Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

Street Respect: “What kind of dog is that?!”

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I was driving with my little dog in the back seat with the top down in my car. Man pulls up in an SUV and told down his window. I’m tensing up and preparing for the comments to start and he says, “That’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen! What kind of dog is that?!”

– Abby

Location: Chicago, IL

This is part of the series “Street Respect. “Street respect” is the term for respectful, polite, and consensual interactions that happen between strangers in public spaces. It’s the opposite of “street harassment.” Share your street respect story and show the kind of interactions you’d like to have in public in place of street harassment.

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IN FEAR OF THE BLACK BOOGEYMAN: Confronting Racist Stereotypes about Street Harassment

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By Lavender Kitchen Sink Collective

On August 7th there was a link via Upworthy on the Stop Street Harassment Facebook page to a YouTube video titled the “Smile Bitch Training Camp.” This one minute video was a satirical take on the misogynist expectation that women in public spaces should present themselves as smiling and cheerful at all times. Created by Black comic actress and blogger Janelle James, the satire featured a cast of mostly white young women and girls (about three of the female actors were visibly people of color) who enrolled themselves into boot camp to train on how to smile on demand for strangers at all times. Despite the presence of Black and Asian faces, the overrepresentation of middle class-presenting white women presents street harassment as a threat to white female bodies. I also noticed a problematic aspect about the actors playing the street harasser roles. First, all the harassers were portrayed as either low-income and/or homeless. Secondly, all but two of the men were visibly Black. While the central message of the video was critically important, the racialized subtext that equates “poor Black man = street harasser” undermined the video’s message.

In response to criticism about the racial characterizations from viewers on the video’s YouTube page, James replied, “It was something I really struggled with during editing. I’d never want that to be the message. These [the actors] are all my friends, they worked (hard) for free and I had to work with what I had. And if it wasn’t funny, it had to go.”

While it is understandable that limited budgets and time constraints affected James’ casting decisions, it is much harder to justify why the male actors embody common classist and racist tropes about harassers: thuggish, unwashed, uneducated, and homeless. If the same set of actors had portrayed these characters as middle-class, college-educated, the video still would have had the same powerful message—minus the racist/classist subtext. In fact, the video would have included a crucial and long-ignored fact about gender violence: so-called “respectable” men regularly harass and assault women.

The idea that all street harassment involves a Black perpetrator and a white victim is not only incorrect, but dangerous. First, studies on street harassment reveal that intersecting forms of marginalization often make women more vulnerable to harassment. Stop Street Harassment’s own 2014 national study “Unsafe and Harassed in Public Spaces” revealed that Black and Latina women and girls are more likely to experience street harassment than their white counterparts. Black women and girls also experience harassment in ways that specifically entrench misogynoirist and cissexist violence against Black women’s bodies, as womanist blogger Feminista Jones noted during the #YouOkSis hashtag campaign on Twitter. Second, the idea that Black men are inherently dangerous to white women has been used historically to criminalize Black men and justify racial disparities in criminal profiling, arrests, and incarceration. Third, having an image in our heads of the street harasser as a poor Black man keeps us from recognizing genuinely abusive and dangerous people in public spaces, all because they don’t fit our racial preconception of what a sexual harasser-predator is.

In the last couple of years, there has been a growing public awareness about street harassment, and the many social, economic, and political costs that sexualized harassment in public spaces can exact on women and other marginalized communities. While street harassment is generally understood as a form of misogynist verbal assault that (cisgender) men use to exert external control over women, street harassment is often employed as a way to reinforce all forms of social domination in public space. People of color, trans/gender-nonconforming people, disabled people, children, immigrants, and homeless people all regularly face street harassment and attendant violence that reinforces the systemic oppression that they face. What needs to be understood about street harassment is not only how this violence threatens women’s personal autonomy and access to space, but how the right to public space for all marginalized people is still contested in a hegemonic society.

Lavender Kitchen Sink Collective is a project that centers queer/trans people of color perspectives on economic, gender, and political justice. Check LKSC out at www.lavenderkitchensink.com or follow on Twitter at @lkscollective.

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Aug. 11 Street Harassment News in the USA

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“The Psychology Behind Street Harassment—And How You Can Stop It,” Shape.com

“Coping with catcalls: How some women brush off street harassment,” TODAY Show

“Buzzfeed’s video about street harassment is a must-see,” Washington Post

“Viewpoint: Street harassment is a female college student’s reality,” USA Today

“#ThatsWhatHeSaid Takes on Street Harassment Because Seriously, It Needs To Stop,” Bustle

“Man Knocked Unconscious After Defending Group of Women From Catcallers: Police,” NBC

“Women could learn to cope better with unwanted sexual advances — or men could stop making them,” Salon.com

“These Are The Things Men Say To Women On The Street,” Huffington Post

“#YouOkSis: Online movement launches to combat street harassment,” the Grio

“This Street Harassment Satire Teaches Women To Always Smile Like Lunatics,” Fast Co Create

“This is why you should stop telling us all to smile,” Metro UK

Construction worker Dylan Craine gives his advice for dealing with harassment by construction workers.

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Aug. 2014: International News Round-Up

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Peru:

“Peru’s Council of Ministers on Wednesday approved a bill amending Criminal Code to punish street harassment with the aim to protect children and women. The announcement was made by the newly-appointed Prime Minister, Ana María Jara, who expressed confidence that Congress will approve this initiative soon, as it is a “citizen outcry” intended to correct legislative omission. Meanwhile, the Minister of Women and Vulnerable Populations of Peru, María del Carmen Omonte, explained the bill amends sections 176 and 176-A of the Criminal Code to make street harassment a crime.”

Colombia:

“Over 60 percent of women are sexually harassed or assaulted while riding the Transmilenio. ‘Ya uno no se puede venir en falda ni nada porque los hombres nunca han visto unas piernas,’ or You can’t get on wearing a skirt or anything because these men have never seen [a woman’s] legs, one victim of inappropriate touching sarcastically told Noticias RCN. Luckily, the city of Bogotá is taking action. Its law enforcement branch created a team of 11 operatives who will be armed with Tasers and specially trained in recognizing and stopping sexual assault. Seven of the agents are female. Bogotá has a population of over 7,600,000, so that’s about 690,909 people per agent, but it’s a start. The very presence of the team could serve as a deterrent to repeat offenders.”

Turkey:

One of the most senior members of the Turkish government sparked an outcry on Tuesday, after declaring that women should not laugh loudly in public. The deputy prime minister, Bülent Arinc, one of the co-founders of the ruling Islamic-rooted Justice and Development party (AKP), made the comment while lamenting the moral decline of modern society. His comments provoked a storm on social media [and women posted photos of themselves laughing in public spaces].”

Mexico:

“The city government has implemented measures to try to make travelling safer or at least less horrific for women. The first three carriages on the metro are reserved exclusively for women and children, though this is not always policed. Since 2008, there have also been women only buses during rush hour, or anti-groping buses as they’re sometimes called. These are laudable and measures warranted in a country where violence against women is egregious, but clearly segregating women is not a long-term solution. Neither is sweltering in jeans and long sleeved tops on summer days in an attempt to protect yourself from harassment. Boys must be educated from a very young age to respect women rather than to want to own and violate them when they are older.

Being harried on the streets is at one end of the violence against women spectrum. More than 36,000 women have been murdered in Mexico between 1985 and 2010, according to UNIFEM and local NGOs. This includes hundreds of young women dismembered and murdered in Ciudad Juárez near the US border in the past few years. One women is raped in Mexico every four minutes, according to JASS (Just Associates), an international feminist organisation, that’s 120,000 a year. New laws to tackle the violence have not been implemented, which Amnesty International says has enabled impunity to persist. ‘The state of women’s rights in Mexico is alarming,” said Rupert Knox, from Amnesty International. “In recent years we have witnessed not only an increase in killings of women but a continuing routine lack of effective investigations and justice.'”

Brazil:

“Police in Brazil say the shooting deaths of 12 young women so far this year in the city of Goiania may be the work of a serial killer. The latest victim was a 14-year-old girl who was shot three times by a motorcyclist who drove up to her as she waited for a bus Sunday. Police inspector Murilo Polati told reporters Tuesday that all the victims were aged 13 to 29, had long hair and were in public places when killed. He says that in all the cases the gunman approached on a motorcycle, drew his gun, fired and fled without taking anything.”

Saudi Arabia:

“A Saudi survey has revealed that around 80 percent of people blame the rising incidents of sexual harassment in the country on the “deliberate flirtatious behaviour” of women.”

India:

“A community panchayat has banned girls from wearing jeans and keeping mobile phones claiming that they were having a “bad” effect on them and were responsible for eve-teasing [street harassment] incidents.”

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Street Respect: “They have no respect, the way they look at you”

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When the stoplight turns green and the shady grey van zooms off, the man sitting next to me scoffs.

“No respect,” he says in a thick Spanish accent.

“I’m sorry?” I say.

“They have no respect, the way they look at you,” he says, shaking his head.

“Oh,” I respond, a bit surprised. I have never had a stranger– let alone a male stranger– stand up for me in this regard. “Yeah, I know! It’s awful!” He nods, taking a long swig of his beer.

When this man first came up and sat down next to me, I had a thousand possible scenarios of what could have gone wrong– a young woman sitting alone at the bus stop late at night us particularly vulnerable. Yet, this man sat quietly for probably 15 minutes without saying a word, quietly sipping his beer. Despite all he could have done, he was nothing but respectful, even when the cowardly men driving by were not.

When it finally comes, we board the bus together. I sit down and the man stops in front of my seat. He extends his hand. “José.”

“Melanie.” Then I said, “Gracias José,” and truly, truly meant it.

– Melanie

Location: Near the Little Tokyo Metro Stop, Los Angeles, CA

This is part of the series “Street Respect. “Street respect” is the term for respectful, polite, and consensual interactions that happen between strangers in public spaces. It’s the opposite of “street harassment.” Share your street respect story and show the kind of interactions you’d like to have in public in place of street harassment.

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