Article
Greetings and compliments or street harassment: Competing evaluations of street remarks in a recorded collection
Discourse & Society
(2017)
Abstract
In this article I evaluate competing discourses about the meaning of street remarks – the remarks
men make to unacquainted women passing on the street – in 1000 comments posted to a YouTube
video of street remarks recorded in New York City in 2014. One discourse prominent in the
comments posted to the video defends the remarks as civil talk, highlighting the literal meanings
of remarks such as ‘Have a nice evening’. A second, less frequent, discourse characterizes these
encounters and utterances as sexual harassment, citing men’s ostensible sexual intentions and
personal experience. I find that (a) difficulties in articulating the ways in which street remarks
are injurious may veil their harm, thus contributing to the perpetuation of male domination of
women in public spaces, and (b) the close juxtaposition of explicitly misogynistic comments with
interpretations of the street remarks as civil casts doubt on the sincerity of such interpretations.
Keywords
- ‘10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Woman’,
- catcalls,
- language and gender,
- male–female interaction,
- street harassment,
- street remarks
Disciplines
Publication Date
2017
Citation Information
Benjamin Bailey. "Greetings and compliments or street harassment: Competing evaluations of street remarks in a recorded collection" Discourse & Society (2017) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/benjamin_bailey/96/