Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

What about equality in public spaces?

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Today is Women’s Equality Day, a time not only to celebrate the gains we have for which our foremothers fought, but also a time to reflect on all of the areas where women continue to lack equality, including in public spaces.

Men who harass and assault women in public spaces – consciously or unconsciously – disrespect women. Their actions exhibit their belief that they have the right to interrupt women’s privacy, demand their attention, and sexualize, insult, humiliate, and hurt them whenever they want. These men generally do not care how their actions make women feel at the time nor do men on a whole understand or care about the many ways the fear or experience of harassment and assault limits women’s movement and feelings of comfort in public spaces.

Women are approached and harassed by men in all contexts, including when they are: commuting to work and school, on business trips and sightseeing in new places, doing errands or going to the club, and as they walk their dog or exercise. They are harassed by men when they are on foot, in a car, riding public transportation, waiting for public transportation, and even as they garden or stand in their own front yard. They are never completely free from the chance that someone will harass them, no matter their age, sexual orientation, race, class, or body type.

In lieu of laws or societal outrage and action over this sad reality, women take it upon themselves to try to stay safe, and in the process, often end up curtailing their public lives and access to public spaces. For example, some women avoid going in public places alone and many avoid going alone after dark or in an unfamiliar area to avoid assault.  This may mean they miss out on night classes, working extra shifts, or attending networking events.

Other ways women alter their lives to try to avoid being harassed include: taking alternate routes to their destination, mixing up their routine so they do not become predictable, paying for a taxi or driving a car rather than walking or relying on public transportation, wearing baggier and less flattering clothing, and wearing specific facial expressions (assertive, scowling).

To avoid upsetting men who relentlessly get in their space, women may pretend they have boyfriends or husbands (even if they are lesbian), make up fake phone numbers, turn up their ipod, and pretend to talk on the phone.

Women constantly have to be prepared for men to approach them in public and they instantly have to decide how to respond: will they ignore them, will they stand up to them, or will they try to humor and appease them.  All options have risks and a woman is never assured that she will be completely safe.   This reality is a huge setback in the trajectory toward gender equality.

All over the country and world, there are activists speaking out against and working to end gender-based harassment and assault in public spaces. Their voices are strong and their actions laudable, but they are few in number.  We need more activists and, most importantly, we need a widespread, coordinated, and concerted effort to end street harassment.

We must all do our part to make sure women and girls are safe and welcome in public spaces, and one day when they are (I’ll be an idealistic dreamer for a moment), only then will we be able to say women have made great strides toward achieving full equality.

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Rape Culture

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Check out this new youth-made documentary by Hard Cover, a television program in Chicago that is completely created and produced by teens, called “Our Hidden Culture” about “rape culture,” including how and why rape persists in American society, statistics about how many people are raped, and the impact rape has on survivors.

The video opens with a tie to street harassment, which I find timely as today for my book I’ve been writing about how the fear of rape complicates and informs the way many women feel in public spaces, particularly when they see or are harassed by a man in an isolated area.

While most rapists (73%) know their victim, the other 27% don’t, and this fact combined with the widespread socialization of women to fear stranger rape, causes a lot of fear among women.

In their study The Female Fear: The Social Cost of Rape, published in 1991, Margaret T. Gordon and Stephanie Riger found that one-third of the women they studied worry at least once a month about being raped. Many said they worry daily about that possibility. A third of the women said that their fear of rape is ‘part of the background’ of their lives and ‘one of those things that’s always there.’ Another third claimed they never worried about rape but still reported taking precautions, unconsciously or consciously, to try to avoid being raped.

In every street harassment study I’ve read, the majority of the women said the fear of rape greatly impacted their street harassment experiences. Does it impact yours?

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Denied Peace of Mind

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I’m skipping work for a few days to write a few chapters of my street harassment book. Near the hotel where I’m staying (to flee distractions), there is a beautiful trail alongside the Potomac River and before buckling down to write yesterday and today I went for a run on it. Having never run there before though, I ran with my phone and kept alert and I ran in a different direction each day. I quickly found out that the trail was isolated, deserted, and mostly far from any roads, buildings, or even people. The beauty of the scenery was dimmed by my hyper awareness of every unusual sound and nervousness when I passed by a few lone men because of the isolation. No one harassed or attacked me but, as any woman who is out alone in a deserted area knows, there is rarely relief from the fear that one day you’ll be the wrong woman in the wrong place at the wrong time.

This afternoon, after more than six hours of writing and a self-imposed internet ban, I came online to do a bit more research for the chapter I’m writing. When I also checked e-mail, I saw a friend had sent me a relevant link to an article in the Phildalphia Daily News called “Staying safe on the run” about the harassment and risk of assault women runners, including the article author, regularly face. She shares a recent story about being harassed while on a run and then highlights some of the women who have been in the news recently because they were abducted or assualted while running.

Ugh. As a runner, I have had men honk and whistle and make kissing noises at me, some have said sexually explicit comments, and two men followed me on two separate occasions, one by car and another on foot. As precautions against assault, I rarely run with music, I mix up my routes and the time of day I run so I don’t become predictable, I don’t run in the dark, and if I am running somewhere new, I usually run with my phone. Sometimes I wish I was a man because that would make being a runner so much easier.

Aside from my own experiences and those detailed in the Philly article, in the last few months I’ve reported on a female runner being attacked in New York, followed in Delaware, and murdered in Vancouver. I plan to address the particular issues that face women runners – and walkers and cyclists – in my book in a chapter that details ways women alter their lives because of actual or feared harassment.

Wouldn’t it be nice if men never harassed or assaulted women? Then we could run in peace and with peace of mind.

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High rates of subway sexual harassment in Korea and Japan

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Two weeks ago The Korean Times reported that sexual harassment on the subway in Seoul is up 26 percent since last year.

“The incidents include male offenders trying to grope women or take pictures up their skirts.

A total of 345 cases were reported in the first half of this year. In April, when unusually high temperatures hit the nation, such offenses reached a high of 78 and since then, more than 50 cases have been reported each month, police said.

Most of the offenders said they did it out of curiosity.

The actual number of cases might be higher than the published data because many women are afraid of reporting the incidents, a police spokeswoman said.”

I wonder if there were unusually low reports of sexual harassment last year to make the 26 percent jump this year or were reports indeed higher this year than in years past?

At the end of 2007, The Korea Times reported that women-only subway cars were to be reintroduced in Seoul in 2008 as part of an effort to curb sexual harassment of female passengers. Two cars of each subway train on all lines were designated just for women. The current article doesn’t address the women-only cars and whether or not that has had an impact.

Speaking of countries with women-only subway cars, The Japan Times just published an article about subway groping in Tokyo. Last year in Tokyo alone there were 2,000 reported cases of men groping women! From the article:

“According to an MPD study last year, most attacks occurred on trains, primarily during morning rush hours.

Almost half of the victims were in their 20s and more than 30 percent were teenagers.

Last year saw police process 2,169 ordinance violations — the lowest number in the past four years. Police attributed the fall to the 2005 introduction of female-only train cars.”

The article goes on to cover information like “how can someone avoid being a victim?” and “can innocent people be convicted?” without any information about the men who engage in this behavior and how to make them STOP! Because guess what, women wouldn’t have to avoid being a victim and innocent men wouldn’t be falsely accused if there was no groping!!

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