Being catcalled by strange men while going about one’s daily business remains an unfortunate reality for women, even in 2023.
But one, at least, managed to come out on top – leaving a construction worker “humiliated” after she was subject to his unsolicited street harassment.
TikTok user Daphne Berry – who posts under the handle @berridaph – went viral on the social media platform after sharing the encounter, drumming up more than 3.7 million views.
“This man just catcalled me out the front of a construction site,” Ms. Berry said in the clip.
“And so I yelled back at him, ‘Sorry, I don’t have any change!’”
Her swift response left the culprit smarting, to say the least.
“The way that all the men on the construction site started laughing at him and pointing at him and made him feel so s–t,” Ms. Berry said.
“It’s that simple, [just say], ‘Sorry, don’t have any change’.”
More than 2000 people took to the comments to congratulate Ms. Berry – saying they’d also use her method the next time it happened to them.
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“I love this definitely trying,” one wrote.
“AHAHA yes! I’m using this line,” a second said, while a third commented, “Oh my god this is GREAT.”
Others shared their own methods, with one woman writing her favourite thing “is telling them to say something funny when they tell me to smile”.
“They always look weirdly confused,” she added.
“I just reported men of a construction site to the company, and all 5 guys I got in camera catcalling were removed from that site,” another shared.
The comment that got the most attention, however, was sadly this one: “I’d do this but I’m not ready to die.”
To which dozens of other women wrote that when harassed by strangers, they “just smile back cause I too, don’t want to die”.
The Stand Up Against Street Harassment report, released last August, found that 78 per cent of Australian women have experienced street harassment in public spaces.
Of those, 97 percent of women said they use strategies to avoid such situations.
