Here are the articles I’ve been reading over the past two weeks!
Check out the photos of teenage girls in Brooklyn as they create a mural depicting street harassers as zombies!
BK Magazine: “Catcallers Turn into Zombies in this Anti-Street Harassment Mural”
“Painted by 20 young women, ages 15 to 21, the mural depicts catcallers as drooling packs of undead, saying things like “God bless those legs” and “Hey yo, ma” and “I told you to smile.” They stagger towards frightened women–both female figures from art history and artists’ self-portraits–saying “Stop” and “I object to objectification.”
Perhaps predictably, the teenagers say they’ve been constantly getting sexually harassed while painting this mural fighting sexual harassment. “Every day we always get catcalled, or there’s always comments, people whistling at us,” Violet Ponce, a 17-year-old from Bushwick, told the Bed-Stuy Patch…
“We wanted to show that the feeling of being catcalled or when someone says something disturbing, it causes fear,” Danielle McDonald, an art teacher overseeing the project along with assistant artist Jazmin Hayes, told the Brooklyn Paper. “So that’s where the zombies came from–something scary and mindless.” They cite feminist activist graphic art as inspiration, from political posters and comic books to works by the likes of Guerrilla Girls and Jenny Holzer.”
Guardian: “I’m tired of being kind to creepy men in order to stay safe”
“We’ve all been bothered by persistent guys who pester us relentlessly, believing themselves to be entitled to our company and more. We’re under pressure to be polite and manage their expectations. Ignored men are angry men, and it’s horrible to sit silently while a man shouts at a packed carriage: “She thinks she’s too good to talk to me!”
When it comes to responding to harassers, you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t – and sometimes it gets to the point when dealing with entitled idiots is so exhausting that you feel safer staying at home…
[We need] to create spaces where all women feel they are safe to look their harasser in the eye and say: “Leave me alone. I do not want to talk to you.” Because I’m tired of being kind to the creeps in order to stay safe. And I don’t want to stay in.”
BBC: “Struggling with Sexism in Latin America”
“Whether it is honour or so-called machismo, the end result is the same. Women become second-class citizens…
Since moving back to Latin America, I have lost count of the times I have been asked what it was like as a woman living in the Middle East. “It must have been so hard,” people say. To be honest, living in cities such as Mexico City can often feel harder.
While many of my female friends have smiled knowingly at my response, others flatly reject it. “Women here are free,” said one. “What’s wrong with being complimented in the street? They are appreciating our beauty,” said another.
If your “freedom” on the way to work is curtailed by threatening sexual comments, and you are made to feel like an object and not a human being, I question whether that is true liberty.”
Vancouver Observer: “An ‘unwanted kiss’ may seem innocent but has larger consequences”
“Early on the Friday (Aug. 7) evening of the Squamish Valley Music Festival, Megan Batchelor was reporting live — sounds like a fun assignment, right? Well, maybe for a man.
As Batchelor was talking about the threat of rain, a young man ran up behind her, planting a kiss on her cheek. She was clearly startled; one can imagine how it might feel for a strange man to come up behind you, aggressively touching or grabbing you, unannounced. Even if you can’t, Batchelor said the incident “rattled” her and she decided to file a report with the Squamish RCMP…
This kind of behaviour serves a purpose and it is to put women in their place. To say, ‘You don’t belong here and while you can play at ‘gender equality,’ we still don’t respect you.’ It intends to humiliate and demean, but even more than that: It is a threat. These public displays of misogyny and harassment send the message to all women that they aren’t safe in public places and that no matter what they do, they are always at risk of sexual assault….
There need to be real consequences and men need to be held accountable for their behaviour. If we continue to brush it off or to tell women to just ‘deal with it’ we are saying that the behaviour is okay and, in doing so, are actively working against gender equality and women’s safety.”
Vice News: “Indian Teenager Dies After Setting Herself on Fire Over Alleged Sexual Harassment”
Trigger Warning. Another life senselessly ended. May she rest in peace.
#India: “The girl was Dalit, from the lowest hierarchy of India’s caste system. In a statement that she gave late on Monday to a judicial magistrate, she accused four local boys of stalking and tormenting her relentlessly over recent weeks with indecent remarks and lewd conduct. She endured the mistreatment along the roughly six miles that she walked daily to school.
“I couldn’t bear the humiliation. They crossed all limits,” she reportedly told the magistrate. “They did things I can’t even share with you.”
Daily Life: “Alicia Keys says she developed tomboy style to avoid street harassment from men”
“To this day, Keys says, each morning she wonders what she can wear that won’t draw too much attention when she goes grocery shopping or to pick her son Egypt.
But, the other day, she says, she had a realisation, wondering “Why are you choosing to be that person?”
She listed all the things she no longer wants to feel ashamed to be.”
Morocco World News: “Moroccan Women Affected by Sexual Harassment Share Their Views”
“Women share their stories and views with #streetharassment, including Fouzia R., a high-school student from Casablanca who says: “In my opinion, men harass women because they have some problems with their self-confidence. I once talked to my elder brother about this and he told me, ‘I would never run after a woman on the street that clearly feels uncomfortable with the situation, nor would I give compliments to a stranger. I have pride.’
So, I think that if men would think more like my brother, sexual harassment in Morocco could be lessened. Parents have to teach their sons respect and values at ayoung age… I guess a lot of parents don’t have those conversations with their sons in their early stages of puberty, in regards to sex, women and respect…”
Wicked Local: “The reality of ‘on street harassment'”
“This summer I am interning at the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern University. In a recent project, we discussed the lagging participation and retention rates of middle and high school female athletes nationwide. Although our sports culture is slowly becoming a more inviting space for young women, there are still many barriers. Street harassment is just one of them — imagine being 14 again, still adjusting to your body as it rapidly moves through puberty, trying to train it to compete and feel healthy. While this happens, you are focusing on the road, on your breathing, on your body, when someone suddenly violates your space and concentration by screaming a comment at you, or takes it a step further by invading your physical space and running alongside you.”
DNAinfo: “Edgewater Woman Fed Up With Street Harassment Chases Attacker”
“Four years to the day after surviving a brutal attack in a Lincoln Square alley, an Edgewater woman out for her daily run said she was forcibly “kissed” on the cheek by a man who she later learned — after chasing him for several blocks — is accused of assaulting other women in the neighborhood.”
Trigger Warning: The Independent: “Teenager requires surgery after being attacked by cat-calling men for ‘wearing a bikini’”
“A teenager from Louisiana will require surgery after being attacked by a group of men who had harassed her while she was wearing a bikini.
Jessica Byrnes-Laird, 18, was sitting in her car while her boyfriend entered a store in Shreveport after the pair had spent the day swimming.
The four men started harassing her and fought with her boyfriend after he emerged from the shop.”
al Bawaba, “A viral video highlights Saudi’s sexual harassment problem — again”
“A video appeared on YouTube this week showing a woman in eastern Saudi Arabia fending off a potential sexual harasser with a broom.”
CityLab: “Talking to My Son About Street Harassment”
“My kid is a gentle soul and a generally decent young man. I trust his instincts and his heart. But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel the need to be quite direct and explicit about his responsibility to be a young man who always treats girls and women with respect—on the street and everywhere else. It’s his responsibility to be conscious and empathetic about what women deal with every day. We talk about it the way we talk about any other duty he has to be a good citizen of the world, and while he occasionally rolls his eyes when I get going on the topic (yes, he is a teenager), I feel confident that he’s listening.”
All Africa: “Zambia: Street Harassment – Women Fight Back”
“The day of the march was one of the best days of my life, partly because I felt we had achieved something against the odds, but most of all I realized just how wonderful it felt to finally speak out and stand up for myself and for what was right. It was as though with every chant I was getting back bits of dignity that had been stripped away from me, for myself and for other women.”
Daily News Egypt: “Feminist author Mona Eltawahy gives account of Cairo sexual harassment”
“Mona Eltawahy, a well-known Egyptian writer who has long-spoken out against sexism, reported a minor sexual assault online and her decision not to press charges against her harasser.”
Daily Times: “Surviving street harassment: An introductory guide”
“As a teenage girl, having been born and bred in Lahore, Pakistan, I crave a society where I can venture to Liberty Chowk without a man’s company and return in the wee hours of the morning, completely unharmed, with all my errands having been run without having faced any difficulty, except perhaps at the hands of a procrastinating darzi.”
Mic: “Men Only Care About Catcalling When It Affects Women They Know”
“A wave of new videos seeks [to force] men to witness the harassment the women in their lives face — but is this really changing their minds, or just momentarily grabbing their attention? …
In order to understand women’s issues, men are commonly encouraged to consider how gender-based discrimination ultimately effects them. Educators prompt men to imagine how they would feel if their mothers, wives, daughters or sisters were subjected to the treatment they either perpetuate or allow to persist by remaining silent. This mentality is implicitly evident in the premise of these videos, and even referenced outright….
Multiple studies capture that [empathy] gap: Women are trained to empathize with others, while men must feel motivated to do so: To truly care about the experiences of others, men may require proof that those experiences directly, negatively effect them, too. In this case, the proof is provided by actual visual documentation of women they know being harassed….
Ideally, our society would recognize that street harassment is unacceptable based on the sexist way it objectifies and demeans women. We’re not there yet, though, and that’s why these videos — flawed as they are — still have some value.
Metro UK: “‘There would be a fistfight’: Dads react to their daughters getting catcalled”
“Sure, it’s a shame that men have to relate catcalling to a relative to really get why it’s so bad, but if this video works towards making guys a tiny bit more understanding about street harassment, it can only be a good thing.”
Obvi We’re the Ladies: “I’m Always Aware, But Should I Have To Be?”
“As women, what we can do is support other women. When someone speaks up about their experience we can listen first, and act second. We can be there for women who have experienced the trauma of sexual assault, and we can be there for women who haven’t. We can share our stories, and we can help one another heal. We can refuse to be silent, and we can refuse to be ignored.”
TripIt: “How to deal with street harassment when traveling“
