Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming
The Peruvian government officially passed the law against street harassment that the Congress approved earlier this month.
Meanwhile in Panama, Ana Matilde Gómez, an independent member of Panama’s National Assembly introduced a bill that would criminalize street harassment. It would also outlaw bullying, stalking, racism and all forms of sexual harassment. It also calls for developing public policies aimed at preventing these problems.
It can be hard to find your place in a movement when you’re not part of a bigger group or organization. At Stop Street Harassment, however, we value the participation of everyone, whether you’re a giant international nonprofit or just one person in a small town. And International Anti-Street Harassment Week is the perfect time to start getting involved. Here are some things you can do as an individual:
1) Learn more – It’s cliché, but true: change starts with you. Are you curious about street harassment, but don’t really understand why it’s a big deal? Do you know your friends would ask questions if you started talking about it? Take a little time to look through our resources and toolkits, and you’ll be prepared to start a conversation wherever you go!
2) Talk about it – This is probably the simplest thing you can do, but always important. Post your thoughts and opinions to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram with the hashtags #EndSHWeek or #streetharassment. We want to hear from you! Don’t forget to change your profile picture or cover photo with one of our great graphics. You can also participate in one of our many tweetchats and Google hang-outs scheduled throughout the week!
3) Cover your neighborhood – Help yourself to our extensive collection of graphics and posters, in various languages. Print them out, hang them in coffee shops, libraries, telephone poles, or hand them out. Girls Speak has also developed an awesome series of posters and infographics meant for posting in public spaces – post and then share them with @GrlsSpeak and @NoStHarassWeek. Another easy way to get involved is to arm yourself with sidewalk chalk and cover the streets in positive or anti-harassment messages.
4) Write it out – We know you have something important to say. Our movement is dedicated to sharing a wide variety of voices and perspectives – and that includes you! If you’re interested in writing a guest post, send it over to submit it here for consideration. Are you serious about getting your op-ed published in a paper? The first three submitted will receive complimentary editing and advice from our founder Holly Kearl. Also consider writing a letter to the editor at your local newspaper, independent or college publications, posting on your blog or social media and more. Join our virtual Write-In to receive daily writing prompts and tips on getting published!
5) Join International Wheat Pasting Night – By now, many of us have seen and fallen in love with artist Tatyana Falalizadeh’s compelling Stop Telling Women to Smile images. On April 17th, she will be making these posters available to anyone who wants to participate by hanging them in their own towns! Stay tuned for more details on this.
6) Join a local organization – Did you know that over 100 organizations in 30 countries are partnering up with us this year? Peruse our list and find someone in your area! Shoot them an email and consider showing up to an event or meeting. Are you a student? Reach out to a like-minded student club (feminist, womanist, LGBTQI+, social justice, etc.) and ask them if they’re involved with Anti-Street Harassment Week. If they’re not, give them some pointers on what they can do! Need help finding a group near you? Email bpurdy@stopstreetharassment.org and we’ll help you out.
7) Create art – We think art is one of the most powerful tools in creating social change. Whether you’re painting a mural in the middle of town or sketching something out in your bedroom, we would love it if you shared with us so we can help you inspire others!
8) Start your own organization – You’ll be surprised how many people are just looking for someone to start something. Start a campus club, meet with people at a downtown coffee shop, join together other people in your profession – whatever works for you. You know your town best – you’re the best person to make a change! Be sure to refer #2 to find tools that will help you start up.
9) Join us year-round! – We’re a volunteer-driven organization, meaning we’re always in need of enthusiastic volunteers. If April is an especially crazy month for you, check out this list of ways you can get involved with Stop Street Harassment!
10) Donate – This is last on our list for a reason. We aren’t in this to make money – Anti-Street Harassment Week is about action, not dollar bills. However, we know that this is how some people prefer to help out. Your donation will help fund much-needed things like our website update and Safe Public Spaces Mentoring Program.
Questions? Email bpurdy@stopstreetharassment.org!
Stop Street Harassment and SlutWalk D.C. took a stand outside the Chinese Embassy today for the five Chinese women who are now on day 17 of their detention. They were detained simply for planning to distribute information about sexual harassment on the transit system….something that SSH advocates people do and do ourselves. NOT OKAY.
Have you signed the petition yet? http://tinyurl.com/md7rfmc #FreetheFive
Tara Willoughby, Canberra, Australia, SSH Blog Correspondent
For many Australians, cars are a huge part of their lives. Around the country, you’ll find ‘Ford families’ and ‘Holden families’. And like many other pursuits in our society, being ‘into cars’ is a strongly gendered affair – cars are for men. Car culture is perhaps most visible during large public events centred around cars. It is also at these events that more insidious aspects of car culture can be seen, including street harassment. While there is debate about whether there are increased rates of harassment around these events, I will look at two events in particular: the Clipsal 500 in Adelaide and Summernats in Canberra.
The Clipsal 500
The Clipsal 500 is a round of the V8 Supercar Championship Series and takes place over 4 days at the start of March in Adelaide. As well as the race itself, there are a large number of other ‘attractions’ during the event, and it forms part of Adelaide’s ‘Mad March’ celebrations.
In 2009 and 2014, YWCA Adelaide ran the ‘Women’s Safety Survey’ after hearing from young women members that they felt unsafe in the city while the race was in town. Of the almost 400 respondents in 2014, 90% said they felt unsafe at the Clipsal, and 60% said they had experienced an incident around the race that made them feel unsafe.
It has however been questioned whether there truly is an issue of harassment at the Clipsal. Critics point to the lack of a spike in reports to police of harassment and assault during the event, the participants from other Mad March events being in the city at the same time, and the theory that increased numbers of people in the city would actually make it safer (although there is no evidence proposed to support this theory). It is also notable that much street harassment is not of the type people feel the need/ability to report to the police.
Summernats
Summernats is a car festival held over three and a half days in Canberra each year. Like with the Clipsal 500, many women feel unsafe during this event. A colleague of mine described her friend’s experience of being continuously harassed and yelled at to ‘take your top off’ – a shout that has been noted at the event for many years. This year alone many women used social media to complain of sexual harassment around the event.
Police regularly report low or no arrests and reports during Summernats. A further example of the shortfalls of police reports as a metric for measuring street harassment at Summernats comes from 2008, when a mob of 400 men aggressively surrounded and harassed a number of women over several hours and yet police were not involved. That year’s Summernats was described by Police as quieter than the year before. Another mobbing incident was alleged in 2011.
What can we do?
Even assuming that street harassment is no worse in and around car-specific events than in the rest of Australia, there is still an onus on organisers to make their events safe for women. Not only is it good for business, but preventing violence against women is everyone’s responsibility.
So what steps can be taken? To start with, we know that messages from society at large matter. Messages that are disrespectful towards women, messages that support inequality between men and women, messages that have strong distinctions between men’s role and women’s roles, all lead to the perpetration of violence and unhelpful responses from people who witness violence. This is a well-established fact [pdf – see especially page 18]. It’s high time that car event organisers think carefully about the messages they are sending to participants.
Activities solely devoted to appraising women’s appearance are present at both the Clipsal 500 (the bikini parade) and Summernats (the Miss Summernats Beauty Pageant). Likewise both events feature various promotional (female) models and ‘grid girls’. Meanwhile, in 2015, the vast majority of winners at Summernats and all drivers lined up at the Clipsal 500 were men. There’s so much that could be done to change this one-dimensional image of women as inactive sexualised objects and men as serious participants. Welcoming women into traditionally male-dominated arenas is a goal that has received a huge amount of support in Australia, including creation of fantastic research and practical tools. It is also important not to disregard the important place of ‘inactive’ elements like models. There is absolutely no reason why men should not also be welcomed into these areas. Indeed, they can add talent in this area just as women add talent as ‘active’ participants.
Most importantly, street harassment (and sexism and violence more broadly) is an issue that needs to be talked about inside car culture, not just by feminists and academics. These behaviours are simply unacceptable, and there is so much that can be done to change the social structures that allow them to happen. Even just starting the conversation makes a difference.
Tara works with AWAVA (the Australian Women Against Violence Alliance) indulging her love of social media. You can find her on Twitter as @angelbird72 or @Tash_Because or being silly as one half of the ‘slice-of-life’ podcast Heaps Funny But.
Simona-Maria Chirciu, Bucharest, Romania, SSH Blog Correspondent
This is a call for book chapter submissions. The topic: Sexual Harassment – Lived Histories & Street Harassment as a Urban Discrimination
Remembering and writing about personal experiences of sexual harassment is sometimes easy and maybe other times it is very hard. But either way, it is good to speak up for yourself and make your experiences matter!
I want to present to you two interesting projects in Romania that aim to tackle sexual harassment and urban discrimination against women.
1. One of them is an editorial project and before the 1st May 2015, you can send your contributions, regardless of your origin country or your gender.
We all have a sexual harassment history (unpleasant, of course!) so I want to share with you some important information about a call for book chapters. I’m very pleased with this project and I’ve already submitted my contribution. I really think there is importance in sharing with others the hard and heartful experiences of sexual harassment so we can raise awareness about this problem. As most of us know, sexual harassment comes in many forms (street harassment, workplace harassment, school harassment) and happens all the time. We are not its victims, but its survivors and need to act as such!
So, “Sexual Harassment. Lived Histories” is an editorial project that aims to gather and uncover sexual harassment experiences for women and men in Romania and the world over. The purpose of this collective volume is to enhance the visibility of sexual harassment stories and experiences worldwide and to offer a framework of its causes, effects, need for proper and viable solutions.
I really think that sexual harassment in general and street harassment in particular are invisible problems, so we need to put some light on it! I invite you to read the call for book chapters and write down, if you want, one or some of your stories! Let your own voice be heard. Your voice matters! This is more than a reflection exercise and is emotionally healing as well.
Let’s raise awareness on sexual harassment together, despite the distances and differences between us! Deadline for this call is 1st May 2015. For more important information, you can find information here.
2. The other project is “Urban Discrimination” and it was created by two feminist NGOs from Romania, Bucharest – FRONT Association and Society of Feminist Analyses AnA. The project is open to people who want to participate actively and it aims to respond problems such as “Is the Capital of Romania an European city who pays attention to gender equality problems, inclusion, diversity? Is Bucharest a sexist, homophobic or transphobic city? Is it a city safe for girls and women of all ages? Are women represented in the public-urban space? Are they finded in the collective memory of Bucharest?”
We all know urban spaces are not safe places! The Urban Discrimination site has a map where women can pin the places where they were sexually harassed and share their experiences for raising awareness and to make this problem more visible.
I only can say I am glad that in Romania feminists are present and working hard in addressing and stopping sexual harassment! We must work and fight for our right to be safe and free!
Simona is the Vice President of a feminist NGO – FILIA Center and a PhD student in Political Sciences, working on a thesis on street harassment in Bucharest. You can follow her on Facebook.
