A teenage girl in school uniform crosses the road to avoid the builders at the end of her road. It’s her routine now, a defence mechanism she’s learnt at the age of just 14.
She knows they’ll shout and leer anyway – as they do every day, enjoying her faint blush of humiliation.
A low pulse of panic passes through the woman out jogging, as a driver swerves close to her, beeping and shouting obscenities.
Will he follow her home? Probably not, but she’s clutching her keys a tiny bit tighter just in case.
This is all part of the fraught tectonics of street harassment that two well-known women this week claim they miss.
First former newspaper editor Eve Pollard, OBE wrote that you can be a feminist and “secretly enjoy” the unsolicited attention of strangers.
“No man is ever going to wolf-whistle at me or stare moodily at me with a hint of lust again,” she told the Radio Times, wistfully.
Then, taking things up a notch, Mail columnist Sarah Vine described her younger self as an uptight little feminist with “a sense of humour bypass” for not enjoying the “winking, thigh-patting and the occasional wolf-whistle” she encountered.
“I realise how silly I was to get so wound up about such things,” Vine wrote, warming to her role of harassment apologist.
“If I had my time again, I would accept those gestures for what they are: crude but flattering demonstrations of male admiration.”
That these women should rail against the "invisibility" effect they feel with ageing is one thing.
But to look back on street harassment with the kind of misty-eyed fondness usually reserved for Christmases of childhood past is another completely.
Ah, for the days when we were leered at in the street!
If only I could stand on the tube with my arms crammed defensively across my chest, in anticipation of that creepy guy 'accidentally' brushing against me!
Shout at me again, intimidating group of lads – it gives me such a thrill!
The constant threat of sexual harassment is like a subtle language that all girls learn at a depressingly young age.
We arm ourselves with strategies, combating the insidious, unsaid threat of lurking men and their “compliments” with a makeshift weaponry of keys, earphones (to block out the catcalls) and alternative routes.
That Vine, in particular, could hanker after this as a romantic experience is dangerously misguided.
Worse still, it endorses the very terminology that men use to justify their actions.
“Chill out, it’s a compliment!”
“You should be flattered…”
And then, inevitably, if you return fire: “Wow, frigid b**ch.”
Both Vine and Pollard are the mother of daughters (Pollard’s is TV presenter Claudia Winkleman); they surely would’ve felt a wave of fury if they’ve seen their own girls receive attention from unsolicited “admirers”.
Their mistake is to assume there’s a line between the inane, flattering “life is beautiful!” wolf-whistle we know from Italian or New York films and its more sinister, I-may-follow-you-home counterpart.
There is no division. One gives rise to the other. What makes one woman feel “secretly flattered” once, will make ten others feel uncomfortable, embarrassed, furious or terrified.
We’ve made a lot of progress since the 1970s and 1980s, when harassment – whether on the office or on the street – was a grim yet accepted part of everyday life.
We now find strength in campaigns such as Everyday Sexism and Hollaback!, which allow us to call out street harassment as the aggressive, predatorial act that it is. We have dedicated hotlines to help tackle perpetrators.
But in a country where 85% of women aged between 18-24 have experienced sexual harassment, most of us are still obliged to navigate a landscape of flagrant misogyny almost every day.
The unthinking comments we’ve heard this week endorse this unacceptable situation and breezily ignore the fact that street harassment often feels very threatening indeed.
Vine writes, “Trust me, there is only one thing worse than attracting unwanted attention, and that’s attracting no attention at all.”
If that “attention” means feeling vaguely uneasy every time we walk alone at night, we’d rather leave it, thanks.
Read More: Harmless Fun? Women Share What It Really Feels Like To Be Harassed On The Street
Read More: Street Harassment: Why 'No' Doesn't Mean 'Keep Trying'