Molly M. Brookfield, "Watching the Girls Go By: A History of Street Harassment in the United States" (UNC Press, 2026)

Molly Brookfield’s book, Watching the Girls Go By: A History of Street Harassment in the United States (University of North Carolina Press, 2026) explores

the historical, legal, and cultural history of street harassment in the

United States. Historically, Brookfield identified the "masher panic"

(late 19th–early 20th century) when reformers and municipalities labeled

male accosting of women a public problem and enacted anti-masher

ordinances or applied disorderly-conduct laws. On law and policy, the

book highlights primarily local legal responses against harassment, with

municipal codes and reinterpretations of existing ordinances more

common than coherent federal action that criminalizes mashing.

In Watching the Girls Go By,

street harassment is situated on a continuum with other gendered and

sexualized violence, with the argument that street harassment normalizes