In the same way one piece of litter once is considered polluting, the idea is that approaching a person once is considered a kind of harassment. It's not what one individual does, it's the net cummulative effect of many.
Unfortunately that's not true. Harassment is a continued effort by one or more people once it's known it's unwanted. If they don't know and have no way of knowing, it's simply NOT harassment.
But you admit there are limits and these limits are arbitrary depending on culture. Shouting insults or harassing a woman were not crimes years ago. You must admit we are discussing an arbitrary line so declaring an absolute right is pointless. All rights have limits.
I don't believe there are limits except for the case of threats.
This is victim blaming. The same could be said of any crime. In some cultures just being an attactive girl alone is enought to get called at, add a male companion and they leave her alone, how unfair is that?
Please realize that your definition of victim blaming means you're saying someone did something wrong because of what another person did. Correct? Now realize the point I'm responding to is that what a single person said could be considered harassment or not based on if other people before them did it too.
See the point I'm trying to make here? If those other people never said anything, then what the one person does wouldn't be harassment, but if they did, then the same action is harassment.
The mentality that allows for victim blaming is the same as the mentality that allows for calling something that's done ONCE, harassment.
Not so. The habit and culture of catcalling or insinuative greeting is both intimidating and validates a stalker. If you allow "well hello there" you can't stop "nice ass" so you also can't stop "nice ass" from one metre away and now it's a matter of statistics to get her ass grabbed, this is what is happening. The guy that said "well hello there" from across the street contributed to an atmosphere that enabled an ass grabbing. The "it's only words" argument is very bad, there are many restrictions to words (slander, false declarations, etc).
No, just no. That's slippery slope. It's a logical fallacy and I'm not going to touch on any of that except the last part.
The "it's only words" argument is very bad, there are many restrictions to words (slander, false declarations, etc).
All of those are civil issues, not criminal. When those happens, it's up to the target to sue. And it's good that you mention slander and false declarations, because they all share one thing in common, spreading misinformation. If someone with a nice ass walks by and the person says it's a nice ass, they're telling the truth. The only truthful speech that has any legal issue is threats.
We already discussed this. The objective of a poster like this is to create awareness, not enforce an action. If you saw an official street sign that said "meat forbidden beyond this point" you'd take it differently. The poster just creates thought. Some people on the fence might move one notch and eat less meat, those that already don't eat it might feel invited to explain why and others will ignore it but not be amazed if someone comes across as a vegetarian. The anti-harassment campaign is lowering tolerance a bit, in a large community, to something that bothers a lot of people. I am not sure you have undergone constant and repetitivd street harassment, I have and I understand why it's best if it's discouraged.
A more analogous poster would say in an area where meat is already discouraged, "Remember, if it was alive, it is meat." The problem with the poster is it's expanding a definition to incorrect and unrealistic standards in which way too many innocent behaviors fall under the definition.
Think that just this discussion is the product of the poster. It works.
Unfortunately it doesn't. (Assuming you don't cat call), it's making two people who don't, and wouldn't cat call discuss it, one because they agree with it, and one because they don't. I guarantee that anyone who would catcall, would not be having this discussion, which brings me to one of my original points that it's just insulting to people who don't.