Julka Szymańska, the Netherlands, SSH Blog Correspondent
Street harassment is a global issue and the Netherlands is no exception, but to this date many people treated it as a fact of life, a minor inconvenience for women, who “should just take the compliment”. But street harassment is not a compliment and it can be a very large, scary inconvenience; the Dutch public is, fortunately, starting to wake up to this notion.
To speed up this awareness and fight the problem, the website Straatintimidatie (the Dutch word for street harassment) was created, alongside a citizen’s initiative that calls for penalizing street harassment with fines.
If you’re a Dutch national, you can still sign the initiative here and if you master the Dutch language, please give them a like on Facebook or tweet with #straatintimidatie on Twitter.
I had a conversation with founder Gaya Branderhorst to find out more about this important project:
J: Could you please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about the team behind the website Straatintimidatie.nl and the accompanied citizens’ initiative against street harassment?
G: My name is Gaya Branderhorst and I’m from the Netherlands, but recently moved to New York for a new job. Before I left — approximately a year ago — I started a project against street harassment, which in this case is a citizens’ initiative requiring 40,000 signatures. This initiative primarily consists of a proposed bill that would punish the sexual harassment of women in public with a fine. At the start of this project I surrounded myself with a small group of supporters, for example: an attorney who wrote the bill itself, a person who manages the social media etc. As well as a well-known Dutch comedian (Soundos el Ahmadi) and an emeritus professor of Human Rights (Cees Flinterman).
J: How did this initiative came about exactly?
G: The team behind the citizen’s initiative against street harassment consists of both women and men, the gender ratio is about 50/50. This was a conscious decision on my part, because street harassment overwhelmingly happens to women, but the harassing is dominantly done by men, so to solve this problem we need men as well. Men should speak up against other men who harass women and tell them to stop this behavior. We also see that almost half of the people who sign the initiative are male. You have to understand that the majority of Dutch men do not condone street harassment, it’s the minority of men who harass the majority of women.
J: I’ve seen a video on YouTube you made in which a group of women turn the tables on random men on the street by catcalling them and asking them how this made them feel afterwards. What a funny, witty action! How did you come up with it?
G: The idea of ‘reverse catcalling’ isn’t entirely new, the Dolle Mina’s (a prominent feminist group during the Second Wave of feminism in the Netherlands) did this too. As I understand it, they did so for different reasons, mainly for laughs, is what a former Dolle Mina told me. But we did it after hearing the commentary of people questioning “if catcalling is really that bad? Isn’t it complimenting women’s beauty in a way?”
So we figured we could turn this around in order to showcase that men don’t find it complimentary to be catcalled either. It turns out we were absolutely right about that: you can see in the video that virtually none of the men are pleased about it, they don’t experience it as a compliment either. And for good reason, because catcalling truly isn’t a compliment at all, it’s a vicious phenomenon that people often don’t see for what it is: harassment. Street harassment is worlds apart from getting a respectful compliment and it honestly surprised me to notice how many people are confused about this. But by reversing the dynamic it suddenly becomes a lot clearer that street harassment is unpleasant. So that’s why we created the video.
J: The Dutch often pride themselves in their liberalism and emancipation of women and minorities, but an initiative again street harassment is clearly still necessary. So, what’s the deal with this country?
G: On one hand the Netherlands are doing relatively well in terms of equality in comparison to some other countries. So in a way that’s true, for example: same sex marriage is finally gaining more ground in the United States (at time of publication we’re happy to report that the supreme court of the USA has decided to lift the ban on same sex marriage last month) and we already had that for quite a while of course. The same goes for women’s right to choose for an abortion, that’s not that big of a deal anymore in the Netherlands either. In a lot of things we are ahead of other countries, even other Western countries, but as a consequence, the danger looms that we as a nation start slacking off. That this so called “tolerant attitude” digresses to a sort of indifference, which is something entirely different than tolerance.
Especially when it comes to the rights of women, this tolerance often turns into a “whatever, been there done that” mindset. And that’s increasingly visible in the realm of women’s rights: there are quite a few things in the Netherlands that are contradictory to the notion that men and women are equals. These things include the wage gap, the amount of women on top of the corporate ladder and the prevalence of domestic- and sexual violence against women and girls to name a few. And of course street harassment, something so many women have experience with. If you take a look at the women in our team, they all have had to deal with street harassment, which is part of the reasons why they’re in our team in the first place. This goes for the women who sign our initiative as well: some of the stories they tell in the comments they leave us are outright shocking.
I don’t understand why –with all out tolerance and progressiveness– street harassment isn’t more of a priority in Holland.
J: What’s in store for the future of this citizen’s initiative against street harassment and the situation surrounding street harassment in the Netherlands in general?
G: Last year I was a guest in the television talkshow Knevel & van den Brink and one of the other guests at the table just happened to be Minister of Social Affairs Lodewijk Asscher, that was a happy coincidence. I was asked if street harassment really is such a significant problem in the Netherlands and my reply was that I think it most definitely is. I told them that every woman I talk to struggles with this sometimes, but that we can’t be 100% certain, because there are no statistics on the matter. Looking at the minister for this paid off, because by now a nation-wide study has been carried out. So even though the proposed bill isn’t far enough in the process yet, we can see that the public debate on street harassment is catching on, something I’m glad about.
On top of that we’re also talking with Member of Parliament Achmed Marcouch about the issue, hopefully this leads to results as well. In our neighboring countries street harassment is a hot topic too, we’re not the only ones in Holland. Belgium for example has already implemented a law against street harassment and France and Egypt are on the same track. Both internationally and nationally things are happening to combat the problem, I think there’s a growing consciousness about street harassment. But if it will be enough? I’m not sure, from my personal, subjective perspective: I don’t see the instances decreasing. There is still plenty of work ahead of us
J: Thank you so much for this interview.
G: You’re very welcome.
Julka is a 25-year-old feminist activist and soon-to-be Cultural Science student with a generous amount of life experiences -including street harassment – and even more passion for social justice.
