Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

Street Harassment Snapshot: June 20, 2011

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(Sorry – a day late this week!) Read stories, news articles, blog posts, and tweets about street harassment from the past week and find relevant announcements and upcoming street harassment events.

Street Harassment Stories:

I accept street harassment submissions from anywhere in the world. Share your story! You can read new street harassment stories on the Web from the past week at:

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Street Harassment in the News, on the Blogs:

Mideast Youth, “Sexual Harassment in Egypt (Part I: The Bad and the Ugly)“

Mideast Youth, “Sexual Harassment in Egypt (Part II: The Good News)“

Essence, “Sound-Off: The Heat Brings Waves of Sexual Harassment“

Alternet, “Eight Ways Men and Boys Are Helping to End Gender-Based Violence“

Ivy Says, “An Hour In A Lebanese Woman’s Heels“

Clutch Magazine, “Summertime Street Harassment, How Do You Handle It?“

Stop Street Harassment, “Dear Prudence, Street Harassment is Not Okay“

Jezebel, “Will You Miss Catcalls When You’re Old?“

Bitch Magazine Blog, “Takin’ it to the Streets: Class-ifying Street Harassment“

Service Women’s Action Network, “Hey Baby, Let Me See a Smile!“

Newsworks, “‘Hollaback’ strikes back at harassment”

The Sydney Morning Herald, “Egypt embarks on a sexual revolution“

Al Masry Al Youm, “The Sexual Harassment File: Can culture be blamed?“

Bikyamasr, “Another face in the crowd: Sexual harassment in Egypt“

The Telegraph, “One-stop solution for every gripe – Call centre with GIS to make debut, tender floated“

ABC News, “Feature film tackles sexual harassment in Egypt“

Announcements:

New:

* Activists in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Sudan led a day against sexual harassment through blogging and tweeting (with the hashtag #EndSH) on June 20 (and part of June 19 for those of us in the USA)

* On June 26, 2 p.m., activists in Washington, DC, will be marching to remind people that these are Our Streets, Too, and street harassment should end!

* There’s a new anti-street harassment group in Sri Lanka

Reminders/On-Going:

* The Window Sex Project is June 25, 10 a.m. – 3 p.m. and it’s a FREE street harassment event for Harlem women ages 18-35.

*Learn about and help fund Hollaback’s bystander campaign, “I’ve Got Your Back“

* Sign Mend the Gap’s petition to address subway harassment in Delhi, India

* Help fund the Hey, Shorty! on the road book tour to end gender-based violence in schools and on the streets.

* College students, enter the Hollaback essay contest, entries due August 1.

* Are you in Egypt? Use HarassMap to report your street harassers

* Have an iPhone? Download the Hollaback iPhone app that lets you report street harassers

15 Tweets from the Week:

1. ohbendorf I’m sick and tired– of the street harassment experienced by women, trans and queer folks, and POC.

2. shani_o Love capping off my day with a healthy dose of street harassment

3. galuk1 @Cristalzheat Street harassment sucks. Any man who thinks they have a right to comment on a woman’s body can walk out into traffic.

4. kayleesays Street harassment in Maine: When the same car drives by four times because you’re sunbathing.

5. PoshBirdGabi Company working on new Moore’s store @ Dunfield & Eglinton engages in #streetharassment. See pic http://yfrog.com/kl1eckj

6. danabalicki Every kind of transportation malfunction topped off by #streetharassment BS. #awesome

7. Fleegull Amazing that a woman who has experienced street harassment has the nerve to tell other women that the harassment they receive is positive.

8. khellonmars I have resolved how I will battle street harassment: saying quietly to myself, “God Bless You.” Brings me peace.

9. BluDissertation Last night, coming home, I had to walk fast, keep my mean mug on, and hold my purse tight. Street harassment is NO joke.

10. DonnaeWahl So, before you start making my Sunday unpleasant, ask yourself, who would Jesus street harass? #streetharassment

11. Sarahcarr Gentlemen of the world: do any of u think that women enjoy verbal harassment from strangers in the street? Be honest.

12. hkearl Happy Father’s Day to all the great anti-street harassment male allies, including my dad! male ally resources: http://tinyurl.com/3levfzw

13. MAswad I honestly believe that to #EndSh, women need to stand up for their rights, shout, fight, and kick the harasser’s ass. Simple.

14. PoshBirdGabi Called cops re #streetharassment by construction workers on my street. Cops went and cautioned them.

15. nasawiya Tomorrow, #Lebanon bloggers & tweeps join #Egypt #Syria and #Sudan to raise awareness about sexual harassment. Join in! #EndSH

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Constant harassment at California bus stop

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One of my bus stops is on a major street in my suburban town. One afternoon while waiting for a bus to get to an evening class, I got honked at, as usually happens when I sit at that stop for more than a few minutes. And then I got honked at again. And again. And whistled at. One man actually started pulling over.

My bus didn’t show up, so for half an hour I had to sit there while every five minutes or so I had a man tell me what he thought of me.

After the half hour I decided to walk to my connecting bus, hoping I could at least be only a little late to class. The walk took another half hour, along the same road, and the honking and whistling continued.

Each one grated on me more and more as I felt less and less like a human being and more like something to be stared at and told what these strangers thought of my body, expressing their clear interest in me not as a person but as a thing to excite them.

I was so worn down by the time I got to the stop to catch the next bus that I couldn’t face any more time in public. I called my boyfriend, walked to the nearest fast food restaurant, waited for him to take me home. I felt disheveled and powerless.

I couldn’t leave my own home to go take a class without being made aware that I was something designed to sexually please strange men.

When I posted to facebook about this happening, one “friend” made a joke about not knowing it was me. Another told me I’d miss it when I was older.

I think I might have given up on men as decent people at all if my boyfriend and his father hadn’t talked to me and expressed their anger at my being harassed every time I leave the house. They hadn’t believed how bad it could be until I called them in tears one too many times, nerves wrecked from being yelled at, whistled at, honked at, and having men try to get me in their cars as I try to go about my day.

– Anonymous

Location: San Francisco Bay Area, California

Share your street harassment story today and help raise awareness about the problem.
Find suggestions for what YOU can do about this human rights issue.

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Kissy kissy in the suburbs — aren’t these Our Streets, Too?

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At the end of last summer, my partner and I bought a townhouse in an area where there are a lot of running trails and a high school track nearby specifically in the hope that I’d be able to go running without facing harassment.

(Side note: What kind of messed up woman-hating world do we live in where thinking about street harasser has to be part of our housing decision? In a survey of 811 women that I conducted for the Stop Street Harassment book, almost 20 percent said they had moved neighborhoods because of street harassers.)

Since we moved, I have faced a lot less harassment, in part because I had a hamstring injury when we moved and couldn’t run again until the late fall, when there is less harassment anyway, and also because I do stick to the trails and track as much as I can. But sometimes I face harassment from guys in cars as I run along the road from my house to reach the trails or the track. And that’s frustrating.

Lately, I’ve also been facing harassment while walking my two dogs. Most recently, I walked them at a bright and early 6:15 a.m. one day last week and a guy  harassed me from his car, yelling crap out his window. Really? 6:15 a.m.?

Just now, I got back from walking my dogs at 8:30 p.m. and a car fully of guys made kissy noises out their car window at me. Thanks, kissy guys. I really wanted to be treated with disrespect, as if I am an object, while walking my dogs. NOT.

This is very benign harassment, of course, compared to some that I’ve faced and compared to what a majority of women have faced at some point (e.g. in my survey, 75 percent of women had been followed, more than 50 percent had been sexually touched). But it’s still not okay. It’s still upsetting.

And PS, I live in a suburb of Washington, DC. I’ve always lived in suburbs across the country and I’ve faced most of my harassment there. Often people think street harassment is a “city” thing, but it is not. It happens in cities, suburbs, along rural roads, in shopping malls, libraries, movie theaters, on buses, subways, taxis, in parks, and along hiking trails. It’s everywhere and it’s gotta end.

[Update on 6/19 — I had to give a work presentation at 7 a.m. this morning and as I walked from my car to the location, a man whistled at me. It was 6:45 a.m. by L Street and Vermont in Washington, DC. Two harassment incidents in 12 hours made me pretty grumpy!]

If you live in the Washington, DC, area, please join me and others in the area in marching against street harassment next Sunday, June 26, 2 p.m. Let’s remind people that these are Our Streets, Too!!

– Holly

Location: Reston, VA

Share your street harassment story today and help raise awareness about the problem.
Find suggestions for what YOU can do about this human rights issue.

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Making the streets of Sri Lanka safer

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There’s a new group in Colombo, Sri Lanka, speaking out against street harassment/sexual harassment in public places. Their group is Join the Fight Against Harassers. Via their Facebook page:

“More than 95% of women find it unsafe to travel alone in public spaces in Colombo. Every woman has faced some form of public harassment in the form of leering, stalking and catcalling, sometimes even leading up to physical harassment.

Public spaces are for every citizen to use without any hindrance or threat of sexual harassment. This campaign aims to make the streets of Sri Lanka safer for all its citizens, to create awareness on the measures that can be taken to protect ourselves from harassment and to empower people to stand up against sexual harassment in public spaces. Most importantly, to change the attitude that it is a menace that simply cannot be stopped.

This page will update you on how and what you can do to clean up the streets of Colombo. Join us now in the fight against harassment.

This campaign is run by Reach Out and Beyond Borders.”

I’m excited by all the international groups speaking out right now! From Lebanon and Egypt to South Africa and India, to the UK and Chile, and of course all of the Hollaback sites, global efforts are going to make a difference!

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