Comedian Jen Kirkman takes on street harassment with powerful retweets
Comedian Jen Kirkman turned her Twitter account into a platform for women to share their harrowing stories about street harassment on Tuesday.
Kirkman, who has 175,000 followers, has been performing in Melbourne, Australia, and said she encountered a group of men at 11 p.m. who called her a "bitch" for not answering when they said she was wearing a nice coat.
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Her tweet about the incident garnered sexist responses from some men, but many women shared their sympathy and snippets of past similar experiences. It wasn't long before Kirkman began retweeting those stories, which collectively demonstrate how street and sexual harassment are pervasive and insidious.
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Kirkman peppered her retweets with comments about how common it is for women to experience this behavior in public, at all times of day and perpetrated by men you wouldn't expect.
"I know men think it's funny to reduce this to basement dwellers but mostly they're real men we see IRL too," she wrote.
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Kirkman argued with people who insisted she fight back or stand up for herself in some way, pointing out that doing so can make a woman vulnerable to verbal or physical abuse and assault.
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She implored men to believe women when they talk about harassment and insisted they bear the burden of creating an environment and public space that's free of violence against women.
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Her message appeared to reach some men who said they never understood the extent to which women experience catcalling and worse.
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Kirkman's spontaneous retweet campaign brings new attention to a problem that's long been debated on social media. The #YesAllWomen hashtag featured women sharing their experiences of male entitlement. In 2014, a viral PSA about catcalling showed what it's like to be a woman walking down the street.
Kirkman said she decided to retweet "because it gives every woman a voice."
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Topics Gender Social Media X/Twitter
Rebecca Ruiz is a Senior Reporter at Mashable. She frequently covers mental health, digital culture, and technology. Her areas of expertise include suicide prevention, screen use and mental health, parenting, youth well-being, and meditation and mindfulness. Rebecca's experience prior to Mashable includes working as a staff writer, reporter, and editor at NBC News Digital and as a staff writer at Forbes. Rebecca has a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and a masters degree from U.C. Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism.
