anti-street harassment week Archives | Page 29 of 63

Romania: Anti-Street Harassment Week in Bucharest

April 21, 2015 By Correspondent

Simona-Maria Chirciu, Bucharest, Romania, SSH Blog Correspondent

We had a week full of events for International Anti-Street Harassment Week in Romania. Activists and feminists were very active in raising awareness about this problem by posting online testimonials about street harassment experiences, sharing international events, participating in flashmobs and distributing fliers.

FILIA NGO and volunteers posted testimonials all week on Facebook and other activists Tweeted about street harassment. These kinds of online posting and discussions with people about street harassment is important. For example, some young women commented on our testimonials, opening up about their own experiences. Is vital for us to start talking more and more about this problem, in online but also in public spaces.

When it comes to street harassment in Romania, people tend to ignore it, to minimize the gravity of it. They excuse the harassers and blame the victims, so for this year’s International Anti-Street Harassment Week, three feminist NGOs from Bucharest — FILIA, FRONT and AnA: Society for Feminist Analyses — organized a public action in a park in Bucharest.

We gathered in a large park on Saturday, 18 April, to raise awareness about victim-blaming and the importance of bystanders intervention. How did we do that? We begun with writing chalk messages against street harassment like: “My skirt doesn’t concerns you!”, “I was harassed HERE”, “I don’t harass women”, “The public space must be safe for all of us”, “Take action against street harassment”, “Brave against street harassment”, “STOP street harassment”, “Harassment is violence”, “Respect women”.

Many people in the park took a moment to stop and read or asked us what are we doing, what is street harassment or just stopped to congratulate us on our work. After the chalking, we made a flashmob – an artistic dance to symbolize the “relation” between the aggressor and the harassed woman, a relation of dominance and submission, a power relation. A powerful woman, an actress and activist on Roma rights – Mihaela Dragan – recited testimonials about street harassment to go with the dance. It was great! Then, the other participants made a circle, surrounding the dancers with banners and placards with messages against street harassment, for the people to see them.

At the end of the activity we shared fliers with this simple message:

“When was it the last time you saw a girl or a woman catcalled, whistled, groped on the street, bus or park? What was your reaction? Street harassment is a daily problem for girls and women worldwide. Whistles, honking, leers, groping, sexual commentaries about women’s body, stalking, flashing, masturbation in public, threats with rape or physical aggression and other behaviours of street harassment in public space are making girls and women to feel unsafe. Street harassment has nothing to do with sexual attraction or what a woman is wearing. Is about the need of the harassers to demonstrate their power on their targets, the women who are seen just like sexual objects, walking down the street to please the men. Is time to get over stereotypes and stop blaming the women, but their aggressors. Say STOP to street harassment! Women have the right to a safe space too! Take attitude if you see a harassed women on the street!”

I was very glad that so many women and men in Bucharest got involved in this amazing week and I hope will be that way and something more in 2016 too!

Simona is the Vice President of a feminist NGO – FILIA Center and a PhD student in Political Sciences, working on a thesis on street harassment in Bucharest. You can follow her on Facebook .

Photos by Ana-Maria Popa.

Washington, DC area #EndSHWeek actions

April 21, 2015 By HKearl

International Anti-Street Harassment Week was huge… groups in at least 40 countries took a stand. In the Washington, DC-area, where SSH is based, we were also busy five with offline actions.

On April 14, we joined the Georgetown University Women’s Center in distributing information and encouraging people to write white board messages for social media and attended a talk on rape culture (including street harassment) by writer and political pundit Zerlina Maxwell.

April 15, several of our board members (Liz, Layla, and Maureen) and volunteers, staff and volunteers with Collective Action for Safe Spaces (CASS) and the DC Rape Crisis Center, and staff from the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority distributed flyers, tshirts, and bracelets at five Metro stations about harassment on the transit system and how to report it. We were able to reach hundreds of people.

April 16, we celebrated the achievements of our friends CASS at their six year anniversary party!

April 17, we hosted Nigerian LGBT/HIV activist Bisi Alimi at the meeting of the Gay District group at the DC Center. He talked about discrimination against LGBT individuals, including in Nigeria, and how that includes harassment and assault in public spaces. SSH board member Patrick, Bisi and I put up a few Stop Telling Women to Smile posters afterward as part of the International Night of Wheat Pasting!

Finally, on April 18, we joined Batala, CASS, and Defend Yourself for street action. From drumming to flyering and chalking (watch a 90 second video clip), we were able to raise a lot of awareness about street harassment. Batala was particularly amazing and drew crowds to hear their beats, giving us an opportunity to talk to people about street harassment, etc.

UK: This Doesn’t Mean a Yes Campaign

April 21, 2015 By HKearl

“A short skirt is not a yes.
A red lip is not a yes.
A wink is not a yes.
A slow dance is not a yes.
A walk home is not a yes.
A drink back at mine is not a yes.
A kiss on the sofa is not a yes.
The only ‘yes’ is a ‘yes’.”

On the eve of International Anti-Street Harassment Week, our friends Rape Crisis UK teamed up with fashion photographer PEROU on new campaign #ThisDoesntMeanYes to dispel the myths around what constitutes consent. They photographed nearly 200 women and officially launched the campaign at www.thisdoesntmeanyes.com on April 15.

In their press release they wrote: “PEROU photographed women who were chosen at random in a pop-up street studio, capturing and empowering each individual in a composition that each felt natural to them. Our aim: to show through our collection of images, that no matter what a woman is wearing, she is never ‘asking for it’ and the mentality ‘she wants it’ is fundamentally wrong.”

Rape Crisis UK explained: ‘No one should be able to blame rape on a short skirt. A short skirt can’t talk – a short skirt can’t say yes’.

Join the campaign by posting your image on social media using #thisdoesntmeanayes.

The four women behind the campaign are: Nathalie Gordon is an Advertising Creative, Lydia Pang is a Creative Art Commissioner, Abigail Bergstrom is a Commissioning Book Editor and Karlie McCulloch is an Illustration Agent.

Afghanistan: 22 Years of Being a Woman

April 19, 2015 By Contributor

Poster 7 — Eventually, I persuaded myself that what I experienced did not happen but was only in my head.

Guest Blog Post for International Anti-Street Harassment Week 2015

The first time I experienced harassment was when I was eight. I was standing by the bakery with my brother, who was also little. I was lost in my childish world when I felt a hand on my butthole. I looked back in shock and all I saw was a number of men, each pretending to be busy with their own work. I was too young to understand what had happened. The whole day, I was anxious and worried. Eventually, I persuaded myself that what I experienced did not happen but was only in my head.

The next day, I had gone back into my world of childhood, but until today, 22 years later, I feel a dark shadow on my heart every time I think about that day. In the past 22 years, I have experienced similar things many many more times. Every time, I have felt humiliated and weak. Every time, I have felt guilty and blamed myself. Every time, I have felt hatred for the men around me, for my life. I began to cover myself more. I stopped wearing makeup. I walked around with a frown on my face as to not give anyone the impression that I was interested in it. But none of these things have protected me from the harassment and violation of my body that me and thousands of women around me face every day.

Constant experiences of street harassment made me feel angry towards men. I began to equate masculinity with rape and violence and I felt that I must always protect myself from men. This is a side effect of street harassment on men. It prevents them from gaining our trust and our love.

In addition, like most women, I also experienced that street harassment had negative impacts on my self-respect and confidence. We cannot dismiss street harassment. It is a serious issue in our communities and we need to do things to stop it before another generation of girls grows up with the hatred, fear, and lack of self-confidence that my generation grew up with. We need to teach our boys to respect women and girls and we need to give our daughters the skills to defend themselves if it comes to that.

Hiding women inside the homes, covering them up in layers and layers of clothing, and preventing them from going out will not end street harassment. In contrast, preventing girls from being active in society contributes to a system that dominates women by keeping them weak in the society and giving them the smallest venues of influence power, if any at all. We must allow our daughters to go outside. Play. Learn. Work. And when they face issues, we must protect them and support them so that harassers and other predators don’t think that their actions will go by unnoticed and unpunished.

By Tamana Azaad, cross-posted from Dukhtarane Rabia (Daughters of Rabia): A blog on social justice in Afghanistan

Preliminary #EndSHWeek 2015 Update

April 19, 2015 By HKearl

Hello!

Wow, it’s been a tremendous week of activism for International Anti-Street Harassment Week 2015!

More soon, but here are a few numbers to recap what has happened!

* 1 member of parliament talked about street harassment (Australia)
* 4 transit campaigns or studies launched or were released (London, Los Angeles, Paris, Vancouver)
* 6 main hashtags were used on Twitter: #Endsh #Endshweek #plutotsympa #everydaysexism #AcosoEsViolencia #NoAcosoCallejero* Anti-street harassment efforts took place on 6 continents
* Co-sponsoring groups in 40 countries took action
* 50 street signs against “catcalling” went up in NYC and Philadephia
* 75 media hits* 485 photos of actions

THANK YOU everyone who was involved!

Please let us know how your event went via this reporting form and send photos to hkearl @ stopstreetharassment.org.

-Holly

PS, check out this man who is PRO harassment?!?!
“Another day ruined”

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