I saw that yesterday. Apparently, it happens in London a lot as well. That one guy following her was really bizarre.
I heard of something similar being made in Brussels last year â but I recall it being much more aggressive. The film highlighted the misogyny she (the film maker) endured in the area she lived whilst she walked the streets in a skirt (nothing short either (not that that matters), just a skirt). The video seemed to show that she, in the main, received abuse from those of north African descent in the city. Naturally, due to this, she was accused by some of being racist. I think she also made some sort of comparative in different attire and the abuse was a lot less when she wore trousers. Terrible state of affairs.
What I found strange about this, was that a lot of people just said hello, but she never acknowledged them. Frankly when cycling and often say good morning to a fellow cyclist, and if they don't reply, I usually give them some verbal abuse. I think you should at least reply to someone who greets you with a hello or something similar.
The problem with the video in regards to race and class is that they avoided predominately white areas and stuck to African-American and Latino areas instead. That made the predominant race of people accosting her to be non-white. It has also come out that they actually edited out the vast majority of abuse by white males that did occur. It has been a common complaint with these types of videos that they stick to minority areas and very poor areas and further the presumption in the US that racists hold that these types of people and neighborhoods need to be avoided. It is of course still a relevant video in regards to the type of misogyny that clearly occurred to this woman who was just walking down the street but the race, class, and politics that this video and other ones like it portray are damaging unto themselves.
I know what you're saying, John. You're on a bike, so contact is much more restricted/shorter. When I'm out walking (sometimes with my pooch) it's a longer 'meeting', but I still sometimes get that 'blanking'.
I think you’re confusing my comment with the American video and the one I referenced from Brussels. You might well be right though about the editing for a particular agenda, I don’t know enough about the Brussels’ film. Here’s an article on it I’ve just found: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/aug/03/belgium-film-street-harassment-sofie-peeters
Uh sorry you are right I confused your comments about the Brussels video and the American Video. My comments in regards to editing and the politics are specific to the American video and other American videos like this. I have never seen nor read about any videos like this from other countries so I wouldn't take a position on those.
Have you got a link or something? I'm not disputing your claim, but I'd like to see some evidence that they edited the film.
There are a few articles that have been appearing all day about it. This one by Slate is the most respected one so far that I have seen. I put the section in Bold where the director makes up an excuse that every time white males did it there was some noise that made it hard to hear them. On Tuesday, Slate and everyone else posted a video of a woman who is harassed more than 100 times by men as she walks around New York City for 10 hours. More specifically, it’s a video of a young white woman who is harassed by mostly black and Latino men as she walks around New York City for 10 hours. The one dude who turns around and says, “Nice,” is white, but the guys who do the most egregious things—like the one who harangues her, “Somebody’s acknowledging you for being beautiful! You should say thank you more,” or the one who follows her down the street too closely for five whole minutes—are not. This doesn’t mean that the video doesn’t still effectively make its point: that a woman can’t walk down the street lost in her own thoughts, that men feel totally free to demand her attention and get annoyed when she doesn’t respond, that a woman can’t be at ease in public spaces in the same way a man can. But the video also unintentionally makes another point: that harassers are mostly black and Latino, and hanging out on the streets in midday in clothes that suggest they are not on their lunch break. As Roxane Gay tweeted, “The racial politics of the video are ****ed up. Like, she didn’t walk through any white neighborhoods?” The video is a collaboration between Hollaback, an anti-street harassment organization, and the marketing agency Rob Bliss Creative. At the end they claim the woman experienced 100-plus incidents of harassment “involving people of all backgrounds.” Since that obviously doesn’t show up in the video, Bliss addressed it in a post. He wrote, “We got a fair amount of white guys, but for whatever reason, a lot of what they said was in passing, or off camera,” or was ruined by a siren or other noise. The final product, he writes, “is not a perfect representation of everything that happened.” That may be true but if you find yourself editing out all the catcalling white guys, maybe you should try another take. This is not the first time Bliss has been called out for race blindness. In a video to promote Grand Rapids, Michigan, he was criticized for making a city that’s a third minority and a quarter poor look like it was filled with people who have “been reincarnated from those peppy family-style 1970s musical acts from Disney World or Knott’s Berry Farm,” Activism is never perfectly executed. We can just conclude that they caught a small slice of catcallers, and lots of other men do it, too. But if the point of this video is to teach men about the day-to-day reality of women, then this video doesn’t hit its target. The men who are sitting in their offices or in cafes watching this video will instead be able to comfortably assure themselves that they don’t have time to sit on hydrants in the middle of the day and can’t properly pronounce “mami.” They might do things to women that are worse than catcalling, but this is not their sin. A really good video about catcalling actually already exists. In “Jessica’s Feminized Atmosphere,” Jessica Williams of the Daily Show covers the whole range of street harassment, from construction workers (of all races) to security guards to Wall Street “douche bags” to teenagers hanging on the corner. She and a group of women lay down pins on places in New York to avoid and by the end, the entire map is covered. There are race and class issues latent in her video, too. She is black, and the women she gathers for her discussion group are all races. But you don’t leave with that icky impression of a white woman under assault by the big bad city. Plus, she has the group demonstrate the armor they wear while walking down the street, which turns into a glorious mosaic of bitch face. http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_facto...in_nyc_edited_out.html?wpsrc=sh_all_tab_tw_ru
Maybe it's a 'big city' thing? New York, Brussels, London etc. Has anyone witnessed this in Hull or Leeds or something? They're cities but not 'big cities'.
To be fair I get it a lot the other way around, lots of sexy chicks following me around, asking me for a bonk and calling me a sexy bastard, just too much sometimes
When i was digging t'roads a very crude co workers favourite to the ladies was show us your piss flaps darling.
Yes if you live in a city where it'd be thought wierd to address a stranger on the bus then you live somewhere alienating enough for this to happen.
