently. (http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/new-yorkers-havelongest-commute-times-article-1.1426047) So that's eight comments on average per morning, eight at night. No idea how many that is on a per mile basis, but should we just expect that women should run this gauntlet every day? Nearly twenty droolers per diem.

And "smile baby" is not the way you introduce yourself or talk to a woman as she hurries by. If you're taking that shot at her as she walks by, that's kind of sleazy. You chat up a woman, essentially, in a stationary social locale, or really anywhere she isn't rushing by to go somewhere. Maybe our disdain is coloured by the desperation of it all, whatever. I don't think these guys were throwing up similar comments at the average passer-by; say, a balding black guy in golf pants and a wifebeater. So it isn't about 'being friendly'. It's about desperate attempts to 'score'. And it's disrespectful. I don't behave like this. Do you? It's unacceptable.

Admittedly, NYC is probably one of the worse places for this. In fact, I'd warrant there are few places outside major metropolises where such behaviour goes on on a wide scale. But that's still pretty damning. And it's motivated by the same factors that motivate misogyny generally. It's too much. This society needs an overhaul in a variety of areas, and this is utterly one such. Addressing male behaviour would be the shortest cut to relaxing the creeping misogyny that this society presently tacitly permits. IMHO.

 

If it's harassment then the woman should have filed formal charges, no? I mean, she has video evidence of the "harassment." I wonder if she will be filing a formal complaint at the Police Station? It will be a good opportunity for everyone to assess the Police Officer's handling of the situation!!

Edit: Maybe Obama can call a special news briefing to fill us in on the status of this mess.

 

Just a curiosity:
Did the actress in the video clip get paid for this gig.
Or, do we have an emerging union problem here?
....................................................

Reminiscing about the army(stratcom) days long ago and far away.
Some of those WACs could fill out a set of fatigues in a way that delighted my eyes. (We were all a lot younger then)
One WAC was completely excalibur via the armies IQ tests. She scored the max right across the board.
She was one of the crypto kids when the computations were done without computers. The crypto kids worked inside a vault inside a secure building inside a secure site under a mountain.
Her brain ruled my mind and heart, and, while following her in a set of fatigues, she ruled my body.

Nice memories.....................

...............
another question:
Are sanity and political correctness always mutually exclusive?

 

Once I paid for two nice looking womens dinner at a French Restaurant downtown and told the waiter not to tell them who picked up their tab because I just enjoyed watching them while I ate alone. No , not gawking but glancing over every now and then just for admirations sake. No I did not follow them out of the place, I left before they did so as not to even be there for them to think it was me. It is nice, to me, to but a drink, dinner or other thing that I might be around for a lovely lady for to see them smile pays me back more than any money can.

 

Go back and do a count. The video makers claim over 100 instances of 'street harassment'. My rough count is approx 20 people making approx 35 comments. Thats one person commenting every 30 mins or one comment every 17 mins. So it appears the makers of the video are not exactly honest. I mean, why cut it unless its really not convincing. One guy saying "Nice" is walking the opposite direction apparently on a cell phone. I am not sure he's even commenting about her.

And we have no idea how many people she walked past. Is a thousand an hour an unreasonable guess? 100 an hour seems awful low. 500 an hour is less than one in 150.

Maybe you enjoyed walking in boy/girl lines and remaining silent in the halls of grade school... Just saying...

 

They don't say they included all the comments. We're back here to the question of veracity, I guess. Do we have reason to conclude that the presenters are lying?

This is a good point about proportionality. Tough to gauge from the video. Assuming your 500 in an hour, that would be 5000 people passed in the total of 10 hours, so roughly 1 in 50 making a comment. But only half - males - make such comments, so that gives 1 in 25 of all people likely to make such comments, and of that I think you could shave off 20% as either not seeing her, being too old, too young, homosexual (2-4% of the population I believe), or otherwise unable to comment. So probably 1 in 20 commented, or 5% of the available possible commenters. And the filmers also cite 'innumerable' winks and whistles. Could that be as much as half of those observing her? Even at 5%, that's a serious problem in my book: 5% of all males making lewd comments at the girl. That's a freaking nightmare, even without considering the absolute effect: 100 comments, if the filmers are taken at their word. In the statistical world, we'd call that 1.0 shitloads (sL) of harassment.

How did you guess? Our hopscotch lines were also rigidly enforced, if you want to know.

 

This is super creepy. I did note a few things. She was walking in a lower income part of town as evidenced by the general dingyness, all the scraped up posters, graffiti and the general slovenly look of the people around her as she walked.

I actually look strikingly similar to the girl in the video (those of you who've seen my picture in the past know that I have long brown curly hair and a fairly shapely figure) and I work with a lot of women in downtown Chicago who are even more beautiful than the girl in the video and also some who dress more provocatively than she did in the video and I can tell you that when we walk solo or as a group out to lunch, sometimes a mile or more depending on what kind of food we are looking for, we almost never get those kinds of comments or propositions. I had a speaking engagement three miles away that I walked to the other day and I was dressed very well and was alone the whole time and only heard one.

Maybe it's the area she is in, and maybe it is the kind of people she's around but I definitely think it's more of a nurture thing because we don't generally get that around here. Even my sister who works at a blue collar plant in a very bad area of town doesn't get that kind of attention in the Chicago area. Maybe it's a New York thing? It's not nature, I've never been treated like that anywhere.

I personally would have stopped walking and gone into one of the stores and asked them to call the police if the guy who followed her for five minutes followed me in. If you are in a downtown area, you have to have street smarts whether you are a guy or a girl.

 

Based on the evidence presented? I mean come on, If they had worse they would have shown it. They didnt because the video was the worst they saw that day.

ah, but that is assuming over 100 comments (when they dont show that). There is a motive and its placed at the end when they tell you how to donate money to them. Going back to the evidence presented; attributing one comment per person (which it isnt 7 of the 20 commentators had more than one comment). But to play along 35 comments out of 2500 people is 1.4% of the males (if we attribute one comment per participant). If we do 20 participants out of 2500 people its 0.8% of males encountered that day.

So I guess its a half full/half empty outlook on life. But then, most of the time I appreciated when someone said "looking good babe" in my younger days. And Honestly, I dont think society as a whole would be better of banning such impulses (as some would suggest).

I agree with this commentary (reflecting on the actual examples from the video):
http://nypost.com/2014/08/18/enough-sanctimony-ladies-catcalls-are-flattering/

Hopscotch... good one LOL.

 

I didn't say worse but 'more'. Could they cram all 100 comments in? Maybe. I suppose one could write them for a second video for verification.

Well, I suppose there is a potential motive there for exaggeration there. The object of documentation is verification: they could be contacted; I'll see what I can do, if anything. I agree that there is such a thing as a positive compliment - but "hey, baby" and "smile" and "hey beautiful" are a bit much, especially if the incidence being reported here is correct over miles and miles and hours. If one wants to meet a girl, buy her a drink in a pub. If one has to toss it at her as she hurries by to have any chance of getting her attention, maybe save it for another day.

And if one has to walk alongside her for five minutes at a time, pretending you're with her, one should just be, you know, shot. It's harassment. The incidence issue is avoidable but not actionable - since no casual assery can be really punishable; idiot A doesn't know, similarly, that idiot B said the same damn thing to her five minutes back - unless egregious and personal.

 

Actually, James R, I'm extremely shy. I've been married twice, and both times, the women proposed to me. So too with most of my dating and lovers.

So, I really have no experience in approaching strangers on the street(except for getting directions when lost).

As for "drawing the line" If I had used the film clip in question to make a point in an anthropology or psychology seminar, I'd have been laughed out of the classroom, and shortly thereafter received the F I so richly deserved.
It ain't me dadio, it's my training---I just may be a victim of too much education.
From an anthropology or psychology point of view, the film clip is worth less than garbage. Without the P.C. bandwagon crap, it should be taken as a bit of kinky street theatre.

But, here we are in the midsts of P.C. brown shoe emotional insanity.