Street Harassment: Flirting with Disaster

If you're old enough to remember, you may recall a time when playful verbal exchanges and gestures between the sexes were commonplace, and when executed with tact and a fair dose of discretion, were reciprocally acceptable. People flirted at social gatherings among friends; people flirted with strangers in public places, in hopes of striking up a conversation or perhaps something more. The casual pick-up line of the young bachelor, the allure and playful demeanor of the coquette -- flirting was one of the highlights of casual human interaction, and a facet of the imperative, innate mating dance which has been the catalyst of human propagation for over 200,000 years.

Today, however, in the age of the perpetually-offended, full-time professional victim, there's money to be generated and influence to be secured in fanning the flames of paranoia and anthropophobic suspicion of trivial social interaction. The tactics are indeed effective, as evidenced by the countless, pouting Millennials who've been sold on "anti-bully" campaigns because their lives were shattered after someone called them a dirty word on Facebook.

In a social climate where children are suspended or expelled from school for make-believe finger guns and corporations kowtow to capricious cretins who demand the removal of sexist Lego men from toy store shelves, we're presented with yet another brand of chimerical threat to our frail sensibilities -- "cat calling". 

A feminist group known as Hollaback!, an "anti-street harassment” organization, launched their most recent grievance against the festering evil of male-to-female interaction with a 2 minute video of a moderately attractive, unknown actress walking through NYC as various men sporadically flirt or, as we're now to refer to it, harass her.

The video was purportedly recorded in random areas of the city, and compiled a barrage of carefully selected "hey mamis" and "daamn girls" over the period of a 10-hour stroll. 

What was the purpose here? Like most feminist organizations, Hollaback! masquerades as a faction comprised of strong, empowered women, while ironically crying about how powerless and weak society is making them feel. They want to create and impose an artificial climate of gender neutrality, where men and women no longer relate to each other as men and women, rather as sexless automatons who cower at the prospect of feeling amorously inclined to engage in harmless, flirtatious niceties. 

Hollaback!'s goal is to criminalize flirting by correlating it with harassment, while attributing men's appreciation of the female form to "sexism". To solidify a true sense of victimhood in their impressionable supporters and eager, prospective martyrs, they use outlandish and comical terms like "visual assault" and "eye rape". 

The group regularly solicits donations; in 2011, they received a $20,000 taxpayer-funded grant for a smartphone app to enable our idle, oppressed darlings to document, map and share incidents where they were emotionally and irreparably scarred by the compliments and passes of random strangers. 

In Hollaback!'s fervor to drive home this epidemic, they seem to have overlooked a few things:

Fifty-nine percent of the recorded incidents during this random stroll took place in low-income sections of Harlem. Not only could the encounters of such a journey be predicted by anyone vaguely familiar with Harlem, but the slant—intentional or not—may have stepped on a few toes of fellow bleeding heart liberals, who in most instances are pining away at the chance to join the chorus of the systematically oppressed. NPR, who usually drools over junk like this, seems to have caught wind of Hollaback!'s oversight; feeling sorry for yourself and loathing men is great -- but there was just a bit too much color footing the blame for their tastes.

Frivolity begets frivolity, however, and if someone can one up by race-baiting while man hating, all the better.

Another critical factor which was ignored is that we still have some semblance of free speech in this country. Despite what the ill-informed dames at Hollaback! think, "cat calling" is not illegal, nor synonymous with the acts of groping, stalking, public masturbation or rape. To claim such is an outright insult to those who've fallen victim to the any of these crimes, and does nothing less than minimize their plight.

Without a doubt, the idiots belting out off-color comments and tasteless pick-up lines to the woman in the video are indeed some of the finest examples of crass, uncivilized street trash unique to modern America, but being crass and uncivilized isn't yet against the law. Unless the encounter turns violent or blatantly sexually offensive, the men in the video are perfectly within the bounds of lawful conduct. 

If someone's bothering you, speak up and tell them to stop. If they don't, defend yourself and/or call a cop. If you're incapable of any of these solutions, you're either a child, elderly or mentally defective; in any of these cases you have absolutely no business walking the streets alone.

The Hollaback! website makes the claim that this charade is to assure women that they may have "enjoyment of equal access to public spaces”, while ignoring the fact that people's right to speak freely is a liberty, equally afforded to people in public spaces.

If an organization such as Hollaback! genuinely wanted to empower its followers and members, they'd spend less time whining and more time doing, trading in the victim badges for demonstrable acts of accomplishment. Anyone can be against something; it's what you're about that counts.

They claim that they wish to "have the right to define themselves instead of being defined by some creep’s point of view". Oddly enough, their entire organization is defined by—and depends on—the expectation of "creeps" having these points of view, and for the sake of having something to bitch about to garner support and bring in the money, they'd best hope that creepiness ensues.

Let's have a moment of clarity here: the women behind this movement consist of the quintessential, jaded types, who are in no danger of a man approaching them for directions, let alone a sexual proposition. It has nothing to do with a lack of physical attractiveness, rather being the all-around unpleasant human being which tend to champion heavy-handed, radical feminist agendas. The multitude of shattered expectations and failed intimate relationships within the bastions of these cliques could fill a library, but that's an entirely different discussion.

The women who oversaw the production of this video may have very well been under the delusion that crimes were being committed, but more than likely were stewing in a mixture of envy and anger as they observed the attention this woman was receiving. 

This campaign is akin to the kindergarten brat who sees his classmate constructing an elaborate structure out of building blocks; he could never produce anything nearly as impressive as his peer, but can surely run over and knock it down.

Sour grapes at it's finest: they can't attain it, therefore in essence, it's wrong! 

The tragedy in this kind of social conditioning is that very young and impressionable girls are being groomed to associate beauty and sexuality with shame, while radical feminism dictates the criterion of what constitutes a worthy female. This isn't to say that a woman should forgo intellectual merit for outward beauty, rather embrace the best of both worlds if she chooses to do so.

It's socially acceptable and seen as virtuous when a woman is valued solely for her intelligence, yet one who chooses to focus her efforts on her physical beauty and accentuate her sexuality is seen as shallow and less than her bookworm contemporaries. Hypocrisy.

I have a fairly good idea which way public opinion would sway if this actress had gone through 10 hours of being congratulated on her literary skills or her acute knowledge in the field of human physiology, followed by a bitter diatribe compiled by a group of strippers.

Nature’s designs are etched into hearts of men and women alike; the urge to pursue mates and flirt with each other is part of the patchwork which makes up the fabric of humanity. There isn't a morality or social contrivance which can alter the tens of thousands of years evolution has invested in mankind.

Male chivalry and the proclivity to compete with other males is derived from the innate drive to provide for and protect his mate and his offspring.

The physical attributes of the female form were intended to attract males and give subconscious cues to reproductive health.

These, among other characteristics were no accident; some we've lost, some we've retained. Lest anyone remain a believer in the delusory, cliche sentiment "it's what's on the inside that counts", please have a look at the topic of sexual selection.

Q: What do you call an animal which loses it's sex drive and instinct to procure mates?

A: Extinct

We tame and suppress many useful and congenital traits imperative to human nature, at times to the brink of madness, and call it "morality". This is done to the verge of our individual impairment and quite possibly to the detriment of our continuity as a species. But nature remains, reminding us just who's in charge and who ultimately prevails.

This timeless truth, articulated by Horace, rings as true today as it did before him, and will continue to do so long after we're gone...

"You may drive out Nature with a pitchfork, yet she hurriedly returns.”