An effect-based test makes the same words an offence or a compliment depending on who hears them

The argument

A second argument concerns workability. If whether conduct counts as harassment depends on how the person addressed felt about it, then identical words spoken on the same street are harassment in one case and welcome in another, and the speaker cannot know which until afterwards. Opponents argue that rules of public conduct have to be followable in advance. A standard that can only be applied once the hearer's reaction is known is not a standard that tells anyone what to do. The difficulty matters, opponents say, because approaches between strangers are how a great deal of ordinary life begins. Conversations, friendships and relationships all start with somebody speaking to somebody who did not ask to be spoken to, and the speaker rarely knows how it will land. A test that reclassifies the unwelcome instances as harassment after the fact makes every such approach a gamble on the hearer's temperament, and opponents regard that as both unfair to the speaker and useless as guidance. The alternative they propose is a line drawn around conduct a person can recognise as wrong before performing it. Following someone, blocking their way, persisting after being asked to stop, and explicitly sexual remarks about a stranger's body are all identifiable in advance, and all of them are objectionable on any account. Opponents conclude that this is where the line belongs: it protects against what people actually fear, it asks nothing unreasonable of either party, and it does not require the speaker to read minds.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Those who disagree answer that the unpredictability is overstated. A speaker who genuinely cannot tell whether shouting about a stranger's body will be unwelcome has an easy remedy, which is not to do it, and the fact that the behaviour is almost never directed at someone able to answer back suggests the reaction is anticipated well enough. They add that most rules of conduct require the actor to judge context, and that this one is no harder to judge than the rest.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Welcome and unwelcome are not evenly distributed, and the premise treats the reaction as unknowable where it can reasonably be anticipated, which is why the behaviour is aimed at strangers rather than at colleagues. [Rejecting P2] Rules of public conduct routinely require judgement about context and about who is present. Nuisance, offence and provocation all turn on effects the actor is expected to anticipate rather than to know. [Rejecting P3] That clearer categories exist does not show the line belongs at them. Each was itself contested before it was recognised, which is the position this question occupies now. [Rejecting C] Conduct recognisable as wrong in advance need not exclude catcalling, since a speaker who pauses to consider whether a stranger wants to hear his assessment of their body can recognise the answer beforehand.