Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

“Street harassment can come from people of any age”

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[Editor’s note: once in a while people submit workplace or school-based sexual harassment stories and they are published even though the site is focused on street harassment]

I’m a high school senior, and this happened to me a couple months ago in school. I was speed walking through the halls to get to my next class and I passed by a group of guys in my year who I didn’t know. When my back was turned towards them I heard a loud whistle, turned my head, and saw them smirking at me. I gave them the finger and continued walking, but not without hearing a burst of laughter coming from them. I had always held an optimistic view of the people at my school, but now I’ve become completely aware that street harassment can come from people of any age.

– Isabelle

Location: Toronto, Canada

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Find suggestions for what YOU can do about this human rights issue.

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“Tell Planet Fitness that they need to make their facilities comfortable for EVERYONE!”

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Hi all! I’ve written in before about the harassment at Planet Fitness Gym, and how the company has ignored requests to form a harassment policy. But I’m writing in today to ask for your help in persuading them to do so.

Planet Fitness Gym has multiple locations in all but three of the United States and their unwillingness to form a policy against harassment affects any member or guest that is currently or will ever work out at any of their facilities nationwide.

I feel that businesses have an obligation to make sure that their establishments are safe and comfortable for both men and women. We all deserve to reach our fitness goals and fill our New Year’s resolutions in peace. With every signature collected below via change.org an email gets sent directly to the CEO and VP telling them to form and train their staff on a harassment policy and to stop hiding evidence of harassment.

Please sign today and tell Planet Fitness that they need to make their facilities comfortable for EVERYONE!

– Earth Angel

Location: Elmwood Park, IL

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“I will NEVER let anyone take my power least of all him.”

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Walking in to a Safeway foods a man sitting at a picnic table at the cafe began yelling comments about my weight. He started by saying I was an embarrassment to women, “Just look at those fat legs, your sinning against GOD!” he shouted.

“You know women are to serve man, it says so in the Bible, your looks show me you don’t serve your man!” he was so outraged that he stood up and was spitting as he yelled at me.

“Someone should hit you in the head with a Bible,” and then he even took a step towards me with his hands in fists I just stood there calling his bluff. He was changing color from flesh tone to purple as he screamed.

“Your husband should put a lock on the refrigerator until you look respectful.”

I shook my head and stood there in shock, looking at him in all his anger. I felt so sorry for this pathetic person. I said, “I have a verse for you from the Bible that you hide behind in your discrimination, ‘Thou that has not sinned cast the first stone’…. but I forgive you as you can clearly see I am no a small person…”

I walked a way to the sound of people laughing and pointing at him. I was hurt but he is so uneducated and so sad how can you take him seriously? I admit after having two kids I have gained a bit of weight but he was not judging my fitness, but how I was as a wife due to my appearance. I admit I was in sweat pants and a over sized shirt but I was buying food for the week not putting on a fashion show and what place did he have bringing God into it?

It’s sad so many people, not just men, have this idea that your attractiveness is a direct reflection on how good of a person you are. I forgive him because it’s small of me not to understand that he was raised like this and through no fault of his own conditioned to behave like this and my only hope is that maybe he thought about what he said to me and will think twice before doing it again. I had no fear of him because I know I could have protected myself against him and I saw fear in his eyes because I did not back down he even retreated when I stepped towards him to speak. I will NEVER let anyone take my power least of all him.

– NL

Location: Fountain, Colorado

Share your street harassment story today and help raise awareness about the problem.
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Rally against rape in Beirut

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Hundreds of people rallied in Beirut, Lebanon, today to protest rape and sexual harassment and the weak laws against such crimes.

The rally was organized by Nasawiya, a feminist collective that also runs The Adventures of Salwa campaign against street and sexual harassment. View images.

Via The Daily Star:

“Neither marital rape nor domestic violence is currently outlawed in Lebanon, and sexual harassment in the work place is also not criminalized.

Furthermore, according to Article 522 of the Lebanese Criminal Code, if a man rapes a woman, his sentence will be repealed if he marries his victim.

"We have nothing to lose but our chains!"

Farah Salka, of feminist collective Nasawiya, said the current Lebanese laws regarding sexual violence were “archaic” and that the time for change had come.

“We are also asking all police, municipalities, and Parliament to take rape and sexual harassment seriously,” she added. Activists will meet at noon outside the Interior Ministry, and march toward Parliament.”

I applaud them and send strong thoughts of solidarity.

It’s exciting to remember this is just one of several large-scale rallies organized women against sexual violence and harassment. In the past few weeks, thousands of women rallied in Egypt and as did hundreds in Israel.

As the poster above says, “We have nothing to lose but our chains” when people protest their own oppression. Let us all vow to raise our voices and protest oppression, be it our own or be it the oppression of others.

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Book Review: Why Loiter?

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This is cross-posted with the author’s permission from MetroBlogs.

The book Why Loiter? Women & Risk on Mumbai Streets aims to map the exclusions and negotiations that females of various age groups and economic classes encounter in their everyday lives in urban spaces in the city of Mumbai. Authors trio, Shilpa Phadke, Sameera Khan and Shilpa Ranade have based this book on their 3 years of qualitative research and conclude that women’s presence and participation in public spaces and events has certainly increased but reserve that the city still does not offer equal claim into the realm of public safety in urban streets and spaces.

Why Loiter? Women & Risk on Mumbai Streets embarks on a significant journey on how a radically transforming city with respect to infrastructure and rapid construction, still continues to grant women only a status of secondary citizen by denying them complete safety at any time of the day. Provision of safety in urban spaces encompasses different understanding for women belonging to different economic classes. Woman travelling in a private vehicle from destination A to destination B has different safety level offered than another woman travelling from same destination A to B in a public transport.

As presented in the book, low visibility areas, poorly lit spaces, deserted streets and public transportation after sunset all consitute for unsafe environments. To counter, women alter their movement and restrict accessing urban spaces, maintaining a compromise. The book presents scenarios where this aspect of women in public spaces is so deeply entrenched that it becomes their second nature to modify their behavior. Examples like covering their chest with a book, file or dupatta, walking while gazing down and pretending to be on the phone while moving swiftly away into private spaces are common glimpses.

What is curious about the book is that investigates various economic and communal settings and how each is unique in providing different degree of freedom and social constraints. So a city, essentially an amalgam of various faiths and religion and cosmoplitan in its claim, provides a different level of freedom in varied communities. And women are not let loose from the clutches of moral policing in the name of safety. She can be letched, eve-teased, groped, stared and made to feel voilated, possibly anywhere. On the other hand, the same does not apply for men, as the authors point out. Men move about and expand their access to urban spaces more vigorously and more importantly any time of the day. Thus enabling more choices with respect to jobs they take up or engage in various social gestures.

This book presents scenarios of Mumbai’s changing landscape and how this emerging urban fabric could be flawed from equitable development and equal access to all citizens. And this is where I see authors blurring issues of gender humiliation to urban development. The two are distinct issues and a very organic development devoid of zoning has not been a solution either, as suggested by the researchers. Women’s safety in a city is not an unique Indian issue. Its rampant here could be a case of cultural baggage of gender hierarchy and its related perils.

Pallavi Shrivastava is an architectural designer with a keen interest in human ecology and sustainability in the built environment. She currently lives in Mumbai and works as a Country Manager for a Singapore Design Consultancy firm and pursues her academic research interest on sustainable and equitable urban development. She currently serves as the Mumbai Correspondent for World Architecture News. Pallavi holds a Masters degree in design from Arizona State University and has worked on several notable design projects both in India and USA. She is an Evidence Based Design Accreditation Certified (EDAC) and is also an USGBC LEED Green Associate.

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