New York – A video recording the comments a woman hears as she walks around the nation’s biggest city is a testament to the pervasiveness of street harassment women face, its creators said.
Join our WhatsApp groupSubscribe to our Daily Roundup Email
The comments come continuously as the woman walks through the streets of Manhattan — “What’s up, Beautiful?” and “Smile!” — and there’s even a stretch when a man just silently walks right next to her for several minutes.
The video, shot over 10 hours one day in neighborhoods all over the borough and edited down to a 2-minute final product, has set off a storm of outrage on its way to more than 10 million views since it was released online Tuesday.
“This is having a very serious impact on the way we live our lives,” Emily May, executive director of Hollaback!, the anti-street harassment organization that put out the video, said Wednesday.
The footage, which was shot and edited by Rob Bliss, was captured by a camera Bliss had in his backpack as he walked several feet of front of actress Shoshana Roberts, who was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and walked silently along.
At no point did Roberts make eye contact with any of the men she passed or talk to any of them. That didn’t stop the comments from coming. When she didn’t respond, one man told her, “Somebody’s acknowledging you for being beautiful. You should say thank you more!”
Roberts said the number of comments the day the video was shot was nothing out of the ordinary for her.
“The frequency is something alarming,” she said.
Martha Sauder, walking on a Manhattan street on Wednesday, agreed that street harassment is a problem and said it happens to her frequently.
“It’s inappropriate. It’s like an invasion of your space,” she said. “I’d like it to stop.”
But the video also has faced some online criticisms, among them that the men shown all seem to be minorities. Bliss and Roberts emphasized that the comments came from all racial groups, and Bliss said some interactions that were filmed couldn’t be used for reasons like the audio was disrupted by passing sirens.
“My experience, what we documented, it was from everybody,” Roberts said.
Another criticism was that some men’s comments seemed innocuous: “Good morning,” ”Have a nice day.”
Some men could have been “genuinely being nice,” said Gerard Burke, a Brooklyn resident who readily acknowledged street harassment exists and has seen it happen to women in his family. He said he thought the video shed light on a bigger problem, “but some people just genuinely want to say hello.”
That’s the problem with street harassment, May said, because when there’s a fear that a simple good morning could escalate into sexual comments or actions, there’s a reluctance to engage at all.
Perhaps the probelm is with the way some women dress. Don’t tell me oh men should learn how to control themselves. Do you ever try dangling a delicous ice cream bar in front of your little kid. then when she screams she wants some you’ll say no sorry learn how to control yourselves. Yes its true ,self control is important and certanlly an important aspect of yiddishkiet. But the yetzer hara is good too. And no matter how hard you work on yourself it creeps up. Its part of a mans DNA like it or not. Its the way hashem made us. Men will always be addicted till the day we die. And to daggle a drink in front of a shikkur and scream self control is no way to win the fight.
P.S. Yes this is spoken from a real married man who struggles with this battle and hopes to win.
Really?? Harrasment?? The women of todays generation dress exteremly provocative (I’m not reffering to the yidishe ladies, that’s a diffrent story) and their like begging for this kind of male attention,so “ma yaasa haben shelo yechtu”. This is not called harrasment. I think the women are harresing the men for dressing like this in their face, its offensive, provocative and disgusting.
While no woman should be harassed, regardless of how she is dressed, the woman in the video wore a nearly skin-tight outfit. Due to the way that human males are hormonally wired, she was bound to create interest of a certain kind. While the men should have controlled their behavior despite this and were clearly disrespectful, the way that she dressed added to the problem.
The only time i speak to a stranger on the street is when they are talking on a mobile device and walking slowly and sort of sideways. i just say “Hang up and walk straight.”
Yes, harrassment. If you can’t control yourselves, stay indoors. The problem is you, not anyone else. So much for being a holy nation – you’re really a disgrace. All that time sitting in shul and yeshiva and all you come up with is outsourcing your failings on to others. Try working on yourself until you get it right.
Feminist say women can dress however they want. Fathers hardly say anything about their daughters dresses anymore. People don’t dress decent anymore. Women dress not for men as they say but for other women. So, if other women were to dress more conservatively I wonder if things will change.
Looking at the video, it seems that almost all the comments were in certain neighborhoods where such banter may be culturally accepted and in fact even expected.
Even the person who walked aside her, probably saw the camera and wanted to be on camera.
I am not condoning harassment, nor would I act in the way that was done, but it may not be harassment, rather just the person’s gross misunderstanding of the local culture.
How about a camera following around a Yid for 10 hours and listen to how many ANTI SEMITIC comments are made. You will hear the racist comments from white Wall Street snobs, from African Americans in Harlem, from Hispanics, etc… Go ahead do the film, let’s see what happens.
Actually some of the street harassment I have personally observed lately comes FROM Hassidic WOMEN directed at other Frum women whom they PERCEIVE as not meeting THEIR extreme dress codes. Usually they will give give a mean STARE, and if they can get away with it, a nasty comment. I’ve also seen and heard them do this to men who are with women.
When we stop having scandals such as Rabbonim taking pictures of the opposite gender in the Mikvah, or so called Counselors raping girls sent to him by her yeshiva, then and only then can self righteous Yidden talk about some woman wearing a pair of pants.
Having not seen the video, I really don’t believe that to be harassment. “What’s up, Beautiful?” and “Smile!” That is harassment? While this is not the way we behave, for the goyim, especially dark skinned ones, this is a normal way to act.
Furthermore. Whether this woman was dressed in such way as to attract attention, like few of posters suggested, or “rather plainly” according to #12 , is besides the point. Goyisher women do enjoy that kind of attention whether they go out of the way to get it or not. And they usually accept it gracefully and, yes, do smile. At least this is what I observed in the offices of the companies I worked for in the past as well as my own now.
My best guess is: women, whose hostile comments are in the article, are not attractive, don’t get that kind of attention and envy women who do. Somebody should do them a favor explaining to them that envy kakes them even less attractive and that women of limited physical appeal should try to compensate for it by developing nice personalities. Then they may not “stop the traffic” but they are much likelier to attract good men.
This is exactly what the women want . ( attention)Otherwise they would not dress like this.
Hey goysha woman. Its not really your culture. I work in a large corporation. And there is a dress code. You cannot dress the way most people dress in the street. They understand that a certain level of tznuis is required. And so when you have two cultures one in work and one out of work you can’t really say this is our culture.