• About Us
    • What Is Street Harassment?
    • Why Stopping Street Harassment Matters
    • Meet the Team
      • Board of Directors
      • Past Board Members
    • In The Media
  • Our Work
    • National Street Harassment Hotline
    • International Anti-Street Harassment Week
    • Blog Correspondents
      • Past SSH Correspondents
    • Safe Public Spaces Mentoring Program
    • Publications
    • National Studies
    • Campaigns against Companies
    • Washington, D.C. Activism
  • Our Books
  • Donate
  • Store

Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Tumblr
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Home
  • Blog
    • Harassment Stories
    • Blog Correspondents
    • Street Respect Stories
  • Help & Advice
    • National Street Harassment Hotline
    • Dealing With Harassers
      • Assertive Responses
      • Reporting Harassers
      • Bystander Responses
      • Creative Responses
    • What to Do Before or After Harassment
    • Street Harassment and the Law
  • Resources
    • Definitions
    • Statistics
    • Articles & Books
    • Anti-Harassment Groups & Campaigns
    • Male Allies
      • Educating Boys & Men
      • How to Talk to Women
      • Bystander Tips
    • Video Clips
    • Images & Flyers
  • Take Community Action
  • Contact

France: Comic Strips are Changing the Conversation

October 25, 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 France. Their projects are supported by SSH donors. If you would like to donate to support the 2016 mentees, we would greatly appreciate it!

At the "Livestation DIY" bar in Lyon
At the “Livestation DIY” bar in Lyon

Street harassment wasn’t a word we used to hear in France a few years ago. To draw a really rough sketch, women often talked about “oafishes” between themselves, mostly making it funny stories. Men never got to sense the extent of the issue.

Then Sofie Peeters shot a shocking film in the streets of Brussels, “Femmes de la Rue” (“Women of the Street”, 2012), showing how she was constantly, repeatedly and heavily harassed in the street, whether it was stares, whistles, names or insults. The media started to talk about it, and it’s like women realized they weren’t alone and had the right to speak up.

It had to be extreme to make us realize that it was truly something happening to a lot of – if not every – women, in a vast variety of situations, context and ways. We also connected the dots and got to fully see that it was happening to many people presenting a difference to society’s “normality”, such as LGBQ-identified people, trans*, fat people, persons with mental disabilities, and the list could go on and on and on.

“Stop Harcèlement de Rue” (“Stop Street Harassment”) started in Paris in March 2014, and then spread across France. The local section of Lyon emerged 6 months later, and we started with no means to raise awareness among people. One of the best tools to use against street harassment has been the Internet and the mainstream culture it carries. For example, Thomas Mathieu has his Tumblr “Projet Crocodiles” (“Crocodile Project”), where he uses real situations that women send to him, often about street harassment, and transforms them into comic strips with men represented as crocodiles of the urban jungle. It became very popular. Other cartoonists started to talk about the subject, like Diglee in her blog. It was like we – the civil society, artists, people – had taken the “red pill” (cf. Matrix) and it was just impossible not to see it and impossible to go back.

We decided that we had to take these drawings to the streets and to the schools, to make people think about the issue through them, especially young people, and to hopefully deeply change the way many people are treated in our common public spaces. So we asked Thomas Mathieu and Diglee for their permission. They were very happy to give us the use of their work. We turned to our Facebook and Twitter followers, our friends and family, and ultimately many people have supported us as we’ve collected the money needed to print the drawings in high quality, large and rigid format, and create a proper exhibition to be shown everywhere.

Stop Street Harassment’s Safe Public Spaces Mentoring Program came at the right time for us, and we got selected, to our great joy. The funding has helped us with the printing costs, too. We’re now midway through our project, and so much already happened, including media coverage of our campaign:

* We tested a first version of the exhibition in a bar on the 3rd of September, and we got a lot of positive feedback, plus some institutions got in contact with us to have it shown at their locations.

At the "Clochards Célestes" theater At the “Clochards Célestes” theater

* We presented the exhibition on an “equality boat” lent by the region Rhône-Alpes during two evenings, the 1st and 2nd of October, in the presence of the cartoonists and as an introduction to debates. People participated a lot and the exchanges were great.

On the Région Rhône-Alpes' "equality boat" navigating on the Rhône. Oct. 2015
On the Région Rhône-Alpes’ “equality boat” navigating on the Rhône

* We worked with the town of Grenoble to present the exhibition during a week in the streets, in a really huge size, from the 7th to 13th of October. A lot of people saw it and stopped by, and we got a lot of good comments, both from the town officers and the public.

On Valentin Huïy's place in Grenoble. Oct. 2015On Valentin Huïy’s place in Grenoble. Oct. 2015

* We took our exhibition to a high school for our very first school intervention. It was there for a week, from the 12th to 16th or October. The students were very interested and so was the teaching team. It was a success.

Neuville-sur-Saône high-school, exhibition and workshop. Oct. 2015Neuville-sur-Saône high-school, exhibition and workshop

We’re now looking forward to adding drawings and texts to our first version, to send the final one to the printer! It’s a long job, but we’ve already been rewarded for it, so it is just a matter of time. 2016 will see a beautiful new tool to fight street harassment, first in Lyon and Rhône-Alpes, and then through France entirely.

Anne Favier is the co-founder of Stop Harcèlement de Rue in Lyon, France.

Share

Filed Under: SSH programs, street harassment Tagged With: france, Lyon, safe public spaces mentoring program

Share Your Story

Share your street harassment story for the blog. Donate Now

From the Blog

  • #MeToo 2024 Study Released Today
  • Join International Anti-Street Harassment Week 2022
  • Giving Tuesday – Fund the Hotline
  • Thank You – International Anti-Street Harassment Week 2021
  • Share Your Story – Safecity and Catcalls Collaboration

Buy the Book

Search

Archives

  • September 2024
  • March 2022
  • November 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • January 2021
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008

Comment Policy

SSH will not publish any comment that is offensive or hateful and does not add to a thoughtful discussion of street harassment. Racism, homophobia, transphobia, disabalism, classism, and sexism will not be tolerated. Disclaimer: SSH may use any stories submitted to the blog in future scholarly publications on street harassment.
  • Contact
  • Events
  • Join Us
  • Donate
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Tumblr
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Copyright © 2025 Stop Street Harassment · Website Design by Sarah Marie Lacy