“Oh god! Yes, Miss America! You wanna hang out? You’re a supermodel!”
Words directed at a GMHS senior, Julia Palmer, while she walking home from school with her boyfriend in broad daylight.
“I can’t walk by the Starbucks and not see him there,” Palmer said, referring to the man who yelled the Miss America comments at her.
This experience is called catcalling.
Catcalling is the act of making a whistle, shout, or a comment of a sexual nature to a woman passing by. Girls experience this all over the world, frequently, and George Mason girls are catcalled regularly on the way to and from school.
“If you had a daughter, would you want that to happen to her? Like, being harassed on the street by a bunch of dudes,” said sophomore Rachel Skomra.
The subject, however, is very controversial, as some see it as a joke and some see a serious problem. The interpretation of catcalling is almost entirely subjective; the experience of it can leave women feeling violated, scared, frustrated and annoyed. Yet, some women (although I was unable to find any in our school who believe so) say it makes them feel better about themselves.
The New York blog says “[e]ven if an individual woman feels flattered by catcalling, she can probably point to a situation in which she felt extremely vulnerable due to catcalling—probably as a young teenager.”
For senior Andrei Enache, it’s a joke, and he admits to doing it for fun with his friends.
“I don’t personally think of it as anything. I don’t see it as a gateway for gaining a woman’s heart or anything like that,” Enache said.
“We do it in a funny voice or we laugh to show that it’s a joke…” Enache continued. “I expect them to do something back, like if I say ‘Hey Mami!’ then they should play along and say ‘Hey Papi!’, as a joke.”
Street harassment is a tricky issue. What is the difference between harassment, a joke and flirtation? It’s difficult to argue that sexual harassment is anything but incessant and invasive, leaving people feeling unsafe.
“It’s disgusting, and there’s no way to respond back to it without feeling unsafe,” Palmer said.
The majority of women I spoke to, who have experienced catcalls, said the preferred ignoring them or taking the compliment even if they don’t like it, because then it’s over quicker. Some people suggested they might say something clever or disgusting back, mocking the harasser, although some women said that that only made them feel even more scared because then the harasser becomes an even greater threat.
However, ignoring catcalls does not seem to solve the problem.
“If it makes you feel uncomfortable, then stand up for yourself because no one should ever make you feel uncomfortable in your own skin,” said senior Katie Goodwin.
The experience, however, remains invisible to most men. For example, senior James Pala stated he’d known of catcalling but never witnessed it. A third-party perspective could assist in preventing unwanted catcalling; the tricky part is finding how to make other men more aware.
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Catcalling has become more prevalent in the media too; as a social experiment, Rob Bliss created a video showing one woman’s 10-hour walk in New York City, where she was catcalled over 100 times.
A woman named Caroline Tompkins, started a blog devoted to the photos of the faces of her harassers. Even buzzfeed has made videos addressing how ridiculous this everyday situation is.
But what is George Mason doing to prevent this from happening to its girls? Some adults in the school have called it “unpreventable.” Are we educating all our students about catcalling as a form of sexual harassment? No.
There seemed to be some confusion between teachers whether the Sexual Education unit part of health class is taught in ninth grade or in tenth grade. The unit focuses on “No means no,” date rape, STD effects, and abstinence, but, according to a sampling of ninth and tenth grade students with whom I spoke, sexual harassment is hardly covered.
How can these classes educate female students when they are catcalled? Is sexual harassment not taught because it is a gray area? Many students and teachers feel this should be a topic discussed in their health classes, but it is not. Catcalling will not stop until its harmful nature is taught to students.
