This is not meant to be victim blaming. However you react to the awful and frustrating and demeaning act of being catcalled or harassed on the street is absolutely correct, whether you scream or stay silent or run or whatever. YOU DO COMPLETELY YOU, you beautiful starfish. However, if you’re tired of the particular way you’ve dealt with this terrible human interaction, and you want to shake things up, may I suggest screaming at men on motorcycles with a mouth full of peanut butter?
A few weeks ago I was on my way to the gym. I was at my most sexually alluring–sweatpants, flat sandals, a tank top with a cheeseburger on it, with a slight kink in my posture since my back felt a little weird that day. I also hadn’t had a chance to eat lunch, so I decided to scarf down a pita full of peanut butter while walking down the street.
Naturally, a sprightly gentleman on an afternoon zip around town turned a corner and caught my face in the light, and embarrassingly could not contain himself. Not wanting to get off his motored-cycle, however, he was content to scream something about how he wished his penis could be inserted in at least one of my orifices. It was difficult to tell exactly what he was saying, the doppler effect subsuming most of his message, but still I felt an understanding. So I reacted the only way I knew how:
With a mouth full of peanut butter, I yelled “fuck off.”
I’m not sure if he heard me. By that point he was halfway down the block, and with a mouth full of peanut butter it sounded more like “FUHHH AWWWWHHH,” but I believe I made my point clear. We shared a moment, and I went on my way.
In a way the peanut butter made it more satisfying. Sure, I may not have annunciated well, but the monster-like noise let me be as disgusting and loud and large as I felt like being. The best part of this interaction is that there are so many ways to replicate it, and yet keep it fresh. Instead of peanut butter, one could use cheese, or yogurt, or a lot of animal crackers chewed up to the point where they sort of start drying your mouth out. It could be a fresh bite of falafel, or a gulp of seltzer that’s left an angry bubble in your throat. The possibilities are endless!
Tags: catcalling sucks, it was actually peter pan crunchy peanut butter, men are garbage, seriously any way you choose to deal with this phenomenon is acceptable and you are good
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IDK where I got this but my favorite move is to make an underbite/bulldog face and glare. Very effective. It goes something like this http://previews.123rf.com/images/Krisdog/Krisdog1… Peanut butter sounds good too though.
……..peanut butter on a pita though?
with crunchy PB and HONEY! so delicious! this was one of my childhood snacks, and now I realize i’t’s pretty weird but a lot of things my mom does are weird, so. That kind of stretchy never-goes-stale plain grocery store pita, of course, not anything fresh or toasted or garlicky.
oh sure make me feel EVEN WORSE about that whole ordeal
No shade intended! In fact I think you might be onto something.
Peanut butter on a pita is so good! Jaya you have good ideas about food and responding to catcallers.
I used to put peanut butter on tortillas, or lefse. Roll ’em up, bite into ’em, and the PB gooshes out in a very satisfying way. It’s like a PB eclair.
My spouse brought home some of those individual packs of peanut butter, and I was a tad scornful bc I spend 90% of my time in the house, with ready access to the Costco-size tubs of peanut butter, so wasn’t he wasteful?
But now I see his precognition skills were in full force. Never again will I leave the house without a tiny serving of peanut butter, ready to enact this plan with messy gusto.
To be at full readiness you should probably also keep a medium dollop of peanut butter concealed under your tongue at all times, just in case you can’t get the foil off your tiny pack in time.
I like this. Part of the reason I find street harassment upsetting is that it breaks the social contract: if you’re willing to shout obscenities at a stranger in public, what else might you do? It seems fitting to respond in kind: if I scream at a stranger with a mouth full of food, something I have been explicitly instructed NOT to do for almost three decades, what else might *I* do? Chase down your motorcycle and fling the rest of my pita into the wheels, causing it to skid and fling you into traffic? Hold you down and cram a copy of Miss Manners into your shocked, stupid maw? MAYBE.
I thought I was the only one who got angry throat bubbles from gulping fizzy liquids too fast!
see, I always just use the standard “fuck awwwwff” in the Brooklyn-est accent I can muster; and then to feel better, I have a brief fantasy to myself where Brienne of Tarth knocks the catcalling pig about in a dashing moment of gender justice.
Yes, exactly! My Southern accent disappears when I yell. I sound like every one of the years I spent in the Northeast when I yell. Because I never heard Fuck Off! or Hands Off! in southern tones. It comes out the only way I’ve ever heard it, a mix of Philadelphia, Manhattan, New Jersey, and Massachusetts: Fuck Awwwwff! Try that ovah heeah wheah I can reachya. Wuddaya thinkin? Iz yer mama proudaya today? Yo, nobuddy luvsya. One day yull die alone.
But when I’m not angry? I sound more like my southern mother: How y’all doin’? Texas o-ul industry shore is hurtin’ these days.
And Brienne of Tarth forever!
This is the most wonderful thing I’ve read today, thank you so so much
I’m also found of “your mother called — she says she doesn’t love you anymore” — IF I have enough time to get the whole sentence out.
this might not be advisable to adapt for face-to-face contact but can I share my mother’s possibly apocryphal handling of an obscene phone caller? [1]
So (she claimed) the phone rings in the middle of the night, waking her up, she stomps out to the kitchen where the phone is, “HELLO.” Obscene caller says dirty thing. “WHAT?” my mother demands. He says the dirty thing again, more insistently. “WHAT? HOLD ON, LET ME PUT ON MY GLASSES,” says my mother, because if you are a old woman you can’t hear people properly unless you have your glasses on, it’s a thing. she puts the phone down and goes rifling around the house for a while, eventually puts on her glasses and turns on some lights and stomps back out to the phone, ALL RIGHT WHAT IS IT, WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO SAY? and he is so frustrated he just goes, Forget it, lady! and hangs up on her.
my mother used to tell this story to demonstrate the importance of speaking clearly on the phone.
[1] (THIS IS A THING THEY USED TO HAVE BACK IN LANDLINE DAYS, CHILDREN)
I always ask them to repeat themselves or just say in my most customer service robocall voice “No thank you, but I appreciate the offer”.
Hysterical laughter, punctuated with something demeaning like, “You’re so pitiful!” That’s for a safe distance and/or on the phone. Pointing and laughing being the best response to indecent exposure.
Australia still has them, or had them in 2012. When I got one, my only on-phone reaction as a bemused “huh!” just before I hung up because it was just so – you know – backward. That place is seriously the Land Time Fucking Forgot Back In the Fifties (And Isn’t Looking For).
I get the occasional random act of phone masturbation on my cell! Sometimes they call back and leave a voicemail so they can finish, which I save forever and force men to listen to when they claim that random acts of sexual harassment are but a myth.
I thought it was usually a man angel that annunciated at a woman?
(I’m sorry)
Last time a guy came up to me (while I was joyfully dancing by the band at a warehouse party) and said “you know, it wouldn’t kill you to smile” I stopped everything and glared at him silently until he got really uncomfortable looking, said, “or maybe it would,” and left the room.
Usually with catcalling of any sort on the street I just flip them off. For me it is the perfect balance between no though/effort and still registering disdain.
The other day, I was walking the dog and a van with a couple guys in it slowed down in that way that is usually cause for alarm, right? I’m approaching the age where it’s more unusual to get catcalled these days than not, but I still braced myself. “YOUR DOG IS REALLY BEAUTIFUL,” said the passenger guy. Dog-calling is the best.
Well for you maybe. I bet that dog felt totally objectified 🙁
Oh man he LOVES it, you know it. Why else would he wear such fluffy pantaloons? C’mon.
Oh yass the fluffy pantaloons. I always catcall collies shaking those pants. –Silently. In my head.
Well he was probably naked so I guess he was asking for it?
I was walking past a construction site once, when I sneezed really loudly. With one voice, all of the construction dudes yelled “BLESS YOU!” from a high window. It was charming.
omg dying that is adorable
Most of my interactions with construction workers have been surprisingly positive.
This has happened to me! I live in a very pro-dog neighborhood, and many people dog-call. I know, “What a gorgeous dog!” in several languages.
What I love is the baby dog chant. Like when they see a dog and it’s “doggie doggie doggie” or “perro perro perro” or whatever with increasing volume as they get closer to the dog. Universal.
Yes! With the bouncing and the tiny, sticky, grabby hands! I have a big black gentleman of a dog who sidles up next to strollers and lets the little monsters pat his shoulder while his much more timid sister crouches and cowers as far from the terrifying cacophony as possible.
I go for “puppy. Puppy! PUPPY! PUPPY!” and want to say hello to the doggie. Especially if the dog/its human is okay with that (otherwise I get over it).
I am notorious for HI PUPPY HI PUPPY as I feel the cuteness of the dog must be acknowledged while not necessarily wanting to interrupt the owner or puppy.
One time I told a catcaller that I hoped his dick fell off. To which he responded, “Yeah you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
…Yes. Yes I would. Which is why I started that sentence with, “I hope.”
D- rebuttal, try harder next time. (Actually don’t.)
Any advice for avoiding creepy guys on the street who keep trying to make eye contact and then move to walk right behind you, while staring at your bum, when you speed up to get away from them? I went for the crossing the road then hiding behind a white van and a parking metre approach, but it didn’t have the oomph of Peanut Butter Mouth.
A pocket full of jacks is a pocketful of caltrops.
This is my new motto!
#teamimprovisedweaponry
Hacking cough. At them. Phlegm if possible.
Make eye contact, pensively shove a couple of phalanges up a nostril. Maintain eye contact while rummaging with gusto.
Ugh a guy once grabbed my butt while riding past me on a bike and by the time I had collected myself enough to yell “Fuck you!” he was already a block and a half away.
Also earlier this week a guy got really close to me and whispered something (based on body language and associated noises) filthy but that I couldn’t understand, and I felt a little bitter satisfaction for being the kind of asshole who grows up in Southern California and learns German instead of Spanish. My ignorance made me teflon!
My proudest moment was probably one Halloween when I was dressed as Wednesday Addams. Literally only my hands and head were uncovered, and some dude at the bar felt it necessary to say, “Well that’s not slutty at all.” To which I responded in my most Wednesday Addams-est deadpan: “I don’t do that.” -_- He muttered something about “that’s not what I meant….” but I was too busy returning to my seat with a beer.
(not that there’s anything wrong with slutty costumes per se, it’s just so not my thing)
Montreal is 100% a Yelling City. I learn new swear words daily.
Old creepy men keep telling me that I must be from France and I dont understand why. Is it my uneven, tangled mullet? Does my thick english accent somehow imitate Burgundian? Is being from France an insult? I don’t know, but my solution has been to put on the thickest Anglo accent I can muster and tell them I’m from Verdun.
So I just saw this and I'm in the Midwest! So DEFINITELY a nationwide spate of dog-calling! SOMEONE CALL THE NYT I HAVE AN IDEA FOR A TREND PIECE.
Last summer I was sitting at the bus stop with another woman, and some teenagers drove by yelling that FHRITP thing.
The other woman was probably about 60 and in Italian Widow drag. I’m 69 wearing tunic and slacks.
We bonded.