Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

Male Feelings of Entitlement Can Kill

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“Elliot Rodger, like most young American men, was taught that he was entitled to sex and female attention…He believed this so fully that he described women’s apathy toward him as an “injustice” and a “crime”…If we need to talk about this tragic shooting in terms of illness, though, let’s start with talking about our cultural sickness – a sickness that refuses to see misogyny as anything other than inevitable.. – Jessica Valenti for The Guardian

Some men’s feelings of entitlement to women’s attention and bodies results in #streetharassment, #rape and even murder. Sadly,  Rodger’s killing spree in Santa Barbara on Friday is evidence of the latter. Our hearts go out to the UCSB community and those who lost loved ones in this senseless violence.

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Stories about being #Grabbed trended on Twitter

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Last week, The Everyday Sexism Project started a conversation on Twitter about being #grabbed against one’s will (sexual assault). You can read the Storify.

Everyday Sexism founder Laura Bates wrote about it for the Guardian, saying:

“These are just a tiny selection of the thousands of stories that poured in when I started the hashtag #Grabbed on Twitter to document experiences of being touched, grabbed and groped without consent.

Within a few hours, according to the International Business Times, the hashtag had been used more than 6,000 times. By that evening it was the top trending topic in the UK.

As suggested by the overwhelming number of personal testimonies that flooded in, the experience of being touched in a sexual way without your consent is devastatingly common.”

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Pardon Cecily McMillan and no more NYPD policy to confiscate condoms

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There’s been good and bad news this week relating to police and justice and harassment in public spaces in New York City:

The bad first –

Via The Nation:

“On Monday, May 5, Occupy Wall Street protester Cecily McMillan was found guilty of assaulting NYPD Officer Grantley Bovell at the OWS anniversary protest on March 17, 2012. She now faces two to seven years in prison, with the possibility of probation.

Her conviction was a terrible miscarriage of justice. Abundant evidence of McMillan’s abuse at the hands of police—photos of bruises on her breast and arms, testimony that she suffered a seizure once handcuffed—were questioned in the spirit of what we’ve come to call rape culture: maybe, the prosecutor suggested, she faked it. Maybe she inflicted the bruises herself. Reports of NYPD misconduct during the Occupy protests were deemed inadmissible as evidence in court, as were the more violent parts of Officer Bovell’s record. In the absence of substantive background, the jurors came to their verdict based on a grainy video.

Upon hearing the terms of sentencing—which were, somehow, unknown to members of the jury—Charles Woodward (Juror #2) wrote a letter on behalf of nine of the twelve jurors asking Judge Zweibel for leniency in sentencing. They expressed remorse. One anonymous juror told Jon Swaine of The Guardian, “Most just wanted her to do probation, maybe some community service. But now what I’m hearing is seven years in jail? That’s ludicrous. Even a year in jail is ridiculous.”

You can sign a Change.org petition calling for a pardon.

Now the good, via USA Today:

“The New York Police Department will no longer confiscate unused condoms as evidence of prostitution by people suspected of being sex industry workers, abolishing a practice criticized by civil rights groups for undermining efforts to combat AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Monday.

Advocates for sex workers and civil rights groups had long pushed for the policy change, noting that the city spends more than $1 million every year to distribute free condoms.

For decades, police in New York and elsewhere had confiscated condoms from sex work suspects ostensibly for them to be used as evidence in criminal trials, even though the overwhelming majority of prostitution cases never go to trial.”

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2014 Anti-Street Harassment Week Report

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All around the world, people are taking a STAND against street harassment! Tens of thousands of us came together to hold rallies, workshops, wheat pasting, sidewalk chalking, and tweet chats from March 30 – April 5, 2014 for International Anti-Street Harassment Week.

This is the brand new wrap-up report about it. Check it out. THANK YOU to everyone who participated. You’re making a difference!

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“How can you truly get over an eating disorder when your fear of the men outside”

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Sharing our street harassment stories can be so powerful, but it’s not always easy to do, especially in a public setting.

That’s why I really admire Raquel Reichard, SSH’s former social media volunteer (who is now doing contract work for the SSH national report coming out on June 3), who wrote an article for The New York Times about her street harassment experiences and how they intersect with her recovery from an eating disorder. She ends her piece with some hard questions that I don’t have the answers to, but wish I did.

Via The New York Times:

“…Street harassment is a part of my everyday life. And I know I’m not the only one. This is also the reality of countless New Yorkers. So many women in New York City who walk out of their buildings, jump on a subway, head to school, commute to work, jog through a park or grab a bite to eat will deal with some form of street harassment, whether it’s annoying like leering and whistling, or illegal like stalking and sexual touching.

I’m just 23 years old, and I’ve dealt with all of that. But even knowing that the women in this city are surely experiencing the same street harassment that I meet most times I walk out of my building, I still feel isolated and helpless during each encounter.

Even on a crowded block, when my body is threatened, I feel alone. The strong and empowered woman that took years to build loses control, resembling the vulnerable girl struggling with bulimia.

What do you do, then, when you want to fight back against street harassment but you literally fear for your life?

How do you deal with that sense of failure that creeps in when you had the chance to school someone on sexism and the objectification of women but you let your anxiety get the best of you?

How can you truly get over an eating disorder when your fear of the men outside and the potential for sexual harassment keep you in a painfully familiar state of hunger, apprehension and self-loathing?”

Street harassment is a complex issue. It touches each of us in different ways. Through our stories, we can collectively better understand the issue — and then work collectively to end it.

We may feel alone in the moment of harassment, but we’re not. There are thousands of us speaking out and more will join us because of our stories.

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