Another CBC reporter offers some thoughts on “punch her right in the face fuck her right in the pussy.”
It was trending on Twitter across Canada Tuesday after it happened to a CityNews reporter outside of a Toronto FC game. Except once they yelled it into her microphone, Shauna Hunt fought back. She asked them why they did it. Now the video of her confronting them has gone viral.
Hunt told them it happens to her ten times per day and I don’t doubt it. My dad called me one evening from Manitoba because he’d seen it happen live on a broadcast — and he fumbled to explain what he heard before I cut him off and told him I knew what they said.
In the past year, it’s happened to me on College Avenue in Regina outside of Balfour Collegiate. It happened twice in one day as I tried to film promos outside of the Country Jamboree in Craven. It also happened to my male colleague, Adam Hunter, three times in one week while he covered a story at the Court of Queen’s Bench just last month. It’s happening all the time.
Remember “How do we beat the bitch?” Said to John McCain at a campaign event in 2007 – by a woman? This reminds me a little of that.
As with any job, there’s a lot of assumed ‘occupational hazards’ when you work as a reporter in the public eye and it does require a bit of a thick skin. You might be subject to unfriendly words from people who don’t like your news station, or the news station they think you’re from, or the news altogether.
I can take that.
…
But when people yell something vulgar, misogynistic and rude at me or into my microphone, I shouldn’t need to tell them it is unacceptable.
Shauna Hunt asked her hecklers what their mothers would think about them doing that. Please think about your mothers, sisters, friends and other women in your lives when you yell something that’s meant to degrade me, and all the women you’ve ever met.
My workplace is one of my favourite places in the world. Don’t subject me to sexual harassment while I’m doing my job.
Don’t do your bit to create the assumption that contempt for women is universal.
It reminds me of the vigilante “Muslim patrols” in London and Cairo in recent years. Or the ultra-Orthodox Jewish men who try to keep women away from them on buses and airplanes in Jerusalem and New York City.
These Canadian yahoos’ favorite phrase is another way of saying, “Stop being a woman in public. This is a man area!”
Yup. It’s the same thing, basically. That woman running for president? How dare she! That’s a man area!
When I started a new job a few years back (not my current job, thankfully), I was subjected to a literal pissing contest. My new supervisor and a fellow employee had taken me out on the boat to survey the lake I was going to be working on. Each of them in turn stood in the front of the boat and pee’d in the water. They then looked at me with a question, shrugged, and then laughed uproariously. It’s the same thing – this is a man’s world. If you can’t pee standing up, get out.
Wow. Just wow.
@Scr… Archivist
These Canadian yahoos’ favorite phrase is another way of saying, “Stop being a woman in public. This is a man area!”
Or in other words: If you can’t take the way that “normal” men behave, you don’t belong here. Except that an awful lot of men (possibly even the “silent majority”) are similarly uncomfortable with that kind of behaviour. Lucky for them that they are usually not the targets, so many of them find it easier just to squirm a bit and quietly seethe (kudos to the ones who do stand up and speak out).
As I’ve mentioned here before, as an electrical engineer, I’ve been a woman in a man’s world for 30+ years. But when I started, the modus operandi was “genteel sexism” in public while keeping the crude stuff private with the bros. I’m trying to put my finger on when (and why) some men have decided that the crude stuff should be brought out in the open. In discussions about “shirtgate” I saw some men assert that there should be more openness to displaying sexuality in the workplace – they considered it a demonstration of maturity. Unless one is employed as a sex-worker, I’m at a loss to understand how it can possibly be appropriate (or productive) for sexuality to be a factor in the performance of one’s job, not to mention one’s relationships to co-workers.
@iknklast
Echoing Ophelia’s “Wow”. But if you were still there, and wanted to play their silly game, you could always try one of these: http://www.shewee.ca/
I understand the “think of your mother / sister /daughter” stuff, but it always makes me angry. It should be enough to just think of women, you know, fellow human beings, and how repulsive it is to crap on anyone like that.
The way it is, there’s an unspoken first sentence. “Yeah, women are weird blobs, but you know some so you could try guessing what they mean when they let out those twittering noises that sound so much like language. Think of your mother…” etc.
It annoys me in that way if it’s the first thing said, but in this one it comes after some forthright and firm rejection, plus it says “and all the women you’ve ever met,” so I gave it a pass. [sedate smiley]
“Don’t hit that guy. He’s somebody’s brother.”
Said no one ever.
Oh, my mistake. I thought you were referring to the sexist anti-harassment practice of saying “don’t harass girls, they’re someone’s sisters. How would you feel if someone harassed your sister?”
But yeah, the “What would your mother think about that” is still not the best approach, just not as bad.
Each of them in turn stood in the front of the boat and pee’d in the water.
Wow! What an AMAZING ACCOMPLISHMENT. It sounds like they were demonstrating that there is actually one thing they can do better with that set of tackle. Leadership? Nah. Creativity? Nawp. Able to pee farther? Check. I am fucking impresed.
So are some men feeling so threatened by the decreasing importance of the sexual dimorphism of our species that they have to try to convince themselves and everyone around them that there are such inherent basic differences between men and women that the idea of seeking equal treatment and equal opportunity is misguided and doomed to failure?
Saad,
Yep someone did almost exactly that: Phrases like “I am someone’s Dad”, “I am someone’s son”, “I am someone’s husband” etc (and same deal for Mum/daughter/wife) printed on the back of a cycling jersey are a thing in Australia. The idea is to re-humanise a person who is being regarded as something less than human by those around them (in this case, by car drivers who for some reason find it a good idea to deliberately endanger and threaten cyclists… there’s actually enough of those here that the campaign makes sense).
It’s a shame that for lots of men, a female stranger seems to be not-quite-human at first glance, and a reminder that she’s a person by reminding him of a woman he hopefully loves and considers a human being,