Steve Santagati mansplains catcalling

You’ve heard of the catcalling video* “10 hours of walking in NYC as a woman” featuring actress Shoshana B. Roberts** and produced by Hollaback right?  If not, here:

The video highlights the problem of street harassment which women face daily. Street harassment is defined as:

Street harassment is any action or comment between strangers in public places that is disrespectful, unwelcome, threatening and/or harassing and is motivated by gender or sexual orientation or gender expression.

Just trying to go about their daily lives-walking, riding a bicycle, jogging, driving-women are inundated with men encroaching on their space and demanding their attention. They offer up unsolicited, disrespectful opinions about women, commenting on everything from their clothing and hair, to their smile and breasts. You can see this on display multiple times in the video (which showcases 100 incidents of street harassment in one day). Street harassment both lowers the comfort level of women in public and limits their access to public spaces. Stopstreetharassment.org took a survey of 811 women in 2008. Here are some of the results:

Behavior that could be categorized as staying “on guard” was the most common. At least monthly women:

Constantly assess their surroundings – 80% (62% said always)

Avoid making eye contact – 69% (32% said they always do this)

Purposely wear clothes to attract less attention – 37% (10% always)

Talk or pretend to talk on a cell phone – 42% (10% always)

Next, behavior that limits access to public spaces was most common. At least monthly women:

Cross street/take other route – 50% (16% said always)

Avoid being out at night/after dark – 45% (11% always)

Avoid being out alone – 40% (8% always)

Pay to exercise at a gym instead of outside – 24% (11% always)

Most alarming was how street harassment prompted some women to make a significant life decision:

Moved neighborhoods (at least once) because of harassers in the area – 19%

Changed jobs (at least once) because of harassers along the commute – 9%

(Read SSH Founder’s Forbes.com article about why employers should care about street harassment and what they can do about it)

From anecdotes and women’s stories, it’s clear that street harassment also impacts women’s:

Hobbies and career choices;

Decision to go to evening networking events, night classes, political forums, and go on business trips;

Ability to go to restaurants or movie theaters alone;

Finances when women “choose” to pay for taxis rather than walk or take public transportation, drive their car short distances, pay to exercise at a gym rather than outside,  pay for a more expensive hotel in a city center while traveling, pay for room service rather than go out to eat when on a business trip;

Ability to go places without a male escort who often can help keep harassers at bay by showing a woman is “owned” or “spoken for”;

Desire to be nice to strangers because they never know which one will turn into a harasser.

Individually, any one of these strategies and restrictions may not seem like a big deal. Collectively, however, the long list of ways women tend to change their lives is extensive.

Here’s the thing though: women shouldn’t have to change anything. They should be able to go about their daily lives without being harassed. Without receiving derogatory comments about their genitals. Without being threatened. Without people telling them they need to smile more (really, if a woman wants to smile, she’ll smile; if she doesn’t want to, she won’t; contrary to what many men seem to think, women do not exist for their pleasure, and are not required to smile on command).  Men are the ones who need to alter their behavior.  They need to stop bossing women around. They need to stop expecting women to be open to their advances. They need to stop critiquing women’s bodies. And they need to stop thinking of street harassment as compliments.

Steve Santagati (author of The MANual: A True Bad Boy Explains How Men Think, Date, and Mate) is one of many men who don’t think what women experience is street harassment. He thinks the comments of men on the street are nothing more than compliments that “every woman” wants.  David Ferguson of Raw Story reports on CNN Newsroom’s recent discussion hosted by Fredricka Whitfield featuring Santagati and stand-up comedian Amanda Seales:

“Women are expected, from the minute we leave the house, to be smiling and available for whatever men want to say to us,” said Seales. “And don’t get me wrong, ‘Hello’ is fine.”

“Oh, come on,” said Santagati.

“I see you shaking your head,” Seales said to him, “but you are not an expert in this because you are not a woman walking in the street, so you don’t know.”

“No, no,” Santagati protested. “I’m more of an expert than you and I’ll tell you why. Cos I’m a guy and I know how we think, more than you guys will ever know. I can’t get in a woman’s head any more than just like, uh, thinking about it.”

“The bottom line is this, ladies,” he went on, “you would not care if all these guys were hot. They would be bolstering your self-esteem, bolstering your ego. There is nothing more that a woman loves to hear than how pretty she is.”

Whitfield and Seales wore almost identically bewildered, dubious expressions as Santagati continued, “Now, this particular video speaks for itself. These guys obviously don’t have a lot of class, but I’m also very suspicious. This video was put together by an ad agency to go viral. How do we know some of those guys weren’t planted?”

Santagati is not the expert he thinks he is. He has no clue what the problem is. It’s not the attractiveness of the men. It has nothing to do with the class of the men. It has everything to do with what they’re saying.  The men in that video harassed Roberts. Period. She did not welcome their comments. She did not want their comments. Some of them clearly ignored the fact that she wasn’t responding, and in so doing became creepy harassing assholes (seriously, that one guy follows her for 5 fucking minutes).  Why can’t she walk along the street without people commenting? Why can’t people keep their comments to themselves? Why do they think they have to share their thoughts with her? Why should she be expected to smile and say ‘thank you’ if she doesn’t feel like it? The men were sending a message:  you’re in our space, so follow our rules. Fuck that noise.

But Santagati doesn’t get any of that. All he sees are the “wrong type of men” and women who really just want to be complimented. How did he reach this conclusion? He doesn’t explain, but for a guy who wrote a book about what men think, how they date, and how they mate, it’s no stretch to think he’s got some biases and prejudices about women rumbling around his brain (did I mention his comment was sexist).

Women are not a monolith. It’s not cool to characterize all women as wanting the same thing. They don’t all respond to the same things in the same way. They don’t all love to hear how beautiful they are. They don’t all love to hear ego-boosts from guys. And even those women that like both may only like them in the proper context, such as a dinner date or during sex. But on the street? When they’re walking to work or school? When they’re exercising or jogging in a park? That’s not the time. It’s not the place. And it’s harassment.  Santagati would know that if he would actually listen to what women say (starting with the two women who were on the show with him). But noooo, he’s too busy mansplaining to women what street harassment really is. Trust me buddy, this is a good time to STFU and listen.

*although the video does point out a real, and problematic, phenomenon, it is not without problems. It has been criticized for presenting (perhaps unintentionally) street harassment as something only black and latino men of a particular socio-economic background engage in.  Santagati’s comments even reflect this. He thinks the men-black and brown men, remember-were the wrong kind of men. In his mind, Roberts would have been grateful if she were approached by the “right kind of man” i.e. a white guy with money.  You can read criticisms of the video here, here, and here.

**Roberts has received threats of violence in the wake of this video.  ::Sigh:: And people think feminism isn’t needed any longer.

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Steve Santagati mansplains catcalling
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