Another CBC reporter offers some thoughts on “punch her right in the face fuck her right in the pussy.”
It was trending on Twitter across Canada Tuesday after it happened to a CityNews reporter outside of a Toronto FC game. Except once they yelled it into her microphone, Shauna Hunt fought back. She asked them why they did it. Now the video of her confronting them has gone viral.
Hunt told them it happens to her ten times per day and I don’t doubt it. My dad called me one evening from Manitoba because he’d seen it happen live on a broadcast — and he fumbled to explain what he heard before I cut him off and told him I knew what they said.
In the past year, it’s happened to me on College Avenue in Regina outside of Balfour Collegiate. It happened twice in one day as I tried to film promos outside of the Country Jamboree in Craven. It also happened to my male colleague, Adam Hunter, three times in one week while he covered a story at the Court of Queen’s Bench just last month. It’s happening all the time.
Remember “How do we beat the bitch?” Said to John McCain at a campaign event in 2007 – by a woman? This reminds me a little of that.
As with any job, there’s a lot of assumed ‘occupational hazards’ when you work as a reporter in the public eye and it does require a bit of a thick skin. You might be subject to unfriendly words from people who don’t like your news station, or the news station they think you’re from, or the news altogether.
I can take that.
…
But when people yell something vulgar, misogynistic and rude at me or into my microphone, I shouldn’t need to tell them it is unacceptable.
Shauna Hunt asked her hecklers what their mothers would think about them doing that. Please think about your mothers, sisters, friends and other women in your lives when you yell something that’s meant to degrade me, and all the women you’ve ever met.
My workplace is one of my favourite places in the world. Don’t subject me to sexual harassment while I’m doing my job.
Don’t do your bit to create the assumption that contempt for women is universal.