Discussion on Women's Hour about harrassment on the streets

[LadyBiscuit]

Did anyone hear this? I am absolutely furious. They had a woman from the London Anti Street Harassment campaign and a male journalist. He was saying that feminists were effectively trying to silence men and deny them a voice by campaigning against harassment.

Sorry I'm being very inarticulate but I was so cross.

I shall post a link when it's up on Listen Again.

Here's the link to have a listen.

[LadyBiscuit]

Sorry, no link yet

[sethstarkaddersmum]

Will deffo listen to that when it comes on Listen Again.

Who was the male journalist?

[HerBeatitude]

Have cross posted another thread about this, we obviously thought of it at the same time!

[iwasyoungonce]

Sounds interesting - will watch for the link, thank you.

The journalist sounds like a twat. That's like saying that by catching the Yorkshire Ripper the police were denying his creative expression.

[Baconsarnie]

The journo was Brendan someone. Really want to intimidate him in the street now (tho for legal reasons I won't be doing this). And the example of a comment that is normally shouted was "hey baby, nice legs", when it's usually much worse than that.

[LadyBiscuit]

Sorry HB! I was shaking in fury. What a complete twat. And I hate it when men say stuff like that and then say 'well obviously I support feminism completely'.

I have looked him up now - he is called Brendan O'Neill and is from spiked on-line "spiked is an independent online phenomenon dedicated to raising the horizons of humanity by waging a culture war of words against misanthropy, priggishness, prejudice, luddism, illiberalism and irrationalism in all their ancient and modern forms."

He was saying it was a return to Victorian values to complain about harrassment {angry]

[celticfairy101]

I was incensed at his message, which seemed to boil down to a metaphorical smack on the bum i.e. 'Get over yourself woman.'

When he said he wouldn't be bothered about Jenny saying 'nice bum' I immediately thought he would be bothered if it was an endless barrage, day in day out.

He'd be the first to speak up against such demeaning remarks.

[LadyBiscuit]

I have done some more research into that bloke. He is a Christian Scientist - explains a lot

[LadyBiscuit]

Link to listen again.

[LadyBlaBlah]

He was infuriating. Caught the end of it, and thought "who is he ?"

I thought the women put up a poor argument and he got away with it

[suze2]

Completely agree - what a twat! I was shouting at the radio .

[LadyBiscuit]

He is the sort of bloke who would come back with humourless feminists. I'm still smarting from emailing Piers Morgan 20 years ago :(

When the woman from LASH was talking about what happened to her (she was shouted at, then followed, then assaulted), he basically said that was all fine until the point she was assaulted.

Honestly, we should follow him around everywhere shouting 'oi nice arse' and then following that up with 'oh are you a gayer?' or 'you fucking ugly old git, I bet you can't get it up' which is quite often what happens if you ignore the compliment

[sixpercenttruejedi]

thanks for the link.
'any comparison between racist abuse and (pause) sexual banter...' He refuses to name it properly in order to downplay it. It's not banter, it's harrassment and abuse.

[HerBeatitude]

Yes it pissed me off that the arguments against him were so weak.

of course he doesn't mind if a bunch of young women shout "nice arse sexy!"

But if it were a bunch of young men, and he knew he might be raped by them, or that they would start effing and blinding if he objected or even ignored them - not smiling back is often enough to start a barrage of violent swearing and abusive shouting - and if he'd had that treatment with the permanent threat of it ending in physical or sexual assault for twenty years, since the age of thirteen - then he might feel very differently about it. Instead of worrying about the "climate of fear" that men would in theory, be labouring under if they were treated the same as they would be for racist remarks, he might actually be a bit more worried about the "climate of fear" that blights women's lives in reality.

And it's extremely odd that that hasn't occurred to him, or that no-one thinks to ask him to think about that.

[HerBeatitude]

"Show us yer tits love" "cor, you've got big knockers for a little girl" "nice tits darlin'" "I could go potholing in your pert little arse love" are just some of the choicer comments I've been subjected to in the last few months.

Not really on a par with "nice legs", is it?

[Ephiny]

It made me angry that he kept referring to it as 'banter'. Banter is a two-way thing, usually between friends - what we're talking about is harassment, intimidation and worse, which is very, very different.

No one's ever said 'nice legs' to me, either, where did that come from as the typical harrassment experience? Though I've had lots of experiences of harrassment in the street, ranging from being called an ugly bitch and spat on, to having demands to get my 'tits' out or give someone a blow job, generally this was by groups of men when I've been on my own, and it didn't feel much like friendly banter to me. I wish they'd touched more on that sort of behaviour, rather than the 'nice legs' comments, because it's not uncommon.

[HerBeatitude]

Yes most street catcalling is aggressive and very explicitly sexual - becuase nice, normal men who fancy you, don't feel entitled to shout out that they do. By definition, it's almost always an aggressive, hostile thing to do.

[TheSmallClanger]

What a cock.
Shouting horrid stuff at women in the street is nothing to do with banter, or even with finding them attractive and "expressing it". It's all to do with reinforcing the idea that too many men have, that women are public property. Hence all that infuriating "give us a smile, love", which I KNOW is the mild end of the spectrum.