No matter who you are, catcalling is never okay.
We feel the need to emphasize that after a video sparked an online discussion on the issue, with one of the posters provocatively alleging the double standard in that men are called predators when committing street harassment while it is seen as a mere appreciation of the victim’s good looks when women do it.
The video starts out with text cards that say “Tips to find a boyfriend easily” and “flirting with oppa on the sidewalk,” and proceeds with a woman and her friends calling to a man — who appeared to be South Korean — standing by himself on the sidewalk. She called the stranger oppa (which means ‘older brother’ in Korean) and “baby,” while also professing love in Korean, before asking for his name.
The 41-second video, which appeared to have been taken in Legian, Kuta and was originally uploaded to TikTok, eventually ended with the foreigner shaking her hand, and the original poster wrote of having “conquered” him in a text card. One of the tweets that reshared this video shows that it has been viewed more than one million times.
It’s an example of street harassment, alright, even though the original poster went on to explain that the foreigner “was unbothered” and that the group eventually introduced themselves and they became friends.
“He did not feel harassed at all and was just happy. If you all don’t know the situation don’t be quick to judge, maybe [it’s true that] the words on my caption were not appropriate,” the user wrote on an Instagram story post.
She said that the video was taken over a year ago and was intended as a “fun thing to do.”
Must we point out that the video was taken without the man’s permission in the first place? Him appearing to smile in the video seems to have encouraged the group to continue their harassment, despite the fact that he also appeared to try to ignore them, which brings back our own experiences of being catcalled on the streets.
To put it simply, even in such intolerable situations most victims don’t know how to react or stand up for themselves, and them being quiet or polite are often perceived as acceptance of the crude behavior. It’s true that we don’t really know how that foreign man in the video truly feels, but if anything, the video illustrates just how pervasive street harassment is that some people can’t even see it for what it is. However, the online discussion that follows this recent viral video also shows us that people are more aware of the problem, too.
Once again, catcalling is never okay.
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