Simona-Maria Chirciu, Bucharest, Romania, SSH Blog Correspondent
Dear men, if you are reading this, good for you and thank you for your interest.
This is a short letter, so don’t worry. I will not eat up your time, but I hope you will find something interesting here and you will take it with you and share it. Yes, I am a feminist. And I don’t hate men. So you are safe, because this article doesn’t blame men.
“Hey, sexy”, “Damn! What an ass!”, “Can I lick your boobs?” – These are examples of catcalls, but more important than this, they represent a manifestation of male power towards women in the public spaces.
Power relations exist within intimate relationship but not there alone. They exist also in public spaces in the form of street harassment, rape, etc. This means, YOU can stop street harassment, you can stop rape, you can stop domestic violence — or you can be a part of the problem if you don’t take an active stand against it. Here is information about this:
- Street harassment includes a lot of behaviors (from excessive staring or honking to public masturbation or following). You have to keep in mind that if your behavior makes a woman feeling anxious, angry or unsafe, then it is harassment and you should stop it.
- Street harassment doesn’t happens just on the street, but also in any public spaces, like parks, stores, buses, trains, the beach, taxis etc. Really, in any spaces that are open for people.
- Men and all LGBT folks are harassed in public spaces too. But women and LGBT are the ones that are the mainly targets and the most vulnerable.
- Street harassment is not about flirting or sexual attraction. If you are attracted to a woman even though she is passing by and you can barely notice her in two seconds, you should not disrespect her by saying sexist words to her or looking at her like she is a sexual object just because you feel soooo attracted to her. Your feelings (or hormones) don’t excuse this behavior.
- A) Street harassment is a form of gender-based violence. Keep this in mind! B) Street harassment is a violation of human rights. Keep this also in mind!
- Women fear that street harassment may escalate into rape, physical violence or even murder.
- Talk to women in your life and ask them if they feel safe in public spaces, if they fear rape or violence from stranger men.
- Mass-media gets it all wrong! Sexual objectification of women in advertising and movies affects us negatively. When men see women as sexual objects they tend to think that women are inferior to them and sexual violence is not such a big deal and that women enjoy harassment, violent sex and physical violence.
- Gender roles are wrong! Remember what you’ve learned is school about gender roles (example: what the mother does (the cooking) and what the father does (reading the newspaper)). As a PhD student I’ve conducted research regarding street harassment in Romania and when it comes to how the respondents (men and women) see the concept of masculinity or to be a man and the concept of femininity or to be a woman, they strongly associate men with power and intelligence and women with elegance and taking care of children and the husband. This is not fair, right? The normative form of masculinity or what it means to “be a man” is important in any patriarchal society. In commercials, in movies and in our school books we see what a man looks like and we grow up with the idea that a man is everything that a woman isn’t. This is so wrong. The results about what masculinity and femininity mean to my respondents (144 men and 1793 women) are astounding and do confirm the theories on how gender roles make us to fall into two categories when it comes to street harassment: the targets (women) and, on the other side, the perpetrators (men). Gender role socialization make us all, regarding our gender, feel and act like we are very different from each other. But in fact we aren’t.
- Street harassment is about power. The consent of the woman has zero importance to the harasser in the interaction. The harasser starts the interaction and only feels that he has the power to decide when and how to end it. The expression of heteronormative masculinity in public spaces seems a must for men that want to be considered like “real men” by exerting power on the ones they perceive being vulnerable and having lower value as human beings (women, LGBT folks).
- You have to address and fight rape culture. The victims aren’t the ones to blame. Ever! When you hear “she was wearing a short skirt! She is the one responsible!”; “Boys will be boys” etc. use your voice and break down rape and street harassment myths.
- You always can talk to stranger women in a kindly manner. If you have respect and good intentions and you see that the woman doesn’t feel uncomfortable, then you can be pretty sure that your action is not harassment.
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If you are a man harassed in public spaces – Don’t feel ashamed because nothing is wrong with you and you can try to fight this back, alone or with people that are also targets of street harassment.
If you think you harassed stranger women in public spaces – Next time when you want to do this, please think that women deserve your respect and the right to move freely and to be safe in the public spaces, without fear of harassment. You don’t have any right to treat them badly.
If you are a bystander, next time be an upstander! Act and react against street harassers! Men are looking to other men for role models. Be that role model!
If you are an ally, congrats! We need you.
And don’t forget that we together have the power to end this! The power to react, to answer back, to fight this abuse and to build safe spaces for us all.
Simona-Marie is a Ph.D. Student in Political Sciences, working on a thesis on gender-based street harassment in Romania. She is an activist and organizes numerous public actions (marches, flash-mobs, protests) against sexual violence and street harassment against women. Now she is part of an working-group trying to improve by public policies the situation of young homeless people in Romania. You can find her on Facebook.
