Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

Street Harassment Like It's 1999

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Today you can google like it’s 2001: http://www.google.com/search2001.html and so I googled “street harassment.” The wonderful but apparently defunct Street Harassment Project was #1, but otherwise, compared with googling the term today, there were barely any other entries. Among the few I did find was this gem – a short article from an online publication then called Children’s Express entitled “1st Person Plural: Street Harassment” from 1999. Two excerpts:

“I’m just walking down the street and there are guys, old enough to be my granddad, eyeing me off,” says Erica, 17, from London. ” I don’t know when a mid-life crisis starts but they want to get their lives in order and stop chasing teenagers.

and

Some street harassment is truly bizarre according to Gabriella, 13. “I was going to the train and this man said, ‘Do you want to go out with me?’ and I said ‘No’. He had a frying pan and he tried to hit me with it! So I started running and he followed me, saying ‘Let me fry you an egg,’ It got funny, actually.”

Heeey, so what’s changed in almost 10 years? Nothing?! Greaaat.

Do you have any good street harassment recollections from the 1990s?

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Comments

  2. administrator says

    Thanks for sharing! I didn’t see those in my google search on the 2001 site but I’ve seen them in current day searches and I love both articles. It’s so important to have men on board to help stop street harassment – go Brian!

  3. Golden Silence says

    If you’re interested in articles and stories about street harassment in the 90’s, Washington Post has a few archived articles on it. (You’d need to pay to see them, but it doesn’t cost much and they’re interesting [and saddening at the same time] reads.)