Our six Safe Public Spaces Mentees are half-way through their projects. This week we are featuring their blog posts about how the projects are going so far. This first post is from our team in Serbia. Their projects are supported by SSH donors. If you would like to donate to support the 2015 mentees, we would greatly appreciate it!

After the political change fourteen years ago, the civil sector in Serbia has been dealing with the transformation of extremely violent society. There are high rates of domestic violence, juvenile delinquency, slow judiciary, inadequate laws and even less adequate penalties, and a society that was not ready to change. These are just some of the problems that demanded immediate reaction. Thanks to consistent efforts of feminist groups and NGOs, we have a new set of laws and certainly more awareness about gender-based violence.

However, these circumstances led to the minimizing the issue of street harassment. Since there was no published survey, members of our group, Equity Youth Association, believed that the right way to start dealing with this issue is to collect the data, first. In Niš, Serbia, there is a University and over 19 secondary schools, so we decided to focus our survey on youth between 18 and 30 years old.

So far, we have conducted a survey in three secondary schools and at two Faculties. We weren’t very optimistic about how open schools and Facilities would be for collaboration since the education system had various difficulties at the beginning of the school year. We have been pleasantly surprised that we haven’t been rejected, yet.

What has encouraged us the most is the reaction of the psychologist of the school that has mostly female students: “I’m so glad you have brought up this subject. Our girls are completely unaware of what harassment is. And how couldn’t they be? We live in society where it is normal to stare and comment on everybody and everything. They are expecting to be looked at. They are taught that looking good is the only thing that matters. They validate themselves through how many offensive, primitive comments they receive daily. It’s disturbing.”

It was upsetting to hear that most of the described behaviors from our survey are seen as “normal” and an “every-day thing”. But, the fact that majority of girls aren’t feeling pleasant when they experienced these things was an indicator that this is something that can be changed.

Boys were quite honest, as well: “Of course I have done this. What is the other way to approach a girl, anyway? I have to draw her attention somehow. Once she meets me, she will know that I’m better than that.” So, they are aware that is wrong, they just don’t know what the alternative is.

One of the teachers shared her story with us: “During my class, in the classroom on ground floor, a man approached the window and started masturbating. Kids started to scream and he luckily ran away. But, I was so shocked that I was unable to move. When I come to think of it, I didn’t tell anybody about this, until now.”

We have also noticed that there are city parks where usually young people are gathered that are recognized as places where harassment occurs. Strangely enough, even though they are always full with young people, especially during the summer, street lighting in these places is not very good.

There are, as well, a few questions in our survey about the LGBT population, or people who are perceived as LGBT because of the stereotypes. These questions, as we have expected, were the one that have received the most reactions. One of the principals said that kids in his school are “normal” and have no idea what those words like gay and lesbian mean.

One of the girls got very angry when she read these questions. She had marched to her teacher and screamed: “Look what they are asking us. They are probably thinking that it’s ok to be a faggot or a dyke, but I would kill them all.”

The teacher was visibly uncomfortable because of the girl’s reaction and this is how she tried to make things right: “But, it’s not “their” fault that “they” are like “that”. I read about this. Something happens in mother’s body during third month of pregnancy that causes them to be like “that”.”

Living in homophobic society, we were expecting to get all kinds of reactions, but we weren’t prepared for this amount of ignorance. It is more than obvious that we need education among all structures of society.

The last set of questions in our survey is about legislation and the lack of the definition of sexual harassment in public places in our legal system. The students’ answers were rather discouraging. One law student wrote, “Making a legal frame won’t change a thing. Prosecutors are not able to prove there was a murder, let along street harassment. Rule of law is unattainable for us.”

However we are grateful for each and every reaction we get and every question answered. Hopefully, the results will indicate what should be our next step and what could really make a change.

Marija Stanković, Equity Youth Association and the lead SSH Safe Public Spaces Mentee in Serbia.