Greetings and compliments or street harassment? Competing evaluations of street remarks in a recorded collection

Abstract

In this article I evaluate competing discourses about the meaning of street remarks – the remarks men make to unacquainted women passing on the street – in 1000 comments posted to a YouTube video of street remarks recorded in New York City in 2014. One discourse prominent in the comments posted to the video defends the remarks as civil talk, highlighting the literal meanings of remarks such as ‘Have a nice evening’. A second, less frequent, discourse characterizes these encounters and utterances as sexual harassment, citing men’s ostensible sexual intentions and personal experience. I find that (a) difficulties in articulating the ways in which street remarks are injurious may veil their harm, thus contributing to the perpetuation of male domination of women in public spaces, and (b) the close juxtaposition of explicitly misogynistic comments with interpretations of the street remarks as civil casts doubt on the sincerity of such interpretations.