Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

Attacked While Jogging

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The New York Times reports that a woman was jogging in a park in NYC on Sunday when a man slashed her forehead with a knife and then walked away. It sounds like she went into shock and then was taken to the hospital. No one saw the attack happen and the assailant is still at large.

What a horrific experience! And all it takes is one attack like that to scare other women from going to that park or going running alone, especially since he hasn’t been caught yet. To naysayers, street harassment can be very insidious and does impact women – directly and indirectly – in the choices they make.

Also worth noting, women are much more likely to be attacked or hurt by someone they know (not true for men), but, random acts of violence against women by strangers in public like this obviously happen. The randomness does a great job of scaring women into trying to avoid places they think they will be more vulnerable (when in actuality, many of them are safer on the street than in their own home).

Will women who read this story be advised by concerned friends & family to not run alone or decide themselves not to go running alone? Probably. Will any men be advised or feel the need not to go running alone because of this story? Probably not, yet statistically, they’re more at risk of stranger attacks than women. Funny, huh?

Anyway, I hope the woman who was attacked will be okay and that the  man will not attack anyone else!

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When your harasser is a customer or client

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After the Rose Bowl, football player Rey Maualug went up behind Erin Andrews, a sideline reporter for the ESPN College Football Saturday telecast, and did a sexual sort of dance – without touching her – before walking on past.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ds-Mrp0wl4]

Reading comments in the blogosphere, it is clear that (like lots of other kinds of harassment) many people saw nothing wrong with this behavior. I disagree because she obviously didn’t know it was happening and he wasn’t about to inform her, thus it was in no way a mutual sort of celebration, but one he enforced on her without her permission or awareness.

As both individuals are known to each other, I wouldn’t exactly classify his actions as street harassment or public harassment, which I tend to define as harassment between strangers in public, but I don’t know that it quite qualifies as workplace sexual harassment either.

This example illustrates a very pervasive kind of harassment that many women deal with in their jobs — harassment by customers or clients (and in this case, the people being interviewed or reported on for a story). What can someone do about a sexually harassing customer s/he is supposed to be serving without jeopardizing her/his job?

I worked in a few retail jobs as a teenager and I had my fair share of getting “hit on” by male customers (most of whom were years to decades older than me).  What could I do but giggle nervously and just hope they would go away soon? The customer is always right, right?

I just did a quick online search for any information on sexual harassment by customers, and among the few webpages I found included this: “Q: Does sexual harassment law apply to harassment by customers? A:Yes, as long as the employer knows about the offensive behavior and has a chance to fix the problem. Customer harassment is a lot like co-worker harassment. Until you speak up, the employer may not have enough reason to suspect that the company’s client is harassing you and making your job miserable.”

But how many employers are in the position to regulate customers? Unless someone is threatening or stalking an employee, in which case I could see an employer banning that person from the area, what would an employer do? Tell the customer to stop “flirting with” or harassing its employees? Will they risk losing a customer when they can probably easily find another hourly worker who won’t complain?

Have you experienced sexual harassment from customers, clients & non-coworkers/supervisors while on the job? Do you know about legal remedies for dealing with it or is it in the same realm as street harassment and is something we’re all supposed to “live with”?

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New Study on Street Harassment

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The following is from a presentation given at the annual conference of the Association for Women in Psychology entitled, “Gender-based public harassment: Avoidance, objectification, and self esteem” by Tracy Lord.

“Limited research on gender-based public harassment suggest there are multiple individual and societal effects of this harassment: increasing women’s fear of men; decreasing trust between men and women; making women ashamed of their bodies; and contributing to women’s self-objectification. Women who are objectified by men begin to self-objectify. The theories of why public harassment occurs include the male bonding theory, the social-structural theory, the sociocultural theory, and the social control theory.

The current study addressed gaps in our understanding of women’s experience of and reactions to street harassment. Women college students (n=125) from the subject pool responded to questions regarding: their public harassment experiences; the frequency with which they occur; and the feelings women have about these incidents. Participants also completed: Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale; the Multidimensional Body-Self Relations Questionnaire – Appearance Scales; the Objectified Body Consciousness Scale; and the Mobility Inventory for Agoraphobia. Preliminary analyses indicated that street harassment in mild and moderate forms were common experiences. Women reported a range of reactions to street harassment. The complete data analysis will be reported.”

None of these findings surprise me. I look forward to reading the full report, especially the theories cited for explaining why it happens.

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Virtual Street Harassment?

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Virtual Street Harassment?
Virtual Street Harassment?

Number five on Gizmodo.com’s “10 Things You Need to Know About PlayStation Home” says “There are lots of dudes. Lots of them.” And it includes this screenshot of a male avatar saying “nice rack” to the only female avatar in the shot, who says, “thanks.”

This post would be an essay if I started analyzing that screen shot alone, so I’ll just say I think it really odd that a random guy is going to comment on a woman’s virtual breasts (that are not real – they are virtual!) and by doing so reduces even an avatar to (fake) body parts.

Also on Gizmodo, I watched two youtube video clips filmed by males playing  the recently released Sony “Home.” The site says, “In it, we see two female avatars being surrounded by male avatars doing little dances. Apparently this is happening all over the service. A lot.”

And indeed, in the video clips there are two or three female avatars surrounded by about five to seven male avatars. Some of the time the women in the first clip (i’m only going to talk about the first one for brevity’s sake) are dancing too and presumably they could leave if they were uncomfortable (I’ve never played this game) so I don’t want to say they are being victimized, especially given that this is a virtual world, but the whole situation is quite odd, as is the commentary from the videotaper. And it’s all the more disturbing/odd if it’s happening a lot.

What I think is especially striking about the dancing is how it is groups of men versus one or two women. Just like a lot of real world street harassment, the online dancing seems to be a form of male bonding or a way to prove one’s masculinity to one’s male peers. In fact, in one of the videos showing the male avatars dancing around the women, the male who was videotaping the incident at first voiced reservations about what he was seeing and passed by, but then he said, “I’m not gay,” and went back and joined the other male avatars in dancing around the female avatars.

If this is a common occurrence, how likely is it that people with female avatars will get tired of being surrounded by males and danced with and so either change into a male avatar or stop playing?

If you’re a gamer, have you ever witnessed this, done this, or been the target of it? If you answered yes to any of those questions, what happened, how did you feel, etc?  What have been the experiences of people who use female avatars?

(thanks, mark for sharing these links with me:))
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Another death from street harassment

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streetharassmentdeathI just read this – a young woman in Washington, DC, was killed two months ago after turning down the flirtatious advances of a young man passing by her house.

“Stanton was eating a hamburger her mother had made her Thursday night when Jones approached her and demanded she make him a hamburger, according to court documents. Stanton refused. Jones then approached the mother, again demanding a hamburger, said the records. Stanton’s mother also refused, saying “I don’t cook food for people I don’t know”, court records indicated.

Jones became angry, according to a witness, made a telephone call and left the area, according to court documents. A second witness told investigators that Jones returned and opened fire on Stanton’s apartment. The bullets passed through the front door, striking Stanton several times.

She was taken to a local hospital where she was pronounced dead. Her mother was shot in the foot and survived.”

Also from the article:

“Some women say neighborhood men can be overly aggressive.

“You never know. Well if I say no, is he going to do this or do that?…it’s just hard,” said Tia Terrell.

“I’ve had men approach me, and I turn my back, they throw rocks and stuff,” said Renay Smith. “That’s crazy. We don’t want to talk to you, just leave us alone.”

This points out what is so very scary about street harassment – a woman never knows how the man will react. Will he escalate his harassment if she ignores him, if she turns him down, if she calls him out, if she yells at him? It leaves us guessing and unsure how to react.

🙁 I can’t believe another young woman is dead over this crap. I think this is the third death connected to street harassment that I’ve heard about in less than a year.

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