By: Delia Harrington, Massachusetts, USA, SSH Correspondent

Recently I read an article on xoJane about street harassment while studying abroad.  It saddened me to hear how isolated the author felt, and how quick she was to cover her treatment  with a joke.  But I also recognized myself and my students in her.

I have been the girl who downplays street harassment abroad, even though I’m a vocal opponent of the same behavior when I am home.  So I started thinking about why we stay silent or laugh at off, and what makes street harassment different when studying or traveling abroad.

While there are some similarities, there are a few dimensions added to the reactions when a person is harassed outside of their own community.  Among these are ethnocentrism, racism, and a belief that women should not be traveling, especially not alone or somewhere dangerous.  The foreign nature of the location, culture, and perhaps language of the harasser can add a level of fear and doubt for the harassed person.  Some people who are not harassed at home will be harassed more frequently or for the first time abroad, because of how they are perceived in this new location.

We don’t speak up because we don’t want to hear from the naysayers back home.

If you’re traveling, you likely heard a bunch of horror stories about it before you left from everyone from your mom to casual acquaintances you meet at parties.  If you are female and going alone, you probably heard it more often and more stridently.  That goes double if you were going to a developing country, a Latin country, an Arab country, a Muslim country, or any place deemed otherwise “dangerous” or “culturally backwards.”

If we speak up about anything that is even remotely negative, these naysayers come back out of the woodwork.  See, it’s dangerous.  See, those people are terrible to women.  See, that’s why women shouldn’t travel alone.  See, you should have just stayed home.

We don’t speak up because we are given terrible advice.

As someone who has worked abroad, participated in five different study abroad programs, helped to lead three more study abroad programs, and worked as a study abroad administrator, I have heard it all when it comes to advising women on their safety abroad.  Some of the advice is incredibly helpful, but some of the advice is straight up apologist, victim-blaming crap.  Over the years I have heard faculty, staff, and administrators say things including:

* They should wear less revealing clothing
* That’s just the culture here so they should get used to it
* The men here just can’t help it
* That’s their problem and they need to handle it on their own
* They need to let it go–they shouldn’t react angry or cause a scene.

We don’t speak up because we aren’t taken seriously.

Perhaps worse than terrible advice is when someone laughs off your very real concerns.  I’ve seen this happen most egregiously when the bystander does not speak the language and therefore doesn’t actually have any idea what is being yelled.   It can also occur when bystanders so strongly identify with the host country that they are unable to speak critically about its shortcomings.  And finally if a bystander is never harassed themselves, they may give it little thought.  It is incredibly easy to say something is not a big deal or does not happen if it does not happen to you, and that makes it harder for someone to speak up the next time harassment happens.

I have stayed quiet for these reasons in the past. But I’m trying to speak up now, and I hope you will too. Chances are, others have experienced this type of behavior too.

In study abroad and international travel, we all think everyone else is having this perfect, fabulous time because that’s all anyone puts on Facebook.   We feel obligated to have a perfect time because of the effort and money we (and perhaps others) put into getting abroad.  Feeling like the only one who gets harassed can be isolating, shaming, or make a person believe they are overreacting.  Feeling like we can’t speak up because it will taint how people see our host country or it will seem ungrateful can make silence seem like the best option.

But remember: talking about street harassment is one of the only ways to diminish its power over us.

I don’t plan to ever stop traveling, and I cannot recommend enough that everyone study, live, work or volunteer abroad at some point if they are able to.  I won’t stop going to countries that are politically tumultuous, economically underdeveloped or culturally conservative compared to my home in the United States.  But I think it’s time that we are honest with ourselves and each other about what traveling abroad is really like for women, the good and the bad.  I believe that the only way to fully reclaim our right to explore this great big, wondrous world is to speak up and support each other, as loud and as often as we can.

Delia Harrington is a recent graduate of Northeastern University and calls Boston home. In recent years, she has found herself studying, working, and volunteering in Egypt, Cuba, France, Benin, the Dominican Republic, Turkey, Germany, and Greece.  You can read more of her writing on her blog, or follow her on Facebook and Twitter, @deliamary.

 By Nikoletta Gjoni, Maryland, USA, SSH Correspondent

The many times that I’ve gotten on the metro recently I’ve thought about an article I read a few weeks ago in The New York Times, How Not to Be Alone. The author, Jonathan Safran Foer, writes about the diminishment of daily human interaction due to the ever-rising use of technology and its tendency to isolate us. What I found to be both intriguing and significant in the article was Foer writing about a recent occurrence on the streets of Brooklyn:

A girl, maybe 15 years old, was sitting on the bench opposite me, crying into her phone…I was faced with a choice: I could interject myself into her life, or I could respect the boundaries between us. Intervening might make her feel worse, or be inappropriate… an affluent neighborhood at the beginning of the day is not the same as a dangerous one as night is falling. And I was me, and not someone else. 

 The significance of what Foer writes (with absolute knowingness) is that 1) an older man approaching a young girl on the street would be perceived as shady to most bystanders, and 2) that he confuses an ‘affluent’ neighborhood for a safe one; street harassment doesn’t discriminate according to zip code. The very real concern that he would come off as an intrusive and possibly threatening man to a teenaged girl is strong enough for him to want to keep his nose in his contacts list and completely ignore the situation. Foer doesn’t tell us what he ultimately decides to do, though he admits that “there’s a lot of human computing to be done.”

Though street harassment is by no means a new problem for women, it is perhaps more widely acknowledged today than it may have been in years past. Like countless of other women all over the world, I have had my fair share of unwanted gazes, comments, and contact. The only time I’ve had backup is when I’ve been out with friends. On any other occasion of simply walking to and from work or trying to look for a street name, help is almost never readily available.

It is disheartening to think that even though people can spot and disapprove of street harassment, few will say anything against the perpetrator. So when I stumbled upon an Avon Foundation tweet regarding a bystander behavior training program for sexual harassment, it reminded me of the work being made out there by different organizations to create awareness of when someone is being verbally or physically assaulted, and to step in when one can. It’s a reminder that when one is being attacked in a public space, it should be the duty of others around that person to jump in and strike down the harassment taking place. One would hope that if enough people partake in bystander intervention, it would eventually become the normalized behavior. Sometimes all it takes is a quick acknowledgment to let the victim know that she has not slipped through the cracks in the middle of a crowd.

So what do I do to deter unwanted advances? Precisely what Foer continues to write about in his article. I pull out my phone, plug in my earbuds, and blast my music. My girlfriends and I joke about how it’s a hassle whenever we forget our phones/ipods/ipads/kindles/earbuds. We joke about how we try to avoid eye contact in a crowded metro car – just in case! – because we have all had that one experience, that one time when we were approached just to be told that we look sad/angry/bored.

I sometimes wonder if it’s the healthiest fix to the problem. I know that in the process of trying to avoid unsavory people, you may miss out on conversing with the interesting ones. Foer recognized that his intentions may have come off as creepy or impure, and while I appreciate and also sympathize with his sensitivity to the matter, I would actually encourage him and other men to step up and speak up when their incentive is to be a good Samaritan. Being prejudged as a harasser is as sad as the harassment problem itself, and it’s something I consciously try to remind myself of whenever I am out in public.

Nikoletta Gjoni graduated from UMBC in 2009 with a B.A. in English Literature. After graduation, she did almost four years of freelance work in a D.C. broadcast station, in addition to having worked as a literacy and linguistics assessor for pre-k classrooms in D.C.’s charter schools.  To get to know her better, she can be tracked on both her creative blog and Twitter, @nikigjoni.

By Sara Schwartzkopf, Colorado, USA, SSH Correspondent

Like most women my age, I’ve experienced my fair share of street harassment. I remember the first time being when I was 14, as I was walking back to my school after lunch break. While I was waiting to cross the street, a man pulled up in a truck, rolled down the window and proceeded to make it perfectly clear that he was leering at my chest. He didn’t say a word, just gave me a suggestive eyebrow raise and a creepy smile before driving off. I remember shuddering, walking back into school and mentioning it to friends who seemed to think it a positive that an older man had “complimented” me.

I remember that instance, not so much because it was extraordinary, but because it was the first time I had a perfect stranger make clear to me that he felt entitled to make his opinion about my body known. It was also the first time that I wondered if this really was a compliment, or if my initial reaction was right that there was something deeply wrong about that encounter.

Since then I’ve had plenty of different interactions with strangers in public places. I’ve heard and witnessed people’s unsolicited opinions on my body when I was overweight, when I was a teenager, when I was out running, when I was with my mother, traveling, hiking, kayaking, walking, shopping, riding public transit, driving in my car, or simply out with friends in public. It’s a very rare occasion indeed when I count these interactions as a positive. It’s also very rare that these comments happen when I’m with a man, and I’ve noticed many of the men in my life are unfamiliar with what street harassment is.

Now both of those things are worth unpacking. As women, we’re frequently told that we are our bodies. Our self-worth becomes inherently tied to how attractive our bodies are. So when a stranger voices their opinion on our looks, it’s implied that we should take that as a compliment (or in some cases as valid criticism). The thing is we are a lot more than our bodies. We don’t need, or particularly want, random people’s opinions on how we look when we’re trying to get any myriad of things done.

The other part of not finding these interactions to be positive is that they frequently don’t come across as compliments so much as demands for attention. Ignoring a harasser on the street at night is often followed by the fear and sometimes reality of being followed. Telling someone to leave you alone sometimes escalates to insults and outright threats. I’ve heard thoughts that men who harass are just at a loss of how else to approach without getting rejected. I don’t think I buy this. I can’t believe how inept a man would have to be to think that yelling, “Nice ass!” at a passerby would net him a better response than, well, almost anything else.

The other thing is why I don’t get harassed if I’m around a man. I can only guess this: men don’t fear what I will do when they shout things at me in public. I am a woman, which means ideally I will smile when they tell me to and say thank you when a comment is offered. Regardless of whether I need or want this validation, I’m expected to take it and move on. Yet if I’m with a man it’s considered disrespectful to him, to address me. There’s a fear and a boundary line there that other men don’t cross. I think this goes a long way to explaining why most of the men I know say they’ve never seen street harassment, or even understand what it is. To them it’s an invisible problem.

Sara is a recent graduate of the University of Denver where she majored in Sociology, International Studies, and minored in Japanese. She has previously written on issues relevant to the Native American community at Le Prestige Du Monde, pulling heavily on her experiences as a mixed-race Kiowa and Chickasaw.