HKearl, Author at Stop Street Harassment

Street harassment snapshot: May 7, 2011

May 8, 2011 By HKearl

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:

Street Harassment in the News, on the Blogs:

Stop Street Harassment, “Stop harassing our moms!”
Czech Position, “Women ‘holla’ out to end street“
The Hindu, “Fighting sexual violence against women online“
Bitch Media, “Takin’ it to the Streets: Cripping Street Harassment“
Cuffington, “Your Ass Looks Like Mary Poppins“
Global Room for Women, “Afghan Women Develop Unique Strategies To Combat Street Harassment“
Venus Geunus, “‘I didn’t want to give a strange man…my phone number and got slapped for my troubles“
Vue Weekly, “The threat of spring“
Green Prophet, “Muslims Debating Harassment, Standing Up for Women’s Rights via Harassmap.com“
Stop Street Harassment, “Lara Logan on ’60 Minutes‘”

Announcements:

New:

Congratulations to Hollaback for successfully getting a journalist fired who threatened to rape one of the Hollaback site leaders in an article he wrote
The Stop Street Harassment website + blog will relaunch this week with a new design and new logo! (slight delay from last week)

On-going:

Help fund the Hey, Shorty! on the road book tour to end gender-based violence in schools and on the streets.
Check out a new website, How Many Women Find Street Harassment Flattering?
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

10 Tweets from the Week:

glittertrash One downside to studying German is that i now understand more of the passing street harassment from men. Farewell, blissful ignorance.
ninahighjumpThe street harassment from cars in this neighborhood makes me stabby! It’s a fucking dress! #illpunchyouintheface #ifyouwerentinacar
BLANK_NOISE blame game needs constant engagement. #ineveraskforit #actionhero chant
HollabackOttawa Spent a week with amazing 13-16 year old young women who had far too many stories of #streetharassment to share.
Ellwynnnnn Not sure what street harassment is worse. Angry abuse or creepy praise. All comments about my body and appearence. #annoyed
catladyfemme I am always taken aback by street #harassment. I’m always too shocked for a stinging retort. #sigh
the_beheld Oh, I get it! Men who catcall think we’re ALL on a #mirrorfast and they’re just assuring us we look presentable GEE THANKS #streetharassment
g3iyer 5 counts of #streetharassment this wk all while tired/dressed down/ reasonable hrs/all ‘hoods. Helps 2 share w/girls who know yuck feeling.
shani_o So many women I know have told me their street harassment stories since reading my post. It amazes me there are people who deny it’s real.
angiemaroon @ricep0d I wish I could hand out #streetharassment tickets as often as traffic cops write parking violations.

Stop harassing our moms!

May 8, 2011 By HKearl

Last weekend, my mom took the Greyhound bus from NYC to DC to attend a writer’s workshop. I was out of town for a speaking engagement, but my partner picked her up and she stayed at our house. Her bus was a few minutes early. In the space of the few minutes from when she arrived to when my partner picked her up, three different men harassed her! One of them even harassed her while she was on the phone with my dad (“Hey honey, do you have a husband? Do you want to come home with me tonight?”)

My mom said she would have felt really unsafe had she not been on the phone with my dad and about to be picked up by my 6’3″ partner in a car. My mom is in her 50s. It is an outrage that she can’t wait at a bus station safely, without experiencing harassment. It is an outrage that as a grown woman, she has to be somewhat dependent on the good men in her life for her sense of safety!

My mom has been dealing with street harassment for four decades. It was only last December that she stood up to street harassers for the first time (for many of us, that is not an easy thing to do at any age). I was so proud of her and inspired by her.

But she shouldn’t have to get up the courage to respond to a harasser. The harassment shouldn’t be happening in the first place to her, to any woman, to any mother!

This week, during dinner with some of my coworkers, one of them, who is the mother of a four-year-old, mentioned how often street harassment happens when she’s with her son and how upsetting that is. It’s bad enough it happens when it happens and you’re alone, but it’s not exactly something mothers want their children to have to witness or learn about!

Related, recently a woman shared a story on my blog about how a man harassed her while she was with her 8-year-old daughter:

“A man slowed his car to follow me & my daughter (8 yrs old) on foot. He followed us for about a block yelling out his window that I’m sexy, I need to give him my number, at least my name, just hop in & talk to him for a little bit. My daughter was obviously confused & uncomfortable, but I ignored him hoping she might think he wasn’t talking to me. I have a history of sexual assault & was merely focusing on controlling my senses so that I wouldn’t dissociate. Then he pulled up into the driveway in front of us, cutting us off & yelled at my daughter: “Your mom is a fucking bitch-cunt-whore” before leaving in a fury. My amazing daughter yelled back that he was a stupid jerk & pulled me off the sidewalk, toward the park nearby where there was more people on foot…”

What an outrage.

There’s all kinds of lip service in the US about how respected mothers are and blah blah blah, and that is true for many individuals, but on a societal level? No way.

Mothers deal with so much crap. On average, these are some of the realities they face:

* Unfair pay and fewer job options (in fact, did you know that a man’s salary goes up, on average, when he becomes a father but it goes down for women when they become mothers?!?!);

* Unequal child care responsibilities;

* Unequal division of labor of household cleaning, cooking, and grocery shopping;

* Insane scrutiny over their looks and weight and overall aging;

* Judgment and scrutiny and sometimes a lack of choice over their own reproduction;

* Domestic violence; and – at the extreme end of the spectrum – higher rates of intimate partner murder than men.

And on top of that, they’ve got to deal with street harassment?

What the hell.

So for Mother’s Day, I’ve got to agree with the amazing Astronomical Kid and demand: men who harass, “stop looking at my mom”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If our society really wants mothers to feel and be respected, then one thing we can do is work to make it socially unacceptable to harass women!

Street harassment resistance in Afghanistan

May 5, 2011 By HKearl

In chapter 4 of my book, I look at how street harassment can vary by country and region depending on factors like, laws, culture, and peace vs wartime.

I briefly mention Afghanistan and how street harassment is exacerbated by the fact that across most of the country, women are not supposed to be in public unaccompanied by men and or unveiled. I also cite a few instances of men throwing acid at girls going to school; a horrific and unique form of street harassment that occurs in a few countries.

There is a lot more going on in Afghanistan when it comes to street harassment, though, and an article at Global Room for Women elaborates on the topic.

I’m on a quest to find information about how women resist and respond to street harassment, so I was particularly interested in this excerpt from the article:

“While studying this social issue, one has to gather information on how women struggle against street-harassment because women are not merely victims. Despite the fact that no formal, strategized and orderly action is taken by the government, namely the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, the media or women’s organizations to recognize the phenomena as a social issue that needs to be addressed seriously, individual women have developed their own methods to fight street-harassment.

To deny the satisfaction of accomplishment to the violators, many women have a silent attitude towards the harassment they face. The silent treatment is a common way chosen by women to protect themselves and discourage the person who verbally abuses them.

Another way of dealing with this problem has been initiation of the harassment by the women when they say something condescending to men just to prevent their harassment and to prove that they are not afraid of their presence. Some women have word fights, or mini-fist fights that usually end at the interference of an outsider.

The different methods that women find to deal with the issue must be addressed and the advantages and disadvantages of each must be weighed to reach a conclusion on which is most successful in ensuring the safety and continuous participation of women in their societies.”

[If you want to read an inspiring book about Afghan women’s resistance generally, I recommend Veiled Courage by Cheryl Benard]

The opening words echo true for most of us — our governments, media, and NGOs don’t do enough (and sometimes don’t do anything) to make public places safe and welcoming for us, so we are left to our own devices for figuring out how to be safe and empowered.

Many women have discovered assertive responses that work, and a growing number of people are taking collective grassroots action to end street harassment.

There are plenty of tactics we can test to figure out what makes us feel empowered, safe, and full of resistance!

My primary resistance tactic is writing about street harassment.

What is yours?

Lara Logan on “60 Minutes”

May 3, 2011 By HKearl

As I wrote last Friday, CBS reporter Lara Logan went on “60 Minutes” this past Sunday to tell what happened to her on February 11, 2011, in Cairo. I’ve written about the mass sexual assault she expeirenced at the hands of hundreds of men a few times.

I was traveling on Sunday and only this morning have I had a chance to watch it (thanks, DVR) while I ran on the treadmill. I was running in tears for a few minutes and noted when I passed the 25 minute mark during my run – the length of them she experienced the assualt.

It’s an emotional experience and not easy to hear her story, but it’s so important to listen. She is very brave to open up like that, especially considering how after she did, all of her female colleagues thanked her for breaking the silence on something they all have faced but had kept quiet about for fear of people using that as proof that women shouldn’t be reporters.

If you missed the “60 Minutes” episode, it’s online and the segment on Logan is less than 20 minutes. May her story be a reminder to us all to keep telling our stories and speaking out. That is something our harassers and attackers cannot take away from us and it’s what ultimately will turn the tide and make the harassment of women unacceptable.

Street harassment snapshot: May 1, 2011

May 1, 2011 By HKearl