The Sunday Story: This is what it feels like to be catcalled

with issues of sexual harassment and assault.

I want to start with a personal story.

It's a story that's hard for me to even think about and to have to tell it.

But I'm doing it because I feel like it's important.

A few years ago, when I was pregnant with my youngest child, I'm walking to the doctor's

office, minding my business, and these three, like, college-age men approached me.

When they got close to me, it seemed like maybe they were going to ask me a question.

Ultimately, they did ask me a question, but it was very vulgar.

I should note, these were three white men.

And one of them asked me if I wanted their, and this is their words, their, quote, white

male part, but they asked it in a much more graphic way.

They did not laugh when this happened.

They didn't smile.

It didn't sound like a joke.

It really sounded like a threat.

Another woman saw it, who was walking by, and she was like, oh my goodness, like, I

can't believe they said that to you, like, what jerks.

At the time, I was just so angry, and, but also, like, just really vulnerable, because,

you know, I felt like if I, if my brother or my cousins or a man had been with me, they'd

never say that.

But these men felt comfortable basically threatening me on the street because I was all by myself.

And I'm also pregnant, so, like, I can't really fight, or I can't fight.

My experience that day is not unique.

It happens all the time.

Cat calling is common, and it can range from telling a woman to smile to something more

threatening.

And while cat calling is often dismissed by society at large as mostly harmless, there

have been countless stories of unreciprocated cat calls and harassment that have escalated

into violence and even death.

When we come back, we're going to take a deep dive into cat calling and its impact.

Stay with us.

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Most of us probably know the trope of cat calling.

Some guys playfully whistling at women walking by a construction site.

Saturday Night Live even makes jokes about it.

Hey, what in God's name's going on over here, huh?

Just, uh, hard at work.

For those on the receiving end, the story is a different one.

Musician, artist, and now podcaster Tara Lopez has been exploring the darker truth of cat

calling.

Her show, This Is What It Feels Like, from Cap Radio in Sacramento, puts listeners in

the shoes of everyday people at the center of issues often overlooked or politicized

by society.

Hi, Tara.

Welcome to the Sunday story.

Thank you so much for having me.

Like, what made you want to look at, you know, cat calling and street harassment?

full of female identifying folks, non-binary folks.

And we were reading Rebecca Solnit's Men Explain Things to Me, which is a book of essays on

women's rights, the silencing of women through harassment, abuse.

And the conversation quickly led to sharing our own cat call experiences.

And I realized very quickly that we all had multiple stories to share.

Like the whistles and yelling, like, hey, good looking or something like that?

But some of the people in the book group also spoke of events that started as cat calling

and escalated really quickly into really scary situations.

Women being followed, stalked, assaulted, threatened by men.

always, as a woman, there always feels like there's a feeling of danger in these situations

because it's like one wrong move and you don't know what could happen.

These situations can escalate so quickly.

One person from the book club was chased and followed on the freeway.

Another was physically attacked in her own front yard while she was watering the lawn.

And you know, as I was listening to everyone chiming in, what was really sad to me is that

we all have these stories.

We were sharing these stories like we'd share book recommendations.

I mean, they were just so prevalent, so common.

And so I got inspired to sketch an idea on a napkin right then and there.

And it was an idea for an art exhibit where cisgender men would be cat called by other men.

And the next year, in early 2017, I debuted that exhibit in my hometown of Sacramento.

So how did it work?

You said that men would cat call other men?

If men could experience what female presenting folks experience on a daily basis,

would that change their behavior?

So we asked women from the region to send their cat call experiences to us.

And we then went into a recording studio with men to record those cat calls.

And that was such a heavy experience.

Men were crying in the studio, apologizing for their past actions.

And I knew right then and there that the exhibit was going to have an impact.

And so the actual exhibit was a long, dark hallway with a mirror in the center of the space

with headphones hanging directly from the ceiling.

And the idea was that men would walk into the space, put those headphones on,

and hear real cat calls and harassment from other men as they looked at themselves in the mirror.

Hey, baby.

How are you?

What's your problem?

Don't you like being complimented?

You should smile more.

I guess you're not that beautiful.

How are you, sweetie?

Hey.

Hey, baby.

You don't speak?

Don't you like being complimented?

You don't speak English.

Hey, what's up?

I mean, it's jarring to even hear it.

What was the response of those who experienced the exhibit?

We had a wide range that were a lot more graphic than those.

But the response was overwhelming.

The exhibit went viral.

We had national, international press.

Lines were forming out the door every single day to experience the exhibit.

People were really intrigued.

A lot of the men were astonished.

Some came out crying.

They wanted to apologize for their past actions.

They wanted to admit that they needed to make a change.

Some men acknowledged that they didn't even know what a cat call was before experiencing this,

which I thought was very jarring.

Lots of women also went into the exhibit.

Many said that they felt validated.

One story that really sticks with me is a woman in her 70s came out

and tears and thanking us as it was the first time she said she's ever felt seen and heard in her life.

So it was powerful and it was clear that it resonated with people.

at least in that moment.

Because I'm like, haven't y'all been around?

Y'all ain't never heard cat calls?

Y'all haven't heard this before?

Maybe it was the context that they needed or they just never thought that women,

or maybe they just thought, oh, they're just complimenting you.

It doesn't, maybe that feels good.

I don't know.

And I think, again, that's where we get in trouble with just viewing cat calls as innocent

or as compliments because as we've seen and as we've heard,

the situation can escalate very quickly.

It can get scary.

It can get violent.

And female identifying folks have died from simply not reciprocating these cat calls.

And so it is so much more than just about a cat call or a compliment.

I'm sure you're still an artist, but you're podcasting as well.

Was it this art installation that got you into the podcasting?

I was trying to figure out a way as to how we could continue this work and build upon it even

more as I saw how much it was resonating.

I wanted to explore other topics such as trans rights, abortion stories, mental health.

And my thought process was that if people could experience and hear these real stories

from actual people that have been going through these experiences, maybe it would create space

for compassion and empathy.

And ultimately, we would treat one another better.

But now you've got this podcast called This Is What It Feels Like.

And in the podcast, you take up the topic of cat calling again.

It's been like seven years since the art exhibit.

Do you feel like there's more recognition now,

even in Sacramento, of this as a real issue that affects people?

We put another call out to women to send their experiences,

and we were overwhelmed with the amount of voice memos we received.

Dozens and dozens of stories ranging from, you know,

uncomfortable remarks to very explicit comments to the scary situations like we were mentioning.

Can I play you some of those voice memos?

I'm sure they're gonna be very disturbing, but I do want to hear it.

it makes me feel sexualized in a way that I didn't consent to.

And it makes me feel like everybody around me

is just gonna clock me as a woman and as someone feminine and because of that as a target.

And that's just endlessly frustrating.

I took it as like a compliment until

I actually got sexually assaulted by one of the guys on the varsity boys track team.

connect with me, even hook up with me.

They weren't attempting any sort of connection or didn't have any idea in their mind,

it didn't seem, that there could ever actually be like a favorable result from that.

like we've been saying, it's about so much more than compliments

because like the men who accosted me, who I talked about in the beginning,

they weren't trying to make a connection.

They weren't like, I'm gonna get, that was, they weren't trying to get with me.

That wasn't the intention.

It was, I'm going to, you know, make you feel bad, essentially.

Um, you know, in a, in a sexual way, just because you're walking down the street.

It's jarring, but very powerful to hear.

You know, obviously you heard from a lot of people who sent these voice messages for the podcast,

but your original inspiration for the art exhibit came from that book club that you were in.

And I guess you went back to that same group to record another conversation

kind of a follow-up, right?

Their stories stuck with me.

And they have for the last seven years.

And I feel like as a community, we really need to talk more about this

because we all have these stories, you know, we're all holding onto these.

We're expected to carry these stories with us every day.

And so I wanted to have a chance to talk to these folks and, and hear, hear them.

And that starts with you asking a question.

Claire, how are you feeling?

You're nodding your head.

And I was saying to a friend, I don't know, a few months ago, I was like,

I'm so angry because I'm paying for therapy.

I'm paying for therapy, been in therapy for two years.

And it's, you know, there, there are other things I need therapy for,

but it's sexual assault and harassment and low self-esteem anxiety.

All of those things like are a byproduct of a society in which we're not valued as much as men.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that part of male entitlement and violence and all of that

being so pervasive, it makes me feel like a responsibility to change that norm.

And so it, yeah, it puts so much pressure on us,

on folks who we shouldn't have all the responsibility.

We shouldn't have to pave the way.

It should be a collective effort.

Every single person working, you know, to fight for all of us to be safe.

I think that there are some men who do, but I definitely think that a lot don't.

I move through the world in a different way than my three brothers do.

For instance, you know, I don't know if men get it.

I don't know if men have the opportunity to get it.

Should they be faulted for that?

No, but can we have conversations and can we start to shift our society in a way where

we have empathy and, you know, accountability in these things?

I think that's so necessary.

which is where he was born.

Her husband was shocked to see how she was being harassed.

And there were a couple of times where he, like, did check people,

And they'd be like, you're right, I'm sorry.

They're able to hold one another accountable if they cross a boundary.

I couldn't even imagine a scenario of that happening here.

Like, it would turn into a fight.

I feel like we have to wait for something traumatic to happen

to hold people accountable for little bits of behavior.

In our conversation, all three said that they were children,

six, eleven, five years old, when they first realized that they weren't safe.

And I realized that I was around that age too,

when I understood that I couldn't move around the world like my brother could.

Things were different for me.

The stakes were higher.

I mean, that is so, so young.

It's a baby.

I have my little girl just turned six, but she's a baby.

You know, 11 years old.

These are babies.

Do you remember the first time you were catcalled or saw someone being catcalled?

at my basketball games, at school, at the bus stop.

I mean, it seemed like everywhere we went,

there was always a comment or an attempt to get her attention.

And one night, the catcalling turned into something really violent.

My mother told me a story of one situation where she was grabbing dinner

at a Taco Bell drive-thru, and a car full of men started yelling at her,

trying to get her attention.

And she rolled her window down.

She told them to stop.

I mean, she was just trying to order dinner.

And the next thing she knew, they were bashing her windows,

attacking her and her friend with baseball bats.

And all of this escalated because she didn't respond to them

in the way that they wanted her to.

Well, first of all, I'm so sorry that this happened to your mom.

Was she okay after that?

I mean, baseball bats.

She tells me, of course, she was pretty bruised up.

But more so than that, she was really shaken up.

To not be safe in a drive-thru kind of changes your whole perspective

on how you move through out the world, I think.

it's such a fine line between annoying behavior and violence.

I'm sure some people listening will be like,

well, I wouldn't hit anyone with a baseball bat.

I might just say, you look nice.

But the person who's interacting with you has no idea what you're going to do.

We don't know whether you're one of the ones with the baseball bats or not.

We don't know.

I mean, at any moment, if you make the wrong call,

or they decide that you did not give them a sufficient answer,

or even if you did, and it's not what they want,

they could just be violent.

I mean, I think a lot of men may not understand what that means,

to be that vulnerable.

And it's like, I'm just walking around.

I'm just living my life.

I'm not trying to get into a fight today.

And I think most men don't understand it because they haven't had to.

To me, it does seem like it's all about power

and trying to silence women through those intimidation tactics.

And to go back to Rebecca Solnit, the author of Men Explain Things to Me,

she says that we have an abundance of rape and violence in this country against women,

but it's never treated as a civil rights issue,

or even as a human rights issue, a crisis, or even a pattern.

She says that violence doesn't have a class, a race, a religion, or a nationality,

but it does have a gender.

what do you think needs to happen to bring about change?

But first and foremost, how we raise our boys in this society needs to evolve.

We need to have that conversation.

We need to teach boys at a very early age what behaviors are acceptable,

how to regulate their emotions, how to treat female-presenting individuals.

We have to break the cycle of toxic masculinity and the violence that is attached to it.

Otherwise, I don't know if we will ever see the change that is really needed.

Before we go, I'm a little curious,

like, what else are you exploring on your podcast?

Because this is just one of the issues, right?

So, I sit down with a 106-year-old piano player named Glenna about the meaning of life,

and how music and keeping things simple are the keys to living a long, meaningful life.

We also speak to four individuals about their abortion experiences,

and what some of the long-term impacts can look like.

And for our season finale, we talk about what it's like to lose a parent to suicide,

and how children and siblings can cope and heal through that loss.

So, we cover a large range of topics here.

I really appreciate you joining us today.

This Is What It Feels Like, a podcast from Cap Radio.

You can find more of Tara's episodes wherever you get your podcasts.

This Is What It Feels Like is edited by Jen Picard.

Sally Longnecker is the show's executive producer.

This episode of The Sunday Story was produced by Andrew Mambo and edited by Jenny Schmidt.

Our engineer was Maggie Luthar.

Our team includes Liana Simstrom and Justine Yan.

Irene Noguchi is our executive producer.

We'd love to hear from you.

Send us an email at thesundaystoryatnpr.org.

I'm Aisha Roscoe.

Up first is Back Tomorrow with all the news you need to start your week.

Until then, have a great rest of your weekend.

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