Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

Canada: Sexual Harassment in Montreal and Efforts against It

By

Alexandra Jurecko, Montreal, Canada, SSH Blog Correspondent

In 2014, a poster campaign on Montreal streets proclaimed “We don’t owe you anything, neither time or smile”. The posters were circulated by a wordpress blog called ontwatch, and are still available for download on their site.
In 2014, a poster campaign on Montreal streets proclaimed “We don’t owe you anything, neither time or smile”. The posters were circulated by a wordpress blog called ontwatch, and are still available for download on their site.

Montreal is often praised for its efforts in promoting women’s safety in the city’s public spaces, and examples of such programmes include the creation of glass-walled metro exits for greater visibility, or the between stops drop off-services provided to women travelling on city buses at night. While Montreal has taken steps to increase the safety and mobility of women, this does not mean that gender-based harassment is a thing of the past. Not even close.

Sexual assault, cat calling, groping, sexist slurs, and all the other forms of gender-based harassment are still a daily fare for many women, members of the LGBTQ community and even men across the city. As accusations of violent sexual assaults frequently find their way into the local news, experiences of street harassment or non-violent assault are often only shared on social media.

During this year’s International Anti-Street Harassment Week, Women in Cities International in partnership with Lucie Pagès and Noémie Bourbannais, took to the streets to raise awareness for street harassment issues in Montreal. In the resulting video, many of those interviewed shared their personal stories of street harassment, describing their experiences as “uncomfortable”, “demeaning” and even “threatening” at times.

After this year’s Osheaga festival, a well-known music and arts event held every summer in Montreal, a concert-goer took to social media to share her experience of sexual assault and to criticize the festival staff for their lack of support: “Getting drugged at a festival against your will and without your knowledge, with the premise of potentially taking advantage of your vulnerability is NO JOKE, and should never be brushed off as it is a serious security concern and a violation of someone’s body”.

Earlier this year, after recording an ever-increasing number of sexual harassment complaints on public transport, Montreal police have launched a campaign calling on transit users to report all such incidents to the police. According to a report published by the Montreal public transport agency, Société de transport de Montréal, 30 accounts of sexual touching and 35 complaints of exhibitionism have been reported by metro users in 2015. However, reading through the hundreds of entries on Montreal HollaBack, a blog mapping accounts of street harassment across the city, it becomes painfully clear that this is just the tip of the iceberg.

As numerous as the stories of sexual assault are, as great are also the efforts of those who work to end gender-based harassment in the city. Non-profit networks such as Women in Cities International with the support of local activist groups lead the way in raising awareness for sexual violence issues in Montreal. As Kathryn Travers from Women in Cities International says, “Once you open your eyes to this, you can’t close them again”.

In the following weeks, I would like to take this opportunity to talk about street harassment in Montreal by sharing the stories of Montrealers who have experienced gender-based assaults and who are speaking out against it.

Alexandra is a freelance writer and recent graduate of Heidelberg University in Germany, where she earned a BA in South Asian Studies and English Literature. Having moved across the pond to live and work in Montreal, she now focuses on refreshing her French skills while volunteering her time to various community-outreach programs. You can follow her on twitter @alexjurecko.

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South Africa: How Johannesburg Infrastructure and Transport Systems Contribute to Street Harassment

By

Nyasha Joyce Mukuwane, Johannesburg, South Africa, SSH Blog Correspondent

Johannesburg is marketed as a world-class African city. In many ways it is, with a burgeoning middle class population and tourist and cultural attractions. High rise buildings in Sandton have turned it into a millionaire’s playground and it has been named Africa’s richest square mile. Precincts such as Maboneng are where the hipsters and the creative go to play and the nightlife extends very late via restaurants, pubs and clubs all over Johannesburg.

However, what is not world-class is the treatment of women on the streets who are running, walking, and going about their daily lives. What the tourist bureaus don’t show is the vulnerability of women and children in poorer areas who have to travel a long distance to school, the clinic and to places of employment. The average under-privileged woman experiences constant street harassment and threats of potential violence against her.

Johannesburg has been identified as a disorderly city with the worst instance of urban sprawl in South Africa, therefore a car is a necessity. It is a necessity as a 90 minute commute is halved with a car. Simple daily tasks such as school runs, grocery shopping and attending classes are completed easily. Owning a car in Johannesburg helps you keep up with the fast pace of the city, allowing you to enjoy what the city has to offer and most importantly, a woman’s  exposure to harassment on the streets is reduced. Urban sprawl and the public transport system leave women vulnerable to street harassment.

Public transport system

Owning a car is simply out of reach for women who are lowly paid without steady streams of income. The majority of people who need to commute around Johannesburg make use of mini buses which are called taxis. These taxis transport people from farm holdings, informal settlements, townships and urban areas. They are convenient and relatively inexpensive. However many women have been harassed, humiliated, groped and assaulted by taxi drivers and other male passengers.

The train can also be another harrowing experience. The most horrifying tale I heard is a woman realizing that a stranger had ejaculated on her skirt in a packed train ride. Personal space does not exist aboard a Metrorail train. In stark contrast to the sleek, smooth running Gautrain, most disadvantaged women use the Metrorail to get around. The Gautrain has stops at 10 stations where only privileged people would find it convenient, like heading to financial hubs or the airport.

The typical work day of a woman in a township called Orange Farm would have her wake up before dawn to get a taxi. The majority of Orange Farm doesn’t have streetlights. The first taxi of the day that will drop her off at the Metrorail station as it is too far to walk. Besides that, there is long grass along the road. The train takes her to the CBD where she takes another taxi to get to her place of employment in Sandton. All modes of transportation will pose their own potential threats of harassment and sexual violence against her. It will take at least two hours for her to get to work in the morning if there are no incidents with the train schedule or  traffic. Then she has to travel another two hours again after work, in the dark, 6 days a week, every month – all the time.

Street harassment is not necessarily seen as an issue to be dealt with by authorities and often law enforcement is not proactive but rather reactionary to incidences of escalated street harassment, such as assault or rape. The Nisaa Institute for Women’s Development works in Orange Farm where community members identified a stretch of veld with dumped garbage and long grass where men are raping and mugging women and a woman’s dead body had been found previously. With Nisaa’s support, community members mobilized themselves and cleared the area of debris and long grass. City officials and the local councillor promised that a park w0uld be put in place to make the area safer. That was in 2013 and they are still waiting. The community members have since become demoralized.

nisaainstitute

Picture courtesy of Nisaa Institute for Women’s Development

Disadvantaged women face street harassment everyday because of the spaces they occupy and the modes of transport they use. Townships were deliberately placed in inconvenient areas to keep people of colour from spaces of privilege by the apartheid government. A privileged woman is not completely immune to street harassment but her material possessions such as a car and the exclusive spaces in which she moves around in create a buffer against street harassment — whether real or imagined. She has the luxury of letting her guard down once in a while. In a literal tale of two cities, I ask again: Is Johannesburg truly a world-class African city?

Nyasha is the public awareness coordinator at the Nisaa Institute for Women’s Development in Johannesburg, South Africa, where the main goal is counselling and sheltering survivors of domestic abuse. She has edited two books by survivors that are available to download for free from the website www.nisaa.org.za.

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United Kingdom: Freshers’ Week & Ending Sexual Harassment

By

Ness Lyons for UNmuted Productions, UK, SSH Blog Correspondent

freshersToday marks the start of Freshers’ Week here in the UK. Over 400,000 undergraduates begin their first week of their first term of their first year at university. A longstanding institution, ‘Freshers’ Week’ – or ‘Welcome Week’, to give it it’s formal name –  is fun, flirty and fabulous. A lot of planning goes into making it so and this year, more so than any other, a lot of effort has also gone into ensuring students’ sexual safety.

“Freshers Week is a celebration so please treat it as such,” states the website for Sussex University’s Student Union.  “Respect other students, their bodies and their choices.  If you’re initiating sexual activity with someone, make sure they are as into it as you are, and that they have the freedom and the capacity to make that decision themselves.”  There’s an unfortunate irony in that statement; this is the same university that last month made a decision to continue to employ a lecturer convicted of assaulting his student girlfriend.

The website Unilad has also done a U-turn when it comes to its attitude towards female students. Four-and-a-half years ago, the site was temporarily suspended after making a joke that encouraged rape during Freshers’ Week.  This autumn however, it’s turned over a new leaf. Unilad has paired with the charity Drinkaware to raise awareness of ‘booze-fueled sexual harassment’; their research shows more than half of 18-24 year old female students have experienced sexual harassment on a night out. Unilad and Drinkaware are campaigning to get young people to ‘call out’ such incidents by using the hashtag #GropeFreeNights.

Drinkaware has also launched a non-virtual initiative to protect drunk students from harassment. The Drinkaware Crew are specially trained staff who will patrol student nightclubs and drinking venues in four areas of the UK, including South Wales. Their aim, according to South Wales Police and Crime Commissioner Alun Michael, is to “support customers who are vulnerable as a result of drinking too much and prevent them from potentially becoming victims of crime.” While this quote gives the impression the Drinkaware Crew are there to protect all students from all types of crime, including petty theft, the sober fact is they’re in South Wales because of a series of sexual assaults that took place in Cardiff city centre during the 2015 Freshers’ Week period.

Following the attacks, the police, councils, universities and student bodies in both Cardiff and Swansea formed a task force to prevent the same from happening again this year. Aside from the Drinkaware Crew, they have implemented a Safe Taxi Scheme and Student Safety bus to help students get home safely. While these are all good practical initiatives, further progress has been made by Cardiff University in launching a ‘No Joke’ anti-lad culture campaign in April of this year and NUS Wales running consent workshops. Instead of simply removing potential victims from harm of sexual harassment and assault, it is after all far better to remove the actual risk and that’s what we should see more of.

Ness Lyons is a playwright, filmmaker and spoken word poet. She runs UNmuted Productions, is a member of Soho Theatre Writers’ Lab and is currently developing a script with an award-winning production company. Follow her work at: nesslyons.net and on Twitter: @lyonsness

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USA: Calling Out Oppression in Order to Change It

By

Deborah D’Orazi, LMSW, NY, USA, SSH Blog Correspondent

Earlier this summer as I walked in New York City after a date, I noticed a man on his bike swerving and inching closer and closer to me. I was slow to pick up on it at first. It was a warm summer evening and I was enjoying the long walk to Penn Station while listening to some music, happy that my date went well, when I realized the man on his bike looked like he either lost control or was not paying attention to who was in his path. Nervous that he would hit me, I kept moving out of the way, swerving in different directions and walking as fast as I could away from an oncoming collision. Just as I thought the bike would hit me, he swerved a tiny bit away from me and called out, “Hey Beautiful!” and made kissing noises while leaning in towards my face. I leaned away and ran as fast as I could away from him and towards the cross walk.

Forget feeling good about the date I just enjoyed or the beautiful weather. Forget the enjoyment I was reveling in from the new music to which I was listening. I was now constantly looking over my shoulder and around me to see if the man on the bike was following me. After a few blocks I felt reassured that he was not following me, but my headphones stayed out and I was now on constant alert just in case someone else decided they needed to make themselves known to me through harassment.

Further reflection on this summer, unfortunately, revealed many instances of misogynistic, racist, xenophobic, and homophobic harassment. Leslie Jones, of Saturday Night Live and “Ghostbusters” fame, was recently harassed, trolled, and attacked online and through twitter with misogynoir threats and the hacking of her personal information on her own webpage. While she stood strong after the first instance we have yet to hear from her after her personal information was leaked. A man was sentenced to a 40-year prison sentence in Georgia after dumping scolding hot water on a gay couple while they slept. Muslim women in France were harassed and ordered to remove their burkinis in public due to xenophobic and Islamaphobic fears.

Overall, these incidents reflect that street harassment is not just a one-time incident or something that someone can ignore. It is a building block of power and oppression that literally shapes how people view themselves and society. It also shapes how society will treat communities and individuals. These incidents of harassment are tools of oppression and are ultimately traumatic events. As Dr. Judith Herman explains in Trauma and Recovery:

“Psychological trauma is an affliction of the powerless. At the moment of trauma, the victim is rendered helpless by overwhelming force. When the force is that of nature, we speak of disasters. When the force is that of other human beings, we speak of atrocities. Traumatic events overwhelm the ordinary systems of care that give people a sense of control, connection, and meaning.”

We must recognize harassment for what it really is—trauma, an oppressive tactic, a power play, a tool used consciously or unconsciously to dominate and erase those deemed unworthy or powerless by society. Harassment creates trauma by causing an individual to lose and question a sense of self and community. That is why it is extremely important that we speak up and refuse to be silent in the face of such oppressive tactics. It is extremely hard and sometimes we will not be able to do so out of fear or some type of inability to do so.

We are only human, but the only change I see in fighting street harassment and other building blocks of oppression is by calling it out for what it is and continuing to speak and act. That is the only way change will occur.

Deborah is a recent MSW graduate who also received certification from American University’s Women and Politics Institute and Rutgers’ Center on Violence Against Women and Children. In addition to social work, Deborah is looking to pursue an MPP/MPA and she is also extremely passionate about the arts (theater, writing, film, television, fine art, poetry, performance art), history, and Hamilton.

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USA: “Like a Girl” and “Street Compliments” – Building Blocks to Sexual Violence

By

Mariel DiDato, NJ, USA, SSH Blog Correspondent

“Hold on” You may have thought to yourself after reading the title of this article,  “I’ve told my sisters that they throw like ‘girls.’ It was just a joke. It has nothing to do with sexual violence.”

Directly speaking, no, it doesn’t have to do with sexual violence. However, telling a kid that they “(insert verb here) like a girl” is saying to that kid, boys are better at that thing than girls, and that they should emulate boys if they want to be good enough.

Or quite possibly, you thought, “Woah! I’ll tell a woman she’s sexy if I see her on the street, but I wouldn’t rape her.”

Fair enough. A street harasser may not ever think to rape someone, but somewhere along the line, they were taught that it is normal and acceptable to disregard a woman’s comfort so that they could tell her how sexy she is. Maybe someone else takes it a step further and follows a woman, demanding her attention. The next person might take it one step further and grab a woman inappropriately on a crowded street or bus. The next might become violent upon rejection, because his right to her body is more important than her right to say no. The line between any of these acts is a fine one, especially if they take place on a regular basis.

Ever ask for a woman’s number and then threaten to call it before she leaves to make sure she put in the correct number? Ever think that maybe she doesn’t want you to have her number?

Ever pressure a woman to have sex after multiple “No’s” or “I don’t want to’s,” for her to finally give in? Ever think that maybe she doesn’t want to have sex and that she’s either tired of saying “no,” or afraid of what you’ll do if she doesn’t eventually say “yes”?

Rape culture isn’t a myth that the progressive left came up with to place blame on men who have never committed sexual violence. It’s a term studied and used by professionals in this field to describe the aspects of society that condone and encourage violence against women.

“Woah, hold it!” You might be thinking, “Rape is one of the worst crimes someone can commit! Our society doesn’t condone rape!”

Stay with me, and just hear me out. It’s a more complicated idea than that.

The violence pyramid is the concept that sexual violence wouldn’t be so prevalent if sexual harassment wasn’t condoned. In addition, sexual harassment wouldn’t be condoned if sexist attitudes weren’t taught from childhood. From “You throw like a girl!” to “Nice tits, sweetheart!” to “She shouldn’t have gotten drunk if she didn’t want to be raped,” these themes are connected. Victim-blaming, refusal to believe survivors of sexual assault, and physical manifestations of sexual violence cannot proliferate without first building the primary bases of sexism. If boys are just naturally better and more valuable than girls, boys’ desires must be more valuable than girls’ comfort. If young boys see men harassing women in public, maybe it’s okay to harass girls at school in the hallways. If the people around boys make jokes about sexual assault, and blame victims of rape more than abusers, maybe committing rape isn’t even such a big deal to begin with. And if all of this is something that “only happens to girls,” what happens when a male becomes a survivor of sexual assault?

If sexual assault is the victim’s fault because “Some people are just psychopaths. You can’t prevent it. You can only take measures to protect yourself,” why are rape and molestation far more common than murder? If society truly believed that sexual violence is truly only committed by “psychopaths,” why are we quick to ignore the acts of Nate Parker, R. Kelly, and so many more abusers in favor of their careers? Is it any wonder that convicted rapists such as the infamous Brock Turner, and more recently Austin James Wilkerson, received laughable sentences for committing a serious felony? Society is quick to decry the effects of rape culture, but quick to deny its existence. We need to acknowledge the ugly parts of our society that allow for these occurrences to be so commonplace and unpunished.

Throw out the ideas that men should be sexually dominant and promiscuous, and women should be sexually inexperienced and submissive, that it’s okay for boys and men to shout sexually charged “compliments” to women in public, and that men are entitled to women’s time, attention, and sexuality. Replace these with the concept that rejection is okay, and shouldn’t be met with persistence. Reinforce the fact that people on the receiving end of harassment and assault are never at fault. Stress to young children that doing anything “like a girl” is just as good as doing it “like a boy.” We can only work towards long-term solutions if we acknowledge the root of the problem. It’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks, but it’s easier to teach young children that all people, regardless of demographic, are worthy of respect.

Mariel is a recent college graduate, feminist, and women’s rights activist. Currently, she volunteers for a number of different organizations, including the Planned Parenthood Action Fund of New Jersey and the New Jersey Coalition Against Sexual Assault. You can follow her on Twitter at @marieldidato or check out her personal blog, Fully Concentrated Feminism.

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