In the span of four days, I was catcalled while waiting for the bus in a quiet Ottawa neighbourhood, and a friend of mine was followed by men in a pickup truck who yelled obscenities at her and even threatened sexual assault.
Yes, this happens every day. And it has been happening for as long as I can remember.
For women, catcalling is an experience that can be anything from degrading and humiliating to absolutely frightening. It’s not flattering to hear what some stranger likes about your body, or what they would like to do to it.
Imagine a 13-year-old girl walking alone to her friend’s house in the suburbs. A large white truck passes by, slows down, and two men stick their heads out the windows to whistle at her and ask her where she’s going.
Fast-forward seven years later and she’s driving home from her boyfriend’s house at night. A car pulls up in the lane next to her. It’s a red light. The four men in the car roll down the windows and begin shouting and whistling at her. She tries to ignore them and stares straight ahead, hoping that when the light turns green, they don’t follow her.
These may seem like harmless encounters, but being in those situations did not make me feel good.
I didn’t interpret the unwanted comments as compliments, or the whistling as positive attention.
I felt like a piece of meat.
But, not everyone agrees. Just last week, New York Post reporter Doree Lewak wrote about how she loves hearing catcalls, and even seeks them out.
I hoped that the article, which included photos (which have since been changed) of Lewak posing in front of construction workers as they gawked at her behind or gave her the thumbs-up, was satire. But it soon became clear that when she likens catcalling to “euphoria,” she means it.
“Oh, don’t go rolling those sanctimonious eyes at me, young women of Vassar: I may court catcalls, but I hold my head high,” she writes.
Unfortunately, I have trouble holding my head high when men come catcalling.
Just a year ago, some women co-workers of mine witnessed a man catcall me on the street and went on about how they would be happy to receive that kind of attention. They didn’t understand why I found it insulting.
Catcalling sends the message that my body isn’t my own—that it is available to be commented on by whomever, whenever, no matter what the setting.
It also becomes threatening when you don’t know whether the men in the car are going to follow you, or when they make outright threats.
What it comes down to is that women and girls are made to feel unsafe when they are catcalled.
They shouldn’t be made to feel that they are nothing more than their bodies.
The time I was catcalled in front of my co-workers was at my first professional communications job. I wasn’t flattered—I was unwillingly sexualized in front of people I looked up to. And I had no control over it.
This is a call to put an end to the catcalling. We need to stop making objects out of women and girls in the street.
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