Since the legislation came into effect in August last year (with support from 90 percent of the French people) police have issued 447 on the spot fines of between €90 ($148) and €750 ($1200). Loading This is how you create a community people can trust. Recognise a problem and demonstrate strong consensus on condemning dangerous behaviour. The Australian Greens recently called for similar laws in Australia. It was a little out of place in a federal election campaign when such laws would need to be introduced in state parliaments, but the intent was sound and it deserved more than resounding silence from all the other politicians currently storming the hustings. Catcalling and street harassment is not a minor issue. Anyone who thinks it is either doesn’t listen to anyone who isn’t a straight, white, cis, able-bodied man or refuses to believe the data. Or both.

The OECD data is reinforced by results from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the Australia Institute, and Plan Australia all of which found that around 90 per cent of women in Australia have experienced cat calling or sexually aggressive comments, and more than half were still children the first time it happened. A quick question I posted on my social media accounts asking women if they would like to share a story of street harassment elicited hundreds of responses in just a few hours (some of them are here). Women had story after story of feeling intimidated or threatened by men in public. Loading Erin Riley spoke about the time she was walking down King Street in Sydney's Newtown and a man slapped her bottom as he was running past to get a taxi. Tegan Leeder said she was out walking her dog one afternoon when a man catcalled her from a car. His son, who she said looked about five years old, was in the back seat laughing along. She says she went home and cried, in part because of the little boy and she felt “like there’s no hope for future generations of boys to be different”.

Other women talked about being out on pushbikes, or wearing new clothes, or going for a run; doing things that made them feel happy and good about themselves. Passing strangers would yell “show us ya tits”, “love your pink bits”, “give a smile love… f--- you bitch”, “fat c---”, "scraggy looking slut", and a litany of other degrading insults far too many men seem to think are an entirely reasonable thing to yell at a woman just quietly minding her own business. Loading Then there were the more sinister stories of men masturbating on trains while leering at a woman, following women home and waiting outside their front door for hours, grabbing women, rubbing up against them, threatening women who object to being objectified and becoming violent with women who rejected their so-called “advances”. These are the stories that paint a picture of statistics. Over and over again women recounted how it changed their behaviour.

They drive to work because they’re too scared to catch trains. They stop taking their children to parks. They don’t wear certain clothes if they’re going out alone. They don’t walk their dogs or go for a run or sit in the sun at lunchtime because too many men have made sure they know public spaces are not safe places for women. Many of them reported feeling guilt, shame, fear, frustration, rage or helplessness, sometimes a combination of all those feelings at once. Others fought back, yelling, pushing, even throwing things to defend themselves and their right to exist in public spaces, even when they knew the risk of defying entitled aggressive men. Many of them reported feeling guilt, shame, fear, frustration, rage or helplessness, and sometimes a combination of all those feelings at once. Particularly for people who have experienced trauma, this kind of threat from strangers on the street can have debilitating consequences. Feminist writer and advocate, Karen Pickering said, despite working in the field for many years, even the discussion of how often and how egregious it can be was hurtful and destabilising.