A street harassment activist has petitioned the government to make catcalling a punishable offence. Farah Benis is the founder of Instagram account ‘Catcalls of London’, an account that collects and publishes accounts of such incidents onto Instagram.
Working in London Fields, Benis reports that most of the abuse reported to her site from that area occurs at night. Of the reported incidents based in London Fields to her Instagram, nearly half have contained non-consensual touching and one third included being followed for more than a minute.
Benis herself has received threats of violence for running the account, but she is undeterred. Galvanized by the street harassment laws enacted in France in August 2018, which led to 447 fines being handed out in the first eight months, Benis said she hopes the UK follows suit.
Created two years ago, this Instagram account is dedicated to sharing people’s stories of being harassed on London’s streets. Inspired by the ‘Catcalls of NYC‘ instagram that was started by Sophie Sandberg two years ago, Benis reached out and got permission to launch London’s version.
“The format really resonated with me. I just thought it had the opportunity to be so impactful. So I got in touch with Sophie, and I was the second account. There are now two hundred accounts worldwide.”
When someone writes in, Benis will then go to the spot where the abuse occurred and write the words that were spoken on the concrete in chalk on the sidewalk.
“I don’t know any woman who doesn’t have a story like this,” said Benis.
“I’ve been working with Safe & the City, which is a great app, and together we’ve been combining our statistics to look at the bigger picture around London, rather than all of us having our own piecemeal bits of information. It’s far more powerful when we’re all together.”
The report, together with Benis’s collected statistics, will be released publicly before the November deadline to submit parliamentary petitions.
