Jennie Ridyard.
Recently I was walking down the street, going to a funeral, when I came across a cat. It was a happy cat, long-haired, tortoiseshell-coloured, wearing a collar and tag, and sitting in a sunbeam in the middle of the suburban pavement.
I said a polite hello, not bothering it, stepping around it carefully so I wouldn’t scare it under the wheels of an oncoming white van.
But then the van slowed. A bloke – probably in his fifties – stuck his head out of the passenger window and pointed wildly, giggling, then shouted: “Pussy, pussy, there’s a nice pussy.”
I looked at the cat and I looked at this man, at his leery face, and I saw his grinning mate at the wheel, and I felt a little queasy. He yelled “pussy-pussy” again, then “look at that pussy!” before they drove off, laughing, leaving me befuddled, thrown. Was he really such a huge cat fan or … or … the unthinkable?
At the ripe old age of 47, on the way to a funeral, I had just been catcalled, quite literally. Because he hadn’t been talking about the cat, had he?
A complete stranger yelled “pussy” at me, simply because there was my groin and there was a cat, a pussy and a pussy close together – and sometimes the world hands a bloke his jokes on a platter, and who is he to refuse them?
Nudge-nudge, wink-wink, where’s your sense of humour, luv? Lucky me to still be noticed, right? I’ll miss the attention when it’s gone, right? Wrong. So wrong. I’ve been doing this walk of shame for 37 years now.
The first time I was sexually harassed on the street was when I was 10. A tall child, but still a child, I remember the feeling – confusion, shame, fear – as a carload of teenage boys slowed down to shriek words at me that I didn’t understand.
I also remember the self-doubt. What had I done wrong? I was merely walking home from the corner shop, carrying an Archie comic and a Crunchie.
And now, decades later, I felt the cold shadow of that old shame, wondering again, briefly, what I’d done to attract their abuse. This time I know the answer though: I am a female in the world, and that is enough. As my friend so elegantly puts it, (some) men think women are just a collection of holes, put together for their amusement. The pussies.
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