Correspondent, Author at Stop Street Harassment

UK: We Welcome All Men Who Are Ready to Take a Stand

November 5, 2015 By Correspondent

Tracey Wise, London, UK, SSH Blog Correspondent

Chris Green. Image via http://www.coe.int/

Since establishing Safe Gigs for Women in June, after being groped at a big music event in the UK, it has become clear that I was not alone in facing this problem. Many women have contacted us, sharing their experiences of harassment at gigs, some saying as a result they now no longer go to gigs alone. At least three major festivals in the UK this summer reported serious sexual assaults. And let’s not forget that infamous T shirt from Coachella.

As such, it became clear that one of the principle aims of this campaign has to be to engage with gig goers to raise awareness of how their behaviour can impact others. Key to Safe Gigs for Women is the idea that this isn’t ‘man hating or women blaming’. But we must have the conversation that says it is not okay for men to grope women at music events nor is it appropriate to see the darkness and crowded space as a blanket for which it is acceptable to do this and get away with it. It will also be working to ensure that we are looking out for each other. Gigs and festivals can be a daunting place at times, and with music being very much, in our eyes, a force for good, to encourage everyone to look out for each other at all times will go a massive way to address this. The establishing of other projects addressing just this issue in the UK further highlight how this is a problem, including the White Ribbon Music project and Girls Against.

Hannah from Girls Against, said when asked why this project and why now:

“We’ve had numerous people… get in contact with us to say that they had no idea this even went on. We’d like to keep educating people… We’ve had people say that they’ve seen this happen but did nothing about it so we want to change that… We should be joining together and supporting each other so that everyone has a good time”.

Writing in support of Safe Gigs for Women on the Land of Sunshine blog, Niki Jones rightly points out that “a woman shouldn’t need a burly protector in order to enjoy a band”.

And it’s not just the UK. Recently, the US based band Speedy Ortiz set up a helpline for fans experiencing harassment at gigs.

Safe Gigs for Women was very much established in the opinion that for this to be successful, we must first encourage and defend the teaching of consent in all schools, as part of sex and relationship education. Secondly, if men are the “problem,” then men have to be part of the solution. So how do we do this?

Whilst I could stand and talk about this all day, chances are someone out there will call me a whinging feminist. But to achieve this, as I was lucky enough to hear Chris Green (director of the White Ribbon Project in the UK) advocate, men have to have the conversation with other men. Men have to call out other men on their inappropriate behaviour. Safe Gigs for Women welcomes all men ready to stand with us in this.

Born and raised in London, Tracey is a graduate of City University. She has spent the best part of her life at gigs and festivals and obsessing about music and created the “Safe Gigs for Women” project.

USA: Flipping the Script on Homeless Harassment

October 28, 2015 By Correspondent

Sara Conklin, Washington, DC, USA, SSH Blog Correspondent

If I asked you to imagine in your head a scenario involving street harassment and a homeless person, what would you picture? If the hour I just spent scrolling through Google is any indication, you’re imagining an unassuming individual being harassed by a surly person who looks to be sleeping on a street corner. This happens, A LOT. I’ve been harassed by a seemingly unhoused individual on many occasions and as someone who works in the field of homelessness in Washington, DC, I am intimately familiar with the myriad of reasons a homeless person can “act out of order,” related to a series or traumas or serious mental illnesses/addiction stemming from chronic homelessness.

But that’s not what I want to talk about —

Far fewer people are flipping the script on the conversation of harassment and homeless people, choosing also to discuss how people experiencing homelessness are often cruelly harassed themselves.

Try to imagine instead, a homeless person who has struggled with serious depression and mental illness and asks for money on the street in an unthreatening and polite manner. Instead of a humble, “no” the solicited person replies with a vulgar and dehumanizing response. This happens more often that you’d think. I’d recommend watching this heartbreaking video, to give you a good picture of such cruelty (and these were just online tweets; the harassment in person can be much worse). One person even asks, “If home is where the heart is, do homeless people even have hearts?”

I come from an organization that supports 60% of the homeless women in our metropolitan area. Our working mantra is that, “But for a few circumstances of fortune and timing, ‘she’ could be me.” The women I have met here are survivors. They have faced unparalleled odds against them and come out on the other side. If we are discussing “street harassment” as unwanted comments, gestures, and actions forced on a stranger, particularly with an actual or perceived gender-bias, homeless women might take the cake.

I have no intention of ignoring the legitimate case that homeless men are antagonized and harassed every day, but I’ve learned firsthand from clients that identify as female, that unaccompanied homeless women disproportionately face, “multiple forms of interpersonal victimization, including sexual and physical assault at the hands of strangers, acquaintances, pimps, sex traffickers, and intimate partners on the street, in shelters, or in precarious housing situations (vawnet.org).”

In the United States we have already made public spaces unsafe for people experiencing homelessness. Reference for example, how it has been outlawed to sit down in San Francisco, or the effort to make it illegal to give people food in Philadelphia, how Manteca purposely changed the water sprinkler schedule to keep the homeless from sleeping in a park, or how Sarasota just got rid of their park benches altogether.

These degrading and brutalizing efforts coupled with verbal attacks from housed city residents can make the day-to-day life of a homeless person unbearable.

But the bigger conversation centers on how we’ve come to tolerate the harassment of a homeless person more than that of a seemingly housed person. It very well could be that the vast majority of readers are appalled by this and reject entirely the thought. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.

The sad truth is, the majority of Americans treat homeless people like occupied public spaces. In other words, without context, making assumptions about why that person is there and why they can or cannot leave. Those are not our assumptions to make. But once we do, it makes it easier for us to dehumanize a person enough to permit their mistreatment.

Since many of us treat our parks and streets with a certain abandon for retribution, we tend to treat the people who occupy those spaces recklessly as well – it’s as if we feel that since the park is public, the person who sleeps there is publicly owned as well, which leaves me entitled to judge them. That sort of entitlement can lead to vocalizing slurs or prejudicial comments without fear of consequence. When a person is on their knees, it’s easier to knock them down.

As we discuss the innumerable ways in which street harassment exists in our everyday lives, and the inconceivable reality that people can be objectified and reduced to targets of harassment merely by existing in a public space, we should acknowledge the ways we treat all individuals who occupy public spaces, including those facing homelessness.

What compels someone to harass a homeless person is a concept I may never understand. But, I can begin to infer that it has something to do with entitlement in communal areas – how we choose when or when not to vocalize observations or opinions about another person sharing a collective space, can speak volumes about our compassion and empathy.

As I continue to demand respect for myself when I occupy a street or sidewalk, I will also petition others to demand the same respect for others regardless of circumstance. After all, “But for a few circumstances of fortune and timing, ‘she’ could be me.”

Sara works in fundraising events at an organization that empowers women who face homelessness through recovery, wellness training, and housing. She runs her own photography company (saraconklinphotography.com) and a popular website that seeks to connect the world through pictures, sarapose.com.

The Netherlands: Demystifying Dutch Tolerance

October 26, 2015 By Correspondent

Eve Aronson, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, SSH Blog Correspondent

Have you heard of the Dutch Myth of Tolerance? It’s not a myth in the mythical sense, and it’s not a fairytale, though it does sound admittedly magical.

Since the 17^th century, the Netherlands has been a smorgasbord of races, ethnicities and religions and has continuously championed itself on what are known as “pillars” of tolerance.

The Dutch Myth of Tolerance is reflective of the disintegration of these pillars towards what has become an increasingly harsh critique of the narrative of ‘acceptance and multiculturalism’ in the Netherlands (or the lack thereof).

At first, the presence of this myth throughout my research was subtle. People told me about their experiences of street harassment and may have thrown in some (racially) identifying characteristics of their harassers. But after several months, it became evident that a more solid smokescreen lurked, and that the notion of Dutch pluralism and tolerance was not always as strong as it presented itself to be.

When people talk about street harassment in Amsterdam, it is not uncommon to highlight the race or ethnicity of one’s harassers, particularly if they are of Moroccan or Turkish decent, two of the largest minority populations in the Netherlands. Often times, the harasser is also tied to a particular neighborhood. For example, one person I talked to said: “In my experience, harassment was worse in neighborhoods with a lot of immigrants from cultures…Moroccans for example.” Another echoed: “A lot of catcalling, primarily from members of black communities”.

A report released in March of this year by the city of Amsterdam also highlighted particular minority-populated neighborhoods and communities as being more affected by street harassment, which arguably worked to further emphasize the link between street harassment and race or ethnicity.

Many of you might also recall the October 2014 video of a woman walking through the streets of New York in the US. The video heavily criticized for selectively showing a disproportionate number of men of color harassing the (white) woman in the video. Emphasizing connections between street harassment, race and location is not only completely inaccurate; it also strips accountability from a significant proportion of harassers who fall outside of these stereotypes and who are harassing women in Amsterdam just as often.

Below is a map of locations tagged by 48 respondents of a recent street harassment survey that I conducted in Amsterdam. Take a good look at where the majority of incidents are reported:

(Source: BatchGeo 2015)

The majority of the geotagged incidents were reported in the center of the city, mostly around touristy areas and not in areas of the city known to have large minority populations (Biljmer, Zuid-Oost and Oost, for example). What this data does then, is encourage a revisiting of stereotypes of street harassment in Amsterdam, albeit from a purely geographic perspective. And this is just a start. The more stereotypes are checked—particularly using visual tools and visualizations—the more people are realizing that street harassment extends beyond race, ethnicity and geographical area.

What kind of impact does this have on the ground? Understanding street harassment as part of broader power structures does not mean that everyone gets this memo, and in this vein, individuals’ lived experiences are critical to take into account. But without denying individual experiences with street harassment, it is important to underline the implications of making generalized statements about races or communities.

Starting up a Hollaback! in Amsterdam is one way to work towards exposing exactly what happens on the ground and where. Geotagging experiences of street harassment not only confronts the Dutch Myth of Tolerance but it also provides an important starting point for conversations about street harassment and race in the Netherlands. Coupled with other awareness-raising initiatives and campaigns, addressing racial stereotyping in conversations about street harassment through such visual tools also encourages a look at street harassment through a much broader lens—one that unfortunately does not make the fight against street harassment easier but who said this was going to be easy? Ultimately, what taking a more comprehensive approach to street harassment does, is it makes the work more strategic and more effective in the long run.

You can find the full analysis of the Amsterdam survey results here or by contacting Eve at evearonson@gmail.com. Follow Eve and Hollaback! Amsterdam on Twitter at @evearonson and @iHollaback_AMS and show your support by liking Hollaback! Amsterdam’s Facebook page here.

Croatia: Breastfeeding in Public is a Street Harassment Issue

October 25, 2015 By Correspondent

Marinella Matejcic, Croatia, SSH Blog Correspondent

*Woman breastfeeding. Image via the Huffington Post*

You know how, when we talk about street harassment, most people just assume that it involves a woman, a man and physical or verbal violence? Maybe you’ll react on the sentence you just read and say: but it can involve a trans* person, as well! You would be completely right, but that’s not the issue here.

I want to talk about another form of street harassment, the one that we’re not “ranting” about enough. It incorporates patriarchy, body shaming and street violence as we know it: breastfeeding in public. Everyday Feminism and HuffingtonPost have covered the topic, but are we paying enough attention?

Sometimes, it is amiss, depending on your location and whereabouts, as well as your feminism postulates, to talk about the relation of feminism and childbearing/caring. But if we talk biology, kids are something some women have, which is perfectly fine. The broader feminist community has to incorporate mothers into their stories and keep the whole “women, sisters” agenda as far as possible from crossing a woman because of her reproductive choices. We tend to talk about sexual and reproductive health and rights, but, from time to time, ignore actual women who decided to procreate.

Saying: “I’m fine with breastfeeding, but…” doesn’t portray you as an open-minded individual – that but is what distinguishes a valid opinion from discrimination.

Some people say that it’s a disgusting site to see. Breastfeeding is disgusting because a woman’s boob is out and the baby is, ugh, eating from it? How awful is that? I really don’t even want to get into that double-standards-patriarchy talk. There is no doubt that the patriarchy itself is the core problem of why do people consider that they are entitled to judge, give advice to or obstruct any women’s actions. But I don’t think that we should discuss this topic related to general hyper-sexualisation and acceptance of women’s breasts in the media and marketing industry. That is a waste of time and emphasizes the wrong notion that woman has to do something specific with her body in order to please the general audience and expectations. Forcing a person to somehow feel ashamed because of a personal process that isn’t hurting anybody is a form of oppression, you know?

Let’s sum it up: I’m talking oppression, feminism and sexualisation. What does nurture have to do with that and how can I justify this blog post on a site street harassment, when it is clearly about breastfeeding? It’s really simple: street harassment can be broadly defined but in every definition, it includes some force of violence in public space – and banning a mother from feeding her child is violence. Sexualisation of that act is violence. There was a great article on this on Everyday Feminism, called 8 Reasons Why the Policing of Parents Who Nurse in Public Is Street Harassment. It is a good read.

Somehow I just can’t get rid of the notion that by shaming a nursing woman, we’re sending signals that a woman’s body is here just for being tangled by society’s ideas on a woman’s position. It’s fact that basically, a woman produces food and feeds her baby in a most natural way, but is seen as daring to provoke the general public by claiming her own body! What nerve, huh? Again, oppression through shaming. Sound familiar?

At one point in my life, I was a breastfeeding mom as well and had to cope with comments like, “Why don’t you just breastfeed her in the toilet, it’s not a nice sight!” or “Are you sure, somebody might see you?” or even “But that’s a private thing, don’t publicize it,” on, I guess, a weekly basis.

By opting-in for the shaming of breastfeeding mothers in the street or in some shopping place (for instance, these security officers that harassed a bunch of breastfeeding moms at a mall, because they were such a threat to public moral and everything) you are perpetuating the culture of violence and street harassment. Maybe, if you find it edgy to think about it in those terms, just try to put yourself in those shoes, while doing some dull everyday task. Imagine people telling you “don’t do that HERE”, “you’re OBSCENE”, “hush, hide!”

What would be your feelings if a complete stranger came up to you and told you to put that food of yours away because that’s not what a nice person is supposed to do outdoors and among other people?

So, what should one do when one meets a woman that nurtures her child in public? Nothing. Live and let live.

What if you breastfeed and somebody harasses you? Best for Babes has some good advice.

Views on breastfeeding in general and views about it specifically in public are so different across the globe, and we have to keep that in mind. Feeding a child in public is a choice that a woman has to have. After all, a baby has to eat.

Marinella is a freelance journalist/writer, feminist activist, and soon-to-be administrative law student. She writes for Croatian portal on gender, sex and democracy called Libela.org and covers CEE stories for globalvoicesonline.org. Follow her on Twitter @mmatejci.

USA: Police Violence is a Form of Street Harassment

October 24, 2015 By Correspondent

Hannah Rose Johnson, Arizona, USA, SSH Blog Correspondent

This month I talked with Pat Farr, a member of Hey Baby! Collective, in Tucson, AZ, about the intersections of sexual violence that are embedded in societal institutions; the sort of intersections that are more complex to organize around—specifically how profiling by police and police brutality constitute street harassment.

Farr presented an analysis of the nuances, scopes and the limits of perfect-victim narratives. When we think of street harassment solely as a cat-calling, where is power moving, what identity is created and who is being left out?

Farr says, “…rape culture is really a complex system that creates a framework for identifying who is a victim and who is a perpetrator. And if someone doesn’t fit into these tropes of victim/perp then it they fall outside of the discourse and are not victims and not perpetrators. So I like the term perfect and imperfect victim…[…] With street harassment it’s even more difficult. There’s very few protections against street harassment to begin with. So this notion of a perfect victim becomes subjectively very difficult to define.”

The first is the Office on Violence Against Women’s definition of sexual assault, which is defined as: any type of sexual contact or behavior that occurs by force or without consent of the recipient of the unwanted sexual activity. Farr says that “The definition of sexual assault by the OVW includes street harassment.”

The second is the Center for Disease and Control’s uniform surveillance on sexual violence, which extends to noncontact unwanted sexual experiences. “This,” says Farr, “is very similar to non-consensual behavior of a sexual nature as described by the OVW.”

The third is the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s definition of sexual harassment which includes offensive remarks about a person’s sex. The EEOC goes on to define sex-based discrimination as: discrimination against an individual because of gender identity, including transgender status, or because of sexual orientation. “As such,” Farr argues that “because sexual harassment is a form of sexual discrimination, according to the EEOC, harassment based on a person’s gender identity or sexual orientation is a form of sex discrimination.”

“This gives us the opportunity to extend the definition of street harassment,” Farr says, “according to these definitions, it is street harassment when a transgender woman walking down the street is attacked because of her gender identity, and hence this would count as sexual violence.”

Farr brought up the case of Monica Jones—a black transwoman, sex worker rights activist and MSW student in Phoenix, AZ. She was arrested after a demonstration for sex workers when she took a ride from an undercover, and refused the driver’s proposition. Farr told me that “even though she refused the driver’s propositions, she was still arrested on the prostitution related crime against morality, manifestation of prostitution.” This kind of law, within the city municipal code crimes against morality, is known as “manifestation of prostitution.” It’s a kind of profiling law when a police officer thinks someone looks like a sex worker and is doing something in an area where sex workers would be.

“…it’s essential to recognize that people of color, lower class people, LGBQ people, transgender people, and HIV positive people all are at greater risk of police violence that’s based largely on culturally defined stereotypes of sexuality,” Farr states, “Compulsive heterosexuality, heteronormativity, white supremacy, neoliberal economics, and the prison industrial complex are all bound up with street harassment as a form of institutional violence against particular identities.”

Identities in the margins present different relationships to power which are reinforced through all of our state-sanctioned systems. These identities—these people and their lives—are vulnerable in the face of systems that reproduce heterosexuality, white supremacy, patriarchy and transphobia. These systems rely on exclusion and violence to function, and create our cultural understanding of who is a victim and what terms make a victim.

What Farr is saying here gives us a wider framework to think about who is a victim of street harassment. It is no longer only the person walking down the street being cat-called, it’s also person being profiled by police and arrested because of their gender identity and race.

This allows us to see police violence as a form of street harassment that is inevitably tied to the state.

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