When faced with street harassment, what should you do?
A few years ago a friend of mine was walking along Cleveland Street in Sydney’s Surry Hills, on her way to work. While stopped at a set of traffic lights, a man in a ute yelled “disgusting fat pig” at her, making direct eye contact with her as he did so.
Instead of freezing or crumbling, she calmly made a note of the tiling company advertised on the side of the vehicle that he was driving, and once inside the safety of her office cubicle, she began Googling the company.
Before long she had a phone number and a choice in front of her.
Option one: she could call the company and make a complaint, risking the possibility that she might be further humiliated, dismissed, or worse, that her abuser might answer the call and try to get an extra dig in.
Or option two: she could delete the phone number, avoid the confrontation, and try to push on with her day.
At this point I should point out that when confronted with random harassment, most women are socialised to choose some variation of Option Two: we avert our eyes from the group of young men who lurk outside train stations and wolf whistle as we walk by; we nervously laugh off the taxi-driver who tells us his wife bores him in bed, before asking whether we have a boyfriend; we pretend we didn’t just hear that thing that man yelled at us from a moving car, even though his words ring in our ears for hours afterwards.
The horrible truth about how women are treated online. Post continues below.
Top Comments
How does she know for sure he lost his job? When I used to work for a large landscaping company one of our gardeners was picked up for this exact thing. He got cut off in traffic while in his work ute and started abusing a young girl in a similar fashion ("lose weight you fat cow" etc....
When a complaint was made to the boss, he assured the young girl and her parents that the guy (who happened to be his best mate since childhood) got given the sack, yet just switched him to office duties for about two months. Two months later he was back out on the road probably doing the same thing. I left my job shorty after.
I just cant get over how clueless people can be. If you are going to be an asshole, don't do it while representing a company by wearing a uniform, in a car belonging to your employer, or put your employer's name on your FB page. You don't need to be an intellectual giant to know that this is just plain common sense.
If I got up to mischief in my school uniform there was no "due process". If you brought the school into disrepute, you suffered the consequences. I learnt this at 13. Why is this so hard for adults to get their head around?
What you do in your own time is your own business (right to an opinion, free speech and all that), even if I disagree with it, but if you bring your employer into it in any way, you deserve to suffer the consequences, whatever they may be.
Couldn't agree with you more!