Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming
Join ActionAid‘s call for #SafeCitiesBecause EVERYONE deserves to go to work or university, use the bus, walk down the street – simply live their lives – without the threat of sexual attack.
Find out more, join the movement, sign the pledge, and Tweet #SafeCitiesBecause today to share why you believe we need safe cities. Read how women all over the world are reclaiming what is rightly theirs: the right to be in public spaces safely.
Wear Your Voice Magazine Releases Video PSA to End Sexual Assault Victim Blaming
Oakland, CA: Wear Your Voice Magazine announces the immediate release of #KillTheSilence2015, a yearlong campaign to end the stigma sexual assault and domestic violence survivors face when going forward with their story.
Victim blaming, also called secondary victimization, exposes survivors to additional trauma after their initial assault, making survivors less likely to come forward with their story out of fear of how they’ll be perceived or repercussions they may face from their community and those around them. In fact, rapes and sexual assaults are rarely reported to law enforcement. A 2014 report by the Department of Justice showed that only 34.8% cases of sexual assaults are reported to the authorities, while a staggering 70 percent of domestic violence cases go unreported each year.
#KillTheSilence2015 was conceptualized by Monica Cadena and Ravneet Vohra, both, sexual assault survivors. Three weeks before her 21st birthday, Monica was drugged and raped by three acquaintances. Ravneet’s abuse started at the age of 4, at the hands of a trusted family friend.
In Monica’s case, she immediately went forward to family and local authorities. After coming forward, she was shamed by family, then partner, as well as staff at the hospital that performed her rape kit. For Ravneet, she remained silent for years, internalizing her trauma as something she did wrong. When she did tell those close to her years later, it was brushed aside. In her first marriage, she was plagued with mental abuse, the abuse that leaves no physical scars. She watched as her society turned her back on her as she turned from victim to villain. Years later she would break her silence around her abuse both in childhood and adulthood in order to make impact with a mission that no one should suffer in silence again.
Throughout the year, Wear Your Voice will be releasing video PSAs to kill the silence around sexual and domestic violence. By speaking our truth and telling our story, it is our hope that others will follow suit, continuing the dialogue on how we can best support those in our lives who has been affected by such acts of violence.
We encourage everyone to participate by spreading the word on social media using the hashtag #KillTheSilence2015, answering one of the three prompts below in 140 characters:
Prompt 1 -How you were silenced from going forward with your own story?
Prompt 2-How Sexual or Domestic violence impacted your life?
Prompt 3-How you will do your part to end victimization?
We invite you to participate in this powerful campaign.
“F–k her right in the p—y” is a harassing phrase some men have yelled at female reporters across Canada for more than a year. One reporter decided to do something about it and bring this reality to light. Numerous Canadian news outlets covered it last week. Below are excerpts from two papers. And good for her!
But first, the Halifax Police issued this statement (good!):
“If you’re a news consumer and/or on social media, you’re likely aware of a disturbing trend that has been discussed in the media over the past few days where men are yelling vulgarities at women reporters while they’re while they’re on camera in public places. Halifax Regional Police has learned that this is also happening in our community. The individuals who are doing this may think it’s funny and harmless or within the boundaries of their freedom of expression, but we view this type of behaviour as a form of sexualized violence and take it very seriously. We want people to know that aside from being extremely degrading and disrespectful, it could also be criminal. Depending on the circumstances, a person who does this could be charged with mischief, criminal harassment, creating a disturbance or breach of the peace.
We encourage anyone who has had this happen, whether a reporter or otherwise, to report to police if they wish. We also urge those men who would be inclined to make these disgusting comments to think twice about the consequences. “
“‘This has nothing to do with you.”
That was the jarring retort when CityNews reporter Shauna Hunt turned the camera on male soccer fans at a Toronto FC game on Sunday to ask why they were standing around and snickering at her.
Moments earlier, and just before Hunt’s live news hit, a man had waltzed into her interview and uttered a vulgar slur into the microphone – “FHRITP,” an obscene quip calling for the sexual violation of the female broadcaster. The shouting of the sentence began as an online prank in 2014, and grew into a regular occurrence that female television news reporters have come to dread, as men and even young boys will routinely interrupt them to scream it live on the air.
One of the smirking men explained to Hunt that the prank wasn’t personal and that she should probably lighten up. Soccer fans in Britain do a lot worse to female newscasters, another added creepily.
By Tuesday, one of the fans had been fired from his job at Hydro One for violating the company’s code of conduct, which includes a zero-tolerance policy on harassment. Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne tweeted her support for the journalists, stressing that the “prank” amounts to verbal assault and sexual harassment, on the job no less. Toronto police are reportedly consulting with the Crown attorney’s office on possible charges; police in Kingston tweeted that such hecklers could potentially face a charge of causing disturbance. The men involved also face a minimum one-year ban from all games hosted by the Toronto FC soccer club and the other teams owned by parent company Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment. “We’re appalled that this trend of disrespectful behaviour would make its way to our city, let alone anywhere near our stadium,” an MLSE statement released Tuesday afternoon read.
The sexual harassment of female television reporters using this “crude trend” has been pervasive in North America since the stunt went viral a year and a half ago. Hunt said she’s had obscenities hurled at her up to 10 times a day.”
“Shannon Martin has had “F–k her right in the p—y” hurled at her from a passing car, in a children’s area at the Exhibition and at a Toronto high school.
It was during that last instance — when several groups of students took turns hurling the crude phrase at her while she worked — that really shocked her.
“I want to curl up in myself. It’s mortifying,” Martin told CBC Radio’s Metro Morning.
“They were trying to get a laugh from their buddies, but I don’t think they were thinking about the words,” she said.
Still shaken days after, Martin alerted the school board of the incident and sent them the video. Eventually, for the students involved, they were able to use it as a learning opportunity.
But Martin says she, and many other female colleagues, encounter someone yelling the phrase at least once a week. Few male colleagues, she said, have similar experiences while reporting in public places.”
From our friends at Women, Action, & the Media!
“The vicious targeting of women, women of color, queer women, trans women, disabled women, and other oppressed groups who speak up on online has reached crisis levels. Hate speech and violent threats are being used to silence the voices of women and gender non-conforming people in the public discourse everyday. Examples of the impact these attacks are having on women’s lives are everywhere.
A recent Pew research study found that fully 25 percent of young women online have been sexually harassed online and 26 percent have experienced stalking. Moreover, Pew found that women overall are disproportionately targeted by the most severe forms of online abuse including doxxing and violent threats.
This is why WAM! launched a pilot project to support Twitter users experiencing gendered harassment and abuse on the platform, including abuse that intersects with racial, LGBT, and other kinds of oppression….
Reporting, Reviewing, And Responding To Harassment on Twitter was produced by researchers from the fields of computational social science, anthropology, sociology, network science and computer science. It was reviewed by five academic researchers in a double-blind, revise-and-resubmit peer review process. WAM’s report provides a baseline for Twitter and other technology company decision makers to make structural and policy changes. View the report.”
“On Monday evening, BU police alerted people to three separate incidents of sexual assault near campus. In several of the incidents, a man approached a female from behind and attempted to lift up her skirt. Police said that a number of similar assaults had been reported over the weekend, suggesting they were the work of one serial creep.
Metro Boston devoted its Tuesday cover to the story. The image, though, seems to, uh, take the visual perspective of this skirt-obsessed groper. It shows a woman in a knee-length skirt and heels, her head and shoulders cropped out of the picture entirely. Accompanying the image is the headline “BU BABES BEWARE.” Critics argued the wording put the onus for preventing sexual assault on the skirt-clad ladies of Boston.”
Safe Hub Collective called them out on the sexism and victim-blaming and they apologized. Good work SHC!
“We appreciate the Metro’s quick response and sincere apology to its readers,” writes Safe Hub Collective. “However, the cover itself is indicative of how much work we still have to do when it comes to reporting on violence against women.”
