Shield

And so my headphones are my shields. They shield me from catcalling and they shield me from feelings of fear, anger, and frustration. A way to ignore and be blissfully unaware of whether someone might’ve catcalled me on my way home. But it’s not a solution and it isn’t exactly voluntary either.

Protecting and shielding are all women can realistically do in their daily lives. It has become routine, a rite of passage even for many adolescent girls. Shield yourself, and if you didn’t, don’t blame the shooter for hitting you. Shield yourself, and if the shooter still hits you, you didn’t shield yourself well enough. So, even though women cannot stop catcalling, they are treated as if they can. Even though women cannot really do anything to make it stop, they are expected to do something anyway, like putting on headphones.

For many women, headphones are therefore not just a welcome distraction after a long day, but a shield to be put up out of necessity. It might feel like a solution, but it doesn’t make anything go away. In a sense, it represents the focus on the victims of street harassment, not the perpetrator. The expectation is put on victims to adjust, to do things that will never make anything stop. They can represent the need to shift focus in the direction of the street-harassing man. A need to shift the focus toward the noise.