Alice Vol. 1 No. 2

advocating for catcalling awareness.
“I think compliments are compliments
regardless of the context,” Dixie
says. “However, the context can
shatter that.”
Sloan says she understands where
girls are coming from and respects
that. Some people respond to her catcall
surprised that she’s a girl, and she
says other people call her some form of
rude. Sloan’s view is that she is always
doing it to make the other person feel
good; she’s not trying to go out with
them, date them, be friends, even commit
to seeing their reaction. She gets
catcalled plenty, too — but it doesn’t
bother her. In fact, it puts a little jump
in her step, she says, even boosts her
confidence. Sometimes Sloan gets a
surprised smile and a little wave back,
and other times she says she can tell
by their laugh that she made their
day, so she knows some people share
her opinion.
“I just feel like [all] the times I’ve
been catcalled on this campus have
been [by] young men, probably in a
pickup truck, a little bit filled over the
guild, so you have boys coming out of
everywhere,” Unger says. “And I’m
not sure what their status is, but maybe
they’re all a little tipsy or going to
a party, or maybe they’re all just feeling
on edge — you know, they want to
kind of do something bad.”
Drinking, she’s noticed, and Alabama
football game days, multiply
the catcalls. Sloan personally distinguishes
the biggest difference between
street harassment and catcalling by
the amount of persistence.
“I feel like multiple instances of
calling out to somebody could be considered
harassment, where I feel like
catcalling could just be considered one
and done,” she says. The later at night
that men yell or catcall, the less genuine
they feel to her. It’s more the alcohol
talking, she says.
“But we know with our legal system,
if we put a consequence on something,
it doesn’t necessarily mean that people
don’t do it that often,” Unger says.
Street harassment can be reported
to the police specifically in Alabama
through crimes of disorderly conduct
and harassment. This includes using
abusive or obscene languages or gestures,
which falls into the harassment
category if it’s singularly directed at
someone or a group. It’s punishable by
a $500 fine or jail time for under three
months, though the latter is rare.
Usually, women just deal with it.
“They may get to a place in their own
maturity, oh you know, three, four, 10,
20, 100 years later where they go ‘Oh
man, I probably shouldn’t have done
that,’ but it’s not going to be because
someone turned around and told them
to go f—k themselves,” Dixie says.
Anger, though completely understandable,
isn’t always necessary,
Dixie says. In some cases, after safety
is secured, being capable of quickly
dismissing catcallers while genuinely
not caring what they say is important.
That way, it won’t derail from whatever
you were currently doing.
“That’s more important to me, because
at the end of the day, that person
isn’t going to matter anymore, and
you’re a powerful, intelligent, creative
and very capable individual who needs
to go on and show that dumbass that
he’s so not what you’re looking,” Dixie
says. That’s the ultimate power move.
[68] Alice April 2016