We’ve previously told you how grotesque it is that, on top of women being catcalled or verbally harassed in the street, there’s a ‘meme’ where people (blokes, overwhelmingly) go up to news presenters (women, overwhelmingly) and yell ‘fuck her right in the pussy’.
It’s a long story and it’s all wound up in a context, but even if you unpick it, it’s not really funny. But you can bet there are a few knuckle-draggers guffawing after a woman presenter was verbally harassed like this while doing a report – on street harassment.
Here’s a video of what happened, outside a conference on catcalling in Nottingham:
BBC journalist Sarah Teale gets sexual obscenities shouted at her while filming a report about harassment of women...
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on Friday, 25 September 2015
If you can’t watch right now, Sarah Teale says: ‘An online study showed that a shocking 95% of people said they’d been harassed, jeered at, or had obscenities shouted at them in the street and a large proportion said they’d also been groped or grabbed inappropriately in public.’
Then a guy, who’s manoeuvred himself out of shot, shouts out, ‘Fuck her right in the pussy’ (the first and last words bleeped out for broadcast) before Sarah, quick off the mark, exasperated, says ‘Yeah, like that.’
This has previously happened – being catcalled, live on air – to Alice Bhandhukravi, but apart from calling her harasser ‘not cool, whoever you are’ she didn’t want to speak further about it when we contacted her.
Which is fair enough – she just wants to get on with her job, right?
Sarah Teale, on the other hand, is going out of her way to call out this crap. She’s told the BBC: ‘It’s not banter, it’s not funny and no-one should have to put up with it.’
And – just like so many other sexual crimes against women (they run on a continuum, you know) – Sarah has been blamed for what happened, with commentators suggesting the incident has been staged.
To them, Sarah says: ‘It’s fairly obvious from my reaction that it wasn’t staged. If it is a craze it doesn’t make it any less offensive.’
Could this be a turning point for a stupid phrase being yelled at presenters? Or is it just another symbol that maybe it’s time for a wider inquiry into violence against women at every level?
Perhaps it’s worth finding the guy who commented on the Facebook upload of the video: ‘So a guy can’t comment a lady for being nice or looking nice? what is the world coming to?’ and very slowly explaining logic to him...
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.