SPEAKER 2: My girlfriend told me that one day she was walking down 8th Avenue and the guy walked up to her and said, “Hey, can I lick your legs?” How does someone respond to that?

They tend to call at you, like “Hey, sexy mama,” or some of them go as far as saying “Psst, psst, psst,” how you call a cat. We’re here talking to people in New York about cat-calling and street harassment. KAMAU BELL: I’ve been living in New York for a few months now, and I’ve noticed that there’s a lot more cat-calling and street harassment here than in San Francisco, so I took to the streets to ask people what’s really going on. Those who are victimized tell a completely different story. The victimizers argue that it is a compliment and makes the people they harm feel better about themselves. Kamau Bell juxtaposes interviews with people who experience cat-calling with those who perpetuate it. It turns moving through public spaces into a disturbingly redundant battle for safety and solace. Those who experience street harassment, however, know it to be an extremely invasive, aggressive, and normalized form of sexual assault and a manifestation of rape culture.

Everyday Feminism in no way condones the use of jokes that further marginalize people who live with mental health issues.įor some strange, misogynist reason, there are still people who believe that cat-calling is an acceptable way of engaging with people. Further, while we appreciate the overall intention of this video, one of the people interviewed uses ableist language to describe cat-callers (she references their needing to adhere to an SSRI regimen). Editor’s Note: Though this video depicts cis women as targets of cat-calling and cis men as victimizers, Everyday Feminism recognizes that people with a wide variety of genders both experience and perpetuate street harassment.

People saying psst psst