Dear Prudence… Street Harassment is NOT Okay.

Via @iHollaback, I was alerted to the terrible advice that “Dear Prudence” gave regarding street harassment yesterday on the Washington Post chat. It’s reprinted on Slate.com:

Q. Catcalled: What would you say to a young women who gets catcalled often during the summer? I live in the city, and as the weather gets warmer, catcalling gets more frequent. Although I dress normally (typically shorts and a blouse in the summer), I find that I’m yelled at by old men and young men, standing on corners, driving by me, etc. It makes me tense, and now when I walk down the street, I see every man as a potential threat. It’s annoying and demeaning, but I know I can’t haul every weirdo on the street to a sensitivity class. How should I deal?

A: Wait, my dear, just wait. When I walk down the street with my lovely teenage daughter, men passing in trucks will honk their horns and make appreciative kissing sounds at her. They apparently think the prune standing next to her is deaf as well as old. Yet, their catcalls spark a vestigial memory in me—a couple of decades ago I used to hear vocal judgments from men. At the time it was annoying. Yet given their absence, I have to admit it wasn’t all bad.

Since today is apparently the “men are pigs” day at the chat, this also falls in the category of there’s nothing you can do but ignore it. And maybe a catcall is better than finding you’re being photographed and your image swapped around by horny married men.

Stop Street Harassment allies Defend Yourself and Holla Back DC! have written letters and I just sent one to her, too. Feel free to do the same: prudence@slate.com. My letter follows:

Dear Ms. Yoffe,

Via twitter I was alerted to the poor advice you gave to “Catcalled” on your advice chat yesterday. I’m appalled that you would use your very public forum to promote such damaging information. It is instances like this that make people think it’s okay to sexually harass women in the streets, even though it is illegal to do so in schools and workplaces.

Street harassment is not harmless and it is not something that young women will “miss when they’re older,” as I’ve heard older women state and you suggest. It is a pervasive problem that impacts 80 – 100% of women worldwide (including over 90% in Yemen where women are completely covered) and it is a human rights issue.

Like other forms of harassment, street harassment is bullying behavior that often happens to women who seem like a more vulnerable target, e.g. teenage girls, young women, women who are walking or taking public transportation, and women who are already part of marginalized groups like poor women or women of color. While it does tend to lessen as women age, the chance of it happening never goes away. My mother is in her 50s and continues to face street harassment. Before my grandmother died in her 80’s, she still had a few recent stories she shared with me.

Not only is street harassment pervasive but encompasses more than “catcalls.” In a study of more than 800 women around the world that I conducted for a book on street harassment, 75% of the women said they had been followed, over 50% sexually touched, over 33% been the target of public masturbation, and 25% had been assaulted by unknown men in public places.

With these figures, is it any wonder that women can feel nervous or upset at even a catcall? We don’t know which man will escalate into worse or which man will lash out at us and call us bitches, ho’s, ugly, or chase us because we didn’t “positively” respond to his inappropriate remarks.

Further, street harassment is not harmless. Studies by psychologists show that women who experience a lot of street harassment tend to engage in self-objectification, meaning they evaluate and seem themselves through they eyes of others. Women who do this are at a higher risk of depression, eating disorders, and low self esteem.

Street harassment impacts women’s mobility and sense of safety in public. Most often, in a study of 800 women I conducted for a book on the topic, it impacts their route and the time of day or night they chose to be in public, but at the extreme end, almost 10% changed jobs and almost 20% changed neighborhoods because of street harassers in the area. You can read these and more statistics about the impact on my website.

I was also disappointed that you told the woman there was nothing more she could do than to ignore the harassers. Ignoring a harasser is sometimes necessary when one feels unsafe, in a hurry, or too shocked to respond in the moment, but ignoring it doesn’t make a woman feel any better nor does it change the culture that makes it okay for men to treat women so disrespectfully in public places.

There are plenty of effective, assertive ways women can respond to harassers, they may be able to report the harassers after the fact, and they can participate in a number of forms of activism to challenge, prevent and end street harassment. Any and all of these options are far more empowering than ignoring a harasser and may prevent him from harassing someone else in the future.

I wrote my master’s thesis on street harassment as well as a book and a number of articles. I’ve given close to 50 talks and presentations and scores of interviews. I speak out on this issue in part because I’m thinking of the next generation of girls, I’m thinking of my future daughter. I want public places to be safe for them, places where they can go for a run, walk to school, take the subway or bus to work, or go out with their friends a night and not have to worry about men making inappropriate comments, touching them, or following them. As a mother yourself, I would think you’d want the same.

I hope that you will learn more about street harassment and the impact it has on women and our society and choose to give different advice the next time someone asks for it.

Sincerely,

Holly Kearl

www.hollykearl.com

www.stopstreetharassment.org