Saturday, April 20, 2024
American University
A project of the Rev. James B. Simpson Fellowship at American University’s School of Communication

On [one] Daily Show segment…women in the studio run through their tactics—listening to music, fake phone calls, looking straight down at the sidewalk and pretending not to hear. I, too, have a strategy. I deploy an advance attack: nodding and saying, “How’s it going?” before any man has a chance to be rude. In case you’ve missed the bigger point, let me spell it out for you: Women have strategies for walking down the street. If you’re a man, ask yourself whether you have a strategy beyond putting one foot in front of the other, and you might begin to see why street harassment becomes exhausting.

american-unversity
On [one] Daily Show segment…women in the studio run through their tactics—listening to music, fake phone calls, looking straight down at the sidewalk and pretending not to hear. I, too, have a strategy. I deploy an advance attack: nodding and saying, “How’s it going?” before any man has a chance to be rude. In case you’ve missed the bigger point, let me spell it out for you: Women have strategies for walking down the street. If you’re a man, ask yourself whether you have a strategy beyond putting one foot in front of the other, and you might begin to see why street harassment becomes exhausting.
— Monica Potts