Labour candidate Corbyn wants to tackle street harassment in the UK!

UPDATE: His campaign sent me this on 8/28:

Here’s a quote we just gave to the Guardian on the women-only carriages controversy specifically: “This is one of seven policy ideas that have arisen from issues raised by women, asking women for their views on how best to deal with harassment in public spaces. These policies are all driven by the knowledge that we must tackle harassment by changing men’s behaviour, not blaming or penalising women – this is why they include proposals for better holding men to account, for ensuring women can report incidents without fear of being dismissed, and for better equipping public officials to prevent harassment. At last we are having a national debate about the problem of harassment in our society – it has been overlooked by the political and media establishment for too long. Our policy in this area will be driven by the views of women.”

The full policy doc is here: http://www.jeremyforlabour.com/end_street_harassment What it says about carriages specifically is: “Consultation on public transport: Some women have raised with me that a solution to the rise in assault and harassment on public transport could be to introduce women only carriages. My intention would be to make public transport safer for everyone from the train platform, to the bus stop to on the mode of transport itself. However, I would consult with women and open it up to hear their views on whether women-only carriages would be welcome – and also if piloting this at times and modes of transport where harassment is reported most frequently would be of interest.”

Two of the women who were involved in drafting the document wrote these articles on the subject:

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/08/jeremy-corbyns-plans-are-step-right-direction

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/anneliese-midgley/we-need-to-stop-street-harassment_b_8044470.html

Jeremy Corbyn, Labour leadership candidate in the UK, revealed his platform to end street harassment yesterday. I applaud him for doing so and see his actions as a sign that compared with just a few years ago, more people are recognizing that street harassment is a human rights violation that limits harassed persons’ access to public spaces.

In fact, this significant shift in just a few years is the topic of my new book (out in 4 days!) Stop Global Street Harassment: Growing Activism Around the World.

I support many of Corbyn’s suggestions, like running an advertising campaign about street harassment, fostering cross-sector collaborations to address the issue, and ensuring that public safety issues are represented and addressed by local and national political leaders. But he also wrote that he would consider women-only public transportation, something he said “some women have raised with me.”

While I am all for conversations around street harassment and solutions, one idea that troubles me is sex-segregation on public transportation. I write about this in-depth in my forthcoming book, but in short: it’s a band-aid solution that puts the onus on women to try to stay safe instead of challenging the bad behavior and it does not account for men’s experiences with sexual harassment and assault, which, while overall happens less, does still happen. This is especially true for men who are or who are perceived to be gay, bisexual, queer, transgender, and/or effeminate.

While I applaud any person, including politicians like Corbyn, who wants to address street harassment (and I thank him for the very kind shoutout to Stop Street Harassment for our work), I want to suggest to anyone who wants to create policy on this issue that instead of sex-segregation, we need education in schools about all forms of sexual harassment, about respect, consent, and what one’s rights are if one faces harassment. We need public service campaigns encouraging communities to not tolerate harassment and to speak out when friends, family, and colleagues engage in inappropriate behavior. And we also need media outlets and companies to stop portraying street harassment as a joke or compliment in tv, movies, songs, and advertising.