Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming
Sometimes men who attend my talks on street harassment wonder how they can meet a stranger on the streets or on the subway without being a harasser.
Watch as the ever-funny and Stop Street Harassment’s favorite comedian Lucé Tomlin-Brenner tackles that question during her set in NYC a few weeks ago.
We’re half-way through the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence. Here’s the #8 name that women do NOT want to be called by men they do not know when they’re in public places. (All 16 names were submitted via Twitter or Facebook.)
Ending the social acceptability of men calling women these names takes us one step closer to creating a culture where gender violence doesn’t happen. Read more about the connection between gender violence and the inappropriate and demeaning names that men call women they don’t know.
Don’t let harassers off the hook: respond | report | share your story.
From today until December 9th, two trucks will roam the streets of Lebanon, playing a message about sexual harassment, “Catcalls are not acceptable words to say,” and “The word is sexual harassment, fight back.”
This creative idea comes from the feminist collective Nasawiya as part of their The Adventures of Salwa Campaign. Salwa is a cartoon character who whacks street harassers and sexual harassers with her red purse.
You can read the Adventures of Salwa guide for fighting sexual harassment and watch all of the videos online.
I think it’s time for Salwa to get an American cousin who fights sexual harassment in the USA too…!!
It’s day number seven of 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence. Here is the seventh name that women do NOT want to be called by men they do not know when they’re in public places. (All 16 names were submitted via Twitter or Facebook.)
Ending the social acceptability of men calling women these names takes us one step closer to creating a culture where gender violence doesn’t happen. Read more about the connection between gender violence and the inappropriate and demeaning names that men call women they don’t know.
Don’t let harassers off the hook: respond | report | share your story.
“I could be wearing a potato sack and I’d still be harassed,” says Ileana Jiménez, a faculty member at the Little Red School House & Elisabeth Irwin High School (LREI) in New York City, in a video PSA recently created by her high school students.
The PSA was made as part of a minimester at LREI that was focused on fighting back against street harassment using activism and media. LREI’s tradition of offering mimimesters allows faculty to offer short three-day courses on topics of their choosing. Throughout their three-day mimimester, students were visited by various street harassment activists, including leaders from Girls for Gender Equity and Hollaback! to learn more about the issue.
Jiménez, who is also a blogger at feministteacher.com, partnered with her colleague and media teacher, Stephen MacGillivray, to help the minimester students create this PSA, which she told me, was entirely directed and produced by students.
It’s wonderful to see a teacher addressing this issue in the classroom and providing students with the space and tools to explore the issue themselves. We need more teachers like Jiménez!