Elizabeth Carr was running along Scarborough beach in Perth on Saturday, when she ran by three men who were “rating” her and other women going past.
The men, who she believes were aged in their 20s or 30s, were using whiteboards to write a score out of 10 as women went by.
“It took me a second to realise they were actually rating me and other women who ran by out of 10,” Carr told Nadia Mitsopoulos on ABC Radio Perth.
“I stewed on it for the rest of the run because I didn’t really take it all in at the time. And then on the way back they did it again, gave me another rating out of 10.”
Carr stopped her run on the way back and decided to get her phone out to film the men, who had also been whistling and yelling out to women.
“Do you know how uncomfortable that makes people feel?” Elizabeth can be heard saying in the video she provided to the ABC.
“Do your workplaces and families mind sexists?” she said.
One of the men yelled out “yeah the boys” and “I’m a feminist”.
Speaking to ABC Radio, Carr said: “I stopped, got my camera out and filmed them. I think they thought I was getting in on the joke, so they showed their faces. But then when they realised I was a bit upset…they hid their faces behind their whiteboards and continued to yell.”
She said the incident made her feel uncomfortable and angry.
“When you see something like that, that makes you feel small and scared, you sort of want to laugh it off to make everyone feel comfortable, but then I got angrier and angrier as I ran along,” she said.
“Then on the way back I decided I wasn’t going to stand for that and so I decided to say something.
“Because I thought about friends, and my sisters and other women who might not ever want to go for a run again after feeling so scared and embarrassed by these guys, and I just didn’t want it to happen to other people.”
Carr said she decided to video the men because she hoped people in their social circles would see it, and maybe use the opportunity to teach them a lesson.
“I wanted them to get called out and I wanted a friend or a family member of theirs to see it, to maybe tell them” ‘This isn’t right, you can’t do this to women’. Hopefully they might learn from it and other men might learn from it,” she said.
“This behaviour needs to get called out because I don’t think these guys know that what they’re doing makes people feel uncomfortable. I think they need to hear that from us. Otherwise it’ll just continue.”
Carr also said it would be helpful if men called out bad behaviour like this when they come across it, too.
“Men like these who can yell at women and treat them like trash probably aren’t going to get the message from women. They probably need to hear it from their peers, so it’s so important for other men to raise this conversation with their friends and call out bad behaviour when they see it.”