Femme De La Rue.

Sexism on the street - a documentary

The house where I've been living the past 4 year with 5 other students lays in the middle of Ghent's red light district. This might sound very odd but actually a whole mix of things are situated in this area: besides some streets with girls sitting behind glass windows and pimps driving through those streets at night there are fancy coffee bars (Ycono), closeby high-end fashion stores, the best ice-cream in town (Ferrara), popular restaurant as "El Negocito" and "The Vitrine". Not really spots where you would spot the criminal type of pimps dining.

Anyway that's not the point of this post, I wanted to talk to you about a certain type of people often wandering through these streets, a certain type of men...
After all it is still the "Rosse Buurt"  but one where a lot of students and families live as well. Needless to say, every time you step out of your front door dressed in what according to me is non-provocative clothing, men often throw not so women-friendly remarks at you. "How much is it?", or "Hi can I have your number, can we come into the house to drink some coffee?" Coffee my ass.  On top of that, if you're not responding, they throw a "slut" or "pute" mention at your head.  Although me and other girls in our house mostly laughed with these situations, situations happening rather often. Over time you notice something in your behaviour starts to change: you think twice before you step out of your frontdoor... "Will they say something when I'm dressed like this?", "Do I look provocative in these clothes ?", "Maybe I should wear pants even if it's the first time the sun hits our country this year and it's above 30 degrees celsius outside"...

I am lucky that I don't consider these remarks personally but just something "they do". So I just do or wear whatever I want, neglect comments and walk (a bit fast) down my street. In the end I just have to walk down the street and I'm in the most fancy shop area of Ghent where people don't make any nasty remarks at all.
However I can imagine this must be a heavy burden for some women who may have experienced worse things than just some insulting remarks. If you get this every single day, you've got to have elephant skin. Sofie Peeters is a young RITS student who made "Femme De La Rue", a documentary around the subject: "sexism on the street".  I was so surprised when I saw it 'cause I never realized that it's actually something that happens a lot and I never really questioned "why" but kind of accepted the whole thing. But most importantly it made me realize that as a woman I shouldn't just accept this and go with it.  So I am truly pleased that a young emancipated girl opened the debate for this rather delicate subject. Delicate ? Well it's sad to say but 80 % of the men who make these remarks to me are foreigners. So the judgement of being racist can quickly be made...

What is your opinion or experience with sexism on the street? Do you just ignore it or do you step up?

The whole documentary can be viewed here. Only 18 minutes but so worth your time.