A REVEALING video is going viral, showing Shoshana B. Roberts, an actress, walking alone around New York. In ten hours strolling the streets Ms Roberts, who is young and attractive but plainly dressed, receives a hundred catcalls (watch below). Some of the encounters are plain scary. One man walks alongside her—silently, intimidatingly—for five minutes. The experience was captured by Rob Bliss, a videomaker, who marched a few paces ahead of Ms Roberts with a concealed camera pointing backwards from his backpack.
In 10 hours of walking, Roberts faced more than 100 instances of street harassment. Responses ranged from catcalls -- "beautiful," "sexy," "God bless you" -- to angry remarks.
"Somebody's acknowledging you for being beautiful. You should say thank you more," one man said.
"You don't wanna talk? Because I'm ugly? We can't be friends, nothing? You don't speak?" another persisted.
Of course, this sort of harassment goes on in every city; many worse than New York.
Many of the individual men calling out do not see their actions as intimidating. Many probably even believe it to be a compliment (one man calls after Ms Roberts:"Somebody's acknowledging you for being beautiful. You should say thank you more.") But the cumulative effect is not only frightening, it also feels hugely demoralising.
It would be interesting to discover the extent to which this sort of behavior affects where and how women travel. Instinctively, it is the sort of thing that you might associate more with certain areas of the world. Certainly I have walked with women through Middle Eastern cities where the unwanted attention has been constant and often physical (an unmarried colleague tells me that she always wears a wedding ring when travelling in the region).
One result is that many cities now boast firms which cater solely to female travelers. In London, for example, there are several women-only taxi firms, with female drivers. In New York, some hotels even have women-only floors. Tokyo's famously crowded metro has women-only carriages on weekday mornings. Having watched the video, one cannot blame some women for wanting this.
You can also watch the video by clicking on the Play Button
edited from The Economist
