Friday, July 27, 2012

Woman of the Street

The video below is a trailer for a Belgian documentary about sexual harassment on the streets of Brussels. No one should be surprised at the culturally-enriched aspects of the experiences this woman had to endure.

Many thanks to Michael Laudahn for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:


Transcript:

0:06 Two years ago I moved to Brussels.
0:10 They say about big cities that people no longer talk with each other in the streets.
0:16 But this was not quite so.
0:21 
0:54 [male suggestion inaudible]
0:55 (F) [No] Thank you.
0:56 (M) Are you all right?
0:57 (F) Pardon?
0:58 (M) Are you all right?
0:59 (F) I'm all right.
1:00 (M) Are you heading for lunch?
1:01 (F) Yes.
1:02 [inaudible, probably suggestion to accompany her]
1:03 (F) No, thank you.
1:04 [inaudible, another suggestion]
1:05 (F) No, thank you.
1:06 (M) Whyyy? [probably more which can't be heard]
1:08 (F) Huh - yes, a little. This is molesting, in fact.
1:10 (M) Where are you from?
1:12 (F) I'm from Brussels, but this is molesting.
1:14 (F) Pardon?
1:15 (F) No phone, no.
1:16 (M) How could we be together?
1:18 (F) No thank you.
1:19 [another proposal to go to his home and have coffee, as far as I can hear]
1:23 (F) Don't you understand? I don't want to.
1:26 etc [denigrating sounds, remarks]
1:32 (Tramp)
1:34 (Whore)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I watched a documentary years ago now. The journalist Simon Dring drove all the way to India (re-creating the "hippie trail")

When he was in Islamic countries the women were harassed no end. It was really appalling. They couldn't walk down the street - one girl had to run to escape a possible rape situation.

The men were unapologetic. Dring interviewed a group of them as they sat smoking outside a shop. They saw Western woman as pieces of meat to use sexually - in the parlance of so-called feminism, as sexual objects - and that was all there was about it.

Now they're here.

And their behaviour is not a surprise.

Foregone said...

Pretty woman, walking down the street ...

Whore, tramp, slut ...

It's a cultural thing.

Anonymous said...

One of these days, one of these days...pop zoom!!!