THE JOKE HE FORGETS, THE FEAR SHE REMEMBERS

There is a sound almost every Sri Lankan woman knows. Sometimes it is a whistle. Sometimes it is a hiss dragged out from the window of a bus. Sometimes it is a horn, a kiss blown from a passing motorbike, or a man calling out “nangi” as though using that word makes what follows any less invasive. The words change. The feeling does not.

For the man, it may last three seconds. For the woman, it can alter the rest of the journey. She checks whether he has stopped. She looks for another woman nearby. She memorizes the vehicle. She moves her bag, adjusts her clothes, crosses the road, calls someone, walks faster. A street that belonged to everyone a moment ago suddenly becomes a calculation. How far is the next shop? Is he following me? If I turn around, will he become angry? If I ignore him, will he come closer?

Then she is told it was “just a joke.” Catcalling is often dismissed as one of the smaller problems women face. It is not assault, people say. He did not touch her. He was only complimenting her. Yet this defense deliberately misunderstands what catcalling is. A compliment is offered with some care for how it will be received. Catcalling is imposed. It does not ask for conversation, consent or even recognition of the woman as a full human being. It is less “I think you are beautiful” and more “I can enter your day, your body and your sense of safety whenever I choose.”

That is not admiration. It is power wearing the cheap perfume of flattery. In Sri Lanka, the scale of the problem makes it especially difficult to keep treating it as harmless. UNFPA research reports that more than 90 percent of women have experienced sexual harassment on public transport, while more than one in ten women face harassment daily. Those figures are not background noise. They describe millions of ordinary journeys shaped by vigilance: bus rides taken with keys between fingers, routes changed, seats avoided, clothes reconsidered and evenings cut short.

Men and women can walk along the same road and inhabit completely different countries. One sees the shortcut home. The other sees the unlit corner, the parked tuk-tuk, the group of men ahead and the distance between herself and the nearest open shop. One gets to move. The other must manage the possibility of being noticed.

And being noticed is presented as a privilege. Perhaps the strangest question surrounding catcalling is why men do it when it so clearly does not “work.” No woman has heard a hiss from a moving vehicle, stopped in amazement and thought, there he is, the love of my life. The absurdity would almost be funny if the consequences were not so exhausting.

For some men, however, the woman’s approval is not the point. Catcalling can operate as a performance for other men: a tiny rite of passage in which masculinity is proven through somebody else’s discomfort. One-man shouts; the others laugh. A friend who stays silent risks looking timid, so he joins in. The woman becomes a prop in a scene staged for male acceptance. Her fear is the applause.

There is also the thrill of producing a reaction. A flinch, an angry glance, a quicker step; each proves that the harasser had enough power to disturb a stranger. That is why calling it a compliment is dishonest. If kindness were the intention, her distress would end the behaviour. Instead, distress is often exactly what makes it entertaining.

This behaviour does not appear from nowhere. Boys grow up watching women’s discomfort treated as comedy, persistence framed as romance and male entitlement excused as nature. “Boys will be boys” becomes a small sentence with an enormous body count of consequences. It teaches boys that self-control is optional and teaches girls that adaptation is compulsory.

So, women learn rules they never agreed to. Do not make eye contact. Do not smile. Do not be rude. Do not be too friendly. Do not walk alone. Do not stay out late. Dress modestly. Carry a jacket.

The list is endless because the logic is broken. No outfit has ever committed harassment. No time of night has rolled down a window and shouted at a schoolgirl. No woman’s decision to walk alone has removed a man’s ability to behave with basic decency. Yet after an incident, many women instinctively examine themselves before they examine the perpetrator. Was my top too tight? Should I have taken another road? Did I somehow invite this?

That is how deeply victim-blaming has entered the bloodstream of everyday life. It gives the illusion of control: if women follow enough rules, perhaps they can become unharrassable. But the price of this false comfort is female freedom. Even if conservative clothing, male company or an earlier journey reduces risk in a particular moment, safety purchased through restriction is not equality. It is a curfew disguised as advice.

Catcalling also cannot be separated from the wider culture of violence against women. This does not mean every man who whistles will commit a more serious offence. It means both behaviours grow from the same poisoned root: the belief that a woman’s boundaries matter less than a man’s desire to cross them. The street harasser reduces her to a body, disregards consent and acts with confidence that he can escape. More violent offenders rely on that same architecture of entitlement and impunity, only with graver consequences.

The threat of that escalation is always present for the woman, even if the harasser insists he meant no harm. She cannot see his intentions. She does not know whether the motorbike will keep moving, whether the stranger will follow, or whether answering back will turn embarrassment into aggression. What looks like a “small” act from the outside carries the shadow of everything it could become.

This is why silence should not be mistaken for acceptance. Women ignore catcallers because responding every time would be exhausting and sometimes dangerous. They laugh nervously because fear is not always photogenic. They continue walking because getting home matters more than winning an argument with a stranger. None of this means the behaviour was welcome. Survival has many expressions, and politeness is sometimes one of them.

The responsibility cannot remain with women alone. Public transport workers, police officers and bystanders must stop treating harassment as a private inconvenience. Reporting mechanisms need to be clear, quick and safe. CCTV at stations and transport hubs can help where it is properly monitored. Drivers and conductors need training and consequences, not vague instructions. Police responses must take complaints seriously instead of dismissing perpetrators as “crazy” and asking women to tolerate them.

But laws and cameras cannot do all the work. Culture is also created in the smaller moments: when a friend refuses to laugh, when a passenger changes seats to stand beside a frightened girl, when a shopkeeper allows someone to wait safely inside, or when a bystander interrupts without escalating the danger. Men, especially, need to challenge other men when no woman is present to reward them for it. Decency performed only in front of women is another kind of performance.

Sri Lanka likes to speak about development through skylines, highways, hotels and clean city advertisements but a country is not truly modern because its buildings shine. Development must also be measured by who can move through those buildings, streets and buses without being reduced, followed or frightened.

A woman should not need armour for an ordinary walk. She should not have to shrink her clothes, her voice, her route or her life to fit inside a stranger’s lack of discipline. She should not be trained to absorb humiliation quietly so that the man who caused it can continue his afternoon undisturbed. Catcalling lasts only seconds for the person doing it. That is precisely why it is so easy for him to forget. For the woman, the sound may follow her all the way home.