Study after study shows that over 80 percent of women and girls have experienced street harassment, including 99 percent of women in Yemen, where women are usually covered in public places. Girls and women face street harassment while wearing all kinds of clothes: from school uniforms to business suits, from exercise clothes to winter coats, from swimming suits to party clothes.
It is clear that street harassment is not about what women/girls wear or where they go. Instead, street harassment is about disrespect, power and control, and bad manners.
Blaming people – asking what they were wearing or saying it’s because they’re “pretty” or “provocative” takes attention away from what’s really going on. It gives harassers a free pass.
Street harassment will never end until the victim-blaming ends. I am against victim-blaming.
Barbara Scott Tompkins says
Women should be heard. We have rights. It’s about damn time!