Catcalling, Race, Class, and Guilt

Tonight I got catcalled on my way home from school. The man yelled (this might not have been all of it, but it’s the part I could hear) “Hey little girl! I saw you walking by today!” It was quite loud and seemed aggressive, although he wasn’t very close to me. He also catcalled me this morning and once before, last summer, with “Hey pretty lady” both times.

I realize this is minute cataloguing of relatively minor catcalling, but the thing is, I don’t get catcalled very much, because I often dress in more androgynous clothing. On the above occasions, I happened to be wearing a dress. Maybe because it doesn’t happen very often, or because I don’t expect attention from men, catcalling really unnerves and upsets me.

Tonight was the most upsetting instance, in part because this man keeps doing it, and I reacted without thinking:

“What the hell???”

I got home a few minutes later, but I continue to find this upsetting. At first I was shaken and angry, but after a while, I began to feel guilty. I was on the phone to my mom when it happened and she was of course concerned and sympathetic. She did point out, though, that it was a relatively benign comment and that the guy probably thought it was fine and is now wondering “What the hell??” himself. She suggested that I could have said something like “Please speak to me respectfully” but of course I couldn’t think of that in the moment. All of this made me feel that I handled it badly and was mean to the man.

This is all complicated in my own mind by the fact that the man is
(as near as I can tell) non-white, working class, and possibly an
immigrant as well. I am white and a graduate student and
upper-middle-class. I worried that he would think I was racist/classist.
Would I react differently if it was a white college student where I
work? As it happens, I have been harrassed by college students, and I
didn’t react, but it sure made me boiling mad.

How do race and class interact with gender dynamics? What if someone
genuinely considers catcalling to be a compliment? As my mother said,
this man (who is much, much older than me) comes from a different world
(as do we all, to an extent, but in this case the separation is
amplified by race, age, and class differences). I don’t really know and
shouldn’t guess what that world is like, but if it condones catcalling,
am I justified in reacting the way I did? There’s a limit to moral
relativism, of course, but it seems fair to say that intent counts for
something, and when that intent is (potentially) conditioned by cultural
differences, the problem seems sticker.

Or is this just a big pile of liberal guilt, which counts for
nothing?

In any case, I’m sorry I reacted the way I did because it doesn’t
reflect the kind of person I’d like to be: someone who defends herself
intelligently without resorting to rude swearing. Yet I find it very
hard to be that person when I feel cornered – and although I was in no
real danger this evening, my fear was real. That brings me to the other
end of the problem: that no matter what issues of intent intervene, men
do not have the right to demand interactions with women, to pass
judgments on our bodies, to intrude on our (psychic) space. My initial
feeling, after I yelled at him, was “Maybe I should have been polite,
but he doesn’t deserve politeness.” I feel guilty, but also angry that I
feel this way, because women always bear the burden for social harmony.

When does someone deserve politeness? When is intent an excuse? How
do gender and race/class interact in this scenario? How might I have
handled it differently?