Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

Video Game Allows Subway Groping & Worse

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Perverts on public transportation get their way in a Japanese video game called RapeLay. Trigger warning… Leigh Alexander at Slate.com wrote the following about the game:

“The game begins with a man standing on a subway platform, stalking a girl in a blue sundress. On the platform, you can click “prayer” to summon a wind that lifts her skirt. She blushes. Once she’s on the train, the assault begins. Inside the subway car, you can use the mouse to grope your victim as you stand in a crowd of mute, translucent commuters. From here, your character corners his victim—in a station bathroom, or in a park with the help of male friends—and a series of interactive rape scenes begins.”

I see no point in making light of a crime most women fear and too many have experienced. I’m reminded of the real life rape of a young woman in New York at a subway station and the knowledge that much of the harassment girls and women experience is on public transportation (see various article on the Stop Street Harassment website), including in Japan.

A 2005 study in Tokyo found that 64 percent of young women in their 20s and 30s had been groped on trains, subways, or at transit stations, leading to the creation of more women-only cars. I don’t know if the high rate of groping in real life make the Japanese game more or less disturbing… 

The game has been banned from Amazon and Ebay and isn’t sold in any stores in the United States, but the Slate.com author found that it only took 30 seconds of Internet searching to find an illegal downloadable game.

[Note: During later research about harassment & assault on public transportation, I found out about Japan’s “Train Cafe” another gross form of entertainment that capitalizes on groping women.

“The cost to ride is 5,000 yen (~$42US). Once each hour, Train Cafe holds an ‘all aboard’ event, where the paying male members ‘board’ the train together with the girls and engage in simulated ‘chikan’ (groper) play. Each 20 minute ride allows gropers to grabs any girl’s behind or breasts. Upskirt grabs aren’t allowed and will result in a violation.”]

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Video Game Allows Subway Groping & Worse

By

Perverts on public transportation get their way in a Japanese video game called RapeLay. Trigger warning… Leigh Alexander at Slate.com wrote the following about the game:

“The game begins with a man standing on a subway platform, stalking a girl in a blue sundress. On the platform, you can click “prayer” to summon a wind that lifts her skirt. She blushes. Once she’s on the train, the assault begins. Inside the subway car, you can use the mouse to grope your victim as you stand in a crowd of mute, translucent commuters. From here, your character corners his victim—in a station bathroom, or in a park with the help of male friends—and a series of interactive rape scenes begins.”

I see no point in making light of a crime most women fear and too many have experienced. I’m reminded of the real life rape of a young woman in New York at a subway station and the knowledge that much of the harassment girls and women experience is on public transportation (see various article on the Stop Street Harassment website), including in Japan.

A 2005 study in Tokyo found that 64 percent of young women in their 20s and 30s had been groped on trains, subways, or at transit stations, leading to the creation of more women-only cars. I don’t know if the high rate of groping in real life make the Japanese game more or less disturbing… 

The game has been banned from Amazon and Ebay and isn’t sold in any stores in the United States, but the Slate.com author found that it only took 30 seconds of Internet searching to find an illegal downloadable game.

[Note: During later research about harassment & assault on public transportation, I found out about Japan’s “Train Cafe” another gross form of entertainment that capitalizes on groping women.

“The cost to ride is 5,000 yen (~$42US). Once each hour, Train Cafe holds an ‘all aboard’ event, where the paying male members ‘board’ the train together with the girls and engage in simulated ‘chikan’ (groper) play. Each 20 minute ride allows gropers to grabs any girl’s behind or breasts. Upskirt grabs aren’t allowed and will result in a violation.”]

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Fearless Karnataka Round Up

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takebackthenightVisit Blank Noise to find out how the Fearless Karnataka/Taking Back the Night activism went in India over the weekend. They will be posting narratives and so far have posted photos.

I found two news articles about their activism. From NDTV.com:

“On International Women’s Day, the message on the streets of Bangalore was loud and clear — public spaces belong to everyone and all of us need to raise our voices to stop violence against women.  ‘Fearless Karnataka’, a group formed after recent attacks on women in the city, led the way with street plays, protests and a late night event to celebrate womanhood.

Talking directly to the people, members of the group staged a street play to catch the interest and hoping to change the mindset of Bangalore’s public. This street play was an attempt to get the public to get involved, to react to violence against women if they see it and not just watch passively.”

From  The Times of India:

“After protesting in front of the DG & IGP’s office on Saturday, members of Fearless Karnataka had an ice-breaker with citizens on Women’s Day. They spoke to people on the streets around the spots where women were recently attacked, and made them put thumb impressions on a survey form asking: How will you, as a bystander, react to an attack? Posters were put up and flyers distributed.”

You can read some of the survey responses in the article. I am in awe of these brave people!

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Applauding Activists in Egypt and India

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In recognition of International Women’s Day, here’s a taste of the latest street harassment activism occurring in Egypt and India.

The Egyptian Centre for Women’s Rights has been engaged in a widespread campaign to end the sexual harassment of women in the country, including on the streets (street harassment). Last year they conducted and published a study about the high rate of harassment that made headlines around the world and, combined with two high profile street harassment cases last year, may lead to better laws this year. Currently, they are preparing to launch a HarassMap project later in 2009:

“This project will implement a system in Egypt for reporting incidences of sexual harassment via SMS messaging. This tool will give women a way to anonymously report incidences of sexual harassment as soon as they happen, using a simple text message from their mobile phone. By mapping these reports online, the entire system will act as an advocacy, prevention, and response tool, highlighting the severity and pervasiveness of the problem.”

When my life settles down some, I’d be very interested in trying out something similar in the U.S.! take-back-the-night-3809

In India, where street harassment is also a huge problem, Blank Noise activists have been engaged in various forms of activism against street harassment for years. Tonight they are holding a Taking Back the Night event:

“We are Taking Back The Night because we want to feel safe in our city. We are taking back the night because for too long our relationship with our city has been fear based. We Take Back the Night with you…Take Back The Night invites individuals, organisations, collectives, groups all to reclaim their city streets at night….Join us to intervene in the neighbourhoods where recent attacks on women took place. Pick a neighbourhood and call the coordinator for location details. Volunteers will hand out testimonials; engage with the public in discussion examining how we can act against violence (bystander ‘polls’ have been made and printed already to trigger discussion); drive people to the street theatre performances by Maraa in the Indiranagar, Ulsoor locations.”

I applaud both organizations for their amazing work to make public places safer for women in their countries.

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Compliment or Not?

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Ruth at Women’s Glib recently wrote about sneaky street harassment – the kind where men pay you “compliments” that are not blatantly out of line so you can’t really respond negatively without appearing rude. I sympathize with her completely!

One of the trickiest aspects of fighting against the street harassment of women is this type of behavior. If we say that the behavior she describes is harassment, people get bent out of shape saying, well now we’re not allowed to flirt, now we can’t even look at other people in public! People who want to get upset over the harassment label ought to consider different scenarios and try to understand how even a seemingly innocent comment can be viewed as harassment.

When I wrote my master’s thesis on street harassment, I found several main factors impacted whether a woman viewed behavior as harassment or a compliment. These factors include: if the woman was alone or in an isolated area or it was dark, the woman’s history with violence, if it was one man or a group, the age gap between the man and woman, if the woman held “traditional” or “feminist” view points, and if the woman felt the man/men approached her respectfully and made a non-sexually explicit comment.

In my current research on how women feel about street harassment, I’ve found that the respect aspect is huge. Did he come up and make a non-sexual comment in a nonthreatening location in a nonthreatening, respectful way (ie he looked at your eyes when he talked instead of your chest)? If yes, then chances are better that the woman will take his actions as a compliment instead of harassment.

On the other hand, even the most polite comment can be viewed as harassment if a woman has had several men approach her within a short period of time or if she is preoccupied with something going on in her life or she is in a hurry or any number of reasons. In our patriarchal society where men (whether gay or straight) are told they should pursue women and women are told they are to be the pursued, it’s acceptable for men to approach and interrupt women’s personal space in public, at work, at school, anywhere, for any reason, with no thought about how many times she’s already been interrupted by other men or what she’s already got going on in her life.

In Ruth’s case, the man at the cafe she likes to go to feels he has the right to comment on her appearance, ask personal questions, and so on, to the point where she’s started avoiding going to the cafe to avoid him. Yes, people are annoying regardless of gender, but, taking the liberty to extrapolate Ruth’s scenario to the larger female experience, it’s hard for many of us to confront someone like him due to our socialization, we never know which men will turn out to be psycho and one day follow us home and attack us or will turn psycho if we tell him to leave us the hell alone, so the easiest and probably safest thing to do is avoid him. And thus we change our lives because of a harasser.

What are your thoughts? Have you had an experience in public (excluding somewhere like a bar or club or party where meeting people is a given) that you considered complimentary? Have you ever changed your life because of a persistent harasser, like the one Ruth has?

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