Ruth Mair, UK, SSH Blog Correspondent
When it comes to street harassment, the use of the word “street” is seen kind of as a catch-all. Anyone who has observed harassment, or experienced it knows that the street is just one of the many spheres of public space where it can occur, and since so many spaces are so very different, there must be different approaches to combating harassment that are tailored (as much as possible anyway) to the space they are hoping to make safe and fully public.
There are a variety of ongoing projects in different cities across the world to combat the harassment of women, LGBTQ people, and any vulnerable individuals who are likely to have encountered that kind of treatment. This week I spoke to Bryony Beynon of Hollaback! London, who has been independently advising Project Guardian, British Transport Police’s (BTP) and Transport for London’s (TFL) initiative to tackle unwanted sexual behaviour on public transport, on the progress that has been made, and the work that still needs to be done.
“It’s been a really interesting journey,” Beynon told me, “although it has been slightly disappointing to see how TFL – less so BTP – are so reticent to put out a message that this kind of violence is happening across their network.”
The “Report it, Stop it” video and Tumblr Beynon calls “quite brilliant” and I am inclined to agree. TFL and BTP have clearly learned a lot from the advice and support of people like Beynon through Hollaback! London, as well as consulting with the Everyday Sexism Project and End Violence against Women Coalition. However as Beynon and I spoke it became clear that there are certain barriers still preventing a more thorough and widespread campaign.
“The ‘Report it, Stop it’ video got over 1 million views, and TFL were really pleased with that. But given that 24 million journeys are made on their network every day, wouldn’t a poster reach more people?”
Beynon explained to me that, since the video was up on YouTube as targeted advertising, there was a limit to which audiences it could reach- targeting 18-30 year old women depending on what other videos they were watching obviously excludes a significant proportion of the population that might experience harassment on street harassment, and although Beynon is the first to acknowledge that she is an activist, not a communications person, this does appear to be an unintentionally blinkered response on the part of TFL, to the issue of sexual harassment on public transport. Bearing in mind also that on TFL’s own pages concerning “Safety tips for using public transport” and “Information on reporting a crime” there is no reference to sexual harassment, or to the BTP text number (61016) specifically created for the reporting of such crimes, although there are plenty of references to taking extra care not to trip down escalators when drunk.
“It’s a really simple message,” says Beynon, but there is a clear reluctance to put such information on posters in case they scare people. However this seems to be a reflection of the perpetuation of the view that a sexual harasser is still “a shadowy man in a mac.”
“The video was great because the guy who was harassing the woman in it was in a suit, and clearly looked like a commuter. That much more accurately matches the profile of harassers from stories that we (Hollaback London) collect.” But there seems to be a block on acknowledging that sexual assault on the TFL network is no different to attacks on members of staff (some of whom happen to also be women) that TFL have also run brilliant campaigns to help prevent.
“There seems to be this idea that posters about unwanted sexual behaviour won’t work because the only people doing it (the harassing) are people who are somehow pre-programmed to do it anyway. It’s stuck in that mode, rather than realising that it’s about power and wanting to control someone else.”
However, as Beynon points out, there are many other projects similar to this that have been highly successful, and reflect a much broader approach to communicating the extent of the issue, as well as the solutions to it. In New York City, the NYPD are working with the MTA, and have messages in subway stations and on trains stating that “A crowded train is no excuse for an improper touch” along with posters and a website with a reporting tool that has been live since October 2014. In Washington, DC, SSH and Collective Action for Safe Spaces have worked with the transit authority since 2012 and their second wave of posters was up this spring saying, “If it’s unwanted, it’s harassment.”
Similarly in Boston, MA, the MBTA launched an app called “See Say” in 2012, allowing passengers to report “suspicious” behaviours- including harassment. In the UK, Nottingham’s public transit is launching an initiative called Project Regard, based on the Project Guardian model of the BTP, but have already had posters on their buses concerning unwanted sexual behaviour for quite some time. Clearly such projects can be successful, in a variety of different contexts.
However, as Beynon and I agree, sometimes that “extra push” outside of all the other messages that women receive constantly telling them that such harassment is the norm, and that they are expected to get on with their day and ignore it, could be quite significant, even to those of us who are engaging frequently with activism relating to street harassment. For all of those who are less engaged, the extra information from posters, stating repeatedly that we do not have to just accept or ignore such harassment, could be absolutely integral to their feeling safe on public transport. But hopefully this will be the next step of TFL in their campaign. This is a long term project, and affecting behavioural change is the only way to really improve the situation. TFL have made progress, with significant support and input of groups like Hollaback, Everyday Sexism, and others, but there is still a long way to go before their campaign will be on the level of more extensive ones like New York’s MTA.
If you would like to support Hollaback! London, there is due to be a call out for volunteers at some point in the next few months. Sharing stories and testimony is really important for Hollaback’s campaigns, so if you have any stories relating to harassment on public transport, or if any of this information regarding reporting is new to you and you would have liked to have seen it on posters on the TFL network then you can share your stories here.
Ruth is a human rights MA student finishing her MA dissertation on the legal and normative rights of terror suspects in the UK (spoiler alert: rights are being violated). She also plays bass in a band called Kinshot, sews as often as she can, and spends time getting annoyed at the cat sleeping on top of her computer.
