Street harassment isn't funny. Recently, a video of a woman being catcalled in New York went viral, and the response was horrible.
Sasheer Zamata, a comedian, actress, and writer who is currently on the cast of Saturday Night Live, made a hilarious bit about being harassed by a man who offered to walk her home at 5am and, when she refused, flashed her.
"I was just trying to be nonchalant about it. I just turned down his dick like he was trying to sell me a cd or something," Zamata jokes.
Zamata's comedy is spot on in this bit. She tells the story of her harassment from her perspective, and then she imagines what her harasser was thinking — how he might justify it to himself. But there's a moment in the video where the joke drops, and you can see how unnerving the experience was. "What was I thinking?" she asks. "I should have gotten into a cab or called the cops immediately. He could have followed me home."
Zamata ends with a riff on how the interaction was "short and sweet, everyone was honest with their... feelings." Her point here is brilliantly subtle. There is no short, sweet, harassment. It doesn't matter how polite a man who says "here's my dick" or even "good morning" is. It's all about intention.
