Here’s the thing about catcalling

An anti-harassment video went viral a couple weeks ago titled “10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Woman.” If you haven’t seen it, it’s worth a watch, but what intrigued me more was the comment section. The majority of the comments were criticizing the video for treating all forms of catcalling as identical: for acting like calling a woman on the street “beautiful” was the same as calling her “sexy,” which was the same as throwing her a sexually explicit comment.  It got me wondering: are all whistles created equal?

As a gringa currently living in a Latin American country, the topic of catcalling has been at the front of my mind the last couple of months because I get an unusual amount of attention on the street. The other women in my study abroad program have noticed the same response, and I was discussing it with one of them the other day when a male friend piped in. He posed the question:

“But what would you prefer? To be attractive and catcalled, or to be ugly and ignored?”

Besides the obvious disregard of a right to bodily autonomy implied in the (honestly innocent) question, it made me realize how little many kind-hearted, well-intentioned men understand the feeling of receiving appearance-based comments on the street. I think a lot of men feel alienated from even approaching the topic because oftentimes women will bite their heads off for not immediately understanding why hearing “beautiful” on the street, no matter how benign the intentions, is never a compliment.

Because we need to stop calling it a compliment. We need to eliminate that word from the discussion entirely.

Why? A compliment makes me feel big. I think it’s fairly universal that when we hear we do something well, it makes us stand a little taller over whatever it is we’ve been praised for. It could be a strong public speaking voice, perfectly winged eyeliner, a quick wit, anything. The feeling in our gut is positive, and we feel as though we’ve grown a couple inches.

But here’s the thing about catcalling: It makes me feel small. It makes women feel small. Over the last few months, I started paying attention to how my body would automatically respond to attention from strangers on the street. My shoulders stoop forward, my eyes fall to the ground, and my pace increases without me even thinking about it. This applies to stares, whistles, “beautiful”s, “sexy”s,- any kind of unsolicited attention. I’ve been working on maintaining a confident composure, but it requires a conscious effort. Kind of a weird response to a compliment, right?

So why do I feel the need to do this? The short answer is that women get raped. All the time. We get groped a lot too. And while we know there’s a 99.98 percent chance that our interactions with that guy won’t go any further than a single comment, he’s still a stranger to us, and we have no way of knowing if he’s in that .02 percent. Because if he is, he’s probably stronger than me, he would probably win that fight, and in a world that’s been conditioned to wonder what I might have done to invite it, I’m not about to incriminate myself by having the audacity to make eye contact.

And this is so, so unfair to the other 99.98 percent, many of whom probably think that they’re brightening my day with a compliment, that I’ll walk away with my head high.

Women have been trained to believe, possibly unfairly, that if a man finds you attractive in any way, he wants to have sex with you. There’s a humorous quote that’s been bouncing around the internet for a while now: “If a guy calls you cute, he’s complimenting your face. If a guy calls you sexy, he’s complimenting your body. If a guy calls you beautiful, he’s complimenting your soul. All three of those guys want to f*ck you, though.” Saddled with this belief, I don’t feel any different if I hear “beautiful” or “sexy” or “I want to put my ____ in your _______,” because deep down I feel like they all mean the same thing coming from strangers on the street, unfair or otherwise. I don’t know him, I don’t know his intentions, and I never asked to hear his opinion on my appearance.

So here’s my official PSA to all the wonderful, well-meaning, non-rapey men out there: If you don’t know her, keep it to yourself. Spread the word. Make a T-shirt. Because the world is damn lovely, and I’m tired of staring at the sidewalk.