Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

Free Smarphone Safety App!

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The Pixel Project, a Stop Street Harassment partner, is proud to present the “Holiday Season Smartphone Safety” campaign (through the end of 2013). All Stop Street Harassment supporters who own iPhones or Android phones are invited to download the free iAMDEFENDER smartphone safety app with it’s unique Pull-Plug alarm as part of your personal safety plan in case the street harassment you experience escalates. For more information about the campaign and iAMDEFENDER app, visit  http://is.gd/HolidaySmartphoneSafety

What’s more: A private donor, who wishes to remain anonymous, has pledged to match each activated download with a US$1 donation to The Pixel Project up to a maximum of 2,500 downloads (US$2,500) as a grant for the development of the back-end technology needed for their online anti-Violence Against Women campaigns! So please download, activate and share with your friends and family!

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Five Countries Tackle Street Harassment

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There have been several articles lately about harassment and anti-harassment efforts in many countries around the Mediterranean and Red Seas —

1. Palestine: “There are many untold stories about sexual harassment in Gaza, home to 1.7 million Palestinians. In a conservative society such as Gaza’s, female victims of sexual harassment seldom speak out, and when she does, society usually places the blame on her. [After her harassment experience was caught on video tape], although Hamas-affiliated media hid Abu Salama’s face due to such concerns, she bravely disclosed her identity on her Facebook page, acknowledging that she was the person videotaped. “I’m not the one who should feel ashamed, only him and everyone like him,” read Abu Salama’s post.”

2. Saudi Arabia: “A video purporting to show a group of men sexually harassing women in an eastern province of Saudi Arabia sparked outrage on Wednesday on social media. It led many social media users to call for harsher laws punishing sexual harassment in the kingdom. The video shows a group of men chasing women in what seems to be a car park, with an apparent scuffle going on between the two groups.”

3. Libya: “Sexual harassment of women is increasing in Libya and women complain that combined with the general lawlessness in the country their daily lives are becoming more of an ordeal and perilous. It was bad under former Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi with men jostling, groping and pestering women in shops, universities and offices and demanding sex but since his ouster two years ago harassment has worsened, say activists and ordinary women.”

4. Lebanon: “Mirna Karouny said verbal abuse was the most common type of harassment in Lebanon, adding that it was almost impossible for a woman to walk through the street in Beirut without being subjected to sexualized language. The trend is also visible in malls and other public venues. She said that overcrowding in Beirut, the increase in the refugee population and the general lack of security in the country was contributing to the rise of cases. As a result, she said, local non-governmental organizations and civil society can only do so much – authorities and security agencies must also do their job.”

5. Egypt: “I Saw Harassment said in a report on Friday that a total of 65 incidents of sexual violation were stopped during Eid Al-Adha, including two cases of mob harassment… A four day long campaign called Warriors against Harassment was activated by the I Saw Harassment initiative on Tuesday, the first day of Eid Al-Adha and ran until Friday. I Saw Harassment had said that during the religious holiday it would “be providing awareness and spreading the concepts of equality and renunciation of violence.”

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SSH Board Member Shares What Men Can Do

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Relando Thompkins

Check out this awesome interview our board member Relando Thompkins did for The Root last week!

“”One of the best things men can do to work against street harassment is talk to other men,” says Relando Thompkins, who sits on the board of directors of Stop Street Harassment. As a resident of Detroit, he talks to a lot of men who gripe about the responses they get from women, and he tries to make them understand that what she finds offensive is not up to him. “Just like a white person can’t tell me what I find offensive in terms of race relations, I can’t tell a woman what’s offensive.”

In my conversation with Thompkins, he compared men who holler at woman to police who engage in stop and frisk. Whatever benefit the New York Police Department claims from its stop-and-frisk programs, numerous studies and statistics have shown it targets men of color more than any other group, thus making an already complicated relationship between the police and black and brown communities more fraught.

“My experiences with racism have helped me become increasingly aware of others who have to deal with oppression of any sort because of targeted identities,” said Thompkins, referring to woman who are cat-called and consider it a form of harassment.

There are also other benefits to talking to other men about street harassment. Every guy I know has a story of being out with a woman and hearing another man say something to that woman. That kind of experience can probably help a man check himself. Then there’s also the benefit of being able to better understand that rejection from women happens to the best of men. Just like we mean no offense when we approach a woman, most women don’t mean any offense when they reject us. Is it offensive for women to label as street harassment every unwelcome but respectful attempt at engagement? Well, no one can tell you what offends, right? Our reaction is up to us.”

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How to Prevent Sexual Harassment?

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More and more studies are showing that sexual harassment – including street harassment – is a widespread problem that negatively impacts the lives of harassed persons. But there is less information available about why sexual harassment happens and how to prevent it from occurring.

A reporter for the International Business Times covers what IS known:

“What are some of the causes of sexual harassment? Despite popular perceptions, it’s usually not about innocent flirtation. In one 2008 study published in the journal Sex Roles, researchers interviewed 80 men from the Arlington, Texas area. They found that a man was more likely to exhibit harassing behavior if he was also more likely to suspect that women were criticizing and rejecting him.

 “These findings also support recent speculation that men’s sexual harassment of women is related to aggression rather than seduction,” the authors wrote.

When you turn to the literature to try and find scientific evidence for what interventions actually work, there’s an incredible gap of scientific evidence. In his 2007 meta-analyses reviewing 8 studies from between 1995 and 2006, researcher Bruce Douglas found that diversity training tends to have only a small effect on attitudes or behavior. Other studies also report just marginal benefits from sexual harassment prevention training.

“The lack of quantitative studies on diversity training continues to be prevalent,” Douglas wrote.

So what is to be done? There may be another avenue to help the victim that doesn’t rely on educating the harasser: all the other people in the office. Bystanders – such as people who hear about sexual harassment through the office grapevine, or directly from the harassed colleague – can also be powerful tools in combating harassment in the workplace, according to a July 2012 report from the Australian Human Rights Commission.“

For suggestions on what to do as a bystander, visit our webpage, watch “Shit Men Say to Men who Say Shit to Women on the Streets” and read our new book 50 Stories about Stopping Street Harassers.

Our proposed national study on street harassment will survey both women and men and ask questions about if survey takers have ever been harassers and if so, why. This is sorely needed data! You can donate $10 or more today to help make this study, about the people and funded by the people, possible.

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A Few New Fall Anti-Harassment Campaigns

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Check out these new anti-harassment campaigns, from Canada to the UK to the USA.

1. A campaign to address harassment on Translink in Vancouver, Canada

Via Straight.com:

SFU students Alexa Dredge and Katie Nordgren. Image via Straight.com

“Katie Nordgren and her Simon Fraser University classmate Alexa Dredge launched a website to share stories of harassment from public-transit riders across Metro Vancouver. For now, Harassment on TransLink is a project for their third-year gender, sexuality, and women’s studies course, but Nordgren hopes its scope will grow beyond that.

According to Nordgren, the site received more than a dozen submissions in its first day, and stories of “aggressive” and “scary” behaviour continue to come in to translink.harassment@gmail.com. In one post, a woman—who is anonymous, like all of the site’s contributors—recalls a man, with his hands in his pants, telling her he wanted to “shove it” in her butt on the SeaBus. Another woman wrote that she was harassed on the SkyTrain by two men who said she wanted to “fall all over their dicks” and then joked about shooting her in the head….

Metro Vancouver Transit Police has heard stories like those posted on Harassment on TransLink, according to spokesperson Anne Drennan. She told the Straight that transit police take sexual harassment and assaults “extremely seriously”, but they’re concerned that many people aren’t reporting incidents to them.

“It’s great to see people being encouraged to tell their stories,” Drennan said by phone from New Westminster. “That’s cathartic, right? But we want them to tell us.”

2. New student campaigns in England aim to combat sexual harassment and assault in night clubs

Via The Guardian:

“The Sheffield Anti-Sexual Harassment (SASH) is campaigning for clubs to hang posters on their walls to raise awareness. It is also asking them to train their bouncers and staff to spot and deal with harassment…. SASH wants to put a list of clubs online that are believed to be “safe spaces” for women. It plans to talk to student societies to make sure that they are not collaborating with clubs that are unsafe. The group hopes that the commercial incentive to get on to the approved list will encourage bars to work with it…

Students in Leeds are also demanding change. There, the feminist society and student paper are running a campaign to get the club night that hosted ‘Fresher’s Violation’ – where female staff “have what is meant to look like semen on their trousers” – closed down. Their online petition has reached over 3,500 signatures, at the time of writing, and has attracted attention from police and the local council. In addition to this, Leeds Femsoc want to persuade clubs around Leeds to sign a pledge against sexual harassment….

Students in Bristol have used Facebook to draw attention to the problem, creating a page called ‘Spotted: Sexism at Bristol‘, where students can name and shame those involved. “One post showed a young girl in a club who had passed out,” says Alice Philips, women’s officer at Bristol University. “Instead of helping her, four boys took pictures up her skirt.”  She adds: “We want to show people that this is happening. It’s dangerous for people to say there’s nothing wrong and everything’s alright. We are giving women a voice and enabling them to shout back.”

3. A new Safe Sites effort in Massachusetts led by the Coalition for the Prevention of Domestic Abuse and the North Shore Rape Crisis Center

Via Wickedlocal.com:

“Participating businesses will display a Safe Sites decal in their windows to indicate that help is available, if needed [for people facing street harassment, sexual assault, or other forms of violence]. Safe Sites are provided with basic written information about emergency services and local resources to share with anyone seeking assistance. They may also offer use of their phones and allow someone feeling threatened to remain in their business until help arrives. Safe Sites is modeled after the successful Safe Streets program of the Arizona Center against Sexual Assault and is also being implemented in other North Shore communities by the YWCA North Shore Rape Crisis Center.

 

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