Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

UK: This is why street harassment violates human rights

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Ruth Mair, UK, SSH Blog Correspondent

When I first browsed around the SSH site for some ideas on what had and had-not been written about by others so far, one of the things that struck me was that in the information about the origins of the Stop Street Harassment project, street harassment was referred to as a human rights issue.

As a human rights student, my first inclination was to agree: of course street harassment is a human rights issue. But I am also the first to admit that although I vehemently oppose street harassment, I had not thought of it in terms of human rights violations before. And when I tried to unpack this, to myself, in my head I had trouble thinking about how I would explain it to someone else, particularly if that someone had never experienced street harassment, or had perhaps never seen it taking place.

So I thought that for my first blog as one of the SSH Summer Correspondents, I would put together a check-list of sorts, in case you are ever faced with trying to explain to someone why street harassment is a human rights issue. Then you can shout it at anyone (should you wish to) who suggests that street harassment is just a women’s issue, or worse, just banter.

First, the human rights aspects of street harassment can be broken in to two realms of violation. The first is that street harassment literally infringes on the human dignity of the person being harassed, and seriously affects their ability to live their life as they wish to. Preservation of human dignity is one of the key aims of instruments such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and street harassment in all its forms violates one’s ability to live in the world with equal dignity to that of other people who are not generally harassed (e.g. women who are harassed when men are not, or transgender people who are harassed when cis people are not, or people of colour who are harassed in ways that white people are not etc). This would be the case regardless of which groups are most vulnerable to being harassed. In the language of rights violations, human dignity is incredibly important, and street harassment can be extremely detrimental to an individual’s sense of personal dignity.

Secondly, there is very little authoritative or legal framework from which governments are able to prevent harassment, or hold those who harass others accountable for their actions. This is also illustrative of a rights violation, because it reflects an institutionalised vulnerability of those who are most often the victims of street harassment. There are laws against bullying in the workplace generally, and laws specifically against harassment of women in the workplace, for example, but not to address the problem of harassment in the streets. As a wise woman one said (or perhaps typed), just because we move through a public space, does not mean that our bodies are public spaces. The lack of framework to address violations in public spaces also reflects a gap in rights protection, regardless of the reasons behind this specific gap (funding, difficulties of enforcement etc) which represent a whole other sphere of problems in rights protection generally.

In terms of the specific articles of rights that are relevant to the problem of street harassment, much of the time this will depend on the context and circumstances of the harassment taking place, however some rights will often apply in a general sense, to any form of street harassment. The first is the right to a private life. This is embodied in article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and states that no one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with their privacy. Although this is intended to apply to instances of the government interfering with private life, it can also be used to refer to examples of harassment where the government are unable or unwilling to uphold and actively protect that right.

Similarly, the right to freedom of peaceful assembly is significant; attending public events is peaceful assembly, and harassment violates that both by removing the safety to attend, and by removing the “peaceful” part of things, which can thus be seen as a violation of that right. The rights embodied in CEDAW, the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, are also helpful here, as they refer to the specifically gendered side of interaction with the public sphere, and the inherent dangers that face those who are not cis males when interacting with the public generally. CEDAW sets out to create legislation for the purpose of guaranteeing women the exercise and enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms on a basis of equality with men, and in ignoring the problem of street harassment for women, states party to CEDAW are inherently violating this, if only by an act of ignorance rather than malice.

In my opinion, these rights easily make street harassment an issue worthy of much more attention at a government level, but for now they should at least give you an edge when anyone attempts to suggest that street harassment is a problem that does not need talking about.

Ruth is a human rights MA student finishing her MA dissertation on the legal and normative rights of terror suspects in the UK (spoiler alert: rights are being violated). She also plays bass in a band called Kinshot, sews as often as she can, and spends time getting annoyed at the cat sleeping on top of her computer.

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“BU Babes Beware”??

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Via Boston Magazine:

“On Monday evening, BU police alerted people to three separate incidents of sexual assault near campus. In several of the incidents, a man approached a female from behind and attempted to lift up her skirt. Police said that a number of similar assaults had been reported over the weekend, suggesting they were the work of one serial creep.

Metro Boston devoted its Tuesday cover to the story. The image, though, seems to, uh, take the visual perspective of this skirt-obsessed groper. It shows a woman in a knee-length skirt and heels, her head and shoulders cropped out of the picture entirely. Accompanying the image is the headline “BU BABES BEWARE.” Critics argued the wording put the onus for preventing sexual assault on the skirt-clad ladies of Boston.”

Safe Hub Collective called them out on the sexism and victim-blaming and they apologized. Good work SHC!

“We appreciate the Metro’s quick response and sincere apology to its readers,” writes Safe Hub Collective. “However, the cover itself is indicative of how much work we still have to do when it comes to reporting on violence against women.”

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UK: London Needs Anti-Harassment Posters

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For many women, the streets are not ‘public’ spaces. Rather, they are places where our actions and clothes are judged by others, and our feelings of security are put into question. This often occurs in the form of sexual harassment or assault, an encounter which is intimidating, demeaning, invasive and frustrating. I would like to add here that I fully acknowledge that various forms of sexual harassment and assault are also suffered by men and transsexual people.

These experiences don’t stop when we step from the street onto London’s public transport and so I was relieved when I heard of an initiative called Project Guardian. As stated on its website, it is a ‘long-term project involving British Transport Police (BTP), Transport for London (TfL), Metropolitan Police and the City of London Police, which aims to reduce sexual assault and unwanted behaviour on public transport in London’. Apart from the name, which implies that women need to be protected rather than needing to be given a platform and the agency to strengthen and empower themselves, it is a wonderful and much needed project.

Given that Project Guardian has been running for nearly two years, when I excitedly mentioned it to friends of mine living in London I expected them to be aware of it, yet none of them were. I wondered if these responses represented a wider trend and so I created a survey in January 2015 asking Londoners of their knowledge of Project Guardian. The results were shocking: 84.3% of respondents using London transport ‘daily’ or ‘once or twice a week’ ‘have not heard of [Project Guardian] & don’t know what it is’ and 13.8% of respondents ‘have heard of it but don’t really know what it is’. Equally 72.8% did not know that ‘lewd comments or leering’ are reportable offences. Yet, when the initiative was explained almost all of the respondents were supportive of its aims and thought it to be a valuable and needed service.

My findings contrasted with an article in the Guardian from October 2013, written by Laura Bates, who’s illuminating Everyday Sexism project helped to advise the Project Guardian team. The article implied that the ‘20% increase in the reporting of sexual offences on the transport network’ was due to the launch of Project Guardian in April that year. However, I doubt the reliability of this claim because my findings show that very few Londoners have even heard of Project Guardian.

This trend is not surprising given that no posters advising passengers of what Project Guardian is and how to use it exist on the London transport network. I started to wonder why this was so, given the endless stream of TfL posters advertising other safety and security issues. I contacted TFL asking if there was a planned poster campaign, given that in September 2014 it was reported in the Londonist that Boris Johnson and Peter Hendry (Transport for London Commissioner) had said that such a campaign was planned. Their response was that ‘an integrated communications campaign is in development’. This came in April 2015 in the form of a social media based campaign called ‘Report It To Stop It’. On the launch day, BTP said that there are no plans for posters in the pipe line but ‘we have more than 300,000 handouts ready plus a big digital campaign to spread the word’.

Whilst a positive move by the Project Guardian team, this recent effort seems insufficient. Aside from the absence of a trigger warning on the rather graphic short film, it is also problematic as it is ‘aimed at women aged between 16 and 35’. I am campaigning for Project Guardian posters on the London Transport system because this way, a zero tolerance policy surrounding sexual harassment and assault will be clearly stated to all members of this public, including potential perpetrators. This would be more effective than a campaign only directed at potential victims. A short film and a few thousand leaflets can’t compete with the publicity generated by a widespread and permanent poster campaign.

Aside from the practical advantages of a poster campaign, I want to see Project Guardian given equal priority to combating other safety and security issues. There are currently 40 different poster campaigns on the transport network including those telling passengers ‘Please don’t play your music too loud’ and to be ‘Beware pickpocket’s tactics’. While these are valid safety & wellbeing concerns, it is outrageous that an issue so serious as sexual harassment and assault is not deemed worthy of a poster campaign. It’s ironic to note that TFL recently allowed the body-shaming adverts from Protein World on Tube platforms, but they don’t think Project Guardian posters are needed. This seems to echo the universal lack of recognition for women’s issues and the often contradictory messages surrounding them.

I did not start this campaign because I believe that law enforcement is the only, or most important, means of change. However, I believe that as a society we have normalised this form of violence against women and therefore posters informing the public that these are reportable offences are needed. Not only do the perpetrators need to know that this will not be tolerated, but those who have experienced sexual harassment or assault need to know that they will be listened to, taken seriously and supported in their responses by both police and surrounding members of the public. It needs to be clearly communicated that reportable offences include sexual touching, exposure, outraging public decency, lewd comments, leering and harassment, for which Project Guardian provides a specialist phone and text line through which to contact them.

Please help to support this campaign by following our Twitter page and tweeting us with your photos of TfL’s current posters and ask them why there aren’t any for #ProjGuardian.

Please tell friends and family about Project Guardian and keep your eyes out for the petition coming soon!

Matilda campaigns for women’s rights and against street harassment, founded Underreported Street Harassment and is a recent graduate from University of Leeds, UK. 

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#ThisisRapeCulture

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Three stories have been going back and forth in my mind over the past 24 hours. The first is so horrific I literally got sick last night after I read it. All three are connected by showing how much our culture fosters rape and limits girls’ and women’s mobility and sense of safety in public spaces and in society as a whole.

1. Boko Haram has kidnapped many women and girls (with school girls kidnapped from their school a year ago the most well-known globally) in Nigeria. Many have been treated as sexual slaves. The very visible proof? 214 of the 234 teenage girls rescued were pregnant. Let that sink in. Fortunately they have been rescued and their communities are welcoming them back and they will receive medical help and counseling. But. No one should have to live through that pain, fear, and suffering, with their lives changed forever by not only the experience but by being forced into motherhood at a young age against their will. It shows how disposable and with how little respect or regard some men have for girls’ and women’s bodies.

Photograph by Taylor Yocom

2. Taylor Yocom, a 22-year old photography student from the University of Iowa created the “Guarded” project to show what women carry to protect themselves, like mace or their keys, which they hold as a weapon. Via BuzzFeed: “These loaded objects on key chains where trinkets should be really do portray how women are expected to always be on guard to protect themselves…when the rapists should not be raping,” she said. “I want people to see the sexual assault statistics (whether they are from strangers who attack on the streets or from date rape) as actual individuals impacted, not simply numbers.”

Good for her. I have carried mace with me since I was 14 years old. It is ridiculous that we have to live this way, have that mentality.

3. In New York City, via Gothamist: “[The] suspect attempted to engage the victim, a 34-year-old female, in conversation. When the victim ignored the suspect, the suspect spat at the victim, who then began to laugh at the suspect. The suspect then took out a sharp instrument, slashed the victim in the arm and then fled the station.” The woman was treated at the hospital and is okay. The man is at large.

But harassers are just trying to be nice and it’s a compliment, right? WRONG. Street harassment is about power, it’s about disrespect, and all too often, it’s about an underlying threat of violence.

 

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UK: Page 3 – a shameless contributor to street harassment

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Emma Rachel Deane, UK, SSH Blog Correspondent

Britain is an odd place. We have an international reputation for stiff upper lips and conservatism, when in fact, much of our politics and our stance on many human rights issues are really rather liberal compared to the US and other western countries. And yet, there are still examples within our culture of mainstream British institutions hell bent on dragging us back to the dark ages. Like the third page of tabloid newspapers (including The Sun – Britain’s biggest selling newspaper) that show a girl in her late teens or early twenties posing in underwear or with her breasts exposed. This serves no purpose except for sexual entertainment. To be clear, this isn’t a “lad’s mag” or one of the top shelf publications your Dad might have had a secret stash of when he was a teenager. This is Britain’s biggest. selling. newspaper. What does that say about women today and how we should see them?

When a young woman’s maturing body is presented to us as news, particularly in such a powerful way as this, is it any wonder that street harassment, and the social acceptance of it, is so widespread? By putting a semi-naked woman on such a prominent page within a publication among news of foreign conflicts, natural disasters and welfare cuts, The Sun and other newspapers like it, are sending the very clear message that women’s bodies are just as attention-worthy and deserve to receive just as much public discussion as any other news story.

Sarah Faulkner is one of the women at the forefront of “No More Page 3”, a grassroots activist campaign calling for the voluntary removal of Page 3 by the tabloids. She had this to say about her earliest memories of Page 3. “My first experience of Page 3 was at school, when one of the boys would bring a copy of The Sun onto the bus. He and his friends would use the images in it to tease female classmates whose bodies had developed a little earlier than others. For the girls that were picked on it affected their confidence as they grew up. We are taught to enjoy male attention, if it makes us popular it must be a good thing, but if a woman’s sense of self-worth comes solely from men enjoying how she looks, then then that confidence is meaningless.”

It’s worth noting that prior to the Sexual Offences Act of 2003 (which outlawed the practice) many Page 3 models were just 16 years old when they posed topless for The Sun, wearing school ties and hats. The sexualisation of schoolgirls is a widespread problem, for which The Sun is not solely responsible, but as Faulkner went on to say, “The influence that a feature like Page 3 has on our society can’t ever be measured to reach a firm conclusion, but what we must accept is that it provides validation for people who already have negative ideas about the role of women and girls within our culture and certainly allows space for casual public discussion of women as objects.”

I agree with her. The attitudes that cause instances of street harassment are held together and even perpetuated by countless forms of embedded cultural validations. The tabloids are not accountable for the misdeeds of the advertising industry, or the tired gender stereotypes we see in film or TV, but when we’re discussing the content of newspapers we must do so while remembering Allen Ginsberg’s famous quote, “Whoever controls the media, the images, controls the culture.” These tabloids have a social responsibility to us all and they must be held accountable.

The debates surrounding Page 3 have received more press than usual recently when, in January, The Sun appeared to remove the feature without explanation. Its sister paper, The Times, broke the news that Page 3 had been ditched for good. This turned out to be no more than a school-boy prank and sure enough, Page 3 returned a few days later under the headline “We’ve had a mammary lapse.” How witty. I have to say, the timing was impeccable.

The Sun managed to draw attention to the “No More Page 3” campaign and the debates surrounding it in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks at a time when discussions around freedom of press are very much at the forefront of our cultural zeitgeist. Faulkner’s views on press freedoms are very clear and are reflected in the No More Page 3 campaign strategy. “I would not support a government imposed ban on Page 3.” She said. “I’m not a fan of slippery slope arguments by a long shot, but that way danger lies. If the images are removed by force its far less meaningful than if the tabloids accepted that they have been at fault, which would propel a real shift in societal attitudes.”

The debates surrounding Page 3 are about as complex as it gets in relation to modern feminism. Many would suggest that these images are a result of second wave sexual liberation and so it falls to us as individuals to decide what female sexuality truthfully looks like and how to represent it in our media. I for one think that if Page 3 was, as its supporters claim, a beacon of female empowerment and a shrine to the female form, we would see much more of a variety of women “enshrined”.

The oldest model ever featured on Page 3 was 29. Considering the fact that the average life expectancy of women in the UK is 83, that’s already 65% of the adult female population ousted. We must then take into account that only four black women have ever been represented in Page 3 and only women with a size 6-10 dress size have ever been featured.

If we’re going to talk about Page 3 in terms of female empowerment, let’s bear the Page 3 criteria in mind and remember how few women we are actually representing in that empowerment. Comparisons have also been drawn from No More Page 3 and the Free The Nipple movement, a campaign that seeks to address sexist nudity censorship. Faulkner was quick to point out that No More Page 3 is not about nudity. “This was never about the exposure of breasts to the public. We have no problem with female nudity at all, this is about media representation.”

She went on to describe the complex relationship between the two campaigns. “I can see where they’re coming from, and I agree with what they’re saying. Female nudity is over-sexualised and therefore over-censored. When women sunbathe topless on the beach or breastfeed their babies, people see sex where there isn’t any, it’s just a body part. It would be great if women could do those things without the usual controversy or fear of harassment that accompanies them. Normalising female nudity is very important, but in order to do that we first have to desexualise it.”

That, in essence is what No More Page 3 is about. It’s about reclaiming our bodies and reclaiming our sexuality which does not exist purely for male entertainment. If we can stop turning women’s bodies into news, we can stop people responding to them as if they were newsworthy.

Sign the No More Page 3 petition here and stay up to date with the campaign at nomorepage3.org. You can also tweet your support @NoMorePage3

Emma Rachel Deane is a London-based retail manager for a fast growing women’s lifestyle brand and an outspoken advocate for women’s social justice issues. She can be found blogging on Raging Hag or tweeting @emmaracheldeane.

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