Meet The People Behind The Viral 2-Minute Video That Perfectly Captures Street Harassment
“I really wanted to show people what it felt like to hear this again, and again, and again in just one day.”
The post Meet The People Behind The Viral 2-Minute Video That Perfectly Captures Street Harassment appeared first on ThinkProgress.
Women walk past a group of construction workers gathered on the street in New York
CREDIT: AP Photo/Tina Fineberg
With the two-minute video “10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Woman,” which was published on Tuesday, filmmaker Rob Bliss hopes to help other men understand what it’s like to move around in public spaces while being constantly sexualized.
Bliss’s video follows a young women throughout one day of walking the streets in New York City, recording all of the catcalls — everything from “what’s up beautiful” to “hey baby” to “damn girl” — she encounters along the way. Altogether, more than 100 instances of verbal harassment took place in the span of 10 hours.
“A lot of guys say things like, oh it’s just one thing, or it’s just this one compliment,” Bliss explained in an interview with ThinkProgress. “I really wanted to show people what it felt like to hear this again, and again, and again in just one day — and then think about extrapolating that to a lifetime of experiences.”
Watch it:
Bliss, who runs a company that specializes in creating online content, reached out to the international nonprofit Hollaback!, one of the leading organizations working to tackle street harassment, to partner on the project. Bliss added a call for donations to Hollaback! at the end of the video.
The woman featured in the project, a New York resident named Shoshana Roberts, responded to a Craigslist ad that Bliss posted seeking someone to star in the video. She told ThinkProgress that she wanted to get involved because she’s experienced frequent street harassment that becomes “overwhelming,” especially when it brings up difficult memories of a past sexual assault. She confirmed that the incidences that were captured on film were “really just a day in the life for me.”
A growing body of research is helping to illustrate the broad scope of street harassment. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “non-contact unwanted sexual experiences” — a category that includes harassment on public sidewalks — is the most prevalent form of sexual violence for both men and women. A recent report from the advocacy group Stop Street Harassment estimated that 65 percent of American women have experienced unwanted attention from strangers on the street.
And groups like Hollaback! say that it’s important to put this type of harassment in the larger context of gender-based violence. Catcalling can actually represent a fundamental threat to women’s safety and peace of mind, since most women are concerned that street harassment will escalate into something more threatening. In fact, earlier this month, two incidences of street harassment took violent turns that left one woman in the hospital and one woman dead.
Bliss said he thinks so many people are talking about his video because catcalling is still somewhat of a “touchy subject” for people who don’t see an issue with it. “Maybe the guys who see this and don’t understand may still think there’s nothing wrong with this — but at least for the first time, they got to experience a little bit of what it’s like to go through a day of getting harassed,” he said.
Emily May, the the co-founder and current executive director of Hollaback!, added that she thinks the video is resonating with two different groups of people for different reasons. “For a lot people, they’re looking at the video and thinking — of course, that’s exactly what I experience, and I’m so glad to know I’m not alone,” she said. “But there’s a whole other group of people looking at it and thinking, oh my god, is this really what women experience? And it’s eye-opening for them.”
The post Meet The People Behind The Viral 2-Minute Video That Perfectly Captures Street Harassment appeared first on ThinkProgress.
