Women love to feel pretty.
A spritz of perfume, pricey hair product and a favorite pair of jeans are designed and marketed to catch attention. But when unwanted attention takes the form of a greasy man’s double-take or suggestive greeting … Men are such pigs!
A recent movement called “Hollaback” thirsting to end street harassment aims to highlight how street harassment makes women feel uncomfortable. What the movement also does, however, is it likens street harassers to violent, power hungry beasts that want nothing more than to make women feel intimidated.
The truth is, women are beautiful, and men are chemically attracted to them. Throughout history, women have been both objectified and revered as symbols of beauty, fertility and desire. Idols have been carved to mimic our figure; intellectuals write poems about the woman’s sway and the blush of her cheek.
Hollaback released a video titled “10 hours of walking in NYC as a woman,” which has sparked debate among men and women alike.
In the video, a woman wearing non-suggestive clothing is hailed by over 100 catcalls and comments as she walked briskly through different areas of Manhattan. A hidden camera on her boyfriend’s backpack captured the events as he walked in front of her.
From the ten-hour video, the editor pulled only clips in which the woman walked through minority neighborhoods and past businesses where men sat huddled in small groups. Some men followed or walked alongside her for several minutes as she ignored them.
If Hollaback’s goal is to stop street harassment, it is taking the wrong approach by featuring an introverted woman walking through what they call “street harassment hotspots” populated primarily by non-white men in less affluent areas of New York.
While street harassers aren’t romantics, in many cases they’re simply surrendering to human nature. More than anything, such brutish expressions of interest reflect biology. The catcall, as inferred by its animal reference, is merely a socialized expression of animal nature. Females are considered the “choosier sex,” because the release of sperm for a male is virtually risk-free whereas childbearing for a female is costly, and potentially deadly.
This means that multiple males will compete to mate with a fertile female; thus, women are biologically the center of attention.
Our primate relatives compete amongst each other for the attention of the female. According to the Norton anthropology curricula, men are likely to compete amongst one another while in large groups, and in many cases, the louder the mating call, the better.
Furthermore, sexual harassment has been found amongst non-human primates. According to a study by scientists from the Santa Fe institute, fertile female primates are harassed by groups of males of lower dominance when the dominant male is not around. This behavior is expected amongst groups of lower-ranking males.
What the evolutionary similarities between our primate relatives and ourselves tell us is that these mating calls are, and always have been, a reality for both female human and non-human primates. However, one of the many differences between humans and primates is that females can speak up for themselves.
The woman walked silently the whole time, even as some men followed or walked alongside her for several minutes at a time. She never once asked them what they wanted, or told them that they were making her uncomfortable. Her silence and demeanor seems to be no more than an excuse to play the role of the damsel in distress.
The feminist quest for equality has been stifled by fear of the aggressive man. The fairer race screams that she doesn’t want to be objectified, but she will behave like an object; beautified and accessorized or not, they should behave less like an object and more like a being with agency and confidence.
Silence among women has reinforced inappropriate behavior by men. We are taught in sex education, self-defense and youth groups that if we look down at the ground while walking in a dangerous area, we are at risk of being raped. The predator seeks the weakest prey.
Hollaback encourages women to use their smart phones and other devices as tools to expose what men do on the streets. This generation is so tied up with sticking their noses behind screens that they can’t speak their mind when the moment strikes. A Facebook post about a street harasser won’t stop him any better than hollering right back at the culprit—or at least shooing him away.
Verbal street harassment is disturbing and pervasive, but women can never expect it to go away by silently whimpering as men hungrily look them up and down. Women will best gain equality by behaving as audaciously and confidently as men do.