Who gets to walk freely in the city?
Ogling, catcalling, wolf-whistling: such everyday intrusions from male strangers 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.
Available from the University of North Carolina Press.
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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.
Praise for Watching the Girls Go By
“A well-informed examination of women’s experience of street harassment from the 1860s to the 1980s. . . . [A] fresh contribution to gender studies.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Brookfield wades through complex social changes with keen perceptiveness, demonstrating how shifting norms of masculinity shape women’s experiences of public spaces. It’s a vital feminist history.”—Publishers Weekly
“An important, scholarly feminist history of the treatment of women in public that has clear connections to the manifestations of today’s toxic masculinity.”—Booklist
“Exactly the book we need, as Americans continue to debate the implications of sexual harassment for women’s participation in public life, the racial politics of urban policing, and the timeworn trope that ‘boys will be boys.’”—Rebecca L. Davis, author of Fierce Desires: A New History of Sex and Sexuality in America
“An outstanding history of an urban practice that hides in plain sight.”—Anne Gray Fischer, author of The Streets Belong to Us: Sex, Race, and Police Power from Segregation to Gentrification
“Opening a window to an important facet of the history of sexuality, Molly Brookfield’s fascinating book illustrates how street harassment was not always accepted, was not always the norm, and was not always without consequence.”—Catherine O. Jacquet, author of The Injustices of Rape: How Activists Responded to Sexual Violence, 1950–1980
Press and Interviews
The Tattooed Historian on YouTube
“Ask Me Anything” on r/AskHistorians subreddit
“Francine and the Wolves of Wall Street” on American Hysteria podcast: portions of research cited in this episode
Molly M. Brookfield 