A Sociology of Street Harassment

Allow me to preface this.  I recognize that a sociological account of why street harassment exists and persists in our society does nothing to better the experiences of women who have to deal with such bullshit on a daily basis.  There is very little I can say about how women should deal with street harassment because, as a man, it’s not my place to judge the reactions of women to patriarchy and misogyny (though I think I can say with absolute confidence that condescending, placating advice like "raise your pinky finger" is some fucking bullshit), just like as a white person it’s not my job to judge how people of color deal with racism and white supremacy.  With that being said, I do believe that sociological accounts like those below are useful if we wish to recognize that street harassment is a part of patriarchal culture, and that patriarchy has to be understood in the context of its intersections with capitalism and the nation state; that in order to truly overcome the oppression of women, a revolution against all of the above is necessary.  Thus, without further ado…

Historically, men were the owners of public space and of women.  As capitalism and democracy developed, and as industrialism took off, we developed the ideas of the “public” realm of economy and government (which was deemed the world of men) and the “private” realm of the home (the world of women).  Increasingly, in the contemporary age and especially beginning with the second wave of feminist movements in the 1960s, this dichotomy has been breaking down.  While this isn’t the place to get into a philosophical discussion about whether or not the separation of spheres remains, it is at least uncontroversial to say that women have left the home, and that while men still dominate government, economy, and the home through patriarchal power structures and social norms, this dominance is of a different kind than in the past.  It is no longer the case in most of the Western World that women are literally owned as male property nor that the realm of the public is only a male realm, even though it remains predominantly and pragmatically so.

What does this have to do with street harassment?  A lot.  With public space and women no longer literally belonging to men, men enforce their dominance in public space through harassment. 

This is obvious because women are almost never harassed in public if they are in the presence of a man.  If some other man has already “claimed” the “property” that is a woman, then she is left alone   She is not stepping outside of her historically prescribed role as a woman because, by being with a man, she gains the right to access public space;

because harassment of that woman would intrude on the property rights of another man.

Street harassment also has the function of reinforcing male dominance (patriarchy).  It can result in women choosing not to enter particular spaces where they may be harassed or do not feel safe.  This results in maintaining these spaces as male spaces.  Now, I can already hear the idiotic “men’s rights activists” chiming in, “But what about when men get street harassed?  That reinforces space as female!”  In short, no it fucking doesn’t.  First of all, do men sometimes get street harassed?  Sure.  Personally, it’s happened to me literally one time in my life (I got a “Smile, honey” while walking down the street).  ONE TIME.  That’s it.  Very few women could say the same.  Here’s the thing, though, more importantly there is no previously established basis for the female ownership of public space. The very dichotomy of public/private was constructed on patriarchy and misogynistic bases.  When (if) men get street harassed it is inappropriate, but it doesn’t change the balance of power in society or produce a new hierarchy.  Contrary to men harassing women, a woman harassing a man actually is just a shitty individual act, while a man harassing a woman is a function of systemic power imbalances.  When a man walks out his door in the morning, he does not necessarily have to be guarded, prepared for verbal or physical attacks that are based on his gender.  In fact, when (if) these things happen to men only rarely might it actually be about his gender at all.  In contrast, when such things happen to women it is precisely because of how our society places her in a hierarchy, and that makes it all the more objectifying and alienating.  While such experiences are objectifying and alienating on the rare occasions that they happen to men too, it is not the same because men get to maintain their status as individuals and do not share a gendered experience from the interaction.  This does not make it appropriate to do such things to men and pointing out this difference is not meant to belittle the experience of men being harassed; but this difference still matters.

Finally, do I actually think that men are thinking about all of this when some fucking asshole harasses a woman?  No, of course not.  Those motherfuckers probably do not have a sociological analysis of their own behaviors.  But I do think that the underpinning aspect of street harassment is more about the fragility of masculinity and the ways in which men feel “threatened” by the advances of non-male-bodied peoples than it is about any individual (which is why, like sexual assault, street harassment is really about power, not sex or attractiveness; so no, how a woman is dressed does not fucking matter).  Street harassers are fucking assholes and need to be dealt with as such in whatever way the woman being harassed deems appropriate (below is a pretty great example of one way that someone might do this, brought to you by Mexico and punk rock).  But to truly elimination street harassment we need to do more than deal with the individual perpetrators, we need to deal with patriarchy itself and the misogynistic basis of our current society.