Justice

Here's What Happens When Dads See Their Daughters Get Catcalled

August 18th 2015

Last month, Cosmopolitan used a GoPro to record women getting catcalled in Manhattan and showed their boyfriends the footage afterward. Digital storytelling network The Scene just posted a video with the same idea, only this time dads reacted to footage of their daughters getting catcalled.


The clip opens with daughter Megan and dad Joe, who does not react positively to someone leering at her.

"This just keeps on going," he says. "That just happens when you keep on strolling? Have some fucking respect. Like have some respect... How often do you think that happens? Obviously they don't say that when you and I are walking down the street. I didn't hear any of that on my way here."

"Yeah, it's usually an everyday thing," she informs him.

The footage cuts over to Leaura and her dad Richard, who starts off saying, "It's summertime, animals are out."

After watching her get catcalled, Richard comments on the large size of her purse, which he says "has a clasp on it so that she wouldn't lose anything if she had to smack somebody in the head with it."

The clip concludes with daughter Danielle and her pap Meir, who isn't offended by the remarks at first but gets angry by the end of it. After a man says "very nice" to her, Meir says, "You are very nice, I think there's no problem there."

Meir also isn't troubled when someone calls his daughter beautiful. He does, however, become uncomfortable with the footage of a guy following his daughter down the sidewalk to talk about her appearance in an over-the-top, obsessive way.

"These are all men that have to respect a young girl walking on the street, not to come so strong on her," Meir says.

When one man continuously bothers Danielle even after she says she's married, Meir expresses discontent.

"That's upsetting me now," he says. "The way he talked, there was no shame. Coming on like this on the street without even knowing the young lady... Our daughters, and [wives], and [mothers] ought to be treated with respect."

After someone behind the camera asked how Meir would have reacted to this catcalling in person, he said, "I think there would be a fist fight."

Last month, Cosmopolitan's video of boyfriends reacting to their girlfriends getting harassed on the street went viral online. Like the dads, the boyfriends were not pleased with what they saw:


The video features Tessa and Jon, who have dated for a year.

Tessa, who has thick curls, tells Jon, "The thing that happened in this [footage of me getting harassed] is something that happens all the time. Somebody will want to comment on my hair but that's just a way to get in."

Jon watches as a man follows Tessa down the street to compliment her locks.

"That's so messed up," Jon says after seeing Tessa endure repeated street harassment. "Those people are scary. It sucks. I'm glad that people are making it an issue and not standing for it anymore."

The clip finishes with couple Amy and Miguel, who cannot believe what his girlfriend faces on the street.

"You're somebody's daughter, somebody's sister," Miguel says. "I'm sure if somebody did that to their mother or their cousin, they wouldn't appreciate it."

When a man compliments Amy's tattoos, Miguel says, "I hate when people tell you that."

After a repeated harasser approaches Amy, Miguel says, "Is that the same guy as before? That's disgusting, dude, just get back to work and do your job. Don't waste taxpayers' money."

In 2014, anti-street harassment organization Hollaback! worked with Rob Bliss Creative to produce a video titled "10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Woman," which shows a young woman who is followed and repeatedly harassed while walking in New York City. The video was meant to expose just how frequently street harassment takes place:


While the clip was celebrated for depicting the ugly reality of street harassment, it was widely criticized for mostly including men of color harassing the woman. Hollaback! apologized after news surfaced that white men were edited out of the video.

"I did at the end of the video make it clear that we had people of all backgrounds who catcalled because I felt this might come up," Rob Bliss, the video director, said in an interview with Bustle. "[T]hose two guys that follow [the woman in the video] make up literally half of the video, and because by chance, they were black, now half of the video is showing black guys. That just only further demonstrates how statistically inaccurate something like this is, and how it shouldn’t be taken so literally. What if they were two Russians, or Japanese guys? Would we be saying that Russians make up half of all catcallers? That’s the problem with drawing too much from this video. It was just one girl’s 10 hour experience, composed of 18 different scenes."

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