Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

USA: Silent Allies

By

Joe Samalin, New York City, NY, USA, SSH Blog Correspondent

(Content Notice for sexist language used in street harassment)

I have worked in their neighborhood for almost two years now and still don’t understand them. Their culture, dress, and mannerisms are so different from my own I’m uncomfortable around them. When I leave work to grab lunch they are often outside, too.

Young, white men in power suits, hair slicked back, smoking cigars. I don’t know if they are traders, bankers, or hedge fund managers, but the first time I noticed them it was like scene out of ‘Wall Street’ (which makes sense since I work around the corner from the New York Stock Exchange).

I first really noticed them about a year ago. A young woman left their side of the street and walked towards me as I crossed past her to go buy some peanut M&M’s. As she crossed the street their loud, sexually graphic comments about what they would like to do to her followed her as she walked on. The comments weren’t necessarily for the woman’s benefit – they were for each other and any other men around.

This is one truth of street harassment – it’s often done to “prove” our masculinity publicly – to ourselves and to other men (and women).

I don’t harass women in public or anywhere else. Most of the men that I know don’t either. As a straight, white, cisgender male I also have the privilege of not being harassed regularly in public. No brutality of a stop-and-frisk, no homophobic or transphobic bullying and violence. None of the pervasive and daily harassment of women and girls in public spaces touches me. In fact, I have never been harassed in public as far as I can remember. And I know writing that sentence is a slap in the face to the many women, folks of color, and LGBTQI friends and family I am blessed to have in my life.

However while I choose not to commit street harassment and am not harassed myself, I have been involved in street harassment a lot. Men harassing women in public seek me out in the moment to join in with them as they ogle, motion to, or catcall women. Or to defend them and have their back the (rare) times when they get called out by the women they target.

It’s (almost) unbelievable. Strangers (men) assume I will have their backs and support their violent (yes, violent) behavior towards women and girls in public. They expect me at least to turn a blind eye, and at best to stand right by their side.

Why?

Because most men ignore it. We excuse it, minimize it, and defend it. With a miniscule amount of effort we could acknowledge the reality of street harassment around us. From Wall Street to any street, street harassment is everywhere. And every one of us who chooses to ignore it or stays silent is complicit in it.

If I don’t speak up and out against street harassment my silence gives men who do it tacit approval to keep on keeping on. I give them my voice and allow them to speak for me.

I recently asked a few guy friends of mine if they knew any ‘hotspots’ of street harassment, areas where it happens not once, but was unrelenting.

Albery Abreu, a friend from the Bronx who has been addressing men’s violence against women since he was in high school told me about neighborhood parks. “Throughout the years I’ve witnessed an absurd amount of street harassment occurring when women/girls walk down the block where the basketball courts are. Boys stand behind the gate and whistle/holler/bark/shout/etc. at girls walking past. Some even leave the courts to run up to women to get their attention. I recall my sister telling me that she dreaded (and avoided as much as possible) walking on the same blocks as the baseball fields and basketball courts, even if there are only a few men and boys playing there.”

Dan Wald, a former board member of Students Active For Ending Rape is finishing up a degree in public health at an Ivy League school and told me “Our school has a break between the main campus and the medical campus, where there are some stores and people hang out. I remember last fall [a female friend] texting me that they wished I was with them” as they walked between campuses.

Gene A. Johnson, Jr. a professional mediator and facilitator of educational classes on masculinity blew my mind with this 4Square screen capture. Gene did not even need to leave his house to find street harassment.

These guys and others helped me better see how much energy we as men put into the lies of ‘it doesn’t happen (that often)’, ‘it doesn’t happen in this neighborhood’, ‘it’s not that serious’, etc.

Street harassment of women and girls happens everywhere men are present. Not because we all do it, but because we aren’t doing enough to challenge it.

Back to Wall Street. That day those men harassed the young woman, I turned around and hollered at them to cut it out. Their reaction? Straight confusion. They did not seem to understand the situation, couldn’t grasp the concept that I – one of them – was calling them out. They assumed I was an ally. And when we as men stay silent in the face of street harassment, that silence sends the message that we are allies of those who commit it.

Copyright: Joseph Samalin. All rights reserved. Reprints or reposts with the permission of the author and Stop Street Harassment.

Joe Samalin has been addressing gender-based violence for over 15 years, including as the Training and Technical Assistance Coordinator for Men Can Stop Rape. He is currently the Outreach and Training Manager for the Disaster Distress Helpline and is examining among other things gender-based violence in the aftermath of disasters. Follow him on Twitter, @joesamalin.

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USA: Hollaback! Baltimore Launches The Safer Space Campaign

By

Brittany Oliver, Baltimore, MD, USA, SSH Blog Correspondent

As activists across the nation work to end street harassment in their cities, there is one organization that is doing some serious work in making our streets safer: Hollaback! Baltimore. As a non-profit, Hollaback! Baltimore is currently on a mission to building a network of supportive non-threatening environments in Baltimore City.

This month Hollaback! Baltimore are encouraging local businesses in Baltimore City to sign the Safer Space Campaign Pledge, which declares their commitment to ending street harassment against women and LGBTQUIA people. This pledge would require staff to take complaints seriously, deal with the harasser, and offer support resources as needed.

By signing the pledge, each venue is given a packet of resources to assist them with keeping their space safer for guests. The packet includes a background on the issue, simple things to do and not do, the official Hollaback! Employer’s Guide to Ending Street Harassment, and a poster to hang publicly so guests will know what won’t be tolerated.

Poster Design: Kristen Argenio at Ideal Design Co

According to Hollaback! Baltimore, this campaign began in March 2013 when Hollaback! London formed a partnership with Fabric, a local club that was fed up with hearing that women were being harassed in their venue. The complaints they received motivated the club to make a difference, so they partnered with Hollaback! London to develop a campaign that would work directly with venues to ensure their current employees and security policies are effective. After hearing about their success with the campaign, Hollback! Baltimore felt Baltimore City needed a similar campaign. This is what they created:

THE PLEDGE:

By signing this pledge, we the undersigned do hereby agree to:

* Post the “Safer Space” poster provided by Hollaback! Baltimore in a prominent place for all employees/staff/volunteers and attendees/customers to see
* Take complaints of harassment, discrimination, and violence against customers or staff seriously
* Remove any offending parties from our space
* Ensure our staff, particularly those responsible for security, are aware of our policies
* Use the resources given to us by Hollaback! Baltimore to better understand the issues at hand as well as the best methods for dealing with them
* Inform victims of their right to share their story publicly and anonymously on Hollaback! (via the website or free phone app) by handing out informational postcards

I believe this campaign will not only help to make streets safer, but it will hold venue owners accountable for what goes on during business hours. You shouldn’t have to be an activist to want to make a difference. Whether you’re a teacher, police officer, business owner, janitor, or student, all members of the community should be willing to make our streets safer for everyone.

Ending street harassment has to be a team effort if we want to get the message across that harassment is NOT OKAY. Through this campaign, local businesses can now become effective agents of change by making their establishments harassment free for everyone.

To learn more Hollaback! Baltimore and the Safer Space Campaign, visit http://bmore.ihollaback.org/

Brittany Oliver is a recent graduate of Towson University and works in the non-profit communications sector and supports local anti-street harassment advocacy through Hollaback! Baltimore. She blogs at brittuniverse.wordpress.com and publicly rants on Twitter, @btiara3.

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USA: Reflections on a Women Bike PHL Street Harassment Focus Group

By

Katie Monroe, Philadelphia, PA, USA, SSH Blog Correspondent

Philly focus group. 2.25.14

This past week I had the opportunity to help orchestrate a focus group for the national study on street harassment currently being conducted by Stop Street Harassment. When Holly asked if I thought Philly bicyclists might make a good “group” for her study, I wasn’t completely sure if I could pull enough interested folks together on short notice. But I sent out a quick email to a small group of women bicyclists I know through Women Bike PHL (the women’s bicycling program I run at the BCGP) – and got an overwhelming response. At 6 p.m. this past Tuesday, almost everyone I emailed showed up to the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia office to take part in the focus group – the first of its kind, as far as I am aware. The hour that followed was full of insights that are still bouncing around on my brain, but here are three reflections I felt most compelled to share:

1) While I took care to distinguish between gender-based and transportation-based harassment in my last post, the focus group reintroduced some gray areas to my thinking. Car-on-bike harassment can and does certainly take place with every combination of genders of driver and cyclist, and there can be situations of car-on-bike harassment that simply involve an assertion of power over lane space and nothing more. However, I got the sense in the focus group that for women, harassment because they’re riding a bike can often become increasingly gendered as a situation escalates – for instance, getting called a cunt or bitch by an aggressive driver was a common theme. In addition, it was pointed out that while there may be important distinctions between the two types of harassment, the “gut feeling” women get from being sexually street harassed is a very similar “gut feeling” to the one they get from an aggressive driver. Good food for thought.

2) A great point resurfaced in the focus group that I remember a few women mentioning in the Women Bike PHL Facebook page last fall. That is, the fact that harassment is a reason that people (particularly women) might choose to run a red light rather than waiting for the green at an intersection, even if they generally abide by traffic laws. When we talk in the bike community about following the rules, I don’t think we often acknowledge the different ways that folks of different gender and sexual presentations experience being still versus in motion on our streets and sidewalks. A woman standing with her bicycle waiting for a green light is a sitting duck when it comes to harassment – and when the choice is between standing and taking it or looking both ways and pedaling through the red, it’s hardly surprising that some women would choose to pedal on! I think this aspect of the experience of biking isn’t always understood widely within the bike and bike advocacy community, and it seems important to me.

3) In that vein, the whole conversation just made me realize even more deeply how much street harassment and transportation choices are fundamentally linked. I saw a lot of light bulb moments happen during the focus group – for me and for the rest of the attendees. It was fascinating to hear the stories of how bicyclists – who have made a very particular and still relatively rare transportation choice, to ride a bicycle – perceive their experiences of street harassment. A few of the varied perspectives: biking as a means to escape the harassment that walking entails, biking creating safer ways to interact with strangers because of increased speed, or biking entailing sacrificing the opportunity to tell off street harassers in a satisfying manner. And I’m sure that’s only the beginning!

I’m excited to read the report and hear what resonated with Holly about our discussions on Tuesday, and to read the report as a whole with questions of transportation in mind. I’m so glad I could contribute to this study in my own way and so grateful to the group who came out to discuss this topic – thank you!

Katie Monroe founded the Women Bike PHL campaign at the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia and she works at the Philly nonprofit Gearing Up, which gives some of Philadelphia’s most marginalized women – those in transition from incarceration, addiction, and/or abuse – the opportunity to ride bicycles for exercise, transportation, and personal growth. Follow her on Twitter, @cmon_roe.

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Nepal: “Public transportation, a hesitation to women”

By

Kriti Khatri, Nepal, SSH Blog Correspondent

Street safety and its relation to women’s independence is connected, from the perspective of women’s mobility. However, rarely has there been an effort to create Safe Streets precisely from the perspective of concerns about women’s mobility. Our street is symbolic of free spirit and freedom itself, but for women the street remains a place to get victimized from various kinds of harassment activities and women have to go through traumatizing experiences of sexual and emotional harassment. A woman being more vulnerable towards various kinds of harassing activities their safety during travel is important.

While we raise voices against street harassment, one important aspect to concentrate on is harassment activities on public transportation. Reports showcase that harassment on public transportation on buses, trains, etc is more frequent for women than on the streets.

Horrendous acts of physically and mentally harassing women via gesture, touch, grabbing, verbal abuses or even constant gazes make taking public transportation a big hesitation for women. In thickly stuffed buses or other means of transportation like trains and metros, women get easily victimized from physical touching, grabbing etc. And since the crowd is a good excuse, it rarely get noticed or exposed. Sexual harassment activities make women feel emotionally left out and drained. As a consequence, women can develop negative attitudes towards their relationships with their male partners and family ties as well. Psychologists says harassment activities not only make women feel raged with the male genre, but also go through mental irritation concerning their body image and social behavior which in the long run can cause depression and other emotional issues.

A report conducted by Astitwa foundation shows that about 90 % of women has been suffered from street  harassment activities among which harassment in public vehicles is the most encountered in Kathmandu. Such harassment activities have been found occurring on school buses, by bus staff, public buses and other travel means. As per the report, most women have been found to experience uncomfortable touching and sexually explicit behavior. While women share their stories of harassment activities, in terms of response, most of them seemed silent. Respondents to the topic of harassment in public vehicles were hesitant about reacting to such activities. Many women seem to remain quiet about this issue by either adjusting in the crowd or dropping in nearby bus stop as their immediate self protection act.

“As for talking we can say I will take immediate action but when such incident happens, we go through emotional hold back, I felt raged but helpless and disgusted when the fellow passenger make uncomfortable gestured towards me, here I can say I wanted to slap him but at that time all I wanted was to get out of the bus.” — a 25 year old school teacher from Kathmandu.

Sexual harassment in public vehicles has been an issue raised by many social organizations in international level. With ever raising incident of harassment activities which has even lead to cases like gang rape and murder of women in public vehicles, this issue has been a concerned area in relation to women safe mobility and independence.

Concerned with the growing number of harassment activities, Nepal Police has initiated strict monitoring of the public transportation system. As per the Nepal police, travel safety of citizen and especially women is on their top priority after getting multiple reports filed against sexual harassment in public bus. According to the information of the Nepal Police, cases regarding public bus harassment are registered more than any other kinds of street harassment cases. As of now, women police are allocated in various bus stations to check inside bus which at least give a chance for victim to complain or make people aware of their act. In future Nepal police aims to monitor bus activities via closed caption cameras. There has also been initiation from nongovernmental sectors to make legal reformation against harassment activities collectively under violence against women in which there should essentially be strict provisions regarding street harassment.

Apart from the legal provisions, effort should also be from bus-driver, conductors and fellow passengers to discourage such activities in the vehicles.  Their effort can demoralize the doer, at the same time make women feel safe and comfortable.

“I was standing on the bus and a guy happen to stand right beside me with his hand around my shoulder from backside, the bus driver saw that and ask the conductor to make him step out of the bus saying that such cheap activities won’t be tolerated in his vehicle, It really felt so nice to find  bus drivers with such attitude towards activities going on his vehicles.” — 23 old employee who make 14 km of bus travel every day for her job in Kathmandu

The act of harassment and violence against women is more of a moral matter than legal. Unless individual understands that harassment activities against women are immoral, eliminating such acts won’t be easy with just legal threats. Women free conduct in the street or elsewhere is only possible when there is assurance of Safe travel and such safety can only be assured in morally governed society and justice run state system.

Kriti Khatri is student of MSc chemistry. She is engaged in different social organization in Nepal and currently she is working on anti-street harassment issues with the Astitwa Foundation. Find more of her writing on her blog.

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Scotland: Good Things

By

Rocío Andrés, Scotland, SSH Blog Correspondent

Trigger Warning

At the beginning, you think you are ready to read about sexual violence against women. You really think. And then, starting with the first page, the testimonies are difficult to forget and the women´s faces stick heavy in your days. The mind is a demon, you say, while trying to estimate how human the barbarity is – how big and open the door. One day, counting on your fingers, you remember since when – beyond the index, the pages-, you have the sexual violence at home.

But we frequently underestimate this. Libraries are full of books on sexual violence during wars, in conflicts or any, apparently far, turbulent crisis context. We love durings. As if there were neither after nor before.

I, myself, read books. And articles, analysis, surveys and piles of good intentional measures. All of them related to the brutal, predatory violence during conflicts. I read about the rapes, the gang-rapes, the assaults, the trafficking, the mutilations, the feminicides and the pain. I read about the thousands of victims, the number of rapers, the datas of deaths, as it happens/ed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, Colombia, Rwanda, Somalia, Afghanistan, Syria, Bosnia-Herzegovina and etcetera. In Egypt, over the three years of the revolution, there have been demonstrations in which more than 80 women were violently attacked in the course of only one night, many of them gang-raped. These are the durings I´m used to.

Now, as I read, I also wonder about the days before, about the “peace times.” The days when women go to work and on their way back, a 9-year-old is telling them obscene words. They are sexually harassed, assaulted or raped in public spaces.

These instances are not put in numbers, groups, patterns like during war. They are just drops. Sometimes, they belong to a new form of sexual violence, which is usually and, due to its spatially diffuse-unknown nature, an almost unmeasurable data, as in the Internet cosmos. Sometimes, they are not marketable enough – like the sexual violence in prisons. Usually, they´ve always been there – unreported, unattended, unheard-, until somebody, tired of holding the keys as a carver, as a weapon, gave them a name, a voice: domestic violence, sexual harassment, street harassment.

How you reach and/or face street harassment might differ in form. However, among the many faces of sexual violence, this one, even without visiting libraries, I know is true: from a softer to a more hardcore level, as a little girl, as a woman, in the bus, in the metro, a lift, a shop, the streets-, all women are aware of. It´s your neighbour violence.

Fortunately, many actions are increasingly taking place to address street harassment, to fight it, including upcoming events in Scotland, Egypt, and the USA.

In Edinburgh, on 17th March, Hollaback! Edinburgh will be at Stirling University for “Challenging Everyday Sexism,” a day of talks, workshops and debates about challenging sexism in public and private life. They will also be holding workshops at Abbey Mount Centre on 26th April, as part of the Pussy Whipped Festival 2014.

In Egypt, after flash mob dancing against sexual harassment on St Valentine´s Day, women are also preparing a two-day training course on self-defense techniques and reactions on harassment with the voice, looks and body language. There is also a film you can now watch online 678, (created in 2010 – before the revolution) directed by Mohamed Diab and focusing on the sexual harassment of women in Egypt. In 2010, it was awarded in Muhr Arab category at the Dubai International Film Festival.

In the USA, Stop Telling Women to Smile will have a week full of workshops, discussions and exhibitions in Oakland (California), with the involvement of artists like Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, who will be portraying local Bay Area women.

These are just some examples showing that good things can also happen.

Rocío Andrés holds a Bachelor´s degree in Audiovisual Communication, History of Art (both Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain) and a Master´s in Education (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain, 2010). She has six years experience as a TV and advertising producer.

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