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JAYPLAY = 09.27.2007
Drive-by Catcalls are commonplace in many women's daily lives. Is it all in good fun, or signs of sexism? by Ashley Thompson
It happens to Whitney Howell, Leawood senior, when she's jogging alone near her house in downtown Lawrence. Groups of men drive by, honking, whistling, doling out what are disguised as compliments. "Hey baby, lookin' good," is a common one she hears. One time, a car circled around the block three times in a row, each time the eager driver and passengers barking out some variation of that line.
It happened to Ashley Wills, Overland Park sophomore, while on breaks from work at Hollister at the Oak Park Mall. Groups of guys, varying widely in age, would regularly hoot and holler."Nice ass," is a line Wills has almost grown accustomed to hearing when she's alone and walking past a group of men. She says over time she tried to adjust what she wore to work to try to discourage the attention, avoiding the low-cut shirts and tight pants that Hollister preferred her to wear. It wasn't very effective.
And it happened to Leah Foster, CUNY law student, one New York City afternoon. It was two weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks when a man several stories up in an apartment building yelled down to her. "Hey, pretty lady. You should smile. Show me that smile," he shouted. Foster ignored the comment, somewhat enraged that someone would feel compelled to tell a stranger to be happy, to look pretty for him. "Show me a pretty smile," the man yelled down again.
"For all he knew, I could have lost my mom or something in the terrorist attacks," Foster says. "It had nothing to do with me. It was all about him. He was denying that I could feel feelings and that I am a person."
Nearly all women have been put in similar situations. Earlier this month, I was outside my apartment at around 1 a.m. in my pajamas – an oversized maroon T-shirt and buggy shorts – taking my dog out to go pee, when a group of guys approached me. Two of them walked on by after a casual wink, but one remained. He asked to pet my dog. Then, as if there was nothing strange about it, he said; "You're lookin' fine. Could I maybe get your phone number?" I just stared at him before spewing off
some reason that I had to go back inside. I don't understand. In the same tone of voice that he used to to pet my dog, this stranger had felt comfortable enough to tell me I was hot and to ask for my number. Would it have been impossible for him to mind his own business while my dog was doing his?
What happened to Howell, Wills, Foster and me is called street harassment. Women encounter such catcalling on an almost
daily basis, be it in big cities or in smaller towns such as Lawrence. In Laura Nielsen's 2006 book about street harassment, License to Harass, 62 percent of women she surveyed during her research said they experienced street harassment on a near daily basis. But Nielsen, a sociology professor at Northwestern University, says that the most eye-opening number is how men responded to the same question. Of those she talked to,
only 13 percent of men thought that women were getting street harassed on a near daily basis.
The obvious gender disconnect may well be one of the reasons catcalling continues; it's stacked up as something that comes with the territory of being a woman.In 2000, three New York City women, fed up with being hounded, formed what is now called "The Street Harassment Coalition," a New York-based organization dedicated
to raising awareness of the longignored issue. Foster joined the group a couple months after its creation, motivated to retaliate after experiences like that Sept. 11 fiasco. She is now its media liaison. The coalition's goal is to get men and women talking about the issue of street harassment."We feel like we can change this. A lot of behaviors change over time or are erased from society. We feel like this can, too," Foster says.
Men are essentially socialized to do this. The vast strides women have made in recent years in the workplace and in the home are remarkable, Nielsen says, but little progress has been seen in the public spheres. Because male dominance has been challenged in many arenas in modern-day society, men still seek to assert their power over women, Nielsen explains. "Male dominance is ever-present," Nielsen says. "When they feel like
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