Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

Archives for April 2009

Successfully Ending Harassment

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This harassment is easy to stop. Hit them where it hurts – in the paycheck. Remember, most people have a boss.

In the early ’80’s at an ivy league college (I was a lecturer, not a student) I was harassed when my daily route took me past a university construction site. As a physics/chemistry student in the ’60’s, I’d had it with harassment.

I took note of date, time, place, exact occurrence, and the fact that I felt demeaned and unsafe (that is very important). I noted the name of the contractor (usually posted on a sign at the site).  I then went to talk to the head of Buildings and Grounds for the university, the people who let the contracts for buildings, and told him of the incidents. I made it clear that I was determined to put an end to this for myself and female students. I had to go no further, the harassment came to an immediate halt.

If you go to the boss and get no help, or are dismissed, go to their boss, and keep going up the chain. You will eventually find someone who realizes this could cost him $.

Discuss the behavior in terms of what it is: men who feel powerless trying to exert some power.

If the problem is men on the street, non workers, the only option is to go to the police with the same data and stress that you feel unsafe and threatened. If the police dismiss you, keep working up the chain of command. The police ultimately work for you and the community.

Find out what laws are on the books in your community and get them enforced.

Any effort you put in will be worthwhile in your feeling of power and of helping other women. I still remember walking past those guys at the university construction site immediately after my meeting noted above – they silently looked at me; they were now fearful of saying a word. In a few days we women passing by were simply ignored, just like the men passing by.

-KT

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Anti-Harassment Day in Egypt

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egyptian-women-protestVia GlobalVoices: April 18 has been marked as an anti-harassment day in Egypt with a call for Egyptian women to be able to move around safely in their own country.

What’s sparked this protest is the acquittal of blogger Asser Yasser‘s street harassers. I hadn’t heard about her case before and I have had a hard time finding anything about it or her in English (and google translate really hasn’t been useful). I finally found a blog post from February which told how the female residents of Asser’s household were street harassed by their new home in the Mokattam area and when Asser was too, she filed a formal report.

“On her way home, some teenagers in parked cars that reeked of hash used cuss words, followed her, tried to grab her, encircled her with their vehicles, and the poor woman and her niece felt trapped. People looked from their balconies and no one lifted a finger to help her. She called the police from her mobile phone as she stood there in utter terror and shortly after officer Mohab came to her rescue. He was almost run down by the fleeing cars.”

I can’t find any other info until the GlobalVoices entry that says the harassers were recently acquitted.

Please post in the comments if you know more about this case and/or what all will be happening on April 18 in protest.

There’s also a Facebook campaign about it, though it’s all in Arabic.

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Don’t Women Lose Too?

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anti-harcellement-banniere1As discussed before, a survey conducted by the Egyptian Centre for Women’s Rights last year found that 83 percent of Egyptian women had been street harassed and about 98 percent of foreign women reported this experience while in Egypt.

In a French newspaper The Observers, Julie Marquet, a French graduate student in history who has backpacked across dozens of European, Asian, and South American countries wrote about her experiences in Cairo. Here is an excerpt:

“I travelled to Egypt with a girlfriend of mine for two weeks in the summer of 2003. We were both 19. It’s my worst travel memory ever: Egypt is not a place you can travel to individually, especially not for two young girls!

Everywhere we went there was some hand groping us, in the street, in buses or trains… They weren’t even shy about it: they grabbed our butts, sometimes even went under our shirts! This happened even if we were careful to wear long-sleeved shirts and pants, even when it was 40°C out! We were told by Franco-Egyptian friends that women weren’t supposed to be too exuberant in public, not to laugh, not to talk loudly, not be noticeable in any way. We tried to be as discreet and invisible as possible, but that didn’t change anything.  If we lashed out angrily at them it didn’t help at all: they would just laugh and never took us seriously.”

Traveling has so many benefits, including the chance to expand one’s horizon and understanding of the human race and world, and it’s a shame women can’t have the same freedom of mobility to go to new places (or old/familiar places for that matter) as men.

Egypt is addressing the high rate of street harassment of female foreigners with a new ad, which The Observers included in their article. The video clip, “shows a typical scène of a vendor harassing a European visitor in a market. At the end, a man’s voice says: ‘If you harass visitors, you’re not the only one who loses. The whole country has to lose.'”

Hmmm. Don’t the women who are harassed lose too, if not significantly more than the men who do the harassing? Like Julie, they have lost the right to be in public without being harassed or fearing harassment even if they try to be invisible…

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Don't Women Lose Too?

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anti-harcellement-banniere1As discussed before, a survey conducted by the Egyptian Centre for Women’s Rights last year found that 83 percent of Egyptian women had been street harassed and about 98 percent of foreign women reported this experience while in Egypt.

In a French newspaper The Observers, Julie Marquet, a French graduate student in history who has backpacked across dozens of European, Asian, and South American countries wrote about her experiences in Cairo. Here is an excerpt:

“I travelled to Egypt with a girlfriend of mine for two weeks in the summer of 2003. We were both 19. It’s my worst travel memory ever: Egypt is not a place you can travel to individually, especially not for two young girls!

Everywhere we went there was some hand groping us, in the street, in buses or trains… They weren’t even shy about it: they grabbed our butts, sometimes even went under our shirts! This happened even if we were careful to wear long-sleeved shirts and pants, even when it was 40°C out! We were told by Franco-Egyptian friends that women weren’t supposed to be too exuberant in public, not to laugh, not to talk loudly, not be noticeable in any way. We tried to be as discreet and invisible as possible, but that didn’t change anything.  If we lashed out angrily at them it didn’t help at all: they would just laugh and never took us seriously.”

Traveling has so many benefits, including the chance to expand one’s horizon and understanding of the human race and world, and it’s a shame women can’t have the same freedom of mobility to go to new places (or old/familiar places for that matter) as men.

Egypt is addressing the high rate of street harassment of female foreigners with a new ad, which The Observers included in their article. The video clip, “shows a typical scène of a vendor harassing a European visitor in a market. At the end, a man’s voice says: ‘If you harass visitors, you’re not the only one who loses. The whole country has to lose.'”

Hmmm. Don’t the women who are harassed lose too, if not significantly more than the men who do the harassing? Like Julie, they have lost the right to be in public without being harassed or fearing harassment even if they try to be invisible…

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Too afraid to leave the house without men

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I’ve had very little trouble from strangers, but I think that’s because I’m excessively paranoid. I’ve been molested by three different people now, and the little street harassment I get hits very hard. I always want to be mean and abrasive, to teach them a lesson, but instead I just freeze up until I can run. But mostly people leave me alone, since I basically never leave the house without a male escort…is that the purpose of street harassment? To keep women, even lesbians, too afraid to leave the house without men?

-anonymous

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