Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

Archives for April 2011

Two heroes call out their street harassers and their stories inspire other women to be brave

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I was raised to be polite, quiet, and not hurt people’s feelings, just as so many girls and women have been, and standing up to street harassers (or any harassers) is not something that comes naturally to me. I am in awe, then, of women (and people) who just go for it, who stand up to harassers no matter what, and by doing so, make the world a better place. Today, I want to mention two of them and I consider them to be heroes.

Nicola Briggs

First, this evening, I had the honor to meet Nicola Briggs, the woman who made headlines last fall by calling out a subway pervert who had his penis out against her on the subway (a video of it went viral on YouTube). During the subway incident, Nicola didn’t think about being polite or ladylike, she didn’t worry about making a scene. She called the guy out loudly, got bystanders to help make sure he didn’t get away, and reported him to police. He was arrested and later convicted.

The Islip Area AAUW Branch in New York sponsored me to speak at their local library this evening and Nicola surprised me by coming to the talk! I asked her to share her story for the attendees and everyone was very impressed and inspired. I know I continue to be both impressed and inspired by her presence of mind and determination to make sure he didn’t harass any other woman. Coincidentally, she wrote a guest post on iHollaback today.

Second, today on the ACLU Blog, Robyn Shepherd shared an amazing story of standing up to a street harasser/sexual assaulter. She was on her way to work when a guy whacked her on her rear on the street. She chased the guy down yelled at him and called the police who came and helped her look for him. In the end, he got away, but it was still an important response. She writes,

“I’m realistic. I knew they were never going to arrest this guy. But here’s the thing, and the point to this whole long, profane story. I know there are a lot of people who think it wasn’t that big a deal. But the truth of the matter is, what this guy did was sexual assault. “Forcible touching and harassment,” if you want to get specific.

Sexual assault doesn’t always necessarily mean something as horrible as rape. And too often street harassment is unreported, and douchebags like this think they can get away with it because the girl is gonna be too embarrassed or too meek to do anything about it. Or they think it’s “just a slap on the ass.” And that’s not right, you guys. I don’t know how other women feel about their posteriors, but you don’t very well get to smack the hell out of it willy-nilly because you feel entitled to do so. There will be repercussions.

To the NYPD’s credit, they did follow up, and the detective told me that if I really wanted to press charges, she would help me do that, even if it meant looking through a lot of surveillance tape and looking at lineups and all that stuff. I opted not to, figuring that they had this guy’s description, and if he did it again, he’d be in a lot of trouble. But something tells me he’s not going to. I think I scared him. Or as the detective said, “So you ran up and confronted him and screamed at him in a bank.”

“Yep.”

“…Awesome.”

I know what happened to me could have been a lot, lot worse. But someone doesn’t have to be raped to be humiliated, violated and hurt. Sometimes, all it takes is a smack on the ass.”

Exactly.

It’s our right to be safe on the streets and the subways and buses and in stores and we don’t have to be embarrassed to call out the jerks who try to hurt and humiliate us.

Thank you, Nicola, thank you, Robyn for standing up to harassers and thank you for also sharing those stories. You inspire the rest of us who aren’t as brave to try being brave.

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“We need to change the society that lets street harassment occur”

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An op-ed I wrote about street harassment was published today by the Christian Science Monitor. Here is an excerpt, I hope you’ll read the full article!

While the prevalence of street harassment may be new to many men who read or hear about it, it’s not to women. For generations, grandmothers, mothers, aunts, and older sisters have shared tips and advice to girls to try to keep them safe from men: Don’t go out alone after dark. Memorize a fake phone number. Carry mace. Dress conservatively. Ignore them.

But it’s time to go beyond that well-intentioned advice which makes women feel less safe and often doesn’t work. Given how widespread street harassment is, those tips have the effect of limiting women’s access to public spaces. It keeps them on guard, off the streets, and dependent on men as escorts. No country has achieved equality and no country will until women can navigate public places without experiencing or fearing street harassment.

Four key steps

As a first step, everyone must acknowledge that street harassment is not a compliment, a minor annoyance, or a woman’s fault. It’s bullying behavior. The harassment is often directed at teenage girls and young women because it’s assumed they are too young to know what to do or how to respond, especially when the harasser is an older, larger man. And often the harassers are correct.

So, second, we need to give girls and women real help. We need to teach them empowering, assertive responses, self-defense, and how to report harassers. Ignoring and avoiding harassers changes nothing. It is disempowering and limiting.

Third – and perhaps most important – we must focus on potential and current harassers. We have to stop looking the other way or saying “boys will be boys” when we see harassment. Fathers, brothers, uncles, and friends need to stop trying to bond with other men through objectifying, harassing, and raping women. And just because men have the ability to access girls’ and women’s bodies through pornography, strip clubs, mail order brides, and brothels, doesn’t mean that they should.

Organizations like Men Can Stop Rape, the Coaching Boys into Men program at the Family Violence Prevention Fund, and the global Man Up Campaign all focus on healthy definitions of masculinity and teach boys and men how to respect themselves – and women. These initiatives are fantastic and need our support, and we need more organizations like them so we can reach every young man.

Finally, we need to change the society that lets street harassment occur. We must challenge comments, forms of media, and policies that disrespect and discriminate against women. We must challenge all gender-based violence and harassment; it’s all interrelated.

The problem may be massive, but each of us has the power to chip away at it right now. Learn more about street harassment, share a story, talk to someone about it, and find and share strategies for dealing with it and ideas for ending it.

If you care about the current and next generation of girls, if you support equality, if you believe in human decency, then don’t sit by. Do something.

In short, street harassment must end.

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Police officer stares, makes kissy faces at woman

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Last year, I was sitting at a bus stop and a police car was stopped in traffic right ahead of me. The policeman inside kept staring at me and wouldn’t stop. He eventually started making a kissing face at me. It was disgusting. I was 22 and he appeared to be in his 50s. I have several street harassment stories but this one was the most disturbing because it was a policeman doing the harassing.

– Anonymous

Location: Westwood, Los Angeles, California

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.

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“The threat doesn’t need to be overt to be real”

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Last spring my four-year-old son and I were taking the subway home after a lovely morning in the city. As we waited for the subway, a man approached and asked me for the time. It was only later, thinking back on the situation, that I was aware of the observations and judgments I started making automatically, not because I could foresee a problem with this specific man but because as a woman I’ve been trained to think of public spaces as hostile territory. From the second he moved in our direction, before he had done anything particularly odd, I was on high alert. Where was he looking? How fast was he moving? Could I see both his hands? Was he trying to talk to my son? After I’d given him the time, how far away did he move, and how fast?

He moved far enough away that he appeared to be about to board a different car when the train arrived. I kept my eye on him and I can’t say why I did, at first. I don’t know if there was something about the way he was standing, or if he was looking at me out of the corner of his eye, or if he was simply a man who had made contact and that was enough for me to consider him a threat.

At the last minute, he ducked into our car and sat several rows behind me and my son. In various reflections, I could see him staring at the back of my head. This is the point at which I started making plans – identifying other people on the train who could help me if it came to that, considering when I should get off the train, and what I would do if he followed me. My normal stop is near the end of the line and I hoped he would get off first.

At the next stop, though, as people exited and boarded, he got up and moved through the half-empty car to the seat directly in front of me. He sat sideways, his face maybe eighteen inches in front my own, and stared straight out the window across from me. I tried to stare him down, but he refused to make eye contract; each time I turned my own head, to check our location, or to reassure my son (who was beginning to pick up on my distress), the man would turn *his* head and stare at me. Then he would turn again to look out the window when I turned my face back.

Now I was really starting to become afraid. I think most women have mental boundaries by which we categorize street harassment, and this guy was crossing lines like crazy. Initiated unnecessary contact, check. Kept giving unwanted attention, check. Now he was violating my personal space, and the worst part (oddly) was that he wasn’t engaging. I’ve blown off my share of persistent assholes who keep trying to have a conversation I’m clearly not interested in having. This guy was escalating with no clear end in sight – he was obviously *waiting* for something, an opportunity to take some action involving me and/or my son that he wasn’t willing to do around other people in an enclosed space.

As each stop approached, the man would place his hand on the backrest and tense up, watching me out of the corner his eye, clearly preparing to follow us whenever we exited the train. Several stops before our own, I waited until the last moment, then grabbed my son and got off the train as quickly as I could. It wasn’t fast enough; the man jumped up and followed, close enough that when I wheeled and ducked into a covered bench area (with a few other people already inside), he sideswiped me. He paused for a second, as if trying to decide whether to stop or not, then kept moving. He locked his eyes with mine and stared me down as long as he could maintain eye contact.

The next fifteen minutes, waiting for the next train to arrive, where horrible. I kept checking the entire platform; I was the last to board the train so that I could be as sure as possible he hadn’t come back; when we arrived at our stop, I waited on the platform as the entire train emptied. I checked over my shoulder a hundred times on the way to the parking lot.

Writing this down still makes me shake. And why? Nothing happened. A creepy guy sat too close on the subway, big deal. The entire episode lasted less than forty minutes. It’s easy to wonder afterwards if you’re being “hysterical” or “over-sensitive”, particularly because street harassment is so often characterized as benign or just the price you pay for daring to exist in public.But I can safely I’ve never been that frightened before, and I’ve lived in big cities, and dealt with street harassment, my entire adult life. Having my son with me obviously increased my fear a hundredfold, both because I was afraid for him, and because of what it meant that the man was crossing all those boundaries with no regard for a child being involved.

Hearing the story later, my husband was sympathetic but couldn’t really understand why I was so freaked out. The women with whom I shared the story, though, reacted with total outrage. They got it. The threat doesn’t need to be overt to be real. And that’s the real cost of street harassment: women having to make a conscious threat analysis every time they leave the house, and avoiding the situations that just aren’t worth the risk of harassment or worse. It makes me sick.

– Anonymous

Location: Baltimore, MD

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.

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“Look how fat that girl is”

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I have been harassed yet again this week.

Yesterday I was walking down the street with my boyfriends mother when three boys on bikes said, “Look how fat that girl is” along with a shout of “Fatty”! I was wearing a sun dress because it was a very hot day. I felt good in this dress, now I don’t even want to wear it. That cruel remark has destroyed any confidence I had wearing it.

When I got to my destination, I was upset and other people noticed. I told them about the boys and they told me not to take any notice of them. But thats so easy for them to say. I was upset for the rest of the night.

Today I was walking past a house where there were men at work. Despite walking on the other side of the road, I heard laughter and they were all leering at me. I could not be bothered to confront them, all I could do was give them the middle finger. I’ve just had enough.

At the moment, I feel like giving up. I feel completely powerless and unable to defend myself.

I am going to join a slimming club to try to lose weight because Im sick of being judged simply because Im curvy and not a twig. Maybe then people will start accepting me instead of critisising me.

– Clarice

Location: North Cornelly, Wales, UK

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.

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