(This is an excerpt from an interview I did with a psychiatrist about mental effects of catcalling on females.)
According to Kathy O’Keefe, a psychiatrist at the Palm Cottage, sexual objectification in regards to street harassment was first defined in 1997.
The definition of sexual objectification, which O’Keefe says is a result of street harassment, is the following: occurs when a woman’s body, body parts or sexual functions are isolated from her whole being. With increased exposure to street harassment, it is possible for women to only see themselves as their body parts.
“A woman will think, I’m breasts, I’m hips, I’m for his pleasure, that’s my function. Then there’s all sorts of mental illness and mental health issues that can come out of self objectification. They’re very real mental health issues,” O’Keefe said.
These mental health issues include: depression, body shame, reduced productivity, appearance anxiety and eating disorders. In extreme cases, a woman being subjected to street harassment can also lead to PTSD. If a woman was exposed to sexual objectification constantly growing up, it is possible that she would associate a word or phrase a catcaller shouts at her with a painful memory from her past. This trauma can bring on PTSD and anxiety attacks when she hears street harassers.
Unfortunately, there is not much we can do to stop this rising problem besides continuing to raise awareness and keep the conversation going. In terms of women dealing with street harassment, O’Keefe has three key tips.
“First: Talk to other people about it- blogs online, conversations in person, places where you can interact with other women, sharing your experiences. Talk to them about how you feel,” O’Keefe said, “Second: Share strategies with each other. Let other women know how you deal with it effectively.”
“Third: Find support. Look for support tools, things you can read. Bring it up to the college. Ask them: What can we do about it as a community?” O’Keefe said.
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Big snaps my friend. it was really smart to talk to a psychiatrist about catcalling and sexual harassment because you can get a lot of anecdotes from almost any woman, but having actual facts helps back up any claim you make. I just wanted to point out that a lot of the sentences seem to be broken apart while there are others that remain in paragraph form. don’t know what your essay is going to be structured like, but it just seemed like something I would bring up here.
Thank you! I just copied and pasted from a word document and realized it screwed up the formatting. I promise that was not intentional!
Thank you for catching that; I just copied and pasted from a Word document so I did not even notice. It should be fixed now! And yeah, I definitely got a lot of insight on the problem by talking to a professional.
I didn’t know that there had been studies conducted on the psychological effects of catcalling. That’s very interesting. I wonder what the data set looked like, where they got their subjects, is all this self-reported by the data set, or what. As a woman I have been catcalled a few times but never to the point where it did me any harm. In my own head, I put the problem back on the callers– how immature, do you think that’s attractive, etc. It must be very strange to be so affected by the words of strangers to the point where you start seeing yourself differently. I applaud this research because mental health of all kinds needs to be pushed forward, out of the shadows and denial of its reality. I know this is an older post, but good work, Nic.
Thank you so much! The full piece is six pages long and was a final project I did for a Newswriting course. I didn’t publish the whole thing here because of its length and I wanted to keep the interviewees confidential. But it goes through interviews with five college students who have experienced mental effects in differing levels of severity with catcalling. Where I lived for a few years was kinda in the deep south and it was worlds away from where I live now up north. The atmosphere was way different when it came to catcalling; it got super aggressive and I was a victim of it a few times a week at least whereas now I rarely experience it. I definitely think the average female does not see it as a big deal or have mental effects; it was only really like that because of the area I lived which was quite unsafe and known as a town for people getting drunk, which prompted lots of the catcalling. Thanks so much for your comment; I really enjoyed reading it! 🙂