Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

“We have to not just sit and take it or ignore it”

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Cross-posted from gawaahi.org

“Street Harassment is a global phenomenon that is largely overlooked, and even considered acceptable despite there being laws against it in many places including Pakistan. Street harassment includes making sexually explicit comments, ogling, whistling, following and groping.

In the making of these videos, we found that many Pakistani women, especially from the lower-middle classes began wearing burqas because they found the additional garment enabling in many ways. However, they find that the problem of street harassment has worsened, and even in burqas, they are harassed as they wait for buses, rickshas, taxis, or walk down the street. The women we spoke with in this series of videos had experienced intimidation that crossed class, age, religion and ethnicity.

We are grateful to the young women featured in this video — Nabiha Meher, Aroosa Shaukat and Mehreen Kasana — for having spoken to us about street harassment. They are all three journalists (as journalism is evolving) whether in the realm of social media, blogs or print.

Made by Naveen Naqvi“

You can view two other films on street harassment by Naveen Naqvi via a blog post from last October.

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60 men harass, grope two teenage girls in South Africa

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2008 Mini-Skirt March in protest of groping - via Siasa Duni's blog

1/5/12 Update: “The two teenagers who were harassed and groped by a group of men near the Noord Street taxi rank last week laid charges of harassment and intimidation at the Johannesburg central police station yesterday.

“The girls said they could remember some of the men who attacked them, so we are hopeful of their prosecution. We don’t need to arrest all the men, we only need a few to make an example,” Matshidiso Mfikoe, a member of the mayoral committee for public safety, said.”

Via IOL News:

“Two teenagers were harassed and groped in public on Friday because one of them wore a miniskirt. The Sowetan newspaper reported on Tuesday that a 17-minute long clip of CCTV footage shows one girl, wearing a black miniskirt, emerging from a shop where a crowd of between 50 and 60 men had gathered. They follow her, groped her and took photos with their cellphones, the Sowetan reported.

She screamed at her tormentors and occasionally tried to punch them as they groped her. When her friend tried to help her she was also abused.

Johannesburg metro police intervened and accompanied the girl in the miniskirt home. A nearby businessman pulled the other into his shop. Metro police arrived a few minutes later and escorted her away.

Gauteng premier Nomvula Mokonyane also condemned the incident.

“We learned with a deep sense of sadness and anger about the abuse of two young women on December 30 last year, because of their clothing,” she said in a statement.

“We condemn in the strongest possible terms the animal-like behaviour of those men involved – some old enough to be the young women’s fathers – where some males went as far as groping the young women.”

Look at this similar story, via a 2008 BBC article:

“Hundreds of South African women have marched to a Johannesburg taxi rank, where a woman was sexually assaulted for wearing a miniskirt. Nwabisa Ngcukana, 25, returned to where she was allegedly attacked by a group of taxi-drivers and street hawkers, who said she was indecently dressed.

“I came here to show the guys that I’m not scared of them – to face my demons,” she told the BBC.

The taxi drivers shouted insults at the women, some of whom wore miniskirts. Some shouted that South African women were being given too many rights….

The authorities have appealed to the taxi-drivers’ association to help find those who allegedly assaulted Ms Ngcukana and other women in recent weeks.

While some South Africans have said it is against local culture for women to wear miniskirts, the National House of Traditional Leaders last week said that women often wore short skirts in traditional ceremonies.”

What chilling behavior and what scary experiences for the young women. The silver lining is the police actually reacted and intervened in the most recent incident, as did a bystander businessman. But what will happen to the harassers and gropers? Do they just get to go on their merry way, ready to harass and grope another young woman the next day? Until there are more prevention efforts and punishments in place, what will change?

And is it time for another miniskirt march?

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Street harassers throw glass bottle, grope on the metro

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I was talking a walk down the street with a girlfriend one afternoon and a truck with two men slowed down beside us. The passenger yelled out of the window, “Hey baby! Where are you going! Want to come with us?”

We ignored the men and kept walking. After about 30 seconds from when they initially accosted us, the passenger threw a glass bottle at us from the vehicle and shouted expletives before racing away.

Another time, on the metro in DC coming home from high school, I made the mistake of dozing in my seat. I awoke gradually to the feeling of the man sitting next to me groping my leg beneath my school uniform skirt. The train was extremely crowded and I wasn’t able change seats or even move to another area of the car. I was so scared and I didn’t know what to do. He got off the train several minutes later.

– Anonymous

Location: 10th St and Pennsylvania Ave SE, Washington, DC

Share your street harassment story today and help raise awareness about the problem.
Find suggestions for what YOU can do about this human rights issue.

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First street harassment experience of the year

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I went to London for New Year’s Eve, and it was on the Tube going back to my friend’s student accommodation that I had my first street harassment experience of the year.

It was very busy, so we were all standing up and in close quarters to each other. I had seen a man to my left but I had ignored him in favour of taking my rucksack [backpack] off and holding onto the pole in the carriage to keep myself from falling over. I heard a voice from that area saying, “Happy New Year,” repeatedly, and I gave a non committal hum before ignoring him and facing my friend.

The talking at me continued, until he felt it was perfectly acceptable to rest his head on my shoulder while the train was moving. He kept on trying to get my attention by asking which stop I was getting off at, and I kept on ignoring him, as this is my preferred method of dealing with idiots trying to harass me.

As the train pulled into the next station, he upped his technique by grabbing my upper arm and squeezing it repeatedly and saying, “Hey, hey, look at me, where are you going? Where are you getting off?”

Honestly, it scared me. It was a very packed train, but no one could hear him as he was being so quiet. My heart pounded and my grip on my bag tightened, I was ready to swing it at him if he persisted, and I turned to him and replied with

“Home. Now leave me alone.”

He opened his mouth to say more, before my friend wheeled round and told him to back off before she punched him in the face. He stopped and we left the Tube two stations early in order to avoid travelling with him further.

I spent the rest of the trip home shaken and outraged, but also frightened in case he had followed us. He hadn’t appeared drunk like so many other revelers. Things could have been very different; instead of backing off he could have followed us. Fortunately he didn’t, but you always go through the “What if?” scenarios in your head.

– Anonymous

Location: London, England

Share your street harassment story today and help raise awareness about the problem.
Find suggestions for what YOU can do about this human rights issue.

 

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Police officer to groped woman: “These things happen”

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Via New York Times:

“Jill Korber walked into a drab police station in Queens in July to report that a passing bicyclist had groped her two days in a row. She left in tears, frustrated, she said, by the response of the first officer she encountered.

“He told me it would be a waste of time, because I didn’t know who the guy was or where he worked or anything,” said Ms. Korber, 34, a schoolteacher. “His words to me were, ‘These things happen.’ He said those words.”

Crime victims in New York sometimes struggle to persuade the police to write down what happened on an official report. The reasons are varied. Police officers are often busy, and few relish paperwork. But in interviews, more than half a dozen police officers, detectives and commanders also cited departmental pressure to keep crime statistics low.

While it is difficult to say how often crime complaints are not officially recorded, the Police Department is conscious of the potential problem, trying to ferret out unreported crimes through audits of emergency calls and of any resulting paperwork.

….

In the case of Ms. Korber, the police did eventually take a report of her being groped, but only after her city councilman, Peter F. Vallone Jr., intervened, she and Mr. Vallone said. In fact, Mr. Vallone said that he had grown so alarmed over how many women were being groped in his district that he contacted the 114th Precinct; his staff then asked Ms. Korber to go there again.”

Of all of the forms of street harassment that women face, groping is one form that is illegal everywhere – it’s assault! So this news that NYPD is regularly not doing anything about it when women report it is very, very frustrating. Especially because during 2011 there were multiple serial gropers in New York City, and many other New Yorkers shared stories about men who groped them in the streets.

Because so many police officers respond this way, plus the fact that some police officers are harassers, makes many people take matters into their own hands, they choose to fight back or create a community response to street harassment.

But street harassment, including groping, is a serious problem. Groping is a crime. The police need to respond appropriately, otherwise, what’s the point of having a police force? Come on, NYPD, you can do better.

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