Watching the Girls Go By: A History of Street Harassment in the United States — Molly M. Brookfield in conversation with Cristen Conger

This event takes place on Crowdcast, Charis’ virtual event platform. This event is free, but registration is required. Register here – https://www.crowdcast.io/c/watching-the-girls-go-by
Charis welcomes Molly M. Brookfield in conversation with Cristen Conger for a celebration of Watching the Girls Go By: A History of Street Harassment in the United States, the first book-length history of the phenomenon we know today as street harassment.
Ogling, catcalling, wolf-whistling: such everyday intrusions from male strangers have greeted American women from their first forays into urban space. Watching the Girls Go By is the first book-length history of the phenomenon we know today as street harassment. Spanning more than a century, from the 1860s to the 1980s, this book reveals how street harassment became normalized as part of urban life and restricted women’s freedom of movement through the city.
Historian Molly M. Brookfield charts how American social and cultural discourses cast behaviors like catcalling as the natural entitlement of white, middle-class men, while scapegoating and punishing men of color and working-class men as the stereotypical–and supposedly more dangerous–harassers. She mines a rich archive of newspaper reports, popular culture, women’s writings, public policy, and more to uncover how class, race, and gender shaped Americans’ experiences of public space, including who claimed a “right” to women’s bodies, who was seen as a sexual threat, and how women fought back against harassment. Watching the Girls Go By challenges readers to reckon with how the long history and lasting impact of the seemingly trivial intrusions that constitute street harassment continue to shape public space today.
About the Author
Molly M. Brookfield is assistant professor of history and women’s and gender studies at The University of the South.
About the Conversation Partner
Cristen Conger is the creator, host and executive producer of Unladylike. Her accidental podcast career began in 2009 when she launched Stuff Mom Never Told You and co-hosted it through 2016. She’s also the co-author of Unladylike: A Field Guide to Smashing the Patriarchy and Claiming Your Space, which Kirkus Reviews called “a must-have feminist survival guide for the Trump era.”
When she’s not making Unladylike media, Cristen’s probably bingeing Real Housewives with her rescue maltipoo, Brewster.
The event is free and open to all people, but we encourage and appreciate a donation of $5-20 in support of the work of Charis Circle, our programming non-profit. Donate on Crowdcast or via our website: www.chariscircle.org/donate.
Please contact us at info@chariscircle.org or 404-524-0304 if you would like ASL interpretation at this event. If you would like to watch the event with live AI captions, you may do so by watching it in Google Chrome and enabling captions: Instructions here. If you have other accessibility needs or if you are someone who has skills in making digital events more accessible please don’t hesitate to reach out to info@chariscircle.org.
By attending our event, you agree to our Code of Conduct: Our event seeks to provide a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, age, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, religion (or lack thereof), class, or technology choices. We do not tolerate harassment in any form. Unsolicited sexual language and imagery are not appropriate. Anyone violating these rules will be expelled from this event and all future events at the discretion of the organizers. Please report all harassment to Charis staff immediately or email info@chariscircle.org.