Don't Stare at Me

For this blog assignment, there are two things that I want to use: the YouTube video titled “10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Woman” and the reading material, “Staring: How We Look” by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson. In class, we were discussing some of the ways women could do to avoid attention from men who are street harassing them. Staring straight ahead without glancing at your surroundings. Looking down while listening to music. Not responding to the street harassers. Not giving any indication of being interested at all whatsoever in the street harassers. There are endless ways women use to shield themselves from street harassers. Unfortunately, there are people out there who do not understand the reason why women are so “cold” to the street harassers because they do not consider it harassing, but rather as complimenting or appreciating. Those people are ignorant in that they do not realize the serious position that women are in. I can guarantee you that on the YouTube video comments, there are people bashing on the woman because they think it is not considered harassing or it’s the woman’s fault for somehow being too “attractive.” These people just do not realize the consequences of responding to the street harassment.

As I was going through my Tumblr dashboard, one of the people that I follow reblogged a post that listed several incidents of sexual, violent street harassment committed against women. Thankfully, there was a credible source on the post where a blogger talks about those incidents, specifically one where a guy pulled up in his car next to a 14 year old girl asking her to have sex with him for money. The girl responded by saying no. Try and guess what happened to her. She got ran over by the guy several times, and sustained life-threatening injuries. Thankfully, she survived, and identified the man thus, he was arrested. Obviously this is an extreme case, but the fact that these situations do happen is too frightening to think about. It shows that there is a large possibility of these acts occurring which is why women are afraid of what will happen if they do stand up to the catcalling and the sexual harassing.

On the other hand, I saw a YouTube video that showed the exact replication of the video, “10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Woman” except for the fact that it was located in Auckland. In this video, the woman received no street harassment which indicated that the location has a lot to do with street harassment which we talked about in class. In fact, my high school best friend and I traveled to London this past summer, and we have encountered several street harassments. There was one instance where my friend and I had to separate because she had to go back to the hotel to get something she forgot. My friend told me that there were a couple of strangers asking her for directions. But, she knew that they were not tourists because they had British accents. She politely declined, and from thereon, she started wearing earphones, and just walked straight ahead to her destination. So, really street harassment can happen at almost everywhere. But, then what about places like Auckland? Does this mean that Auckland is that much of an ideal society where women are treated with respect that they deserved? Or is there another side to Auckland that we do not really know? This is what I was thinking while watching that video, and I was very confused. If you have any answers, please tell me!

photo credit: Collective Action for Safe Spaces

In addition to the street harassment, I thought about how staring plays into the harassment part. In the NYC video, we could see almost all of the street harassers blatantly staring at the woman. For this particular circumstance, staring at the woman was to objectify the woman sexually, basically only seeing her as a sexual object. In relating to the reading article on staring, Garland-Thomson, the author, talked about how staring was a violation of manner etiquette. There was one quote that I found to be interesting because it kind of disturbs the overall topic of street harassment. “To draw the stare through any eccentric behavior or appearance is to violate social decorum just as surely as does the act of staring.” What this statement means is that if the person is staring at another person, it is also the fault of the person being stared because that person is drawing attention to herself which violates the whole civilizing process. Garland-Thomson mentions many key points on staring; one example being that staring “validates individuality” meaning that it “calls out our differences from others.” I found this kind of ironic because what women want is not to be noticed by potential street harassers. Women just want to go about their daily routine without people noticing them, therefore harassing them.

The author also mentioned staring back at the person who is staring at you. If we applied this to everyday situations where women are walking on the streets, it is hard to say what kinds of results are bound to occur. In the worst case scenario, a woman stares back at her street harasser in response to his sexual, verbal harassment. The man would most likely be motivated by that response which then could possibly escalate into even more harassing, and worse, sexual assault. As for the positive case scenario, when the woman takes the chance to stare back at the harasser, the harasser may feel intimidated because the power dynamic has shifted from him to her. In an ideal world, it could even result a small, but significant change in the perspective of the harasser.

Yet, this is not the ideal world. There are people who have committed such extreme acts of sexual violence because they have been rejected by women who have taken the chance to stand up for themselves. For example, there was a woman who refused to give a man her phone number, and as a result, she was killed by the man with a gun. 

In response to the YouTube video of the woman in NYC, there was a video conference debate, and I thought I should end this blog with this video that I highly recommend you to watch.