Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

Winners of the Hey, Shorty! drawing + help fund Hey, Shorty! book tour

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I’m trying to be more interactive-y so I filmed the drawing of the names of the people* who won copies of the new book Hey, Shorty! A guide to Combating Sexual Harassment and Violence in Schools and on the Streets and a copy of the Hey…Shorty! documentary, both from Girls for Gender Equity.

(If you watch the drawing, you’ll notice something I didn’t while filming… one of my dogs is licking himself on the couch behind me. Whoops, sorry about that folks! But I can’t redo a drawing, so you’re getting real, unedited life. You can also spot my second dog on the couch on the other side of me. At one point I smile at her.)

I hope everyone who didn’t win will check out the Hey, Shorty! book. You can read one of its latest book reviews on the Ms. blog today.

Also, one of the authors of the book, Mandy Van Deven, needs your help as she works to fund a national book tour. Please consider donating to the book tour so that more people around the country can learn about the important issues the book covers. Mandy and I will co-speak at any of the events that are in my area, so if you’re on the East Coast, you may get to hear from authors of two of the only books that address street harassment! Learn more and donate.

*Jeff Stutsman and Sara Cannon won copies of the book, Dienna Howard won a copy of the documentary

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Two heroes call out their street harassers and their stories inspire other women to be brave

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I was raised to be polite, quiet, and not hurt people’s feelings, just as so many girls and women have been, and standing up to street harassers (or any harassers) is not something that comes naturally to me. I am in awe, then, of women (and people) who just go for it, who stand up to harassers no matter what, and by doing so, make the world a better place. Today, I want to mention two of them and I consider them to be heroes.

Nicola Briggs

First, this evening, I had the honor to meet Nicola Briggs, the woman who made headlines last fall by calling out a subway pervert who had his penis out against her on the subway (a video of it went viral on YouTube). During the subway incident, Nicola didn’t think about being polite or ladylike, she didn’t worry about making a scene. She called the guy out loudly, got bystanders to help make sure he didn’t get away, and reported him to police. He was arrested and later convicted.

The Islip Area AAUW Branch in New York sponsored me to speak at their local library this evening and Nicola surprised me by coming to the talk! I asked her to share her story for the attendees and everyone was very impressed and inspired. I know I continue to be both impressed and inspired by her presence of mind and determination to make sure he didn’t harass any other woman. Coincidentally, she wrote a guest post on iHollaback today.

Second, today on the ACLU Blog, Robyn Shepherd shared an amazing story of standing up to a street harasser/sexual assaulter. She was on her way to work when a guy whacked her on her rear on the street. She chased the guy down yelled at him and called the police who came and helped her look for him. In the end, he got away, but it was still an important response. She writes,

“I’m realistic. I knew they were never going to arrest this guy. But here’s the thing, and the point to this whole long, profane story. I know there are a lot of people who think it wasn’t that big a deal. But the truth of the matter is, what this guy did was sexual assault. “Forcible touching and harassment,” if you want to get specific.

Sexual assault doesn’t always necessarily mean something as horrible as rape. And too often street harassment is unreported, and douchebags like this think they can get away with it because the girl is gonna be too embarrassed or too meek to do anything about it. Or they think it’s “just a slap on the ass.” And that’s not right, you guys. I don’t know how other women feel about their posteriors, but you don’t very well get to smack the hell out of it willy-nilly because you feel entitled to do so. There will be repercussions.

To the NYPD’s credit, they did follow up, and the detective told me that if I really wanted to press charges, she would help me do that, even if it meant looking through a lot of surveillance tape and looking at lineups and all that stuff. I opted not to, figuring that they had this guy’s description, and if he did it again, he’d be in a lot of trouble. But something tells me he’s not going to. I think I scared him. Or as the detective said, “So you ran up and confronted him and screamed at him in a bank.”

“Yep.”

“…Awesome.”

I know what happened to me could have been a lot, lot worse. But someone doesn’t have to be raped to be humiliated, violated and hurt. Sometimes, all it takes is a smack on the ass.”

Exactly.

It’s our right to be safe on the streets and the subways and buses and in stores and we don’t have to be embarrassed to call out the jerks who try to hurt and humiliate us.

Thank you, Nicola, thank you, Robyn for standing up to harassers and thank you for also sharing those stories. You inspire the rest of us who aren’t as brave to try being brave.

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“We need to change the society that lets street harassment occur”

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An op-ed I wrote about street harassment was published today by the Christian Science Monitor. Here is an excerpt, I hope you’ll read the full article!

While the prevalence of street harassment may be new to many men who read or hear about it, it’s not to women. For generations, grandmothers, mothers, aunts, and older sisters have shared tips and advice to girls to try to keep them safe from men: Don’t go out alone after dark. Memorize a fake phone number. Carry mace. Dress conservatively. Ignore them.

But it’s time to go beyond that well-intentioned advice which makes women feel less safe and often doesn’t work. Given how widespread street harassment is, those tips have the effect of limiting women’s access to public spaces. It keeps them on guard, off the streets, and dependent on men as escorts. No country has achieved equality and no country will until women can navigate public places without experiencing or fearing street harassment.

Four key steps

As a first step, everyone must acknowledge that street harassment is not a compliment, a minor annoyance, or a woman’s fault. It’s bullying behavior. The harassment is often directed at teenage girls and young women because it’s assumed they are too young to know what to do or how to respond, especially when the harasser is an older, larger man. And often the harassers are correct.

So, second, we need to give girls and women real help. We need to teach them empowering, assertive responses, self-defense, and how to report harassers. Ignoring and avoiding harassers changes nothing. It is disempowering and limiting.

Third – and perhaps most important – we must focus on potential and current harassers. We have to stop looking the other way or saying “boys will be boys” when we see harassment. Fathers, brothers, uncles, and friends need to stop trying to bond with other men through objectifying, harassing, and raping women. And just because men have the ability to access girls’ and women’s bodies through pornography, strip clubs, mail order brides, and brothels, doesn’t mean that they should.

Organizations like Men Can Stop Rape, the Coaching Boys into Men program at the Family Violence Prevention Fund, and the global Man Up Campaign all focus on healthy definitions of masculinity and teach boys and men how to respect themselves – and women. These initiatives are fantastic and need our support, and we need more organizations like them so we can reach every young man.

Finally, we need to change the society that lets street harassment occur. We must challenge comments, forms of media, and policies that disrespect and discriminate against women. We must challenge all gender-based violence and harassment; it’s all interrelated.

The problem may be massive, but each of us has the power to chip away at it right now. Learn more about street harassment, share a story, talk to someone about it, and find and share strategies for dealing with it and ideas for ending it.

If you care about the current and next generation of girls, if you support equality, if you believe in human decency, then don’t sit by. Do something.

In short, street harassment must end.

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Police officer stares, makes kissy faces at woman

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Last year, I was sitting at a bus stop and a police car was stopped in traffic right ahead of me. The policeman inside kept staring at me and wouldn’t stop. He eventually started making a kissing face at me. It was disgusting. I was 22 and he appeared to be in his 50s. I have several street harassment stories but this one was the most disturbing because it was a policeman doing the harassing.

– Anonymous

Location: Westwood, Los Angeles, 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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Tina Fey talks street harassment

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Sometimes I feel like I can’t escape from street harassment! Not the actual act of harassment, which, thankfully I am experiencing less than I ever have since my pre-puberty years, but rather, I can’t seem to escape thinking, hearing, and reading about it. But overall, that’s a good thing because it means more people are writing and speaking out about it (as twitter, facebook, hollaback sites, and google feeds show me daily).

I often can’t even escape street harassment during day-to-day conversations because I’m now so associated with street harassment that when people see me, many share their stories! It’s almost comical when people start off by saying, “Holly, I experienced street harassment yesterday and it made me think of you”!

Often at my talks, we eventually get kicked out of rooms because so many people are talking, sharing stories, and thinking aloud about street harassment. After all, it’s not very often we have the time and place to talk about it. And that is great! When I speak at conferences or conventions, the conversations often carry on longer than that.

For example, earlier this week, I had a killer travel schedule as I gave talks about street harassment in Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania in the space of five days. For major stress relief and to try to briefly sight see, I went running outside each day, except one day when I opted to use a hotel’s gym to ride a bicycle. I had given a talk about street harassment to around 100 women the afternoon before and this was my one day in five that I was not giving a talk. Someone who had been to my talk was also at the gym at 6:30 a.m. on a Sunday and confessed to being a chatty morning person and immediately jumped into telling me her street harassment stories and musings on the topic. Repeat, at 6:30 a.m. when I wanted some stress relief! But of course I talked to her. I can’t turn down an opportunity that comes up.

But, sometimes I need a break and actively pursue one.

Upon my (brief) return home this past Wednesday, I was happy to see that a copy of Tina Fey‘s new book Bossypants had arrived. I’d been saving onto an Amazon gift card since January and I was glad I had waited to use it for this purchase. I love Fey and 30 Rock is one of the few shows I watch each week with my partner. He and I decided to read it together and prepared for some good chuckles (and yes, there are plenty!).

When we first started it, he sped read ahead a bit and then loudly announced, “Look at the next page — street harassment!”

Sigh. Of course, street harassment.

In her chapter titled Growing Up and Liking It, there’s the subheading When Did You First Know You Were a Woman? Fey describes how when she was writing the movie Mean Girls, she attended a workshop taught by Rosalind Wiseman as part of her research (Wisemand wrote Queen Bees and Wannabees, the book Mean Girls was based on).

I’m going to let Fey describe what happened next (see pages 14-15 of her book):

“[Rosalind] did this particular exercise in a hotel ballroom in Washington, DC, with about two hundred grown women, asking them to write down the moment they first “knew they were a woman.” Meaning, “When did you first feel like a grown woman and not a girl?” We wrote down our answers and shared them, first in pairs, and then in larger groups. The groups of women was racially and economically diverse, but the answers had a very similar theme. Almost everyone first realized they were becoming a grown woman when some dude did something nasty to them. ‘I was walking home from ballet and a guy in a car yelled, ‘Lick me!’ ‘I was babysitting my younger cousins when a guy drove by and yelled, ‘Nice ass.’ There were pretty much zero examples like ‘I first knew I was a woman when my mother and father took me out to dinner to celebrate my success on the debate team.’ It was mostly men yelling shit from cars. Are they a patrol sent out to let girls know they’ve crossed into puberty? If so, it’s working.

I experienced car creepery at thirteen….I was walking home alone from school and I was wearing a dress. A dude drove by and yelled, ‘Nice tits.’ Embarassed and enraged, I screamed after him, ‘Suck my dick.’ Sure, it didn’t make any sense, but at least I didn’t hold in my anger.”

And so here I am, all fired up again over street harassment instead of being able to just laugh and find stress relief from reading Fey’s funny book.

As usual, I’m outraged. Why are we okay with a culture where grown men yelling sexually explicit things to teenage girls and overall treating them with disrespect is how we learn we are women?! I’m not okay with that and I know you are not either. So we’ve got to keep taking action and keep speaking out. It’s our right and it makes us powerful.

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