Recently, a video of a woman walking through the streets of New York City for ten hours became an internet phenomenon. However, this woman wasn’t just a normal, working class citizen, but  a planted actress who was a participant in an experiment to raise awareness by the organization Hollaback! The aspiring actress, New York City native Shoshana Roberts, was instructed to walk the blocks of Manhattan for ten hours while being secretly filmed. Throughout the course of the experiment, Roberts was catcalled one-hundred and eight times. Some of the verbal abuse used by her harassers were things like, “Hey baby”, “Sexy--American Eagle[referring to the logo on her jeans]”, and “Damn girl!” Roberts herself has even received death and rape threats, evidence that the video did raise awareness but did not stop the problem of misogyny in today’s society. Ironically, in the process of trying to point out the discomfort women feel when being sexually harassed, the harassment continued in the form of rape threats. However, the video did fulfill the companies intentions: to raise awareness and go viral.

A woman should not be sexualized, mocked, and harassed on the street simply for just walking. Many women in metropolitan cities take different routes than their normal in order to avoid unsolicited male attention. Just because a woman is walking by you, it is not an invitation for you to violate their privacy, unless, of course, they give you verbal consent that they want you to speak to them. This is all in direct correlation with the misogyny in today’s society and the male superiority and intrinsic dominance they feel toward women. Women are objectified and harassed simply for walking to a destination. This does not happen with men. Women are not shouting obscenities at men who are walking in solitude, mostly because women have been raised to be submissive and in traditional gender roles it is the man who is the initiator of conversation. However, this conversation does not encircle street harassment that is unwanted by the female.

Additionally, a debate response from CNN featuring The MANual author Steve Santagati and comedian Amanda Seales, blew up across the internet. Santagati, your average white male middle-aged misogynist, was quick to point out that women should allow men to be “bolstering [their] self-esteem, bolstering your ego. There is nothing a woman loves to hear more than how pretty she is.” Fundamentally, there are many things wrong with Santagati’s statement. Catcalling is not a compliment, it is invasive and a form of sexual harassment. Catcalling is not meant to “bolster [a woman’s] self esteem”, it is meant to ascertain the dominance of the male and let the victim know he is interested in her in a sexual way, whether the woman feels the same is irrelevant to the catcaller. Seales was able to shut down Santagati’s unpopular opinion and let him know that he had no say in the matter because he was not a young female walking the streets of New York City.

Catcalling is the most vile form of sexual harrasment. Catcalling is an obvious violation of a person’s privacy. Catcalling incites fear in women to a point where they do not feel safe walking across the street outside their apartment building. Catcalling is why we need feminism.