30 Oct 2014

Walking in NYC

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This week’s major viral hit is the video below documenting how an average-looking, not-especially-sexily-dressed woman receives 100 instances of street harassment in the course of a ten-hour stroll through New York City.

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My millennial Facebook friends from Yale circles were righteously a-buzz over this one yesterday. One girl after another testifying that she, too, was constantly harassed by men. It is all about power, they agreed. I offered the consolatory reflection that none of them will have this problem any longer after just a couple of decades. But the girls did not particularly appreciate hearing that one.

It was not very long, however, before the thoroughly-conditioned youngsters, just like Hannah Rosin at Slate, identified a highly problematic subtext in the Hollaback! video: “the video also unintentionally makes another point, that harassers are mostly black and Latino, and hanging out on the streets in midday in clothes that suggest they are not on their lunch break. As Roxane Gay tweeted, ‘The racial politics of the video are f*cked up. Like, she didn’t walk through any white neighborhoods?’ ”

Today’s young people simply cannot tolerate viewing, hearing, or reading anything uncomplimentary to the groups they have been trained all their lives to regard as sacred. Their noses twitch, their hairs stand on end, their heads go up, and they reflexively cry: Racism!

Once the material is identified as racist, that is it. It is not only bad, it is ipso facto false, and must be dismissed out of hand. It doesn’t matter if the questionable content is perfectly true. It is still false because it is wrong, cosmically, absolutely, utterly WRONG. In the minds of today’s young, nothing is, nothing can possibly be so unutterably wrong as Racism. And Racism is not necessarily some kind of concrete theory of the characteristics and relative inherited inferiority of certain groups. Racism is merely saying anything whatsoever negative about certain groups.

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The mandatory racial witch hunt having concluded, the Internet Community then turned its attention to poking fun at the Hollaback! Sexual Harassment video.

Funny or Die! gave us this (non-embeddable) 1:56 video of 10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Man.

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And Tumblrland responded with this:

Walking-Girl

via Ratak Monodosico.

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2 Feedbacks on "Walking in NYC"

GoneWithTheWind

I certainly see two sides. They drag some bait past some hungry men and they bite at it. Whoa! Who would have seen that coming? I’m betting if they had used Lena Dunham dressed the same way that they wouldn’t even have two minutes worthy of video because she isn’t “bait”. Should these guys have/use better manners? Of course but seriously are they unaware that a lot worse happens on the streets of NY City? This seems to be not such a big deal. But the question is how would you stop it? It would have to be something unconstitutional. I do realize that doesn’t stop our government from passing unconstitutional laws and regulations but should they?



T. Shaw

Lena D – LMAO!

I fall in love about a dozen times walking from the office to Penn Sta. I keep it to myself. Don’t tell the ball and chain!

It seems as if my black and brown brothersare slightly more demonstrative.



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