A Word on Catcalling 

Antonia King

Hey Freshers and returners! I remember that when I first came to university the cat calling and street harassment was a bit of a shock as I grew up in a very small town where it was less of a problem. So, I thought I'd do a little piece on street harassment in case anyone of you are in a similar position, or have just moved off campus and will have to deal with Egham hill a bit more often, or just want to read about about why cat calling sucks.

There are so many reasons cat calling is awful and there's also many people who will explain it better than me here, but I'll give if a go. Essentially cat calling is just reminding someone they're a sexual object. It's as if we should think, 'Oh, I was just going about my day to day life. I had forgotten for a second that my sexual appeal was the most important part of my existence, thank you for reminding me kind cat caller.' Not to mention that cat callers often reduce the object of their affection to body parts, boobs and bum being the most popular choices *rolls eyes*. To quote my most recent experience, one man decided to tell me that my 'ass' was so big he could see it from space. Now, no ones actually been to space to check for me, but I'm pretty sure he was exaggerating. All of this gives the same impression that magazines and tabloids do, that women are primarily there for the use of men and for sex objects. This is also part of the reason why boobs are used to sell everything from cars to groceries, but women are told breast feeding in public is disgusting, but thats a whole other thing. 

The major reason why I personally hate cat calling is because of how it makes me feel. It makes me feel like I've done something wrong. As much as I know I shouldn't blame myself, I do always end up thinking 'well this dress is short' or 'maybe the heels are giving the wrong impression'. It also makes me feel unsafe, particularly if I'm on my own. It's the reason I spend a lot of my money on taxi's and not walking at night instagramming pictures of at the moon (which I love to do). Cat calling makes me want to hide, and that is a problem. Trust me when I say that is their issue and problem, not yours! I like to say something back, for my own pride I guess. I'll often shout 'no scrubs' as I'm a massive TLC fan. Or I'll sometimes just run after a driver who beeped me shouting something like "I love you too!"- they look terrified. This being said, only do this if it is safe to do so, eg when you're with someone or in a busy location. Cat calling can sometimes lead to more dangerous behaviour such as following, which unfortunately I guess some of you are already aware of. So as much as you shouldn't have to moderate your behaviour because of harassment, do stay safe lovelys! There is no right way to respond, if you shout back then thats fine, and if you put your head down and walk fast away from the situation then thats fine too. 

*Serious bit coming up*. 

What is also important to note is that this is part of a wider problem. Unofortunately men are kind of taught they have an entitlement to women's bodies everywhere (that being said I have of course met some amazing gents who are more clued up on this than me). This isn't some complex radical feminist or misandrist argument, it's pretty basic stuff. Video games, language, the delightful Robin Thicke all help to make this stuff normal and all contribute to this feeling of entitlement. Even rom-coms do it (and I love my rom-coms). Guys are taught, even in romantic movies, that if she doesn't say yes, chase her or jump on her fayre ground ride (looking at you Gosling, my future husband)! When men are taught that "you know she wants it" and rape jokes are on main stream television shows, shouting at women on the street is seen as no biggy. Also, there's many reasons why most women don't talk about this more. For one, it's often seen as so normal that it doesn't need to be discussed. It happens so much, why even bring it up? It's nearly always treated as just a part of life. Also, alarmingly, if a women talks about cat calling experiences it can feel like bragging, cause all male attention is good right? Male attention is what girls are taught to want and compete for from a young age, with 'female' toys and games being based around makeup, beauty and 'getting the guy'. So why is this male attention bad? This is why you'll often hear the word compliment used in relation to cat calling. No! 'That's a nice dress' is a compliment, so is 'you look nice'. Commenting on body parts and shouting isn't a compliment, ever, it's just really creepy. So, if you do ever experience cat calling please know that you are entitled to feel however you want to about it. You may be told to stop 'humble bragging' when discussing it, or you may get told "well you do look fab tonight', but please know it isn't okay! Also, talk to any of the lovely SU support staff (Sid, the co-president for welfare and diversity is always here to help!), or of course fem-soc if you feel the need too. 

Sending love!

aj 

xx

Choice: The Patriarchy Matrix

Image: Two shiny pills, one red, one blue

Trigger warning: discussion of genital surgery, offensive sex worker tropes and stereotypical beauty

Since I was elected as the SU's Women's and Marginalised Genders' Officer, is has become almost impossible for me to go a day without discussing feminist or otherwise political issues. I talk extensively to both people who are roughly on the same page as myself and those who have very different opinions. I try to explain my point of view rationally and calmly and put in my best effort to empathise and understand other's views. It's not always easy, but I think that's what we owe each other.

The recurrent theme over the last ten days or so has been the importance of 'choice' or 'free will'. An interesting example of this is that because women choose to have cosmetic surgery it's none of Feminism's business and those of us who think it's often harmful should go back to burning our bras, thanks very much. On the flip-side, all of feminism is based on enabling choice, accepting all voices and not dictating good and bad. Occasionally, this means I get stuck between a rock and a hard place, and no simple answer in sight.

Why? I'll try not to get too existential on you, but this is the question I often come up against: Do we, or do we not, we have free will? Are our choices completely our own? Spoiler alert! Probably not. The argument goes that we are essentially a sophisticated machine - our 'wiring' (genetics, childhood,...) is meant to pre-determine how we respond to any given situation. We have awareness, but all our thought processes and actions are a result of our previous life and genetic material. 

Imagine your brain is spread out over a pool table in the form of pool balls. The order, number, colour of the balls is due to your genetics and previous experiences. For some reason (chance, god,...) a red pool ball drops into the middle of the table, hitting some other balls, and setting of a chain of collisions and movement. Some balls ricochet off the sides and crash into others, some drop into the pockets, some are completely unmoved. If you record all this and play it back slowly, you can see that everything that happened was due to the position of the balls at the start. The black ball was already teetering at the edge of a pocket, the green ball was missed by the red ball by a few centimeters. If the red ball had been slightly further left, it would have hit the green and possibly not affected the black. Etc. This view is called determinism.

Determinism is difficult to deal with in our society, because he hold people accountable for their actions. We obviously couldn't do that if we accepted we had no free will. So let's 'zoom in' a bit and just say that it doesn't matter whether we have a free will or not - in the sense that the we can move our pool balls around ourselves without outside interference: Choice.

I know, I know. Bear with me.

So, what remains? The fact that we all have a certain set-up before something in the world happens to nudge (or make us choose to nudge) our marbles pool balls. If we grew up being told that there are no black swans, we'll choose to assume that any black swan we see isn't a swan. If we're taught it's not alright to steal, we'll choose not to take anything without paying for it. And if we're taught we should be a good person and that a good person helps others in need, we'll choose to give money to charity or support a friend going through a rough patch.

Now imagine we were taught that there are only two genders and they depend on what genitals you were born with. Imagine we were taught that people who have sex for money are bad lowlifes, full of disease, and to be avoided at all cost. And imagine if we were taught pretty women have a BMI of 20, symmetrical faces, small noses, white skin, medium to large tits, long hair and hairless legs... Us women would feel bad if we had small breasts, or a big nose, or dark skin, or love handles and we would perhaps choose to pay someone to 'fix us'. Because we've been taught being pretty is important and good.

As Nimco Ali from Daughters of Eve said at the recent ULU Sexpression event: "No woman just randomly wakes up in the morning and goes 'I think I'd like to cut off my labia today'. And yet thousands have labiaplasty every year." Without porn, without recurring, harmful portrayal of women and other marginalised groups in the mainstream media, making the choice of taking a scalpel to perfectly healthy parts of ourselves would seem ludicrous. That kind of behaviour only appears to make sense if we are trying to achieve an ideal. Unfortunately, that ideal is a fictional construction propped up by a desire part us from our money.

So. A fight for feminism or a triumph of freely-made decisions? You tell me. The one thing discussions over the past two weeks have made clear to me is how much getting active in Feminism is like Neo taking the red pill in the movie The Matrix. Once you've seen the Matrix, you can't unsee it, and you notice it everywhere. The difference between The Matrix and the real world is that once we see the Kyriarchy Matrix, we can all be Neo.

Alexandra Sophia, 2013-2014 Secretary