Hollaback! Is Catcalling women justified?

Following a video in which a woman walking in NYC received more than 100 catcalls over just ten hours, Hollaback! a movement geared at ending street harassment, continues to face the challenge that is an everyday reality for women globally. Activists against street harassment regard it as a form of sexual harassment that occurs in public spheres. Leering, honking, whistling and even groping and grabbing all sum it up but street harassment is not limited to these. Hollaback! emphasizes that what qualifies as street harassment is determined by those who go through it.

It is true that street harassment might be targeted at anyone, but historically subordinated groups have been most vulnerable; women making up this group. Studies show that internationally, 70-99% of women experience street harassment, a form of non-contact unwanted sexual experience, at some point in their lives. In India where street harassment is casually referred to as Eve tease, women only subway cars are operational owing to the prevalence of the harassment. The same applies in Japan, which begs the question whether segregation offers any permanency of solution.

Although the catcall video elicited earnest uproar and concern for women battling with such sexual harassment, some denounced it and termed Shoshana Roberts, the woman in the video, a feminazi. An argument projected is that telling men not to catcall attacks their existence and is an infringement of their rights, the political right to communicate ones ideas and opinions- the fundamental freedom of speech. Catcalling is not a behaviour society should be bothered with limiting, it is merely free speech.

The Kenyan chapter of Hollaback! ,Hollaback! Nairobi, features stories shared by women who have faced street harassment. In one a woman was barked at(just as a dog would) was then told ‘kama ni nzuri ni nzuri’. That a man will not refrain from saying something is good if he feels it is good. Is imposing unwanted attention on people to be deemed as a societal norm, owing to it being minor? Following the principle that harassment is to be identified by the victim, there is no room for minor catcalling, only aggressive.

Street harassment is so rampant that it suffices to say that it is acceptable in our society. Evidencing this would be a father somewhere in Eastleigh endorsing, by virtue of not condemning, his teenage son’s groping of a woman right before his eyes.

Should the feminists just pack up their placards and leave men and their free speech alone? Is catcalling harmless self-expression or is it something that needs to be curbed? How possible is it to make an acceptable behaviour unacceptable? Suggestion has been put forward that a proper survey on assaults needs to be conducted in order to work out a response that will work . If unsolicited sexual attention is something you feel needs to be curbed, talking about it in your circles should be a step forward at addressing the issue.