CATCALLED NYC

CATCALLED logo (sketch of letters on top on buildings at street level)

Street harassment is the biggest unlegislated form of violence against women in the world. There is almost no legal recourse against street harassment in public places—a type of harassment that 98 percent of women will face at least once, according to the Harvard Law Review. Part of the reason it’s so hard to legislate against is because it’s so prevalent. Another reason is because the damage it causes is largely invisible.

I have taken self-defense classes, dressed differently, altered my hair and makeup, and changed my habits to avoid street harassment, because street harassment makes me wish I’d never been born. It is the most disempowering experience that I deal with on a regular basis, one that threatens me because of my appearance, vilifies me for my choices, alienates me from my community, and singles me out, over and over again, merely because I am female and in public.

This summer I grew tired of staying silent about street harassment. I along with several talented people created and developed CATCALLED, a project where 11 women anonymously documented their experiences with harassment for two weeks straight. They wrote throughout the summer in New York, and we just launched their day-to-day journals to demonstrate the ubiquitous effect of catcalling. Not just each individual incident, but the prevailing emotional toll, which can last hours, days, months, even years. Our entries are primarily reflective, and often weave in narratives about the participants’ histories, traditions, relationships, and goals.

For example, Participant 1 writes about her experience with her trans* partner in her neighborhood, the Bronx:

We attempt to walk like friends if we’re anywhere outside of lower Manhattan, but when it comes down to it, men notice my partner, with his short hair and men’s clothes and breasts and hairy legs, and they lose their shit. They see a pair of dykes and out come the slurs and glares. The movement of their bodies into our personal space in order to scare us. The balled up fists and spats on the floor. It leaves me angry and full of anxiety, and sometimes feeling a little bit helpless, but I refuse to go back into the closet in order to feed the egos of the insecure, ignorant cowards we call men in our society. I won’t play straight again in my life for anyone.

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