Sexual harassment on the street

Street harassment is a form of sexual harassment that consists of unwanted comments, gestures, honking, wolf-whistling, catcalling, exposure, following, persistent sexual advances, and touching by strangers in public areas such as streets, shopping malls, and public transportation.[1] According to the founder of the non-profit organization Stop Street Harassment, it can also consist of physically harmless behavior, such as "kissing noises" and "non-sexually explicit comments," to "more threatening behavior" like stalking, flashing, sexual assault, and rape.[2]

Recipients include people of all genders, but women are much more commonly victims of harassment by men. According to the Harvard Law Review (1993), street harassment is considered harassment done primarily by male strangers to females in public places.

This is the definition of street harassment according to Wikipedia (you can check the sources on this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_harassment#cite_note-1). As you can tell, it is not a very nice thing to say to anybody. It is not flattering, it is degrading.

When I read this I was curious. It is well known that females suffer this almost daily, but is it as common between males as well? Therefore, I decided to make a little survey. I asked 57 teenagers between 15 and 19 years old a very easy question. "Have you ever been harassed on the street?". The results are quite interesting.

As you can see in this chart, most of the people I've asked (57 in total) have been harassed at least once. However, many people have told me that that usually happens to them and it is not on rare occasions.

I guess most of you had imagined the results. Girls are cat-called pretty often. However, I decided to ask boys too so I could see if this is just a gender issue. You can see the results in the next two charts.



It was quite surprising for me to discover that both girls and boys are harassed. Is catcalling only an impolite behaviour? Well, I don't think so.

Although they have been catcalled too, most of the boys admitted that the things people shout at them are mostly words like "cutie" or "you look so good". On the other hand, many girls have told me about more serious experiences, such as very sexual comments, chases and even attempts of rape.

So sexual harassment happens to both genders, but we can clearly see one of them is at a disadvantage.



I hope you liked this post! Special thanks to everyone who participated in my survey.