After a video documenting more than 100 instances of catcalling one woman faced in New York City went viral this week, responses highlighting its problematic elements shortly followed.
As Vox reported, Shoshana Roberts, the subject of the video, has received rape threats via social media following its release. Others have discussed how to interpret the video's message when it failed to include all men -- of all races -- who catcalled Roberts.
On Thursday, novelist Joyce Carol Oates suggested on her Twitter that the harassment of women in urban areas is merely a “matter of neighborhoods,” and that she:
HuffPost Black Voices style and beauty editor Julee Wilson begged to differ, she explained on HuffPost Live on Oct. 30.
“No, I’m pretty sure it happens everywhere,” she said. “Yeah, I mean [Roberts] happened to be in New York, but I’m sure she could do the experiment and go somewhere else and prove that theory wrong, that it happens everywhere, and that’s really sad."
Laura Bassett, a politics reporter for HuffPost recounted her own experience with street harassment in Washington, D.C. As she explained, the prevalence of catcalling is completely unrelated to the affluence of an area.
“I work near the White House [in a] really expensive, affluent area of D.C., and every day I get catcalled on my way to work and on my way home from work,” she told host Caroline Modarressay-Tehrani. “To deny that it happens or to say that it only happens in certain neighborhoods, frankly it’s classist.”
Watch more discussion about the week's biggest women's issues in HuffPost Live's #WMN series here.
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