by RAF KATIGBAK

There are a few things of exceptional note about Omar Hassan. That he is Tunisian with piercing blue eyes is certainly one; that he has a broad and infectious smile which unabashedly demonstrates his complete absence of upper incisors is certainly another.

But other things make Hassan tragically familiar. Like many people in Montreal, Hassan spends most of his time on the streets, living hand to mouth, struggling below the poverty line. Also, like many people in this town, he has mistaken me for a girl.

When approached in front of St-Laurent metro station by a toothless Tunisian asking, “Excuse me, are you man or woman?” most males would be alarmed, if not offended. Not me, I’m used to it. Happens all the time. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve been called “miss,” “ma’am” and “madame” while in line for groceries. In fact, Hassan’s inquiry was less an affront to my masculinity, and more a sign that I need a haircut.

The reasons for the unintentional gender bending are plenty: a) like most Asian males, my facial hair development seems to have stalled at six years old; b) much of my attire conforms to the whip-thin silhouette popularised by designer Hedi Slimane; c) I use words like “whip-thin silhouette;” and d) when long, my hair could possibly be described as “luxurious.”

But being mistaken for a girl can have its advantages. While I can never give birth and perhaps will never understand the appeal of Josh Hartnett, I can at least get a tiny glimpse into what it’s like to be female. In Montreal, that means I sometimes get doors opened for me; in New York, it means I get sexually harassed. Not so much dudes grabbing my breadbasket in a sudden farcical moment of realization à la “Funky Cold Medina”/Crocodile Dundee, but more street harassment, that shady area of sexual power play that includes unsolicited comments from groups of males on the sidewalk or in a car. For most girls, that includes any variation of, “Hey baby,” “Hey sexy” or “Nice (insert body part).” For me, it’s followed quickly by an, “Oh snap! He’s a dude!” when I actually turn around.

Depending on what route she takes to school, my girlfriend Sarah, who now resides in New York, averages around 10-15 comments a week. “You feel the difference between a nice complement and harassment,” she says. “About two-thirds are pretty harmless, like, ‘Nice hair.’ But one-third actually make me feel uncomfortable. It was a real shock when I moved here, because I never EVER had this problem in Montreal.”

Her friend, also named Sarah, spent the last few years in Chicago, where it’s apparently even worse. “Guys would actually pull up ahead of you in their car, put it in park and hang out of their window as you walked by, kissing or commenting at you. It was really aggressive,” she says. “It’s at the point where, if I’m watching a movie and a pretty woman walks down the street and doesn’t get harassed, I think, ‘That’s so unrealistic!’”

Which begs the question, what makes Montreal so different from Chicago or New York? In a city where the local erotic boutique has shopping carts and a 12-items-or-less lane, you’d think we’d have organized teams of dudes taking shifts ogling women on the street. Are we not the sex capital of North America? Is it a language thing? Are Montreal males just too lazy to accost women bilingually? Or is it genetic—perhaps we lack the catcall gene? It’s certain that Montreal males do check women out (we are really a European city after all) but perhaps we’re just more discreet about it than Americans.

At the end of our brief conversation, Omar Hassan told me that he would rather have moved to America, “Where you can have a good job, and make money.” For so many of the disenfranchised, America continues to hold hope as a place whose citizens, as Thomas Jefferson famously proclaimed, “Are endowed with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of... hey, nice ass!”

Riff-Raff@sympatico.ca

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