Opinion: Here’s how men should respond to the ‘street harassment’ video

By now you’ve likely seen “10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Woman.” The video, which illustrates the sheer volume of unwanted verbal attention a woman might face on any given day walking down city streets, has accumulated close to 9 million views since it was posted Tuesday. And for good reason: It’s something that women everywhere can relate to.

By now you’ve likely also seen the predictably horrible responses left in the comments on YouTube and other sites that have shared it all over the Internet.

“i saw nothing bad here... In fact, i think, that almost every woman would love to recieve this kind of attention from men...,” reads one common refrain. “Out of all the men in that video, most were showing basic manners.Where i grew up ignoring someone you make eye contact with is considered rude, so i say hi to a lot of stranger men AND women in the street out of basic manners,” reads another. And those are some of the less offensive ones.

You may further also not be very surprised to hear, as Hollaback!, the group that focuses on the problem of street harassment, tweeted, that Shoshana B. Roberts, the woman in the video, has already received rape threats for her role in conspiring to shed light on the issue. The temerity of this woman.

Sites have dutifully rounded up many of the worst such responses, such as this piece on the Awl, “Two Minutes of Walking on the Internet as a Woman.” The video, John Herrman writes, is “also a neat portrayal of what it is like to be a woman talking about gender on the mainstream internet.”

As we’ve seen in the recent #Gamergate morass, a men’s rights movement hastily smuggled onto the Internet in a pixelated Trojan horse, and in many of the dismissive responses to the troubling accusations made against radio host Jian Ghomeshi, there’s no topic of conversation regarding the experience of the contemporary woman that won’t be instantly drowned out by a chorus of aggrieved, falsely-skeptical men. Misogyny and sexism in the video games industry isn’t a problem, despite what nearly every woman involved in it claims, because the affronted men declare it so. The women who’ve accused Ghomeshi of sexual assault must have something to hide, or why else would they have remained anonymous, and not gone to the police?

The response to Roberts’ video is your answer.

As many have noted, the video is a sobering revelation for men, but so familiar as to almost be banal to women. The reactionary comments are commonplace too. The woman wants attention. Her interpretation of what constitutes harassment is invalid. Her experience isn’t legitimate because it doesn’t line up with mine, the sober-eyed man, the dispassionate observer of the universe as it is.

In other words, as we regularly say to women who’ve reported being harassed, or abused, or raped, we say: I don’t believe you.

It’s little wonder then that so many feel as if saying nothing is an easier route to take than the alternative. Why bother if the situation is just going to be compounded by a second and third round of dehumanization?

One of the most pernicious, but stubborn, stereotypes regarding gender roles is that men are of the more detached, logical persuasion, while women are irrational, emotional, hysterical. You can read this in the reactions to the video: Why are you overreacting? It’s nothing. You’re making a big deal out of something that isn’t a problem.

The stereotypical masculinist, the misogynist, prides himself on his allegiance to evidence. Give me hard numbers. Show me the proof. And yet, again and again, when confronted with an overwhelming glut of experiential data from the lives of women, he still somehow conspires to wave it away.

You want proof that harassment is a problem for women in the streets, or online, or in the workplace? Just ask a woman. Ask any single woman you know. She’ll tell you right now. She’s been telling us. We hear it every day, and yet, for some reason, we don’t listen.

People can watch this video and read the comments and come away with a couple dozen examples of the wrong reaction, but there’s really only one right way to respond when a woman tries to explain to us what it’s like to inhabit her world: Be quiet and listen.

Luke O’Neil is a Boston-based writer. Follow him @lukeoneil47 on Twitter.

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