Archives for October 2015

“Thanks for making Playa Vista a terrible place to be a woman”

October 31, 2015 By Contributor

I work at in Playa Vista, across the street from the Home Depot on Jefferson. Our parking lot is severely overcrowded, so I try to ride my bike in to work when I can. However, when I do have the audacity to ride my bike on a public street, 50% of the time I am catcalled at by day workers who congregate outside of the Home Depot. They whistle, wave, try to say hello, and generally attempt to get my attention. Somehow these men feel entitled to my attention, when all I am trying to do is get in to work.

There’s no alternate route for me to take. I am forced to ignore them, because I know that engaging them could result in threats to my safety or personal harm. This morning I had enough and tried calling the store, I explained the situation politely and was “transferred”, which meant my call was re-routed to an extension that did not exist.

How a company can be so callous about its impact on it’s surrounding community is bewildering to me. Thanks for making Playa Vista a terrible place to be a woman.

– Nicole

Location: Marina Del Rey Home Depot, California

Share your street harassment story for the blog.
See the book 50 Stories about Stopping Street Harassers for more idea.

“It was still uncalled for”

October 30, 2015 By Contributor

I was in San Francisco, California, with my family on vacation. I was walking back to the hotel from the grocery store with my mother when a car full of guys yelled out the window at me. I’m not sure what they said but it was still uncalled for, especially when walking with my mother.

Optional: What’s one way you think we can make public places safer for everyone?

When you see it happening to someone else help them by calling out the perpetrator.

– AY

Location: San Francisco, CA

Share your street harassment story for the blog.
See the book 50 Stories about Stopping Street Harassers for more idea.

Egypt: Comic Stories Against Harassment

October 29, 2015 By HKearl

Our friends at Imprint Movement, in collaboration with Al-Moltqa for Consulting and Training, launched a new anti-harassment campaign in Cario’s subways yesterday.

Their press release says:

“The campaign aims aims to communicate to subway passengers and security personnel how sexual harassment affects the entire Egyptian society and not only the girl or the woman who gets sexually harassed.

Imprint has chosen a new approach to draw attention, “Comic Stories”. The comic stories address the challenges that women face created by sexual harassment, the victim blaming culture, to what extend do women and girls feel safe in public space, reactions of the public, its reflection on her personal and professional life and how that effects the entire society. Many posters will be put up to show how the crime of sexual harassment increases when the public don’t interfere to support the girl/woman who get sexually harassed.

The comic story will be circulating around the Cairo subway, It’s Now at Al-Shohadaa, Then it will take place at Mohamed Naguib then Al-Sadat and finally Al-Attaba metro stations. Twelve posters will be put up at Helwan University station, Manshyet Al Sadr Station and Cairo university station as these station are considered to have the most activity and gets huge amount of people daily.

The launching of “What will you do?” campaign is 24th of October, 2015 and ends on the 15th of February 2016.”

Congratulations to them on this innovative campaign!

Learn more about the campaign and see photos here.

Via the Guardian: An illustration depicting a young woman’s experience on a minibus. Illustration: Ahmed Nahby/Mada Masr/Imprint

UPDATE: The Guardian has a great feature article about their campaign. Here is an excerpt:

“Imprint, the organisation behind the campaign, has been raising awareness of sexual harassment through events ranging from one-on-one conversations to workshops, co-founder Abdel Fattah al-Sharkawy explained.

He said participants – both male and female – often found they weren’t aware of what constitutes sexual harassment, and rarely related the term to their own day-to-day experiences.

‘We wanted to make that link’ through the comic campaign, he said.

The group decided to work with comics because ‘they’re catchy and colourful’, drawing people of all ages in to explore the stories they tell, Sharkawy added.

Another image from the series shows male passengers on a minibus reacting to the young woman.

‘This woman can be an influential person in your life,’ the illustration reads. ‘Sexual harassment doesn’t harm her alone, it harms us all.’

They differ from typical public service announcements because they rely on storytelling instead of propagandistic slogans, so they ‘make you think and form an opinion,’ he said.”

“This is the first time in my life when I am actually afraid”

October 29, 2015 By Contributor

I am a Latin woman living alone in The Netherlands. I speak Spanish and English, but I don’t speak Dutch. People here often ask about my culture and the role of women in society; they like to say women here are treated with equality, but sadly I have to tell them this is the first time in my life when I am actually afraid of going out in the night alone.

I have been followed 3 times in less than 10 months, catcalled almost every single day (sometimes I wish I could understand what they are actually saying) and even had a man danced ridiculously at me and not letting me follow my way at the train station.

The first time I was followed I realized a man was watching me and I decided to go shopping, several minutes later I realized he had followed me across the city centre, and now he was following me inside of the store, he approached and started asking questions about me and I told him to leave, the same mechanics repeated 5 times until he finally left. I felt so angry and powerless.

After that first time I tried to buy pepper spray, I couldn’t, it is illegal here. The second time I was followed I was carrying grocery bags, going home. I thought if the man didn’t leave me alone I could throw him something out at him. The third time, I was returning home from a club. A man started walking next to me asking me if I was going home and telling me to go back to the club, with him. I told him to go away but he didn’t listen and continued following me until I almost got home. I had to stop and tell him I would yell and call the police. When he finally left I ran home.

Again I felt powerless, this time I was not angry, I was afraid.

– MVM

Location: Eindhoven, The Netherlands

Share your street harassment story for the blog.
See the book 50 Stories about Stopping Street Harassers for more idea.

USA: Teens Educating Teens

October 29, 2015 By Contributor

Our four Safe Public Spaces Mentees are half-way through their projects. This week we are featuring their blog posts about how the projects are going so far. This post is from our team in the USA. Their projects are supported by SSH donors. If you would like to donate to support the 2016 mentees, we would greatly appreciate it!

Hey, I’m Tena, the founder of Me=You: Sexual Violence Awareness (MYSVA for short). My friends Jineth and Ash and I make-up MYSVA. We are a teen activism group that aims to get fellow teenagers talking about and preventing gender- and sexual orientation-based violence.

For the past few months, we have been working on the administration and promotion of MYSVA (setting up social media accounts, partaking in the SPSM program, setting up a bank account, and more). Just this month, I finally secured approval from the Palm Bay (Florida) City Manager to host MYSVA Chalk Day on Sunday, December 6; a day we, our friends, and passersby will write testimonies and anti-street harassment messages in chalk along the sidewalk outside the local library, Degroodt.

A few weeks ago, on October 13, MYSVA presented about violence issues to an audience of 15 teenagers at the Degroodt Library Teen Advisory Group Meeting.

First, via power point slides, we covered different types of sexual violence (street harassment, teen dating violence, domestic violence, etc.) and how to recognized them. Then, we role-played street harassment scenarios, with me as the bystander, Ash as the street harassment sufferer, and Danny (a person from the audience) playing the harasser. The bystander just watched and made excuses for the harasser, like “maybe he is just being nice” or “maybe he knows her”, as the victim was followed and catcalled.

The audience laughed when Danny’s character exclaimed, “Are you a beaver, ‘cuz DAMN!” but we made sure to emphasize how uncomfortable this is for a stranger to hear this from a random being off the street. We brainstormed different ways a bystander can intervene.

Also, we collected surveys on the teen audience’s experiences of harassment (to be analyzed in the near future). All in all, our audience was really receptive and we got positive feedback from them.

Plus, on October 6, I interviewed Ms. Sue Kiley, a licensed counselor and the director of program’s at the Brevard Women’s Center in Melbourne, Florida. I learned lots of new informatiom on the motivations behind harassment, especially stalking, and support available for those who have experienced it. I hope to share my new-found knowledge when we launch our website (coming soon!)

Tena Gordon is a high school student in Florida and the founder of MYSVA.