10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Woman

[daisy16]

[youtube][/youtube]
Just curious to what everyone thinks of this video that came out a few days ago. I'm kind of on the fence about it. Some of it was definitely harassment, like the two guys who followed her for a few minutes and the guys shouting things like "DAMN" at her. But I also didn't and don't see anything wrong with some of the simple hello's and have a good day comments she was getting. I say that stuff all of the time when walking by people on the street or in public. I don't expect anything in return, I just try to be nice.

[RoseHammer]

I'll never understand why guys catcall and do stuff like that anyway, I've never seen a girl turn around and go talk to them. Some of the guys were just saying hello or have a good day which to me is fine, at least it's polite. Scumbags are scumbags though, I hate being followed and pursued by a stranger when I'm on my way somewhere.

[fluffernut]

The comments on the video are ridiculous. People claiming it isn't harassment, saying she should be happy people consider her attractive, etc. A guy followed her for five minutes trying to get her to talk to him and that's not harassment? God damn.

[kayuhsee]

I know she ends the video saying its all different backgrounds doing this to her, but I've heard that the two purposely only showed POC giving out the catcalls. I don't really know if that's the truth or not, but if it that's pretty shitty. It does show how creepy guys can be though. Especially the one that just walks with her for about five minuets and the one keep trying to give her his number.

[Anonimal]

The comments on the video are ridiculous. People claiming it isn't harassment, saying she should be happy people consider her attractive, etc. A guy followed her for five minutes trying to get her to talk to him and that's not harassment? God damn.

I had a mini-comment war with someone saying that her ignoring the guy walking right next to her isn't an obvious sign that she doesn't want to talk to him. It's pretty damn obvious that if you ignore someone, you don't want to talk to them.

Edited to add: I wouldn't consider all of those harassment, some of those comments were pretty polite and could have just been friendly salutations. "Have a good evening" and "How are you doing this morning" seem fine to me.

[Izabella]

I wasn't that shocked by it because I see/experience this every day and it's sad how I'm just used to seeing this now. Although I don't live in NY and I bet it's even worse in NY.

Yeah, the comments are what pissed me off.

People claiming "how is saying good morning harassing someone" don't really get it.
The tone they're saying it in. They're not being friendly and wishing everyone walking by them good morning, it's obvious they were just saying it as a means to start hitting on her (while also checking her ass out). Just because it's a harmless comment, it's a completely different intention and still makes some of us uncomfortable. I can tell when a guy is saying "good morning" because he's cat calling me, and a guy is saying "good morning" because he's just friendly and will say that to anyone walking by.

And then some comments claiming she's a bitch for ignoring them? Do you expect her to fucking stop every single time someone cat calls her, to chat? Like really, some of us are just trying to get from point A to point B without being interrupted. We're not outside walking around to entertain guys. Most of the commenters dismissing this video are males and probably still don't see the problem with what was going on.

[FoodandFashion]

I ignore anyone who usually tries to talk to me no matter what because it's rare as hell to have someone say "Good morning" or "Hello" without a negative intent where I live.

80% was definitely harassment. Don't yell at people. Don't sexualize people. I agree with someone here, the way they said the more polite things said it in a negative way. It was said to gran her attention. And the guy that followed her, he was polite at first and then he followed her.

It's best to just ignore rather than spark a conversation. You don't know what kind of people they are. I try to be nice but if I see it's only directed towards me, I ignore or tell them to fuck off. There were a few Caucasians, you just cannot see them very well.

Whoever is saying "She should feel grateful" has insecurity issues. That shit only works on aggressive women. I've never seen a woman who minds her own business like that kind of "pick up".

They shouldn't have added some of the more polite ones because it confused a lot of people (who I think lack sense but it happens) and brought out a lot of idiots. Inevitable, by the way.

[Guest]

I know she ends the video saying its all different backgrounds doing this to her, but I've heard that the two purposely only showed POC giving out the catcalls. I don't really know if that's the truth or not, but if it that's pretty shitty. It does show how creepy guys can be though. Especially the one that just walks with her for about five minuets and the one keep trying to give her his number.

That's what I heard too, and I don't doubt it tbh. I appreciate what the video is trying to show but I also side-eye it for that.

[BoomShaka]

Replied to two comments, and downvoted five. I knew I would be there all day if I kept scrolling down.

Sent from my KFTT using Tapatalk

[Izabella]

I know she ends the video saying its all different backgrounds doing this to her, but I've heard that the two purposely only showed POC giving out the catcalls. I don't really know if that's the truth or not, but if it that's pretty shitty. It does show how creepy guys can be though. Especially the one that just walks with her for about five minuets and the one keep trying to give her his number.

That's what I heard too, and I don't doubt it tbh. I appreciate what the video is trying to show but I also side-eye it for that.

I read somewhere that just as many white guys cat called her, but they did it in a more quiet or subtle way and it was hard to pick up on the Go Pro so they just didn't include it since it would be hard to catch? Who knows.. I doubt they'd intentionally leave out white guys though.

[Waldorfdarling]

The thing is it is very normal to be cautious yes even when someone (a stranger male someone that is) makes a seemingly "polite" comment. Because how many times did these polite comments lead up to something not-so-polite? The lines are so blurry. When do you know for sure that responding to one of these won't turn sour? It's a big bad world and there's too many creeps out there for a girl to take any chances.

Btw I don't think strangers on the street really care to wish me "good morning" or "god bless you", because gentlemen just don't do that to women on the street but rather in a friendly environment where both parties are open to conversation. These men are creepy and even if there's a minority that isn't, well, it gets lost in the bunch. You can't hold women responsible for watching their back.

We blame women for walking in dark alleys late at night and wearing short skirts and now we also blame them for being cautious with strangers? People will grasp at any invalid point just so they can find an excuse for men's behavior, and that to me, is infuriating.

[daisy16]

I read somewhere that just as many white guys cat called her, but they did it in a more quiet or subtle way and it was hard to pick up on the Go Pro so they just didn't include it since it would be hard to catch? Who knows.. I doubt they'd intentionally leave out white guys though.

Yeah, why would they EVER purposely leave out white guys being pieces of shit and only showcase black men being the bad guys? That definitely never happens. I'm sure the GoPro just conveniently didn't pick up many white guys catcalling her Sorry, I don't buy that for a second.

[Izabella]

I don't know why people are turning this into a race issue , it wasn't supposed to be like that at all. How do you know the neighbourhoods she was walking in are mostly people of colour? From my experience, white men (especially in business suits) aren't going to yell at you from across the street. They usually say something under their breath as they pass by you, or say something quietly after they've passed you. Pretty sure some of the video even shows this. I don't understand why every thing turns into a race issue these days.
To assume they purposely left out white males is just a little far fetched. Sorry, that's just my opinion. If you'd like to think this theory, then by all means, keep thinking it.

On another note,
here's a funny article related on this. It's called "An Apology to Street Harrassers" (it's supposed to be sarcastic, just in case people don't get it)
http://www.the-broad-side.com/street-ha ... to-be-nice

[daisy16]

I wasn't exactly saying that I believed they were intentionally leaving out white males, I was more so pointing out that I don't buy that they would never intentionally do just that. I get what you're saying, but I don't know what world you live in that it's far fetched to say they'd purposely leave out white males doing something wrong and capitalize on black males doing the same thing instead.
Anyways, the comments on that article are making my head hurt. Shit like this sure does bring out the idiots of the world.

[Izabella]

Whether they intentionally left them out or not, there's no proof they did so why jump the conclusions? Just because there's more POC in this video doesn't necessarily mean something was intentionally done to make it look that way. Is there a possibility? Sure. But that's like saying a TV show is purposely avoiding POC if there's an all white cast (like how SNL was getting flack for not hiring enough black comedians). Yes maybe the TV shows are doing it on purpose, but again, there's no proof... so people just jump to conclusions. I personally don't believe SNL intentionally avoided hiring black people but because there was a time where there wasn't any black people, so people automatically thought it was done on purpose. People always just assume it's being done on purpose.. but I say, if there's no proof, then it's not fair to assume so. It's not fair to assume these two creators, who tried to send a message about sexual harassment and what females have to go through and have actually gone viral and started an important conversation about it, are now being accused for trying to have a race agenda behind it.

[CoralCat]

I doubt any particular group was singled out.
And rather than concentrating on the slight possibility that it's a race issue - which I don't believe it is - can we instead concentrate on what it actually is, a gender issue
I'm glad to say round my area there's often police strolling round the town center and if anyone gets blatantly cat called they call the guy over and give him a warning, it's barely a problem here anymore so I hope other areas start doing the same if they have enough police resources

[savetheempire]

My BF and I had a long conversation about this. Ultimately I think it stirs up an interesting conversation that is worth having but the major drawbacks of this video were that all the men catcalling were POC and the woman herself appears to be a POC. I don't think it's right to lift feminism up while simultaneously being racist.

[savetheempire]

I doubt any particular group was singled out.
And rather than concentrating on the slight possibility that it's a race issue - which I don't believe it is - can we instead concentrate on what it actually is, a gender issue
I'm glad to say round my area there's often police strolling round the town center and if anyone gets blatantly cat called they call the guy over and give him a warning, it's barely a problem here anymore so I hope other areas start doing the same if they have enough police resources

But they made it a race issue by only leaving in catcalls from men of color. To ignore that is just as bad as the ignorant commenters who say what she experienced wasn't harassment.

This video is exactly why feminists of color have so much criticism for white privileged feminists.

[RoseHammer]

I doubt any particular group was singled out.
And rather than concentrating on the slight possibility that it's a race issue - which I don't believe it is - can we instead concentrate on what it actually is, a gender issue
I'm glad to say round my area there's often police strolling round the town center and if anyone gets blatantly cat called they call the guy over and give him a warning, it's barely a problem here anymore so I hope other areas start doing the same if they have enough police resources

But they made it a race issue by only leaving in catcalls from men of color. To ignore that is just as bad as the ignorant commenters who say what she experienced wasn't harassment.

This video is exactly why feminists of color have so much criticism for white privileged feminists.

I'm sorry but how exactly do you know that they only left catcalls from men of color? Is there evidence that that catcalls from white men have been edited out? I mean I've been catcalled by white guys plenty of times ( because I live in a redneck-y area ) but please forward some actual proof before making an argument.

[CoralCat]

Leaving out white people sounds like one of those theories people made on tumblr, I've been looking and trying to find a source and all I can see are tumblr blogs with no sources explaining how they got to that conclusion.
Everyone knows about racism and most people accept it is a problem, it is wrong and it must be stopped, unfortunately that view isn't massively shared with harassment which is much more low profile, by addressing the only slightly possible racism instead of the blatantly obvious gender issue, you might not realize and you're probably not doing it in purpose but your kind of ignoring it and dismissing the gender issue and point of the video