Do We Need to Put a Stop to Catcalling?

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Recently, Hollaback’s viral video displaying catcalling has become a huge topic of controversy.

Hollaback is a group organization that tries to combat street harassment. They produced “10 Hours of Walking in New York City as a Woman” to bring awareness to the importance of putting an end to catcalling.

The catcall video was shown on CNN in an empowering debate between actress Amanda Seales, and author Steve Santagati. This video has received hundreds of thousands of views due to the outrageous commentary made by Santagati. He referred to catcalling as a “compliment,” and women and men all over the world were outraged.

” No! It’s harassment,” said Lincoln junior, Cassiopeia Jenkins-Schell when asked if she viewed catcalling as a compliment.

Cassiopeia recently created a skit on dress codes for her English class where the topic of catcalling was brought up. A student in the skit stated that she had been “catcalled on the street.”

This led to a discussion about how children are being catcalled in the streets by adults and how nothing is being done about it.

“It started in middle school for me.” Cassiopeia shared.

With such a controversial topic surfing through our communities, the talk of outlawing catcalling was bound to happen.

“It makes you feel unsafe, objectified, and threatened. Some can say it goes against freedom of speech, but if you feel threatened there’s definitely something wrong with that.” argued Cassiopeia.

On the other hand, Lincoln junior, Nancy Cazares argued, “It goes against the first amendment, and although I’m completely against it, I don’t think that would be the right thing to do. There needs to be a better solution.”

There has yet to be any laws passed on the issue of catcalling, but the issue is present in the daily lives of many people, and the time for a solution is now.