Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

Archives for March 2011

Forty years of street harassment…

By

I am a 55 year old woman and I have experienced this kind of harassment since my early teens and still do today. My daughter is 21 and has experienced this kind of harassment since she was 12 years old. We want to know why? What gives certain males the right to tell us what they feel about us as we innocently walk the public highway? I have two sisters, aged 50 and 45 respectively and they too have experienced harrassment from early ages.

The list of types of harassment experienced by just this one family group are as follows:

  1. Being followed whilst walking along – either by a single male i.e around a supermarket in Spain – trying to ‘rub up against’ me from behind as I walked around with my family (I was 14 years old)
  2. As a 16 year old – I was waiting outside my grandma’s house a car pulled up with a single older male inside who asked if I was available for ‘business’ and to get into his car – I was a schoolgirl.
  3. My sisters aged 14 and 9 years were approached as they walked up to my grandma’s house by a group of men in a car and told to ‘get in’ and one even tried to grab my youngest sis to pull her inside.
  4. My daughter, whether she wears skirts, long coats, trousers jeans whatever with or without make-up gets cat called, wolf whistled and jeered whilst walking or waiting at a bus stop. It has come to a point where she is becoming agoraphobic because of this and refuses to go anywhere alone.
  5. I walk home at 9pm most nights and have been subject to shouting from cars packed with young men, being followed twice by two men who stopped me and asked where I was going and even a man in a motorised wheelchair, followed me almost to my street, calling out to me.

It is absolutely unbelievable and only now is there a forum for us to shout about this totally unnerving and bullying offensive behaviour – and I’m sorry but only women understand about this because 99% of the time it is only women who experience this intimidating and invasive behaviour from men.

– S HAY

Location: Happens everywhere in all situations (United Kingdom, Spain)

Share your street harassment story today and help raise awareness about the problem. Find suggestions for what YOU can do about this human rights issue.

Share

“We were told we should not be out at that time of night”

By

My Girlfriend and I (we’re lesbian) were walking down the street at midnight in Swansea on a Saturday evening, a male in a car propositions us for sex and makes comments about my legs. in the end I tell him to F**CK off, he then follows us into a car park where my car was park. He only retreats when he sees and hears me call the police.

The police were not one bit interested. In fact we were told we should not be out at that time of night as if it was OUR fault! knowing a bit about how to defend myself as well as my rights, as well as what the police should really be doing I challenged him, he then backtracked and claimed that was his personal opinion.

After complaints to the police, who were still not interested, my persistence and help from my AM Edwina Hart the offender was finally given a warning.

A few weeks later we saw two police officers in a van around about the same location leering at us.. Male police officers are as bad as anyone. Just check out the number of warnings and arrests for prostitution and then the number of men warned or prosecuted for soliciting women for sex… tells you all you want to know about South Wales Police.

– Anonymous

Location: Swansea High Street, South Wales, United Kingdom

Share your street harassment story today and help raise awareness about the problem. Find suggestions for what YOU can do about this human rights issue.

Share

Foul mouth on the train in Scotland and no one did anything

By

I was sitting on a train, minding my own business, when a young kid (age about 14/15) got on and sat on the luggage rack beside me.

He was quiet for a while but I knew he was looking at me, up and down, and I became a bit uncomfortable. He then started talking to me, I ignored him, and the words which came out of his mouth were foul. He said things like, “I wonder how soft your p* is” and things which were very very very sexually explicit. I was actually mortified and almost shaking.

There were people on the train, seats in front of me, two women, seat a few up, young healthy business-like men, and I am 100% sure they all heard him. No-one did anything. Not a single person stood up and told him to F Off.. so I endured what seemed like hours (but were in fact a few minutes) of total verbal abuse. I had it in my head that if he tried to touch me I’d stick my pen through his eyeball. But that wasn’t his game.

Eventually we pulled into a station and a guard – who had been sitting 8 seats away – stood up and put ‘the lad’ off the train, all nicey nicey, gently gently. I had no idea he was even there. It was a ‘come on now laddie.. off you go’… touchy feely thing and the boy just grinned..

The ‘guard’ never once spoke to me, never intervened, before, during or after – zilch. When I got off the train I was still shaking. I actually – at 9 am in the morning – walked into a shop and bought a bottle of wine and plastic cups, went into the toilets at work and poured myself a large glass.

I think you’re just not expecting to be assaulted so publically and for no-one to do anything about it. As this site says – I am someones sister, mother, aunty & girlfriend and if communities can’t or won’t do anything to protect their own, who will?

p.s. I was on my way to help with a charity which helps vulnerable adults in the community – sick isn’t it??

– AM

Location: Stirling Train, Scotland, United Kingdom

Share your street harassment story today and help raise awareness about the problem. Find suggestions for what YOU can do about this human rights issue.

Share

14 block stalker

By

I grew up in Queens, NY, and I have a lot of street harassment stories. The most recent one happened one or two summers ago and was so frightening that it still scares me when I think about what could have happened.

I was walking on Avenue B from 14th Street. At one point I passed this big dude who made a comment; I thought nothing of it and passed on. But after a block or two I noticed that, even though I was wearing my ipod headphones, I could hear someone murmuring something. It was the dude and he kept saying “So sexy….so sexy.”

I turned off my ipod but kept the headphones in and kept walking. It was about 3 pm and a nice day with lots of people out. I didn’t want to duck into a store and let him know he’d won (stupid, I know, looking back) so I kept walking, but noticed that I could see his reflection in shop windows that I passed.

Finally, after about 14 blocks of his following me I picked up my phone, turned the corner at E. Houston and called someone. I probably should have called the cops, but I wasn’t thinking straight at that point. I watched him pass me and keep walking. I stood on that corner until all I could see of him was a blue dot representing his full ensemble of blue shirt and pants.

Looking back I would have called the cops once I reached that corner. Looking back, I wouldn’t have even waited until E. Houston and would have ducked into a hair salon or something. Thank goodness it ended the way it did.

– Anonymous

Location: New York City

Share your street harassment story today and help raise awareness about the problem. Find suggestions for what YOU can do about this human rights issue.

Share

The tide is turning!

By

In the last chapter of my book, I wrote about the need for governments, major organizations and media groups to pay attention to street harassment and address it as a form of gender violence that impedes equality.

I would never have guessed that so soon after I turned in my manuscript 15 months ago,  I would already see that starting to be fulfilled.

First, last fall, there was the launch of the United Nations’ Safe Cities Programme (which is the first by the UN to truly address street harassment) and the New York City Council’s first-ever hearing on street harassment. Those were huge developments and I know will influence what other organizations and local governments do about the issue.

And while there has been a definitive growing number of media outlets addressing street harassment, I am overcome with happiness and relief to find such well-respected, influential, and impressive groups like BBC  News and ACLU addressing street harassment – and in one day no less.

I think the tide is turning!

I hope you’ll read both articles, they’re great.

I have so much hope right now.

Share