Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

Asking for it? As if

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With funding from the Scottish Government, Rape Crisis Scotland has launched a television advertisement and online campaign called Not Ever, focused on ending the prevalent attitude that rape victims are to blame for their perpetrator’s crime because of what they were wearing.

In the ad, men at a pub look at a woman’s skirt and decide that she is “asking for it.” The ad then shows earlier in the day when the woman in shopping for the skirt and says she is looking for one that will make men want to rape her. Then she turns to the camera and says, “As if.”

From the campaign page:

“No woman asks to be raped – ever. It’s a simple as that. Women should not be held responsible for the behaviour of rapists or expected to base their decisions on dress around the possibility that these might lead to an attack.” …

The prevalence of these ideas and the prejudicial attitudes they underpin seriously damage the chances of women who have been raped of receiving justice. With the conviction rate in Scotland in 2010 having fallen to 3% – its lowest ever, the need to change attitudes which blame women is more urgent than ever.

We need to stop victim-blaming and assign responsibility to those whose decisions do lead to rape – perpetrators and the apologists whose woman-blaming views have assigned rape its current status as a low-risk crime. For as long the notion that women can “ask for it” or invite attack through their dress or behaviour are allowed to persist, rapists will continue to act with impunity, confident in the knowledge that their actions will receive far less scrutiny than those of the women they assault.”

I applaud the Scottish government and Rape Crisis Scotland for tackling this issue. The television ads are running during the World Cup, so they are definitely being seen by men (too often women are the focus of campaigns around gender violence when we men to be targeted, too). The website contains resources for survivors, information on the current rape law, quiz questions, and discussion threads.

A few weeks ago the government of Wales launched a television and online ad campaign called One Step Too Far showing how slippery the slope is between sexist and harassing behavior and sexual assault. Their television ads also are airing during the World Cup.

I applaud both governments for actually taking this issue seriously. Victim blaming in cases of gender violence is pervasive, from Egypt to Australia to India to Brazil to the UK and the US. Imagine if every government invested resources in combating these attitudes, thereby helping to prevent harassment and assault and making it easier for victims to come forward and charge the perpetrators! This is how change happens.

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Weekly Round Up: June 20, 2010

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Story Submissions Recap:

I accept street harassment submissions from anywhere in the world. Share your story!

In the News:

Events:

Resource of the Week:

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Thanks, Dad

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Since the day I told my dad that the topic of my master’s thesis would be gender-based street harassment, he has been incredibly supportive of my work. He read and gave feedback on numerous versions of my thesis. Then he and my mom encouraged me to write a book. When I got sidetracked at times on other street harassment projects, he kept pushing me to focus on the goal of getting a book published. When I got a book contract and wrote the book, my dad read numerous drafts of chapters and gave feedback as I wrote and revised. In the days leading up to my due date, he hand wrote edits on nearly every single page of my manuscript, then scanned and emailed them back to me. The morning my manuscript was due, he was still editing, scanning, and sending me pages to help make it as strong as possible. He continues to offer encouragement as I blog and write articles about street harassment. In fact, earlier this evening, I sent out the draft of a new article to a few people for feedback. My dad was the first one to respond.

I am incredibly lucky to have two parents who encourage me, push me, and are proud of me. Given the subject matter of the work I do, I feel particularly lucky to have such a great male ally in my dad – many men do not care or understand why street harassment upsets women, but he gets it and wants to see the problem end.

So thanks, dad, for everything you’ve done and continue to do to support my street harassment work. Happy Father’s Day!

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90% of Bangladeshi girls ages 10-18 experience sexual harassment

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Via Hindustan Times

“According to the Bangladesh National Women Lawyers Association, almost 90 percent of girls aged 10-18 years are victims of sexual harassment.

The perpetrators range from college students and unemployed youth to street vendors, rickshaw pullers, bus drivers, fellow passengers, colleagues and supervisors.

‘Sexual terrorism thrives on patriarchal attitudes, prejudices, cultural norms, double standards and discriminatory laws that devalue women and deny them their rights. Eradicating it will require transformative social change.'”

Nearly 90 percent of girls starting at age 10 are harassed in public?!?! That is so terrible!!

The article describes many cases where the family members of girls being harassed took matters into their own hands by snatching the harasser or his father and turning him over to the police and even burning a harassers’ home. With 90 percent of young girls being harassed, it’s no wonder people are upset enough to do so! What’s a 10 year old supposed to do against teenagers or grown men harassing her? Outrageous bullying on the men’s part.

The article also notes something I was unaware of – the Bangladeshi government is led by several women and it is because of them that the government declared last Sunday Eve Teasing Protection Day.

“The resolve to raise public awareness comes from the presence of several women in public life. ‘In a country where the prime minister (Sheikh Hasina), foreign minister (Dipu Moni), home minister (Sajeda Khatun), agriculture minister (Motia Chowdhury) and the leader of the opposition (Begum Khaleda Zia) are female, women and girls cannot walk on the streets, use public transport, or go to school, shops, parks or other public places without often being ogled, taunted, harassed, humiliated, sexually molested, groped and assaulted – and in some cases, attacked with acid, abducted and raped.'”

Yay for women leaders.

Given the close proximity of Bangladesh is to India and the overlaps of culture, I wonder if programs similar to those going on in India to educate young boys about gender issues and healthy definitions of masculinity could be useful in curbing the problem of eve teasing in Bangladesh, too.

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Women in the Maldives face street harassment

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“At midnight Rachael, 25, returned from a friend’s place. Glancing around to make sure she was not being followed, she climbed the stairs to her seventh-floor apartment.

When she’d first arrived from the UK several months ago to work on a government project, she had smiled and replied to the greetings thrown her way on the street. She stopped doing it when the men started following her.”

This is from an article in the Minivan News about the high rates of street harassment that women, especially foreign women, face in the Maldives (the smallest Asian country that is comprised of 1,200 island in the Indian Ocean. The local population is 300,000 and the annual visitor population is 600,000). The harassment is usually verbal and vulgar, no matter how covered up the women are when they are in public. There are also many cases of groping and stalking.

For foreign women working there, harassment is usually a daily occurrence. The native women interviewed said they are not usually harassed as often and rarely is it physical. One woman mused that “physical harassment directed at local women has lessened ‘as guys know that we will scream, and slap them and embarrass them if they try anything.'” Interesting, if true.

The police officers interviewed for the article said that there are very few reported cases of harassment or assault in public by women and they urged women to report it if the are harassed. Depending on what the person has done, they can prepare a case under the public nuisance laws and send it to the Prosecutor General’s office.  In the article, the good news is that two of the foreign women interviewed called the police and said the police were wonderful and took their complaints seriously.

So even though I had to look up the Maldives to see where it’s located (time to brush up on my geography!), I am unsurprised that street harassment is rampant there. I find it interesting how two-thirds of the populations is comprised of visitors and I wonder how that contributes to foreign women being harassed more than local women.

Anyway, obviously this is a global problem and it must end!

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