Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

“To Be Harassed…”

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Guest Blog Post for International Anti-Street Harassment Week 2015

To be harassed…

Is to be stared at

Leered at

Eyebrows waggled at

Cat-called

Belittled

Pestered for a date

 

To be harassed is to be told to smile

Shake something

Show somewhere

To be objectified

As if you’re there for their viewing pleasure

 

To be harassed is to be followed

Touched

Assaulted

Forced into submission

 

To be harassed is to be gossiped about

Slut-shamed

Excluded

Isolated

 

To be harassed is to have graffiti written about what you did or what you are

True

False

Or exaggerated

 

To be harassed is to be made to feel uncomfortable

Not desirable

Not pretty

Not complimented

Not flirted with

 

Because of your appearance

Outfit

Style

Body type

Gender

Or sexuality

 

To be harassed is to be devalued

Not appreciated for your mind

Intellect

Or personality

 

To be harassed is to not feel safe

To walk down the street

Use the bathroom

Go to school

Be in public

 

To be harassed is not wanted

Not a choice

Not enjoyed

Never deserved

And never warranted

 

To be harassed is to be disrespected

To be harassed is to feel like your existence is violated

To be harassed…Don’t harass because we are all people!

Me equals you.

By Me=You: Sexual Harassment Awareness. Join their Google Hangout today at 6 p.m. EDT. INFO. 

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Today’s Events – April 13

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Here are the main events happening for day two of International Anti-Street Harassment Week!

Virtual Events:

April 13 | 2 p.m. EDT: @StopStHarassmnt, @NoStHarassWeek and @Noacosocalles will chat about practical solutions to street harassment.

April 13, 6-7pm – Me=You Street Harassment Awareness will be hosting a Google Hangout with Erin McKelle from Stop Street Harassment (SSH), who will be speaking about this cause and answering questions on sexual harassment. INFO. 

Stop Harcelement de Rue (Paris) will be hosting a Twitter chat about sexism and harassment on public transportation (@stophdr #terminusrelou) [3 pm]

 

International Events:

Colombia: Hosted by OCAC Colombia:

5PM to 8PM: TALK “COMPLIMENT OR HARASSMENT, LET’S TALK ABOUT STREET HARASSMENT.” Street harassment is an issue that must be discussed, so we will be waiting for you at the Camilo Torres Auditorium of the Sociology’s building at the National University.

CHARLA “GALANTERÍA O ACOSO, HABLEMOS DE ACOSO CALLEJERO.” El acoso callejero es un tema del que hay que hablar, así que les esperamos en el Auditorio Camilo Torres del edificio de Sociología de la Universidad Nacional.

United Kingdom: London transit will be releasing their marketing video for the anti-harassment campaign Project Guardian called Report It to Stop It.

France: Stop Harcelement de Rue (LILLE) New poster campaign launch [8 pm.]

 

USA Events:

Georgia: Hollaback! Atlanta will be hosting  Let Me HOLLA at You – A Panel Discussion. Presented by Holla!ATL’s Tayler Mathews and Clark Atlanta University’s Women’s Initiative Program [6pm – 7:30pm at Clark Atlanta University, McPheeters Dennis, RM 201, 223 James P Brawley Dr SW, Atlanta, GA 30314

Illinois: Volunteers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champagne campus are hosting #GamerGate Hot Topics Dialogues, a discussion about online harassment [7pm, Women’s Resources Center]

Nebraska: The sociology, queer alliance and radical notion clubs at Hastings College are hosting a “Cats against Catcalling” sticker giveaway [April 13]

Utah: Fearless Self Defense is hosting “Take Back The Streets With Chalk!” [3-7pm at Liberty Park, Salt Lake City]

Washington D.C.: American University’s Take Back The Night event will in part address street harassment  [7-10pm]

Washington D.C.: GW Feminist Student Union has been creating a photo campaign in which GW students holding a sign with an example of street harassment that has happened to them. On April 13, they will be debuting the photos, adding new ones, and handing out empowering compliments to those who want them! [Kogan Plaza at George Washington University]

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#EndSHWeek Wrap-Up: Day 1

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NYC rally

Hello! Thank you so much everyone who has participated so far in International Anti-Street Harassment Week!! This is our biggest week to date with groups in 36 countries confirmed to take action. The end of the day has been very exciting as I just got word that Fiona Patten, a member of Parliament in Victoria, Australia, will be raising the issue of street harassment in Parliament this week!!

So what happened on the first official day of the week of awareness? Here’s a recap of some highlights.

What Happened Today?

View more than 70 Photos!

* From Colombia to Nepal to the USA (including Baltimore, Des Moines, Miami, New Orleans, and Philadelphia), groups took to the streets today to raise awareness with sidewalk chalk and signs.

* Groups in Pakistan and Cameroon held community discussions.

* Hollaback! Vancouver debuted their interactive campaign and art show “What’s Your Number?”

Nepal

* Yesterday, a few groups got a jump start to the week, including the #ThisDoesntMeanYes street photo shoot in London, a rally with 200 people in New York City, and a street harassment resource fair at the University of Scranton, in PA, USA.

Two Virtual Events:

* Safe City in India hosted the first tweet chat of the week! Read a recap.

* The NOW Young Feminists & Allies virtual chapter hosted a google hangout about street harassment and multiculturalism. Watch it.


Two Articles:

* An op-ed about street harassment in the Pakistan Today newspaper.

* “This is what street harassment looks like in 16 languages” by Kristin Taylor (“What started out as a small project blossomed, as more and more women began to share their experiences with me. The ink of their markers bled into the fabric, permanently inscribing on my shirt thirty-eight stories of street harassment written in sixteen languages: Afrikaans, Amharic, Arabic, Chinese, Danish, English, French, Hindi, Jamaican Patoi, Lebanese, Italian, Moroccan, Nepali, Serbian, Spanish, and Tagalog.”)

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Australia: Is Street Harassment a Police Issue?

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Tara Willoughby, Canberra, Australia, SSH Blog Correspondent

[Content Note: links include descriptions of violence and harassment]

It is difficult to write about street harassment in Australia without writing about the criminal justice system and ultimately, police. Whether as responders or as harassers, police often take a central role in media discussions of street harassment. In my final post as a blog correspondent, I hope to outline where police fit in with people’s experiences of street harassment and also make an argument about what they should be doing to deal with this issue.

Do people report street harassment to police?

As has been discussed many times (including in my March blog correspondent article), the types of behaviours that constitute the majority of street harassment in Australia are often not easily reported to the police. Of the countless stories and conversations I have been a part of concerning street harassment, only once have I heard of someone reporting an incident of street harassment (being ‘egged’ from a moving car) to the police. And even in those serendipitous circumstances where the victim happened to have a notepad and pen on hand and the car happened to move away slowly enough to catch the licence plate number, the process of reporting was still a considerable investment of time and effort.

Do police act on street harassment?

Police can only take substantive action on individual instances of street harassment if they are against the law. While many types of harassment are crimes in Australia, many are not. The responses of police to reports of even criminal street harassment can be quite mixed. International law firm DLA Piper (writing in conjunction with iHollaback! And Thomson Reuters) note that “in practice, “one-off” incidents of minor street harassment, such as using offensive language in public which is not threatening, will often not be investigated by the police.” Police in the incident I described above spoke with the young man responsible for throwing eggs to tell him to ‘pull his head in’. Other reports describe police responses as anything from non-existent to actively hostile.

In a broader sense, police in Australia have taken some steps to address street harassment as a larger phenomenon. This includes speaking out about sexism and violence against women and acting in partnership with local government and communities to attempt to design safer public spaces. However, to date, police have not taken any high profile stances targeting street harassment specifically.

Do police commit street harassment?

Short answer, yes. Like any large group of people, within the police there are those who behave inappropriately and deliberately harm the people around them; at the beginning of 2014, 1 in 40 New South Wales police officers had been convicted of a criminal offense. Police forces around Australia have well documented issues with sexist, racist and homophobic violence.

What SHOULD police do?

There are two main reasons why police ought to take action on street harassment.

Firstly, addressing street harassment is within the stated goals of the police. NSW Police, as an example, states its goals thus: “We aim to protect the community and property by preventing, detecting and investigating crime [and]… maintaining social order”. The many forms of street harassment which constitute crimes in Australia fit directly into this credo, and if we acknowledge those which don’t as part of a self-perpetuating spectrum of violence, then addressing these forms of street harassment must be part of effective policing.

Secondly, interactions with police around harassment (either reporting harassment from other members of the public or experiencing harassment from police themselves) are identified as the key area where relationships between police and young people have become confrontational and hostile. Maintaining functioning relationships with the community is vital to effectively fulfilling the role of the police, since they rely on people trusting them and providing them with information.

How?

As addressed above, addressing individual instances of street harassment on a case by case basis has not been effective for police or victims so far, and it will not help to change the attitudes that allow people (including some police) to engage in street harassment with relative impunity. Police are one of many influential public entities that can help to create change in our society. In order to actually make a difference to this issue, they must commit to working with the wider community in partnership to eliminate the prejudices and violence-tolerant attitudes that support street harassment in Australia today.

Tara works with AWAVA (the Australian Women Against Violence Alliance) indulging her love of social media. You can find her on Twitter as @angelbird72 or @Tash_Because or being silly as one half of the ‘slice-of-life’ podcast Heaps Funny But.

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Today’s Events – April 12

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It’s the first day of Meet Us On the Street: International Anti-Street Harassment Week, and we already have so much going on!

Virtual Events:

Please join Young Feminists and Allies, the National Organization for Women’s First Virtual Chapter, and Stop Street Harassment for a Google Hangout about Street Harassment from a multicultural perspective.

Holly Kearl, founder of International Anti-Street-Harassment Week, will moderate three brave women with diverse backgrounds as they discuss the similarities and differences in the ways they experience street harassment.

* Kasumi Hirokawa: TCK and trilingual feminist from Shanghai who currently lives in Japan

* MorningStar Angeline: Native American and Latina actress who lived in both the Southwest and West Coast of America

* Muneera Hassan: Bangladeshi-American, Muslim, college student from Boston currently living in Northern VA who wears hijab

There will be a Q&A section, so please send us your questions in advance or during the event at youngfeminists at gmail dot com or Tweet at at @nowyoungfems and please use the #EndSH hashtag.

International Events:

Cameroon: Young Women for a Change, Cameroon is holding a dialogue in Beau with youth and adolescents to address the different forms of Street harassment facing women and girls and how to intervene. [April 12]

Canada (Vancouver): Hollaback! Vancouver will be debuting their interactive campaign and art show “What’s Your Number?” It will enable people to record the frequency and emotions involved with street harassment for 24 hours. Clickers (or counters) will be distributed to initial participants along with a blank notebook. For 24 hours, they will click twice for direct street harassment, and once for an indirect impact. At the end of the 24 hours, the clickee is encouraged to creatively express the experience in the notebook provided through mediums like poetry, illustration or essaying before they’re passed on to the next one. At the end of the week, the notebooks will be collected by the Hollaback Vancouver team for compilation. In order to showcase the process behind What’s Your Number?, the art show will be a free event extended to the community at-large. Part education, part creative and part party, this night will get everyone together in a comfortable space to talk about the effects of street harassment and – most importantly – what can be done. [Campaign kicks of all over the city on April 12th, with the Artshow / wrap up party taking place April 30th 436 Columbia St Vancouver BC 7-11 pm]

Colombia: OCAC Colombia  is hosting SUNDAY, APRIL 12 – 9:00 a.m.: STOP THE STREET HARASSMENT: We will be in the Sunday’s Bikeway and we will will cross cycling the 7th Avenue from Plaza Bolivar to the National Park | DOMINGO 12 DE ABRIL – 9 AM. ALTO AL ACOSO. Estaremos en la Ciclovía y haremos un recorrido por la carrera séptima desde la Plaza de Bolívar hasta el Parque Nacional

Nepal: Hollaback! Kathmandu will be hosting a Stand Up Against Street Harassment event, displaying charts and boards that say street harassment is not okay. They will also be interacting with the local people about what the campaign is and what they can do to respond to street harassment and stop it. [April 12, 3-5pm at Basantapur]

USA Events:

Iowa: Hollaback! Des Moines is hosting their 3rd Annual Chalk Walk to End Street Harassment. [April 12, 1 pm at the Pappajohn Education Center]. Can’t be there in person? Sometime during the week of April 12-18, go back to a street where you experienced harassment. Reclaim that space by writing an empowering message; then take a picture and send it to them at dsm@ihollaback.org! They will post all the photos to their blog after the event.

Pennsylvania: FAAN Mail will be kicking off EndSHWeek with their 5th annual rally and community engagement event. [April 12, 2-5pm at Love Park, Philadelphia]

Virginia: Hollaback! RVA is hosting a Bystander Workshop discussing and presenting on how bystander intervention and street harassment intersect. They will provide “swag bags” and snacks to participants! [Richmond, April 12, time and place TBA]

Plus, some of our groups got an early start on things and hosted these fabulous events on Saturday, April 11th:

Bahamas: Hollaback! Bahamas hosted a meditation and stress relief workshop with the World Peace Initiative.

United Kingdom: Rape & Sexual Abuse Support Centre hosted street action focused on victim-blaming and rape culture (#ThisDoesn’tMeanYes) at Braithwait Tunnel, Braithwaite Street, London.

South Korea: Rok Gi Yeon Promotions hosted “Ladies Night Vol. 2,” a benefit concert to support the charity Disruptive Voices, in Seoul. Find the Facebook event here.

Pakistan: No to Harassment hosted a fabulous panel and discussion about how a woman is #notanobject.

New York: Hollaback! hosted the annual NYC Anti-Street Harassment Rally! The event featured local activists and speakers and include da series of workshops for folks to learn more and take action against street harassment. It also featured Hollaback!’s famous 12 foot inflatable #catagainstcatcalling cat.

Pennsylvania: University of Scranton is hosted a SHARE (Street Harassment Awareness Response and Education) Fair.

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