Sometimes it comes in the form of outlandish requests: “Epouse-moi!” Marry me!
Sometimes it even cloaks itself in politeness: “Bonsoir, ma chérie.” Good evening, my dear.
Call it what you will: Misogyny. Sexual harassment. Catcalling.
I dealt with it in the States—usually someone making an assumption about my sexual orientation based on my short haircut—but never on a daily basis. And frankly, it’s exhausting.
It’s exhausting to replay these scenarios over and over in my head, trying to think of what I could have said or done, trying to decide whether it’s better to not react at all.
It’s exhausting to have to plan my life around the assumption that someone is going to yell at me.
“I’ll cross the street here so it’s less likely that someone will dérange me.”
“I won’t go to this location at night because there are too many bothersome men.”
“If I go to this place with a Cameroonian friend, people will be less likely to make comments.”
It’s exhausting to hear the same crap over and over and over again.
I don’t know what their endgame is, but then I never did in the States, either. Are you trying to hit on me? Epic fail. Are you pointing out the foreigner for the benefit of everyone in earshot? I’m pretty sure they already noticed. Are you trying to make me feel uncomfortable and vaguely unsafe? Well done, sir.
I’ve accepted these kinds of comments when I’m in a city, but for whatever reason, they’ve started to happen more frequently in Nyambaka. I used to hear something every once in a while at market day, when people from surrounding villages come into town to trade, but walking home from school today at 4 pm on a Tuesday afternoon, two separate incidents occurred.
Of course, none of this is new. This doesn’t contribute anything to the conversation about street harassment, and my ranting isn’t going to help anything.
Once, walking to a bar with my ex-boyfriend, a man drove by and yelled a sexually explicit comment. After I’d had a few minutes to swear profusely and threaten the man with all manner of bodily harm, my boyfriend asked me what he could do to rectify the situation.
Well, clearly men like that don’t respect women, I said, but perhaps they respect other men. The only thing that might work, it seems to me, is if men speak out when they hear their friends/acquaintances/coworkers/whomever harassing women.
But that’s probably just my hopeless idealism flaring up again.
That is in no way hopeless. We as women need to take action when it comes to catcalling to dismantle this idea of "entitlement of space" that men have taken on but we also desperately need men as our allies in this work. Too often when I'm having conversations with my male friends about this they say something along the lines of, "Well, I don't do that. I'm not like them" which I always respond with: "Okay, but what are you doing when that's happening around you? Do you laugh? Do you ignore it? Do you say something?". It's one thing not to be "that guy" but being silent when it happens is still a form of accepting that behavior.
ReplyDeleteMale privilege is also intertwined in this because they don't see it as an issue because it's not directly affecting them (in regards to heterosexual cis-males) but they need to understand the privilege they have and then use that to their advantage as an ally to end street harassment and any other form of gender-based harassment.
I'm sorry that you're still struggling with this even as you're overseas.