A kinder and more respectful world starts with tough conversations, and a few whiskers
By: Dawn McKee, Arts and Culture Contributor
From 12:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. on Jan. 13, 2025, Sexual Assault Centre Hamilton and McMaster’s Sexual Violence Prevention and Response Office hosted Cats Against Catcalling, a joint event in the McMaster University Student Centre.
This event tackled the issue of street harassment while offering students the chance to engage with adoptable cats from the Hamilton/Burlington SPCA. The event used a unique approach to address a serious topic, combining education with stress relief to facilitate meaningful conversations about catcalling and its impact.
The event organizers—Miranda Jurilj, Jessica Sondhi-Cooke, Rinsy Gandhi and Nada Nassar—emphasized that catcalling is a form of sexual violence, not a harmless compliment. Sondhi-Cooke explained that Canadian statistics show over a quarter of women on post-secondary campuses experience harassment, along with six percent of men. Marginalized groups, including non-binary individuals, are disproportionately affected.
Cats were a creative way to draw in people to attend while creating a welcoming environment for discussions about sensitive topics. Before interacting with the cats, students attended a presentation on bystander intervention, ensuring that they left with both knowledge and an engaging experience.
“We want students to understand that harassment is never acceptable and that they can take steps to stop it," said Sondhi-Cooke.
We want students to understand that harassment is never acceptable and that they can take steps to stop it.
Jessica Sondhi-Cooke, Peer Educator
McMaster SVPRO
The HBSPCA’s involvement also highlighted animal welfare, adding another layer to the event’s message of compassion. “We love animals, and working with the SPCA allowed us to align our goal of providing care for both people and animals” shared Jurilj.
Nassar explained that the event focused on teaching the "five Ds" of bystander intervention: direct, distract, document, delegate and delay. At the event, organizers explained how students could use these strategies to intervene safely when witnessing harassment, tailoring their actions to their comfort levels and circumstances.
“Whether it’s distracting the harasser, recording the incident, or supporting the person being targeted afterward, there’s always something you can do to help,” said Jurilj.
Whether it’s distracting the harasser, recording the incident, or supporting the person being targeted afterward, there’s always something you can do to help.
Miranda Jurilj, Public Education Coordinator
SACHA
Street harassment resonates with students, many of whom are away from home for the first time and navigating unfamiliar environments. The event emphasized that everyone plays a role in creating a safe campus culture and showed survivors that they are not alone.
“Ending harassment is possible when we work together. Every action, no matter how small, can make a difference,” said Gandhi.
Peer-led education played a significant role, with student presenters breaking down barriers to participation. Stickers and other take-home materials encouraged participants to continue the conversation beyond the event.
By combining education with engagement, Cats Against Catcalling demonstrated that small actions can drive meaningful cultural change. The event left students with tools to address harassment and a sense of shared responsibility for fostering respect and safety on campus.
By: Mitali Chaudhary
There is no doubt that, in this age of information and technology, the ease with which anyone with a smartphone can immortalize moments through video and photography is one of our most influential achievements.
The now ridiculously effortless step of sharing our content with the entire world is the truly amazing feat, however, as attention can be quickly brought to important social issues, ideas can be sent across the globe, and extremely cute cat videos can be giggled over with friends.
But such forms of media can often do more harm than good. The act of taking and sharing a single photo in an inappropriate context may result in personal privacy issues, given the number of people who can potentially view it and interpret it in different ways.
This is especially relevant in light of a recent video of a woman who missed her ferry in Victoria, British Columbia and had a breakdown at the terminal. A bystander filmed her entire tirade, then posted it on the “Spotted in Victoria” Facebook page. It took off from there, becoming viral and accumulating thousands of likes and shares.
But we can’t forget about the impact this had on the woman. By exposing her moment of stress to the entire world, she was, to some degree, stripped of her privacy. As videos and photos show only specific moments of a person’s behaviour, usually in awkward or unbecoming circumstances, it’s almost impossible to bring their situation into context.
It’s easy to sit behind a keyboard and judge the individual from the minute-long YouTube video than it is to analyze the reasoning behind their display of distress. In this case, her missed ferry could have meant missing a dying loved one, or an important dinner. This lack of context caused her feelings to be further trivialized, by the bystander himself, as the video’s accompanying description read “she had a little temper tantrum,” as if she were a toddler who has them often, and isn’t meant to be taken seriously. Everyone feels flustered in an out-of-control situation. Why mock them by recording and sharing their plight with the whole world?
This is only one among many questions that have risen along with this trend of capturing and sharing images and videos without consent. Where is the line between funny and creepy when it comes to recording someone’s awkward situation? How many views does a video have to get to start infringing on the subject’s privacy? And when is taking a photo taking it too far?
