Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

Racial harassment in Virginia

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I was driving my car down the street, just dropping my daughter off to school and a white man with short red hair came out of no where and started harassing me for no apparent reason. He was calling me names like dumb ass and making racial comments. He drives a green van and stays close to South Quaker Lane in Virginia. I wrote down his license to report him to the police.

I’m very uncomfortable in this situation because I have a young daughter and she doesn’t need to be in this danger.

– Anonymous

Location: South Quaker, VA

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Guilty Verdict for Delhi Gang Rape Perpetrators

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Trigger Warning

More than nine months after the street harassment and then brutal gang rape and eventual death of a young woman in Delhi, India, a Delhi court found the four perpetrators guilty for the crime and have sentenced them to death.

While I appreciate that for once a rape/murder case received the gravity it deserved, I am against the death penalty, even for these young men. Yes, they need to face consequences for their actions, but not an end to their lives.

I also think that some of the huge amount of time and resources spent on them could have been better spent going to schools and villages and cricket games (formal and informal) to talk about respect for women and girls, etc. This is a cultural problem in India (and every other country in the world) and every day there are numerous rapes and gang rapes. More needs to be done to chance cultural norms and prevent it from happening!

SSH’s friend Dhruv Arora who runs GotStared.At in India wrote an article today about why he is not in favor of this ruling and shared similar sentiments:

“The problem with this retributive approach to justice is that the problem is completely sidelined in favour of the desire for revenge. The problem is that sexual assaults are not lust-crimes at all, but are much more deeply linked to the roots of our society and have strong ties with the culture of power and domination. Yes, these things take time to change and till then we cannot do anything, but if we lose our heads in favour of personalizing justice to fit our emotionally triggered desire for “real action”, then we are failing as a society. True, it takes time, but till then we need to work on removing our ties to violence and not engrain them into our legal definitions. The least we need to ensure is that while this slow and painful process of change takes its due course, we don’t make things worse. If we let our deep frustration, anger and the helplessness of not being able to make an immediate change in the culture of sexual crimes take control of our better judgment of being able to identify positive change; we’re going to only make matters worse.”

If you want to do something about sexual harassment and sexual violence in India, I suggest getting involved with groups like GotStared.At, Breakthrough, Safe Delhi/Jagori, and Blank Noise!

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I Love this Video: Creeps on the Street!

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Laci Green, a sex educator with a popular YouTube series, takes on street harassment in her latest video.

In it, she shows what street harassment is and covers why it’s not okay!

She’s getting a lot of hate for it from people who want to defend street harassment as being a compliment, so show her some love via the comments to the video or on Twitter.

Thanks, Laci, for using your public platform to speak out!

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Meet SSH’s Fall Intern, Rickelle Mason!

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Rickelle Mason just started as Stop Street Harassment’s fall intern! She will help our summer intern Talia (I’m  grateful is still with us a few more weeks) complete the law-focused Know Your Rights Toolkit and transition the Safe Public Spaces Mentoring from a pilot to a full program. She’ll also blog and help with social media. Yay!

Meet Rickelle:

Rickelle Mason is an undergraduate senior at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. With a major in Psychology and a minor in Women’s and Gender Studies, she has a passion for feminist psychology, and using community-based participatory research to dismantle gender-based violence. She has worked for several years in the university’s Community Psychology Research Lab, which was recently the recipient of the “Outstanding Training in Community Psychology” International Award. There she assists in conducting research that encompasses the development, implementation and evaluation of mental health services, educational initiatives, advocacy programs, community interventions, amongst other things.

She also works in the Mindfulness, Body Acceptance, Culture and Health Lab, where is she primarily conducting her thesis. Her passion for research was solidified through the completion of a competitive research fellowship called the “Charlotte Research Scholars” which she was awarded after her sophomore year of college.

Her future research interests encompass program evaluation of non-profit services, sexual agency and empowerment, prevention of gender-based violence and using positive psychology (like mindfulness and self-acceptance) to enhance body satisfaction and sexual well-being. Another interest is the impact of objectification and stigma on sexual health behaviors.

In her spare time, she likes to visit her family back home in Philadelphia, give advice to one of her 10 siblings, and read as many books as she possibly can. She also enjoys taking walks that last for miles and end with iced coffee. Follow her on Twitter, @RickelleM.

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“This was one of the first incidents”

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Street harassment is a frequent incident in my life but this was one of the first incidents.

When I was 14 and I was walking home, I was at the bus stop right by my house, a guy around late 20’s/early 30’s started talking me, asked me how old I was, told me I was beautiful and asked where I was going. I told him I was going to my boyfriend’s house (I only said that in hopes it would be a deterrent, it wasn’t).

I can’t really remember what was said after, but I just remember I didn’t want to be rude and I didn’t know how to deal with that type of situation, I think I had said goodbye and then he kissed my hand, said goodbye and hugged me, then hugged me tightly, and tried to kiss me on the mouth but I turned my head and instead he ended up kissing my face multiple times.

I kept wriggling and said can you let me go please, and he eventually loosened his grip and I quickly walked away and didn’t turn around to see if he was following me but I walked around my block three times to make sure he wasn’t following me so he wouldn’t know where I lived.

I get harassed pretty much every time I leave my house but seven years later and this was the worst incident of someone being physical with me when I was 14 and didn’t know how to take care of my self properly.

Do you have any suggestions for dealing with harassers and/or ending street harassment in general?

When I can be in the mood to not be rude, I tend to try and explain how and why it’s not okay to the people harassing me. I usually try the “what if it was your younger sister/daughter/mother” approach. However, I don’t agree as although it humanizes the victim, it only really perpetuates the culture by suggesting that “a woman is only valuable in so much as she is loved or valued by a man.”

However, I feel that as we are not beyond the stages of where this is even actually being taken seriously by many, that having the harassers think of their loved ones in the same situation make them feel gross and yucky about themselves and hopefully stop.

– Nova

Location: London, UK

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