Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

“This unknown passenger…chose to protect me”

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I was traveling on a Liverpool Train heading back to university after a weekend back home, so I was a little nervous traveling on my own as I had my laptop bag and fear theft.

At one stop a group of men in their mid-20s (who’d obviously been drinking and had a night of festivities) got on and decided to sit in my seat section and talk to me. I feared that they would harass me but after some stern words from me they apologised and we actually had a nice conversation.

At the next stop, instead of leaving the station one of the workers stepped into my carriage and asked if I wanted them to leave. It turned out another passenger had seen the interaction and had reported them.

This gives me hope as often people ignore harassment happening around them, but this unknown passenger – instead of just leaving and forgetting about me – chose to protect me. So even though I had distilled the situation it still meant a lot that people were willing to step in.

And by seeing that people around judged their behaviour as inappropriate and possibly dangerous, the men apoligised again, and hopefully learnt a lesson about approaching young women on their own.

– Gina-ofthenorth

Location: Liverpool, UK

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Egypt: Year One, HarassMap Report

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I grew up in Cairo learning how to strategize my life to avoid sexual harassment. I would make sure to run my errands during a football match when men and boys in the neighborhood are busy watching, not before or after. I knew which routes to take to school, and that I can only go to cafes to meet my friends, but never to public parks.

I always took sexual harassment as a fact of life that I need to deal with. It never struck me as a plaguing problem until, as a 25-year old professional, I realized that I spend a significant portion of my income on a “precaution budget” against sexual harassment. For example, I had to go out at expensive restaurants but not the more affordable “men-only” cafes or free public parks, and I had to resort to private taxi rides over public buses. I even turned down jobs because they had no accessible parking, which will take me back to the dreadful public bus. And even with all these precautions, I was still harassed in the few minutes that I have to walk every day between my parked car and any building.

I felt very lonely in this shameful experience. But when I talked to one friend after another, I found that it happened to every other woman I know, and that it was not my fault. So I decided that the first step in building up resistance against this shameful behavior, is to create awareness, and tell other women that it is not their fault, and they should not let sexual harassment go unpunished.

Through common friends, I met Rebecca, Engy, and Amel, and we established Harassmap: an open online mapping tool to end the social tolerance of sexual harassment. We help victims, like us, speak out and access support services, and contribute to changing the environment in our streets to no longer tolerate harassers. Our initiative has three prongs: online crowdsourcing of harassment reports, offline street campaigns in target locations, and referral to psychological/legal support services.

Our first year of work was a learning experience for us first and foremost. The reports we received on our portal (540 in the first year) showed that there is no typical harasser or victim. The demographic features of the former ranged across teenagers, university professors, medical doctors –and children in 83 cases; whereas the victims were young and old, women and men, veiled, face-veiled and not.

This insight was a strong foundation for our offline campaigns. It was important to feel confident as we debunked the justifications of harassers to violate women’s safety as such. “Look how she’s dressed”, “It’s her fault for going out so late”, “men are sexually frustrated” are all too common excuses. Conversely, knee-jerk condemnation or patronizing media discourse were evidently ineffective, we had to speak grassroots language and immerse within the grassroots. Now, more than 500 HarassMap volunteers go out once per month to ask shop owners, police, doormen and others with a presence in the street to send the message: harassment will not be tolerated!

In 2012-2013 we are working on strengthening our efforts on the ground. Public order enforcement by community figures (mainly doormen) is very evident in Egypt and it is important to win it on our side. Therefore we aim to strengthen community outreach teams to become more independent as they interact with respective communities. On the other hand, we hope to expand our intervention beyond street harassment, to include workplace, school and university. Finally, we are encouraging the Egyptian police to work together and use our reporting system to target enforcement areas.

Sawsan Gad is a GIS Analyst and the co-founder of HarassMap.

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HappyRat’s HarassMap

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Editor’s Note: HappRat recently started posting her street harassment experiences on a map to show all of the places and times she’s harassed. This is why she decided to do so —


View HappyRat HarassMap 2012 in a larger map

I decided to make the HappyRat HarassMap because, quite plainly, people are visual animals. For some reason just reading the the constant flood of individual stories about street harassment still leaves people the ability to dismiss each one as just another isolated, extreme incident. that isn’t in their world. Many people are just desensitized to the stories, or think it happens elsewhere (as in, “This is modern America, it can’t happen here,”), or believe isn’t a real problem (read: “You’re just being too sensitive,”), or suspect it’s really the fault of the person who gets harassed (aka, “What were you wearing?”).

There are a lot of directions we can take to address the issue of street harassment, but I wanted to show the geographical patterns in the areas where I personally have the most problems so people can see that it is indeed a real problem. In one sense the dismissers are right –  while this does happen in all parts of America (and the world) the frequency does have to do with the area you’re in, and that can tie into a lot of cultural factors that can and should be addressed to make the streets there safer for every person.

If the neighborhoods that have the most problems can see a visual map of what is happening in their community, on their streets and on their block where their little girls are growing up, maybe they can work together to do something about it. Maybe businesses there will realize that there is a reason women aren’t shopping at their stores and be motivated to get involved. Who knows what the knowledge could do for the community. I’d like to find out.

I also want to point out these are only the experiences of one person. Just me. I am one of thousands of women who live in my area. If this map seems like a lot of incidents, multiply it by a thousand and you’ll have a closer idea of what’s going on every day.

I feel like I really should have said that the reason I chose to make this map is because I’m sick and tired of letting harassers off the hook to enjoy their day, and I like collecting data, and I like maps, and I really want every harassment to leave a stain on the place it happened instead of being invisible, and that’s why I try to mark the spot with chalk whenever possible. But that doesn’t really sounds as thoughtful. So I’ll just stick with, “Because people are visual animals.”

-HappyRat

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“What if it keeps happening?”

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I was walking with my mom and a man approached us. He said, “Hey, beautiful,” and asked if I had a boyfriend. He continued to make other comments and we walked away. I felt I should have said something to defend myself but I didn’t. I feel so angry inside because I should have said something to make him stop. How can I show him manners? What if it keeps happening? How do I make it stop? Now I feel like hurting him. I want to find him. Show him manners. It keeps bothering me. Why didn’t I do something? I feel so angry inside.

– Anonymous

Location: Brooklyn, New York

Share your street harassment story today and help raise awareness about the problem.

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A Letter to My Harasser

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Hello Sir,

I do not know your name, but you passed by me a week after Eid-ul-Fetr in the Bazaar in Kabul, Afghanistan. You might remember me. I was the young woman wearing a white scarf and a long red embroidered tunic with dark pants. I was standing by a vegetable stand and bargaining the price of fresh mint when you passed me and nonchalantly pinched my bottom. I turned red. The old man who was selling vegetables noticed but didn’t say anything. He probably sees this every day. This had happened to me more than once, but this time I felt more embarrassed because the old man noticed.

I ran after you and grasped your wrist. Scared and sweating I started yelling. “Why did you do that? How dare you? Do you do this at home to your family members too?” and you started yelling back louder, “you crazy woman! I haven’t done anything. You are not worth doing anything to.”

I was still ashamed to tell people what you had done. You probably remember how everyone was watching us. Other women advised me to keep calm that this would only ruin my reputation, but I wasn’t going to give up now. I started yelling. Soon the police arrived and took us both to the station.

A tall man in uniform asked me what had happened. I told him. You opened your mouth and the police officer yelled, “You, shut up!” Next thing I knew he was beating you. You were on the floor and he was kicking you with his gigantic shoes. Sweat was dripping off his thick eyebrows. He must have been as angry as I was.

I didn’t see you again, but the friend who was walking with you followed me all the way home. He told me, “what is the big deal?! It is not like he f***ked you.” But I was too tired for a second fight that day.

You and your friend probably both claim to be Muslims. You probably even pray at the mosque every Friday or more often. You probably tell your wives that they should not get out of the house because the world out there is filled with horrible men who will disgrace them. You probably even believe that you had a right to touching my bottom because you think a “good” woman would never be out on the streets without a man. Your sisters are “good.” They stay at home when you pressure them to. If I were a “good woman” I would do the same. These streets belong to men.

I am writing this letter to tell you that I never intended for you to get beaten and humiliated, but I am not sorry for speaking out. I am writing to tell you that I know what you are up to. You want to threaten me, scare me, and keep me shut at home where I will learn to tend to many children and cook food for your kind and be submissive to a man that might someday marry me. You want me to be terrified of the world outside and not find my way and my place in it. You want me to believe that the only safe and “decent” place for me is in the kitchen and the bedroom. But I am writing you to tell you that I am not buying that ever again. Not you, not the Taliban, not this government, not my brother or mother, nor anybody else can convince me that I am less than a man, that I cannot protect myself, that I cannot be what I want to, and that the best life for me is in a “safe” kitchen where a man or a mother-in-law has control over my every move. I am not buying that. Not ever again.

I will come out of the home every day and walk bravely down the streets of my city, not because I need to, but because I can and neither your harassment or sexual assault nor an oppressive government will ever be able to take that ability from me again.

With Defiance,

A Woman You Harassed

(By: Noorjahan Akbar, co-founder of Young Women for Change)

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