Woman who was harassed 100 times in New York receives rape threats

Much has been reported, written and said about how women are treated in India. That they are subjected to harassment on a daily basis is no secret. But a video that surfaced two days ago of a woman getting harassed a 100 times in a 10-hour span while walking through New York City has highlighted the universality of the problem. The existence of sexism even in the West – and in a supposedly safe city like New York – is depicted through the video.

 

The video is a collaboration between Hollaback!, an anti-street harassment organization which has been campaigning against it since 2005, and the marketing agency Rob Bliss Creative.

 

 

Within minutes of posting the video, the actor received rape threats on YouTube where the video was uploaded. Hollaback’s twitter account tweeted the following regarding the incident:

The subject of our PSA is starting to get rape threats on the comments. Can you help by reporting them? http://t.co/NMYCFd9YOm

— Hollaback! (@iHollaback) October 28, 2014

The video shows Actor Shoshana B Roberts walking in a tee and jeans, clothes perceived as ‘decent’, in the busy streets of New York City. The organisation claims that in 10 hours the actor was subjected to harassment nearly a 100 times.

 

At one point in the video a black man is seen saying, “Somebody is acknowledging you for being beautiful – you should say thank you” when she refused to acknowledge his catcalls.

 

Keeping the issue of sexism aside, the video is also being critiqued for being ‘racist’ and editing out ‘white’ harassers. Even though the video claims that the woman harassed by men belonging to all communities, the video only shows blurred faces of either black or Latino men passing remarks at her.

 

“The one dude who turns around and says, “Nice,” is white, but the guys who do the most egregious things—like the one who harangues her, “Somebody’s acknowledging you for being beautiful! You should say thank you more,” or the one who follows her down the street too closely for five whole minutes—are not,” Slate reports.

 

Bliss posted the following clarification on reddit saying,”We got a fair amount of white guys, but for whatever reason, a lot of what they said was in passing, or off camera. So their scenes were a lot shorter, but the numbers themselves are relatively even. Also, we didn't always capture the audio or video well- there's a siren that kills the scene, or someone walks in front of the camera, so we had to work with what we had. Cities are noisy, and full of people that walk in front of the camera, you know? By chance, this is how it looked and it didn't end up being the perfect representation of everything that happened, but we really did have a broad spectrum of people that said/did something.”

 

Representing another side to the issue of sexism at hand, popular prime time show the Daily show with Jon Stewart came up with a satirical video by Jessica Williams on October 2nd, highlighting the harassment faced by women in this time and age.