Archives for May 2016

Calvin Klein and the glamourisation of sexual harassment

May 14, 2016 By Contributor

Cross-posted with permission from SallyOReilly.com.

OffensiveCalvinKleinAd-May2016 — *“Upskirt” shot Calvin Klein ad*

You’ve probably already heard about the new Calvin Klein advertising campaign. It’s worked, that’s for sure, in that Twitter and Facebook can’t get enough of complaining about it. And of course the pro-sexism and creepy factions can’t get enough of defending it and lashing out at people who recognise it for what it is – blatant sexist glamourisation of and dismissal of sexual harassment.

It’s so depressingly predictable. I almost didn’t write about it because I don’t want to give the advertisers my attention when I have better things to do right now – like eat lunch for example.

However, I’m incensed. I’ll be brief (that’s not a pun).

This new campaign features butt selfies, dodgy slogans, curiously vagina-like grapefruit and ‘upskirt’ shots of a girl who is not only not annoyed but is kind of, pleased looking. Because it’s flattering to have an upskirt shot taken right? At least that’s what they want us to think. They want us to think that women should be pleased to be objectified, and that being available in this way is what female sexuality is about. That this is erotica (yes ..they’ve actually officially called it “Erotica”). After all, women are the target market – right? (!!??)

“Eat_in #MyCalvins”

#RollsEyes

This shot, despite vast amounts of complaints (which I’m THRILLED about) is still live on their Instagram account as I type.

It is appalling, and utterly lacking in awareness and basic empathy, that womens’ experiences of sexual assaults and sexualisation are being normalised and packaged as ‘Erotica’ in this way.

Erotic for whom exactly? Well, I think we can answer that..

But that’s Calvin Klein for you. I don’t know if you’re aware of this but if you have a teenage daughter who has recently insisted that you buy her CK underwear there is a very real chance that on her Instagram there is now a shot of her in said underwear, possibly with some sideboob showing and a host of ‘likes’ from strangers, hashtagged #MyCalvins or #meandmycalvins.

This is grooming.

At ‘best’, teenaged girls are being trained to view themselves as sexual objects without desires of their own. At worst the brand is encouraging underaged girls to pose in ways that will attract sexual predators and who will grow up to believe that their function is to look and be sexually available and to be OK with , indeed to like with being viewed as such. How is that erotic for them?

And now, these predators can feel more OK about it, after all the ads have gone viral and teens themselves are hashtagging away, blissfully unaware of the sinister side of their online activities.

I’m concerned, very concerned.

Please engage your teenagers in a conversation about this when you get a chance and consider signing any online petitions you can find. While there is the irritating reality that we are giving CK more publicity here, there is a more positive reality too – people are beginning to see how very real the threat of advertising is to the self esteem and sexuality of our women and girls. And people power is a real thing.

Meanwhile – #NotBuyingIt.

Sally O’Reilly is a psychologist, psychotherapist & clinical supervisor based in East Cork, Ireland. She holds the European Certificate of Psychotherapy from the EAP and is a graduate member of the Psychological Society of Ireland. Visit her websites and follow her on Twitter, @psychosal.

“There wasn’t a way for me to respond”

May 13, 2016 By Contributor

A guy about my age pulled up in a car and yelled, “Hey, faggot!”

I was carrying something at the time, so I couldn’t flip him off, and I didn’t want to respond verbally and engage. So I kept walking and turned onto a one-way street where he couldn’t follow. I felt frustrated and angry; there wasn’t a way for me to respond, and I couldn’t really talk to my friends about it. What do you say? “Some guy yelled at me from a car.”

There’s not a follow-up or a “poor you” that you’d get or anything; it feels like a “so?” kind of thing to say.

– GK

Location: Outskirts of Chicago, IL, while walking to a friend’s house.

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

2016 Anti-Street Harassment Week Report

May 12, 2016 By HKearl

Last month, groups and organizations in 36 countries and 18 US states (and DC) took part in International Anti-Street Harassment Week!! Here is the wrap-up report featuring highlights from the week. View more photos here. THANK YOU everyone who took part!

USA: Street Harassment is the “Global” Trigger That Re-Traumatizes Victims

May 11, 2016 By Correspondent

By Shahida Arabi, New York, USA, SSH Blog Correspondent

I grew up in neighborhoods where street harassment was an all-pervasive part of living, breathing and communicating. This is not to say any area is exempt from the threat of street harassment – this form of harassment takes place all over the world and across all cultures. In my own country of origin, Bangladesh, street harassment is incredibly common, along with sexual harassment, and this form of “eve teasing” has even led to the suicides of young girls. I found that my experiences with street harassment in the USA did not differ as drastically as one might think from my experiences in Bangladesh.

Starting from the age of fifteen, I was routinely objectified by older male strangers on the street as a part of my everyday commute in New York. I have been followed, stalked, harassed, asked whether I was “eighteen yet,” told that putting my earphones on were against the law, cursed at for not being responsive, bashed for being sassy and talking back in a way that was not to their liking, and at one point, almost assaulted on a train by a man who followed me from train car to train car until two other men intervened.

These experiences were triggering enough without any prior history of sexual assault, but after I also experienced my first sexual assault on the streets in Bangladesh and then a later, more severe sexual assault in the U.S., street harassment became something even more darker and foreboding – it became a constant trigger that reminded me that my body was not considered my own in this society. Women are constantly reminded – through lingering stares, covert and overt sexual remarks and even touches – that their bodies are the property of the men who desire them and that their consent does not matter.

It began occurring to me that although street harassment has and always will be incredibly traumatizing for all women navigating public spaces, it will also be incredibly re-traumatizing for women whose spirits, minds and bodies have also been violated by assault, rape or physical and/or emotional violence. Those with histories of chronic trauma, who may have PTSD or Complex PTSD, will be even further debilitated by this form of harassment every day as a barrier to a peaceful, safe commute because their brain is already on high alert, scanning the environment for potential threats. As a result, these victims will are likely to experience even more anxiety, rage and depression after an incident of harassment.

RAINN estimates that there is 1 sexual assault every 107 seconds in America and an average of 293,066 victims (age 12 and older) each year. With numbers like these, along the prevalence of childhood sexual abuse and domestic violence, I can only imagine that there are many survivors of abuse and trauma who are being subjected to a dual traumatization on their daily commutes that are leaving them feeling further revictimized. It doesn’t help that street harassment in itself is in fact a very real threat, and many have experienced sexual assault when encountering this form of harassment regardless of their trauma history.

Street harassment also has a strong verbal component which can be psychologically retriggering for survivors of verbal and emotional abuse who may have suffered childhood abuse or long-term abuse in an intimate relationship. Being name-called on the streets as a form of retaliation after rejection as well as in the private space of your home by a spouse, partner or family member can be incredibly jolting. It can reinforce and instill a pervasive sense of helplessness and worthlessness that already exists in other facets of a victim’s life and his or her trauma history.

That is why I call street harassment the “global” trigger – it not only has the capacity to affect every country, it also has the potential to trigger every other trauma experienced in one’s life. It’s an assault and a violation on a woman’s right to navigate public spaces without having her body being considered public space.

Those who trivialize street harassment as a “compliment” are not only ignorant about the deep-seated issues of this patriarchal entitlement to women’s bodies and rape culture, they are also ignorant about the effects of trauma. According to Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score (2014), trauma lives in our bodies and rewires our brains. Incidents of trauma add onto each other and make the brain more and more hypervigilant to threat. When we are traumatized, we can “regress” back to the original trauma through visual flashbacks or ones that have a high emotional component; these are what therapist Pete Walker calls emotional flashbacks.

The people who leer, touch, degrade, objectify women and later rationalize their heinous boundary-breaking behavior with a narcissistic sense of entitlement are essentially prioritizing their selfish desires over the very real needs, boundaries and desires of the victim. Like many other forms of abuse, street harassment is not about sexual desire or flirting – it is about power, control, coercion, devaluation, objectification and manipulation.

Unfortunately, every incident of street harassment builds upon pre-existing trauma and societal stereotypes about women. This cumulative effect traumatizes and continues to re-traumatize victims in an endless cycle of sexual violence against women, especially for those who reside in neighborhoods where street harassment is a pervasive problem.

It’s time that society heed the wake-up call. Street harassment is a serious issue that is part of the larger problems of gender violence and rape culture. It is this everyday microaggression, this global trigger, that has the potential to traumatize and even re-traumatize victims, all over the world.

Shahida is a summa cum laude graduate of Columbia University graduate school and is the author of four books, including The Smart Girl’s Guide to Self-Care and Becoming the Narcissist’s Nightmare, a #1 Amazon Best Seller. As a passionate advocate for survivors of abuse, sexual assault and trauma, her writing has been featured on many sites. You can follow Shahida on Twitter, her blog Self-Care Haven and join her Facebook community.

Welcome May – August 2016 Blog Correspondents!

May 9, 2016 By HKearl

Meet our newest blog correspondents! They will write monthly posts from May to August 2016.

Shahida Arabi, NY, USA

Shahida is a summa cum laude graduate of Columbia University graduate school and is the author of four books, including The Smart Girl’s Guide to Self-Care and Becoming the Narcissist’s Nightmare, a #1 Amazon Best Seller. As a passionate advocate for survivors of abuse, sexual assault and trauma, her writing has been featured on sites like The National Domestic Violence Hotline website, Elephant Journal, Dollhouse Magazine, Thought Catalog, and the Feministing Community blog. She studied English Literature and Psychology at NYU, where she graduated summa cum laude and was President of its National Organization for Women (NOW) chapter. Her blog, Self-Care Haven, has over 1.8 million views and has been shared worldwide in all 196 countries. Her work on emotional and psychological abuse has been shared by numerous clinical psychologists, mental health practitioners, bestselling authors, and award-winning bloggers. You can follow Shahida on Twitter and join her Facebook community.

Tharunya Balan, Bangalore, India

Tharunya is an urban planner and architect with a passion for issues of social, environmental and spatial justice, including the gendered ways in which urban spaces are designed and function. As a middle-class well-educated Indian woman in a large cosmopolitan city in the subcontinent, she constantly works to expand her understanding of gender, privilege, discrimination, and systemic oppression in her country and environment. She has a particular interest in including men in conversations around women’s issues and the ideas of safety, respect, and consent. She has a bachelor’s degree in architecture and a master’s degree in City and Regional Planning from the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she will be returning to obtain a degree in Geographic Infomations Systems Technology later this year.

Mariel DiDato, NJ, USA

Mariel is a recent college graduate, feminist, and women’s rights activist. Although she received her degree in Nutritional Sciences, she plans to pursue graduate degrees in the fields of Public Policy and Women’s Studies to turn her volunteer activism into a career. She began her activism as a confidential crisis advocate for sexual and domestic violence survivors for Rutgers University’s Office of Violence Prevention and Victim Assistance. Since her training, she has become completely immersed into the field of women’s health and rights. Currently, she volunteers for a number of different organizations, including the Planned Parenthood Action Fund of New Jersey and the New Jersey Coalition Against Sexual Assault. She is passionate about ending sexual violence, and is determined to see the elimination of rape culture in her lifetime. You can follow her on Twitter at @marieldidato or check out her personal blog, Fully Concentrated Feminism.

Deborah D’Orazi, NY, USA

Deborah is a recent MSW graduate who also received certification from American University’s Women and Politics Institute and Rutgers’ Center on Violence Against Women and Children. In addition to social work, Deborah is looking to pursue an MPP/MPA in order to help create policies that empower many different members of society, particularly those who are dealing with trauma. Deborah hopes to use her passion and skills to continue advocating and writing for human rights, gender and racial equity, trauma, HIV and AIDS, reproductive health and maternal care, LGBTQ issues, and economic inequality. In addition to social justice issues, Deborah is also extremely passionate about the arts (theater, writing, film, television, fine art, poetry, performance art), history, and Hamilton.

Hope Herten, IL, USA

Hope is a full-time undergraduate student studying public health and Spanish in Chicago, IL. After graduation in Spring 2017, Hope wants to return to her hometown of Cleveland, OH, and help work on outreach programs to improve the overall health of the community by focusing on minorities and high risk populations. Street harassment is intimately linked to the health of women, and as such is a serious public health issue. During her time in Chicago, Hope has participated in many protests and events trying to call awareness to women’s issues on campus and in the broader Chicago community. Her role model is Michelle Obama, a powerful woman who has devoted her life to many great causes like children’s health equity, the advancement of young women, and gender equality. If you want to keep up with Hope you can follow her on Twitter @hope_lucille or check out her public health blog.

Minying Huang, Amman, Jordan

Minying is a 19-year-old British-born Chinese student from Cambridge, England. She is studying for a BA in Spanish and Arabic at Oxford University and is currently on her Year Abroad in Amman, Jordan, where she spends far too much time gorging herself on syrupy cheese pastries, drinking copious amounts of mint tea, and trying to figure out how best to deal with street harassers. She is particularly interested in transcultural dialogue and intersectional approaches to activism, exploring the ways in which overlapping identities shape both individual and collective experiences of oppression and marginalisation. Outside of study, she likes to read, write, and draw; she has written for Your Middle East, and her poems and illustrations have been published in a number of student publications including feminist and LGBTQ+ zines. You can follow her on Twitter @minyingh.

Manish Madan, Ph.D., NJ, USA

Manish is a Professor of Criminal Justice at Stockton University where his research focuses on examining sexual harassment, gender empowerment, spousal abuse and policing issues. It is grounded in policy, international and comparative research. He teaches both undergraduate and graduate students. His research has appeared in International Criminal Justice Review, Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management, Asian Journal of Criminology, and Journal of Criminal Justice and Security, and in many prominent media outlets including NY Times, India Today and The Economic Times. He was recognized with President’s Outstanding New Scholar Award by the Western Social Science Association in 2015. He frequently consults organizations on sexual harassment and gender issues. Manish earned his doctorate at Michigan State University and has Masters in Statistics, from India (Delhi) and Canada (Newfoundland). You can follow him @Prof_Madan or reach out to him at www.manishmadan.com.

Ginger Skinner, NY, USA

Ginger is a full-time reporter and long-time New Yorker with over 10 years of experience writing about health and wellness. Ginger is also a member of Brooklyn Movement Center’s No Disrespect anti-street harassment team, and is dedicated to deepening the conversations surrounding the causes of gender-based harassment and violence, and the intersections of race. She’s also a poet and essayist, currently working on a collection of poems on the impact of colorism on Black women and girls. She holds a BA from Howard University. Ginger enjoys drinking strong coffee, wearing shoes, listening to podcasts, and biking, and has an irrational fear of small talk and flying insects. Follow Ginger on Twitter at @ginger_skinner.

Turquoise A. Thomas, KS, USA

Turquoise is a 26-year-old freelance journalist, program manager at the Wichita Women’s Initiative Network, and a junior at Wichita State University. Upon graduating she plans to attend a joint Juris Doctor/Masters of Social Work Program. A California native, with a background in youth development and law enforcement, her current work focuses primarily on women, children and gender. In Fall 2015 she expanded her fieldwork and academic studies outward from California to the Midwest with the intention of expanding women’s services in underserved states such as Kansas. Turquoise is an avid public educator and presents regularly as the founder of SHERO Coalition (SHERO Co). Feel free to follow her on twitter @anthroisms or join her growing coalition SHERO on Facebook!

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