Video of woman harassed and catcalled on NYC street goes viral

In just 24 hours, a YouTube video of a woman silently walking through the streets of Manhattan and getting catcalled and verbally accosted by countless male passersby has gone viral. It’s been watched nearly 5 million times and has now sparked a worldwide conversation about street harassment endured by women and minority groups. But the woman in the video, actress Shoshana B. Roberts, and the anti-harassment organisation that sponsored it, Brooklyn-based Hollaback!, have also received a host of death and rape threats, officials say. The two-minute video called ‘10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Woman’ shows Roberts walking silently in jeans and a t-shirt and being greeted with a variety of remarks. At one point the video shows a man who walked alongside Roberts for five minutes without saying a word, causing her clear alarm.

I wanted to empower them [woman] a bit and talk about their own personal experiences, a lot of the time street harassment is something they can’t remove themselves from.

Rob Bliss, who filmed the video from a backpack

Produced for charity Hollaback!, which is dedicated to ending street harassment, the organizers said Roberts encountered more than 100 instances of verbal street harassment within 10 hours. She endured countless other winks and whistles. The charity says women, people of color, gays, lesbians and transgenders are particularly susceptible to street harassment, which reminds victims that they are vulnerable to assault.

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