Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming
Sasheer Zamata is SNL’s newest cast member. She’s tackled street harassment in her comedic work in the past, and I look forward to seeing what new perspectives and content she brings to SNL! And I hope next year, ALL the new cast members SNL hires are persons of color to make the representation more reflective of our country’s demographics.
H/T Soraya Chemaly
I’m so excited to announce that Patrick Ryne McNeil has agreed to join the SSH board of directors!
I first met Patrick almost three years ago when I spoke to his class at George Washington University, where he was a master’s student in the same public policy/women’s studies program I went through a few years earlier. Soon after, he submitted a street harassment story to the SSH blog and decided to write his master’s thesis on the street harassment of gay and bisexual men, a groundbreaking topic.
Since then, he’s written for the SSH blog, been featured on the blog, and we’ve collaborated on events and focus groups. In addition to being a smart and compassionate person, I am excited he will bring so much knowledge about the street harassment of gay and bisexual men to the board and to SSH’s work.
Meet Patrick:
A native of Pennsylvania, Patrick Ryne McNeil works in communications at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, where he writes on a range of social justice issues. After completing a bachelor’s degree in English and Communications with a minor in Sociology at Marymount University in Arlington, VA, Patrick went on to The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. for a master’s in Women’s Studies, where he wrote his thesis on the street harassment of gay and bisexual men. Patrick has written for the Huffington Post, Washington Blade, Feministe, Fem2.0, Role/Reboot, and the Stop Street Harassment blog, and was awarded SSH’s Safe Public Spaces Trailblazer award in 2013 for his street harassment-related work.
“I am beyond excited to start working with Stop Street Harassment in this more official role and to join a board with so many incredible activists. While I’ve helped in the past year with tweet chats, blog posts, and a focus group, joining the board has already sparked within me an even greater passion for organizing around this issue and affecting meaningful change.” ~ Patrick
Welcome, Patrick!
Trigger Warning!
Men assaulted a 16-year-old girl in a town near Kolkata, India, on October 26 and then the day after, as she walked home from the police station after reporting the first rape, a group of more than six men attacked her again.
Friends of the men she reported to the police set her on fire on December 23 and she died, pregnant, on New Year’s Eve. She was able to reveal who the perpetrators were before she died and police made their arrests, although at first they covered up the information and tried to rule it a suicide. They also tried to force a cremation of her body.
USA Today reports: “In Kolkata and New Delhi, the nation’s capital, hundreds of women and their supporters took to the streets in protest Thursday and later held candlelight vigils.”
Her death comes a year after the fatal gang-rape of a 23-year-old woman in Delhi that ignited a firestorm worldwide and led to Parliament enacting tougher anti-rape laws.
Street harassment, sexual assault, gang-rapes, and murder: no person should be subjected to any of these crimes, yet so many people, especially girls and women, are. The slow, incremental change we are seeing is not happening fast enough for my liking. We need continual pressure and outcry and revolution.
Speak out. Create change. Challenge sexism, harassment, and violence.
Resources in India: Jagori | Blank Noise | Breakthrough
Phew, 2013 was a banner year for SSH as we expanded our programs and network of volunteers.
We have few initial goals going into 2014, and I’m sure more will come up in the coming weeks. If you have suggestions for what else you’d like us to do, please let us know!
1. Get the 1st-ever national study on street harassment funded and the national report done!!! (You can donate to help make the study happen.)
2. Have three cohorts of volunteer blog correspondents whose members each write four monthly articles. (Applications are due on Monday for the first cohort.)
3. Run a successful International Anti-Street Harassment Week, March 30 – April 5. (Find out how to participate.)
4. Make SSH language and work more inclusive of the various populations that face street harassment. (Look for an announcement on Monday that is a first step toward this goal.)
5. Work with 10 Safe Public Spaces Mentoring Sites.
We look forward to working with you this year to make public places safer for everyone!
Someone just tried to pick me up in the grocery store by smiling and saying, “Excuse me, you’ll probably laugh at me, but you’re slim and attractive and I was wondering if it would be possible to get a date with you,” and when I smiled back and said, “No thank you,” he said, “Sorry I don’t have white skin” and walked away quickly. Too quickly for me to have responded, and even so, I’m not sure what I would have said.
Do I just chalk this up to a wounded society that contains wounded people and carry on? Was he on some sort of misguided consciousness-raising mission? Should I have said, “Calling a stranger slim is not an appropriate comment, and also no, thank you”?
Honestly, before he finished his sentence I thought he was mentioning slim as a strange lead-in to asking me for help with vegetables, as we were in the produce aisle.
– Anonymous
Location: Whole Foods on Prospect Street in Cambridge, MA
Share your street harassment story for the blog.
Check out the new book 50 Stories about Stopping Street Harassers!