By Kaitlyn Nguyen, Summer 2023 Power in Place Collaborator
Her name was Ruth George.
She was only 19 years old when she was catcalled to her death. She had only experienced one year of college before all her future plans died with her in the backseat of her parked car.
Catcalling kills. Catcalling killed Ruth George.
After a long night out with her professional fraternity, George was dropped off in front of the all too familiar parking structure at the University of Illinois-Chicago. As she walked back to her car, George was approached by 26 year old Donal Thurman, who had followed her in. Trying to demand her attention, Thurman shouted degrading comments to the young college student, who chose to respond in the most appropriate way possible- she ignored him and kept walking. The next morning, Ruth George was found unconscious in the backseat of her car. Authorities were led to believe she was choked to death by Thurman, who decided that being ignored tha night was his last straw.
It’s a harsh reality that almost every single woman and young girl has experienced. Part of the female experience is thoughtfully deciding how to respond in certain situations to de-escalate the imminent threat of violence. Oftentimes, women feel like the best response to catcallers is silence, solely because their safety is never promised. As a result, the effects of catcalling psychologically affect women down the line. It forces victims to rethink their mindless habits by avoiding certain streets and minimizing their expression of revealing clothing. Yet, studies have shown that the occurrence of catcalling has nothing to do with the decisions women make everyday. According to an online survey, 99 percent of respondents had experienced street harassment in public places. And, about 45 percent of women reported that they experienced sexist comments in public at least 25 times in their lifetime. In fact, in New York, catcalling is only another part of many women’s daily routine.
In 2014, an anti-street harassment organization known as Hollaback! released a video of a woman walking through the streets of New York for 10 hours. In that video, the woman was catcalled over 100 times while wearing a plain black t-shirt and jeans. From the social experiment, Hollaback! found that catcallers responded poorly to being ignored by their victims. The woman walking through the streets of New York had received backlash from the offenders with comments suggesting she should be grateful for their “compliments”. The video released by Hollaback! exposes daily life through the lens of young women. Acknowledgement of the normalcy of catcalling has since then been brought to the attention of countless authorities. In fact, several countries and regions have made sexual street harassment illegal. For instance, in 2018, France passed a law that allowed police officers to sanction harassment perpetrators in the moment, rather than waiting out strenuous public trial processes. And in both New York and California, state law criminalizes aggravated harassment in public places, which even covers willful conduct towards a specific person that so much as annoys them without a legitimate purpose!
All in all, progress has been made towards chastising catcalling. As we hear the stories of women, we empathize with their female experience in today’s society, and we adapt to wane the effects of street harassment
References
[1] Alter Charlotte. “Watch This Woman Get Harassed 108 Times While Walking in New York City.” Time. October 28, 2014. https://time.com/3543632/street-harassment-hollaback-video/
[2] Bosman, Julie. “A College Student Was Killed by a Man Whose Catcalls She Tried to Ignore, Prosecutors Say.” The New York Times. November 27, 2019.
[3] Kendja, Avondale. “Catcalling Kills: Defining the Impacts of Street Harassment.” Garbo. August 2, 2021. https://www.garbo.io/blog/catcalling-street-harassment
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/27/us/chicago-college-student-killed-catcall.html
[4] Roy, Jessica. “Another Woman Killed for Turning a Man Down.” The Cut. January 26, 2016. https://www.thecut.com/2016/01/another-woman-killed-for-turning-a-man-down.html
[5] Sharkey, Joe. “A Worldwide Fight Against Street Harassment.” The New York Times. October 21, 2013. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/22/business/fighting-harassment-of-women-on-streets-worldwide.html?searchResultPosition=2
Kaitlyn Nguyen is a rising sophomore majoring in Political Science at UCLA. She’s aiming to pursue a minor in social data analysis, with a concentration in international politics. On campus, Kaitlyn works to provide free resources for homeless women and children in the downtown region of Los Angeles. In her free time, she loves cooking and whipping up drinks as a barista! This summer, she’s working part time at a cute local cafe and interning for PiP!