Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

Men: Speak out against street harassment, March 30 – April 5 (and always)

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International Anti-Street Harassment Week starts in just 5 days!!

While women are the main targets of street harassment, entire families and communities are impacted by it — when women aren’t as safe in public spaces, everyone suffers. And so it’s in men’s best interest to get involved in challenging street harassment, and, as the main perpetrators of street harassment, they are in the best position to stop it.

Many men get this and will be involved in International Anti-Street Harassment Week this year, including male-led initiatives like:

* Hey Baby Art Against Sexual Violence (they’re hosting an event/rally at a high school in Tucson, AZ)

* London Tae Kwon Do School (they’re talking about street harassment during all of their classes that week)

* Masculinity U (they’ll be posting information on social media about street harassment)

* Men Stopping Violence (they’re hosting the April 4 Tweet Chat at 2 p.m. EDT, #EndSH).

Individual men will be involved too, like Mark Webster in Virginia who will donate his photography skills to photograph a sidewalk chalking event in Washington, D.C. on Sunday; Joe Samalin, a SSH blog correspondent who will speak at the NYC rally against street harassment on April 5; and Alan Kearl, my dad and HUGE SSH supporter who will join my mom in putting up flyers in South Beach, FL, this weekend.

Men: the best way you can get involved is to talk to other men about this issue. Tell them why it’s not cool to harass. Speak up when you see harassment happening. Join us in any way you can. We need you!

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Anti-Street Harassment Week 2014 Press Release

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
03/24/14

Contact:
Holly Kearl, hkearl@stopstreetharassment.org

International Anti-Street Harassment Week Draws Attention to the Problem of Street Harassment
23 Countries to Participate in Week of Awareness

WASHINGTON — In its fourth year, International Anti-Street Harassment Week will be observed by at least 150 groups in 23 countries from March 30 – April 5. Tens of thousands of people will participate in the awareness-raising week to tackle the prevalent social problem of gender-based street harassment.

“What could be more basic than the right to walk down one’s street safely, without facing harassment? For too many people – especially women and all members of the LGBQT community – this is a right they are routinely denied because of street harassment, or the threat of it,” said Holly Kearl, author two books on street harassment and the founder of the nonprofit organization Stop Street Harassment. “More and more people are recognizing street harassment as a human rights violation and each year we join forces, amplify each other’s efforts, and draw global attention to the problem.”

Groups in Egypt, India, Germany, Peru, Nepal, Colombia, and the United Kingdom will host activities, ranging from sidewalk chalking parties to informational workshops. Safe City Nepal members will distribute leaflets about harassment in Kathmandu. HarassMap in Cairo, Egypt, will run a campaign called Mesh Sakta (“Don’t be silent”) to encourage everyone to take an active role in speaking out when street harassment happens.  Stop Harcelement de la Rue will hold a “Safe Bar” event at a famous Paris, France, venue, followed by sidewalk chalking.

Stop Telling Women to Smile is a primary co-sponsor of the week and any interested people and groups can download PDFs of their famous “Stop telling women to smile” posters and paste them on walls in their community. Founder Tatyana Fazlalizadeh encourages everyone to paste the posters in the evening of April, 4 so that on April 5, “The walls around the world will bear the faces and words of women protesting street harassment.”

Events hosted in the United States include campus workshops on street harassment from Arizona to Pennsylvania, a film screening in Massachusetts, a Unity March in Texas, a rally in New York City, and distributing flyers at a Metro station in Virginia.

There will be many virtual events as well, including a Google+ Hangout panel on March 30 and six Tweet Chats on topics like the impact of street harassment on people’s lives and street harassment and teenagers (use hashtag #EndSH).

Participants in the week who are smartphone users are encouraged to use the new, free phone app called Safetipin that allows them to quickly conduct a safety audit wherever they are and see what other reports have been made in their area. “Our hope is that more people upload and use the information to advocate for safer streets and safer cities,” says Safetipin founder Kalpana Viswanath an advisor to the Jagori Safe Delhi Initiative. All pins for a city are clustered showing a color to indicate the level of safety (Green for Safe, Amber for Less Safe, and Red for Unsafe). A special report will be issued for all individual reports made that week.

Street harassment is a pervasive human rights violation. Around the world, studies suggest that most women and LGBTQ individuals face street harassment, ranging from verbal to physical forms, and it limits their access to public spaces.

Any individual can help speak out against street harassment during the week simply by sharing stories on and offline. Visit www.MeetUsontheStreet.org for more information about the week and how to be involved

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Stop Street Harassment is a nonprofit organization dedicated to documenting and ending gender-based street harassment worldwide through public education and community mobilization. SSH organizes International Anti-Street Harassment Week annually and helps activists with local campaigns through the Safe Public Spaces Mentoring Program. SSH just completed the first-ever national study on street harassment in the USA which will be released May 20, 2014.

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“He tries to ‘punish’ me”

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Sitting in a pretty empty stopped subway car with the doors still open, a man is walking by staring and I try to avoid him. He isn’t even getting on the subway but this doesn’t stop him from standing on the platform yelling into the car at me “Ma’am you’re beautiful!” I feel uncomfortable and don’t want to encourage him so I don’t respond, yet he still goes on: “Ma’am, you’re beautiful! You could at least say thank you!”

I still avoid him, and that is still not enough for him to just drop it, he goes on one more time and now he is annoyed that I am not appreciative of his obnoxious shouts, and he says, “Ma’am, YOU’RE UGLY”.

I couldn’t care less about whether a stranger thinks I am beautiful or ugly, its just the fact that he tries to ‘punish’ me or make me feel bad about myself because I don’t appreciate being hollered at is what gets to me.

– Anonymous

Share your street harassment story for the blog.
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India: Men on the Street — Take a Walk!

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Via Flickr

By Pallavi Kamat, Mumbai, India, SSH Correspondent

While people talk about and highlight street harassment, primarily amongst women, does anybody wonder about the reasons it happens?

One of the main reasons, according to me, is that women are considered the weaker sex. Men feel that they need to control women in order to show that they are powerful. And one of the ways they can do this is by harassing innocent and gullible women who are simply walking down the street. In fact, experts believe that warped social beliefs and psychological problems are responsible for men indulging in such harassment.

Unfortunately, instead of helping stop it, society tends to worsen the situation. When a woman is harassed, society tells her that she must definitely be at fault. Maybe she was wearing the wrong clothes or had stepped out at a wrong time. Or maybe she had ventured into an area where she should not have. This only encourages the men further.

In cities like Mumbai, it is often alleged (and rightly so) that the police do not take the street harassment complaints of women seriously enough to file an FIR. And passers-by try not to interfere fearing they will get unnecessarily caught in the legal rigmarole. In fact, in October-2011, two youngsters were stabbed to death for trying to stop some goons from harassing their girlfriends.

So, what can be done about this? Nothing? Are women destined to face street harassment and continue pretending as if nothing happened? Sadly, such questions lead to more questions. But, I am an eternal optimist. According to me, women need to come out and speak more against such instances. These need to be highlighted and not shoved under the carpet. Perpetrators of such acts should be named and shamed by citizens groups. This is the thinking behind the ‘Chappal Maarungi’ campaign [literally meaning to hit with a sandal/shoe].

Some experts are also seeking a change in the way cities are modelled in their bid to fight street harassment. Changes such as bright lights and wider pavements are some of the suggestions being considered in Mumbai.

Such solutions need to come from within local people and societies – an external person/organisation cannot provide better answers. Also, buy-in for such solutions needs to be obtained; one needs to emphasize that it is not a woman’s personal problem when she is harassed on the street but a social problem – one that needs to be taken seriously and dealt with like any other crime.

Pallavi is a qualified Chartered Accountant and a Commerce Graduate from the University of Mumbai, India, with around 12 years of experience working in the corporate sector. Follow her on Twitter, @pallavisms.

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Father dead after defending daughter from street harasser

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On rare occasions, street harassment escalates into murder. This is a case where that sadly, outrageously happened…to a witness/bystander to the harassment.

“Michael Tingling and his 15-year-old daughter Masharah were inseparable.

“He could’ve gave birth to her instead of me, that’s how close they were,” said Masharah’s mother, Yolanda Simmons. “They hung out like they were best buddies.”

On Wednesday, during one of their regular afternoons together, Tingling and his daughter were approached by a man who “made inappropriate gestures” to the girl, police said. The men got into an argument and Tingling, an ex-boxer, was punched in the chest and collapsed in front of his daughter. He died an hour later.

Police arrested Joseph Firek, who is 59 and on parole for residential burglary, and charged him overnight with first-degree murder and a hate crime, saying Firek kept making racial comments while attacking Tingling.”

More about what happened:

Firek “stared at them, looked at her up and down, and her dad grabbed her, put her behind him and he told him, ‘You need to walk away,’” Simmons said. “The guy was just standing there grinning.”

Firek then allegedly said “What, n*****?” and punched Tingling at least twice in the upper chest, said Assistant State’s Attorney Rita Infelise. The two men exchanged punches until an unknown male separated them.

Tingling, who family members said had a pacemaker, walked away with Firek pursuing him into the intersection of Clark Street and Estes Avenue as Masharah called 911. He eventually stopped following the two, who went into an auto shop where Tingling sat down, saying he didn’t feel well and had shortness of breath, Infelise said. Paramedics rushed Tingling in full cardiac arrest to St. Francis Hospital in Evanston, she said, and police arrested Firek at the scene.”

SO HEART BREAKING. This dad was just trying to protect and stand up for his daughter and now he is dead. Street harassment is disgusting, vile, and can have very real consequences. It needs to stop NOW.  Our hearts go out to the 15-year-old girl and the friends and family of her father.

No one should ever be harassed or killed for standing up for a loved one who is harassed.

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