It happens to Whitney Howell, Leawood senior, when she’s jogging alone near her house in downtown Lawrence. Groups of men drive by, honking, whistling, doling out what are disguised as compliments. “Hey baby, lookin’ good,” is a common one she hears. One time, a car circled around the block three times in a row, each time the eager driver and passengers barking out some variation of that line.

It happened to Ashley Wills, Overland Park sophomore, while on breaks from work at Hollister at the Oak Park Mall. Groups of guys, varying widely in age, would regularly hoot and holler. “Nice ass,” is a line Wills has almost grown accustomed to hearing when she’s alone and walking past a group of men. She says over time she tried to adjust what she wore to work to try to discourage the attention, avoiding the low-cut shirts and tight pants that Hollister preferred her to wear. It wasn’t very effective.

And it happened to Leah Foster, CUNY law student, one New York City afternoon. It was two weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks when a man several stories up in an apartment building yelled down to her. “Hey, pretty lady. You should smile. Show me that smile,” he shouted. Foster ignored the comment, somewhat enraged that someone would feel compelled to tell a stranger to be happy, to look pretty for him. “Show me a pretty smile,” the man yelled down again.

“For all he knew, I could have lost my mom or something in the terrorist attacks,” Foster says. “It had nothing to do with me. It was all about him. He was denying that I could have feelings and that I am a person.”

Nearly all women have been put in similar situations. Earlier this month, I was outside my apartment at around 1 a.m. in my pajamas – an oversized maroon T-shirt and baggy shorts – taking my dog out to go pee, when a group of guys approached me. Two of them walked on by after a casual wink, but one remained. He asked to pet my dog. Then, as if there was nothing strange about it, he said; “You’re lookin’ fine. Could I maybe get your phone number?” I just stared at him before spewing off some reason that I had to go back inside. I don’t understand. In the same tone of voice that he used to ask to pet my dog, this stranger had felt comfortable enough to tell me I was hot and to ask for my number. Would it have been impossible for him to mind his own business while my dog was doing his?

What happened to Howell, Wills, Foster and me is called street harassment. Women encounter such catcalling on an almost daily basis, be it in big cities or in smaller towns such as Lawrence. In Laura Nielsen’s 2006 book about street harassment, License to Harass, 62 percent of women she surveyed during her research said they experienced street harassment on a near daily basis. But Nielsen, a sociology professor at Northwestern University, says that the most eye-opening number is how men responded to the same question. Of those she talked to, only 13 percent of men thought that women were getting street harassed on a near daily basis.

The obvious gender disconnect may well be one of the reasons catcalling continues; it’s stacked up as something that comes with the territory of being a woman. In 2000, three New York City women, fed up with being hounded, formed what is now called “The Street Harassment Coalition,” a New York-based organization dedicated to raising awareness of the long-ignored issue. Foster joined the group a couple months after its creation, motivated to retaliate after experiences like that Sept. 11 fiasco. She is now its media liaison. The coalition’s goal is to get men and women talking about the issue of street harassment. “We feel like we can change this. A lot of behaviors change over time or are erased from society. We feel like this can, too,” Foster says.

Men are essentially socialized to do this. The vast strides women have made in recent years in the workplace and in the home are remarkable, Nielsen says, but little progress has been seen in the public spheres. Because male dominance has been challenged in many arenas in modern-day society, men still seek to assert their power over women, Nielsen explains. “Male dominance is ever-present,” Nielsen says. “When they feel like they’re losing power, they reassert themselves. Street harassment is a carryover of that.”

While she admits that women catcall, too, Nielsen says that her interviews and research have shown her that men and women do not experience being catcalled the same way. The act of street harassment and catcalling reinforces gender hierarchies, she says, and carries with it an often-implicit threat of violence, whether the men are aware of it or not. “Men will never be able to understand what women feel like when walking alone down the streets,” Nielsen says.

In 1998, filmmaker and social activist Maggie Hadleigh-West tried to change that with her film “War Zone.” Hadleigh-West carried a hidden camera around in four big U.S. cities—New York, San Francisco, Chicago and New Orleans—and caught men in the act of street harassment. She questioned them aggressively on-camera about their sexist comments, and allowed them to see their behavior from a woman’s perspective. The Department of Defense now uses the film as a tool for teaching the U.S. military about sexism, according to Hadleigh-West’s Web site, www.yomaggie.com.

So how do the perpetrators see their behavior without the aid of a hidden camera? “It’s usually just showing off with friends, having a good time,” says Marc Kingston, Overland Park sophomore. Kingston says he does not catcall or street harass, but has been in the car when his fraternity brothers have hooped and hollered at females anywhere in the vicinity. The behavior usually has less to do with the actual woman, he says, and more to do with guys showing off in front of friends,

Kyle, Wichita junior, who’s not keen on admitting publicly that he catcalls, says that after a night out with friends, he “woos” at more than a few women on his way home. He says he doesn’t really know why he is compelled to shout out. He is not motivated by a possible reaction from the woman, he says. “It’s really just for entertainment,” Kyle says. “It’s humorous, and I bet that sometimes it makes women feel good about themselves. You know they go home and talk about it. I’m sure there are some who enjoy it, anyway.”

Kyle says he has never catcalled solo. It’s always in social, and frequently drunken, situations. “What fun would it be if I were alone?” he says. “I’d turn to the empty seat next to me and be like ‘yeah, man…did you see that?’ I don’t think so.”

Through her work at the Street Harassment Coalition, Foster says she has found that often, men aren’t even aware that what they’re shouting could be considered degrading. For this reason the Street Harassment Coalition holds workshops, hoping to open the eyes of men who are self-professed catcallers. Sometimes the message gets across, but often the act is so ingrained that it’s difficult to sway in the short term, she says.

Similarly, women have become accustomed to dealing with it. “I just ignore it,” says Audrey Fusco, Wichita graduate student. “There’s not any point in caring.”

Howell echoes that approach. “By not reacting, that’s sort of my response to them. Ignoring it is best,” she says.

In Lawrence, few men admitted to me to have ever catcalled before, and none agreed to go on record with their full name. Most I spoke with actually said they thought it was degrading and trashy. Mitch Oswald, Effingham graduate student, says that he sees it happening even in his small Northeastern Kansas hometown. He compares the act to guys who listen to music loudly in cars with the windows down. “It’s just another annoying way to get attention. As far as I’m concerned, anyone who does it is a moron.”

Although she sidesteps name-calling, Fusco says she wishes men would realize how ineffective and mundane the standard catcall can be. Comparatively, when she was in Italy, she and a friend were walking down a narrow road when a fishing pole with a small piece of paper attached to it dangled in front of them. They ran over to the note, which was from an unknown Italian guy above. He asked to take them to dinner. They politely declined, but did manage to snap a photo to remember the event. “I appreciated it more than the generic catcall or honking. I don’t respond to that.”

Yet it continues, despite the apparent lack of positive reinforcements for those macho men out there. They have no real hopes of getting a purr out of the cats they’re calling, Kingston says. “I think guys know there’s little chance.”