Cat-Calling, Around the World

Happy Sex Week, everyone. In observance, Matter has published the aptly named Eyefucking Diaries, where ten women in nine countries recorded a week’s worth of street harassment. In unsurprising news, all of the women were harassed at least once! Here’s an account from Nairobi:

What happened?
The man was anywhere between 25 and 50. Someone you wouldn’t suspect that they would talk to badly or make negative comments. Saturday is an easy day; there are not many people on the streets in the mornings. On this day the most disgusting quite was, “You do not have to work, you can always have sex with me and I’ll provide everything.”

Cool!!!!!!!!!

In addition to featuring each woman’s diary, Matter collated the responses into some handy little data nuggets (which I suggest you have handy the next time some idiot at a party tells you that street-harassment-is-not-that-bad-what’s-wrong-with-a-compliment): women almost always receive cat calls when they’re alone, men equally assail by themselves or in a group, and the most common cat-call experienced by the participants were requests for a smile, a scourge with which we are familiar. I wish they included the descriptions of how the woman reacted to each instance, since I’ve always had trouble with delineating an appropriate reaction. Last week, Jessica Williams may have provided me with my answer.