How women should not accept street harassment as just a compliment

Since the beginning of time, women have been oppressed, treated as objects, discriminated
against and so on. But there is a topic that has been matter of discuss last years: Street
harassment. The street harassment has become controversial on our current national outlook.
Last year, it was approved a bill that penalize behaviors as whistling, leering, following, flashing,
public masturbation and groping among others. Despite of this, some men still say, What is the
big deal? or Why dont you take it as a compliment? and this essay pretend to demonstrate
how serious is the problem and why this kind of harassment should not be accepted has a
compliment.

As a first argument, according to a survey carried out on 2015 for the Observatory Against Street
Harassment in Chile (OCAC by the acronym in Spanish), 75% of the population in Chile has
declared themselves as a victim of street harassment, being the 85% women. This means that it is
a problem that affects more than half of the Chilean population and therefore not a minor
problem. Also, it could be deduced that the fact that a high percentage of the population
acknowledges to be a victim of this action, recognizes that it is an immoral act and deserves to be
punished, which can be demonstrated in the same survey with 90% of the people agreed.

In second place, in several testimonies collected by organizations such as the National Youth
Institute (INJUV by the acronym in Spanish) or OCAC mentioned above, it is possible to say that
street harassment has a significant impact on the lives of those who suffer from it. Those
testimonies demonstrate that many people change their behavior or routines for the fear that
previous experiences cause. They take different routes to home, are in a constant alert tension,
wear always earphones so they can keep their head down and ignore stalkers or walk with keys
between their knuckles just to feel safe. If an action like that cause feelings of fear, anger,
frustration, impotence, embarrassment or worst it cannot be considered as something good as a
compliment.

In third place, our society teach people and specially women to live with the feelings that was
mentioned above. These are so standardized that the first ideas about criminalizing street
harassment seemed exaggerated for many people, mostly men. It was in the last few years that
people began to realize with facts, statistics and testimonies that this problem was on a large scale
and that women are not overreacting. A unilateral action that implies take away the privacy and
human right of another person it cannot be good. People need to become aware and empathize
with those who has been victim of street harassment.

In conclusion, an action as street harassment never should not be considered as something good
as a compliment, because it is an immoral act that affects a significant percentage of the Chilean
population, and it has traumatic effects on people who are affected by it. In addition, society must
be educated from now on so that people do not normalize these actions, since it is an important
part of radicalizing this action in the future.