Wolf-whistling isn't a bit of harmless harassment, it's an act of menace

Wednesday, 13 April 2022

Virginia Fallon is a Stuff senior writer and columnist.

OPINION: Any woman who has ever walked alone would have known what was about to happen when the car turned around a few months ago.

It’s the way it always happens: a vehicle cruises past, nearly stops, then partway down the street does a U-turn to crawl back again, this time even slower than the first.

And any woman will know what I did next: kept walking, kept my eyes ahead of me, kept waiting for what I knew was about to happen. First came the wolf-whistle, then the comment.

“Nice tits!”, the man yelled.

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**

This all-too-familiar scene played out one sunny afternoon as I was going about my business walking my neighbourhood streets.

Because women’s clothes are always pertinent to men’s bad behaviour, I’ll describe what I was wearing: a pair of sneakers, trackpants, and a top with a small soup stain down the front. I definitely wasn’t asking for it, though to be fair I did have boobs. Still do.

Obviously I’m being facetious, because no woman ever asks for it. What we do ask for, though, is to go about our business free of the sort of harassment I copped the other month – the sort of harassment women cop every day.

It first happened to me when I was 12, and rollerblading outside my house. The same thing happened when I was 16 and riding my Raleigh 20, and then when I was 30 and walking the dog. It also happened last year when, at 42, I was going through my own blimmin’ gate and got the same gross comments from builders next door.

It’s happened myriad times in between, but those particular incidents stand out because I remember how they made me feel. At 12 it was frightened, at 16 it was disgusted, at 30 it was frightened again, and at 42 it was annoyed. A few months ago I felt rage. Why? Because I remembered being frightened, and knew damn well if I hadn’t been on a sunny street in a familiar neighbourhood I would have been again.

Wolf-whistles and cat-calls aren’t a bit of harmless street harassment; they are acts of menace and sexual aggression. It’s behaviour that perpetuates rape culture, and it happens all the time.

It’s so common the only thing surprising about it is when it actually makes the news, as it did last week when already victimised women were victimised once more.

Construction workers opposite an Auckland safe-house had been harassing the organisation’s clients, a support worker at the refuge said.

Jessica Kay said workers contracted under Scarbro Construction​ frequently cat-called and harassed women outside the house, also making kissing noises. Their targets were women escaping domestic abuse, or experiencing homelessness.

While Kay said the men apologised when she confronted them, a spokesman for the company refused to say anything to Stuff other than “no comment. That’s not news”.

But unfortunately for Scarbro Construction, it is news, as well it should be. Just as we’ve begun to unmask those who target women online, we must do the same to those doing it or downplaying it when it happens everywhere else.

Street harassment is violence. Wolf-whistling and cat-calling are tools used to intimidate and terrify; to reduce women to sexual objects and deny our absolute right to safety and respect. If calling out those who do it isn’t safe, then call someone who can. Like a reporter.

And if this sort of comment from a woman makes a man feel disgust, annoyance or even rage? That’s something I can live with.

Women, on the other hand, are still feeling frightened, and that’s something we should live without.