Cat-calling is an experience that most women are, unfortunately, pretty familiar with. You can be minding your own business in your yoga pants and 3-day hair and a car load of dudes will honk and ask for a kiss (to which the imagined outcome is, what, you wave them down and say yes, you would like to go on a date with them?).
So it's refreshing that (what is now widely believed to be staged) footage of a woman appearing to fight back harassers while riding her bicycle in London has captured the internet's attention.
More World News Videos
Cat-called cyclist fights back
A controversial viral video of a female cyclist retaliating after being harassed in the streets of London has now been confirmed as a fake,
Filmed by a man on a motorcycle, the video, which is currently trending on Reddit, shows the woman fending off two men who pull up in a van beside her at a traffic light. One of the men leans out the window of the van and touches the woman on her arm and asks where her manners and charm are.
Once the lights change the women pedals furiously to catch-up to the van, and when she does, she proceeds to rip the van's side mirror off and then speeds off in a glorious, angry and victorious fashion.
![Most women have experience street harassment ... it's not OK.](/web/20170224223919im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/u/j/0/i/1/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.guikqc.png/1487803282293.jpg)
The motorcycle rider, who has been filming the altercation, then pulls up to the van and tells the men, "that's exactly what you deserve you SCUM."
The video has been met with fierce debate on Reddit. Some people have admired the woman's courage in standing up to the cat-callers. Others have said that the footage showed assault, not cat-calling, and others have chimed in to share their own experience of cat-calling and harassment.
There have also been comments that the video looks fake or staged. One commenter wrote,
"On second viewing, it looks staged. The way the motorcyclist arrives at just the right time. Stays behind the cyclist. Over-the-top acting. She was quite convincing though."
Whether the video is real or not, cat-calling is shockingly common. According to the Australia Institute at least 87 per cent of women will have experienced some kind of verbal or street harassment.
"What street harassment tells women is that we should expect to pay a price for being female in public," Laurie Penny wrote back in 2012 for The Independent. "Many young women, growing up, learn that it is up to us to 'fend off' sexual harassment in public places - by dressing conservatively, taking the shortest route home, not travelling alone after dark. We learn, in short, that public sexual harassment is our fault. It's time we change to (sic) record."
6 comments
New User? Sign up