Topic: Liberal Fascism
You may have thought that cat-calling is an issue tailor-made for the Left. Does it not play right in to the feminist narrative of rape culture? But no! It turns out that Shoshana Roberts, whose urban trek became an Internet sensation, is not a feminist heroine after all. She’s an enabler of racism.
I suppose I ought to have seen this coming given the, ahem, multicultural composition of Ms. Roberts’ verbal molesters. Writing for National Review Online, Charles C.W. Cook provides a roundup of progressive commentary on this article. Here, for example, is the Nation’sAura Bogado sobbing on her Facebook page (which you should check out, the comments are priceless):
That catcalling video you all posting is deeply problematic: It perpetuates the myth of the cult of white white womanhood by literally placing this white woman in neighborhoods where men of color will be the ones who catcall (or, in some instances, say hello to) her. Doing so makes it appear as if men of color are the perpetrators of all that is bad on this planet, which can only be balanced with the exigent need to therefore save white women above all else. This stale, ahistorical association also makes invisible the disproportionate harassment that women of color face broadly from men (including white men)—and the very tangible violence that trans women of color face in particular. I'm not here for it. Please stop posting it like you are.
As a matter of fact, Ms. Roberts traversed some decidedly white neighborhoods, e.g. SoHo and Greenwich Village—as Cook points out in his piece. But even so I can see how such a video would be deeply, deeply problematic to a race-obsessed leftie like Bogado. After all, as she laments, it doesn’t depict a redneck in a hardhat harassing a transgender person of color.
But you know what I find deeply, deeply problematic? It’s Bogado’s tacit assumption, widely shared in progressive circles, that “men of color” just can’t help themselves. Trot an attractive white woman past them and they’ll act out. Or maybe it’s a way of striking back against white privilege! As Solon’s Emily Gould puts it, “Part of being honest about street harassment and creating awareness of it has to be an honest assessment of the ways this kind of harassment can be a way marginalized groups talk back to the white gentrifiers taking over their neighborhoods.”
Okay then, Emily, let me be honest about cat-calling: The men who engage in this type of behavior, regardless of race, are lowlife assholes for whose behavior there is no social, racial or ideological excuse. Now what part of that is confusing you?