Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

UK: “We Need to Change the Whole Picture”

By

Annabel Laughton, Gloucestershire, UK, SSH Blog Correspondent

Finn Mackay. Credit: Rosie Charlotte Mackay

This week I was delighted to meet Dr. Finn Mackay, a teacher and feminist activist. She’s a sociology lecturer and former youth worker, and has a special interest in working with boys and men, as a researcher and campaigner. She’s involved with the White Ribbon Campaign, and domestic violence prevention work, and speaks and writes about feminism and male violence against women.

First we talk about Reclaim the Night. Mackay set up the London Feminist Network in 2004 and revived a national women-only Reclaim the Night march held in London every November. Mackay explains how Reclaim the Night marches directly tackle intimidation of women in public space. “Public space is gendered, though it shouldn’t be,” she says.

As the name suggests, Reclaim the Night is women’s takeover of public space from men. I ask her about the street harassment I experienced on my local Reclaim the Night march in November, and she laughs wryly. “That happens on all the marches. Groping, asking the way to brothels…  it’s an explicit reaction to women taking back the space. Men feel we are trespassing. It’s their way of saying, ‘these are our streets; go back home.'”

Reclaim the Night marches are a powerful statement. For her book, Radical Feminism: Feminist Activism in Movement, Mackay interviewed women about Reclaim the Night, and many women said the march was the only time they could feel safe and powerful.

Is street harassment getting better or worse, I asked?

Her answer is grimly definite: worse. Mackay explains that in her experience, young women say street harassment is an inevitable part of a night out, and how if they reported every instance, they’d never be off the phone. Working in secondary schools in London on anti-bullying campaigns, it was common for girls to report that they would go out wearing two pairs of pants, or would wear tights in summer, because it was so normal for boys to try to grope them inside their underwear. She believes women feel they have to appear unaffected by incidents, not wanting to appear delicate, prudish, or like a victim, and talks about women priding themselves on thinking of witty ripostes to sexual comments. She also explains that most people don’t know the definition of sexual assault (in the UK this is any unwanted intentional sexual touching), and are unsure at what point harassment becomes a criminal offence.

Next I want to find out what Mackay thinks about other areas that interlock with street harassment, like porn. Her view is that it’s an enabler. “Porn is part of a culture where men have to do things to women, and women have to put up with them; a predator/prey dynamic.”

Even more directly, a man can see violent images online and think, “I’ll go and do that to a woman”. Likewise, online harassment is part of that culture of women putting up with everything. The vicious, vitriolic online misogyny experienced by women has contributed to the development of a dialogue where the victim is expected to “toughen up” – because it “happens to everyone”.

Finally, we talk about causes and prevention. Good sex and relationships education (SRE) in schools, including education around consent, would go a long way. At present, there is no duty on schools to teach more than the biology of reproduction, despite many attempts by campaign groups, so provision varies. While there is some progressive, radical work in schools, others offer no SRE, and even in schools that do, it’s often taught by an over-worked gym teacher or someone else without adequate training.  Mackay is sceptical about statutory consent campaigns.

“One recent one was, ‘Give it: Get it’. This doesn’t take apart the predator/ prey dynamic. In fact, it sets it up. It’s obvious who’s doing the giving and who’s doing the getting. This is still about controlling women’s sexuality; it removes their sexual agency, as well as assuming men are desperate for sex and women have to be persuaded. And what can be given, can also be taken.”

This points to an urgent need for educating men and boys, and for tackling the expectations of how men behave. In Mackay’s experience, men are usually shocked and defensive about how they come across, even perpetrators of domestic violence. “They split the power thrill [of the act of violence] from the reaction. This is a status defence; they know they have higher status. Men need help. We need to think about how we’re constructing masculinity.”

In the end, though, Mackay sees street harassment in the broadest possible context: the whole of society. “We live in a male supremacy; there’s no getting away from that. All our major institutions are run by men. Ultimately, we need to change the whole picture.”

Annabel is involved in campaigns for human rights, mental health, environmental issues and social justice. She has an honours degree in Classical Studies, a diploma in counselling, and works in Higher Education.

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Romania: A Letter to All Men

By

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

Dear men, if you are reading this, good for you and thank you for your interest.

This is a short letter, so don’t worry. I will not eat up your time, but I hope you will find something interesting here and you will take it with you and share it. Yes, I am a feminist. And I don’t hate men. So you are safe, because this article doesn’t blame men.

“Hey, sexy”, “Damn! What an ass!”, “Can I lick your boobs?” – These are examples of catcalls, but more important than this, they represent a manifestation of male power towards women in the public spaces.

Power relations exist within intimate relationship but not there alone. They exist also in public spaces in the form of street harassment, rape, etc. This means, YOU can stop street harassment, you can stop rape, you can stop domestic violence — or you can be a part of the problem if you don’t take an active stand against it. Here is information about this:

  1. Street harassment includes a lot of behaviors (from excessive staring or honking to public masturbation or following). You have to keep in mind that if your behavior makes a woman feeling anxious, angry or unsafe, then it is harassment and you should stop it.
  2. Street harassment doesn’t happens just on the street, but also in any public spaces, like parks, stores, buses, trains, the beach, taxis etc. Really, in any spaces that are open for people.
  3. Men and all LGBT folks are harassed in public spaces too. But women and LGBT are the ones that are the mainly targets and the most vulnerable.
  4. Street harassment is not about flirting or sexual attraction. If you are attracted to a woman even though she is passing by and you can barely notice her in two seconds, you should not disrespect her by saying sexist words to her or looking at her like she is a sexual object just because you feel soooo attracted to her. Your feelings (or hormones) don’t excuse this behavior.
  5. A) Street harassment is a form of gender-based violence. Keep this in mind! B) Street harassment is a violation of human rights. Keep this also in mind!
  6. Women fear that street harassment may escalate into rape, physical violence or even murder.
  7. Talk to women in your life and ask them if they feel safe in public spaces, if they fear rape or violence from stranger men.
  8. Mass-media gets it all wrong! Sexual objectification of women in advertising and movies affects us negatively. When men see women as sexual objects they tend to think that women are inferior to them and sexual violence is not such a big deal and that women enjoy harassment, violent sex and physical violence.
  9. Gender roles are wrong! Remember what you’ve learned is school about gender roles (example: what the mother does (the cooking) and what the father does (reading the newspaper)). As a PhD student I’ve conducted research regarding street harassment in Romania and when it comes to how the respondents (men and women) see the concept of masculinity or to be a man and the concept of femininity or to be a woman, they strongly associate men with power and intelligence and women with elegance and taking care of children and the husband. This is not fair, right? The normative form of masculinity or what it means to “be a man” is important in any patriarchal society. In commercials, in movies and in our school books we see what a man looks like and we grow up with the idea that a man is everything that a woman isn’t. This is so wrong. The results about what masculinity and femininity mean to my respondents (144 men and 1793 women) are astounding and do confirm the theories on how gender roles make us to fall into two categories when it comes to street harassment: the targets (women) and, on the other side, the perpetrators (men). Gender role socialization make us all, regarding our gender, feel and act like we are very different from each other. But in fact we aren’t.
  1. Street harassment is about power. The consent of the woman has zero importance to the harasser in the interaction. The harasser starts the interaction and only feels that he has the power to decide when and how to end it. The expression of heteronormative masculinity in public spaces seems a must for men that want to be considered like “real men” by exerting power on the ones they perceive being vulnerable and having lower value as human beings (women, LGBT folks).
  2. You have to address and fight rape culture. The victims aren’t the ones to blame. Ever! When you hear “she was wearing a short skirt! She is the one responsible!”; “Boys will be boys” etc. use your voice and break down rape and street harassment myths.
  3. You always can talk to stranger women in a kindly manner. If you have respect and good intentions and you see that the woman doesn’t feel uncomfortable, then you can be pretty sure that your action is not harassment.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

If you are a man harassed in public spaces – Don’t feel ashamed because nothing is wrong with you and you can try to fight this back, alone or with people that are also targets of street harassment.

If you think you harassed stranger women in public spaces – Next time when you want to do this, please think that women deserve your respect and the right to move freely and to be safe in the public spaces, without fear of harassment. You don’t have any right to treat them badly.

If you are a bystander, next time be an upstander! Act and react against street harassers! Men are looking to other men for role models. Be that role model!

If you are an ally, congrats! We need you.

And don’t forget that we together have the power to end this! The power to react, to answer back, to fight this abuse and to build safe spaces for us all.

Simona-Marie is a Ph.D. Student in Political Sciences, working on a thesis on gender-based street harassment in Romania. She is an activist and organizes numerous public actions (marches, flash-mobs, protests) against sexual violence and street harassment against women. Now she is part of an working-group trying to improve by public policies the situation of young homeless people in Romania. You can find her on Facebook.

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Northern Ireland: The Deep Psychological Impact of Street Harassment

By

Elaine Crory, Belfast, Northern Ireland, SSH Blog Correspondent

In survey after survey, women tell us that they begin to experience street harassment at a young age; many as young as 12 years old, almost all by the age of 18. In a world where so much divides us, this is something that is almost universal for young women.

The evidence for the harm that street harassment does is enormous, too. Young women learn to text friends to say they got home safe, to keep keys between their fingers or mace in their bag, to shrink away from large groups on the street or in public transport. They turn up the music on their headphones to drown out catcalls, or pretend to talk on the phone, or lie about imaginary boyfriends – because some men will respect another man’s supposed territory before they will heed a woman’s “no”.

But the effects goes beyond behavioural changes to avoid harassment. The impact on women’s sense of independence, on her comfort in her own skin is hard to gauge in numbers, but we hear testimony of it again and again, via resources like Stop Street Harassment, Hollaback!, and the Everyday Sexism Project. Teachers and parents see young women shrink into themselves and become less outgoing and confident, less willing to go out by themselves perhaps, more self-conscious of showing legs and bellies even in the height of summer. Projects like SSH, and the online realm generally, are invaluable resources for sharing stories and experiencing solidarity, but somehow the need to find support on the internet when surrounded by women – mothers, grandmothers, sisters, friends – who have been through the same ordeals is indicative of the greatest harm done by street harassment. It fills us with shame. It teaches us that it is our fault, our just desserts and as inevitable as death and taxes.

When we are still children in so many ways we learn that we are subjects to be observed, categorised and consumed by men. We are objects to be desired or to arouse disgust. At all times when we are out in public, we are inviting judgement and appraisal. Young men become consumers and arbiters of taste. It is no wonder that so many men take that supposed right to all other areas of their lives and that so many of us tolerate it, after all even the President of the USA grades women from 1 to 10. We knew this, and yet the majority of white American women voted for him. It’s unremarkable. It’s just how the world is, right?

I recalled in my last piece for SSH that my first experience of street harassment was being told that I was ugly, and that I immediately believed my harasser. I was ashamed of my own obviously strikingly ugly appearance, disrupting a man’s peaceable walk through the town on an unassuming afternoon. The sense of shame was so strong that I was in my 30s before I told anyone my experience, and as I did so I felt a strange lump on my throat and tears come to my eyes. After all the years that had passed in between, and even after the feminist texts and work on anti-harassment groups, the shame and humiliation is still there. It took a while before I realised that I felt much the same about the times I’d been cat-called, touched or groped, flashed and leered at. So different and yet so similar, because they all were rooted in the fact that we all grew up in a society that sees women as consumables and men as the consumers.

That is the real and frightening impact of street harassment. It is at the coalface of everyday sexism, the first clumsy instrument of rape culture, the insidious infection that makes so much of the sexism and misogyny that we encounter seem somehow natural and inevitable. And it starts alarmingly young, perhaps even younger than the figures can capture. I was 13 when I was told that I’m ugly by a stranger, and also 13 when a much older man furtively rubbed his erection against me on a bus. Legally and socially, I was a child – albeit one with breasts. Why had I already internalised the shame? Because it permeates all social interactions.

I walk my 5 year old home from school, and it is striking how often people – generally men – comment on her appearance. Usually it seems that she doesn’t notice. Once, though, an older man wanted to give “the lovely child” a coin. She recoiled and hid behind my coat, and his reaction was to curse, toss the coin towards me, instead, and to reach around me to tousle her hair. She cried in anger and shock most of the way home, and I felt choked with both anger and fear for the future, because this is how it starts. This is why I accepted verbal abuse at the age of 13, and now I worry that she will, too. We walk on the other side of the road now, more often than not, and I hate that fact.

Elaine is a part-time politics lecturer and a mother of two. She is director of Hollaback! Belfast, co-organises the city’s annual Reclaim the Night march, and volunteers with Belfast Feminist Network and Alliance for Choice to campaign for a broad range of women’s issues.

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USA: Sexual Violence Should NEVER be Normal

By

Libby Allnatt, Phoenix, AZ, USA, SSH Blog Correspondent

Photo taken by the author

Trigger Warning – Attempted Rape

As the United States grapples with the misogyny, racism and bigotry that was seemingly validated with the election of Donald Trump, it is more important than ever to not normalize sexual violence.

The presidential election of 2016 rattled much of the nation.

It was supposed to be her.

On January 20, 2017, we were supposed to be inaugurating our first woman president.

But that’s not what happened. If you are outside the United States, I would venture to guess you’re aware of the trash fire that has transpired here since the country not only condoned the candidacy of an admitted sexual predator, but handed him the White House on a silver platter.

The election threatened the livelihood of many groups: Muslims, Mexicans, Jews, the LGBTQ+ community, just to name a few. These threats should not be underestimated. Trump’s refugee ban last week served as proof that he will try and make good on his threats.

Another group who felt threatened as we watched the polling results roll in on November 8: women. (Not all women, I should add. More than half of white women voted for Trump.)

The attitudes that normalize Trump’s “locker room talk” are the same attitudes that women must face the repercussions of every day as we walk down the street.

I started a new job this semester and work nights three days a week. At first I felt uneasy about knowing I’ll be walking home late at night, in the dark, in the city. But I refuse to feel scared.

I and the women around me have had lots of experiences with street harassment, and I feel disgusted to even say that I haven’t had it as bad as many others. I have struggled to understand the roots of the phenomenon and arm myself with knowledge.

While I believe we should avoid demonizing Trump alone (change is broader than one man, and government and the nation as a whole also needs to be held accountable for what they condone and initiate), we can’t ignore what his victory represented to a lot of people: that America condoned the actions of an admitted sexual abuser.

Groups have thoroughly documented hate crimes by perpetrators who used Trump’s exact words. A man harassed me a few days after the election using Trump’s words.

After the election of Donald Trump, women’s everyday fear of sexual assault was intensified, as if that’s even possible.

The other night when I walked home from work, a man in a car catcalled me. (The anonymity and distance of being in a vehicle does wonders for the empowerment of harassers.) I breathed a sigh of relief when he drove away.

The next night I walked home again. My stomach clenched when a group of four men were walking in my direction. I clutched my keys between my fingers.

A thought passed through my head: What if I got raped right now?

They passed me without saying anything, and I felt ridiculous for being scared of a group of innocent men. But this is our reality.

Some say street harassment is a fact of life, that we should deal with it.

But do they know what it’s like to breathe a sigh of relief when you make it through the door because you arrived untouched and unbothered?

I text my mom the second I get back to my apartment, the text already written out before I depart for home. The response she sent last night once I notified her of my safe arrival? “Yay!” A casual and all-too-normal declaration of joy at your daughter making it home unscathed.

The fears are for good reason. Last year at my own apartment complex a man followed a girl into the building, forced his way into her room, and tried to rape her before her male roommate stepped in. I would link to the news story, but I am obviously wary of publicizing the apartment complex I live in.

Paranoia. Fear. Guarding our bodies at all costs. Could we take on a man twice our size? Do we have our pepper spray? How do we fight back?

We fight back by not being scared. By continuing to talk about the obscene, ridiculous and terrorizing details of our experiences. By intervening when we have to. By holding accountable those who don’t take it seriously.

The hand signing executive orders to deny women reproductive rights and health care has been accused of groping their bodies. The words that spew hatred for any skin color that isn’t white come from the same mouth that makes jokes (threats) of dating 14-year-old-girls.

I don’t care who’s in the Oval Office. Sexual violence isn’t normal. And I refuse to ever let anyone make me feel like it is.

Libby is a student at Arizona State University. Originally from Salt Lake City, Utah, she is majoring in journalism with a focus on print and she is minoring in psychology and women’s studies. You can follow her on Twitter @libbyallnattasu and Instagram @LibbyPaigeA.

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UK: Street Harassment Across the United Kingdom

By

Annabel Laughton, Gloucestershire, UK, SSH Blog Correspondent

Hello readers! I’m delighted to be blogging for Stop Street Harassment, and am looking forward to bringing you some exciting activist stories from England. For my first post, I decided to find out what the street harassment picture looks like in the UK as a whole.

2016 produced some interesting research related to Street Harassment. As reported on the SSH blog in March, the UK-based End Violence against Women coalition commissioned a YouGov survey. The most striking figure to emerge was that 85% of young women have experienced street harassment, and 45% of young women have experienced it in the form of sexual touching. Street harassment isn’t restricted to the 18 – 24 year olds though; 65% of all women have experienced it, and 35% have experienced it as sexual touching. In another headline finding, over 75% of women were under 21 the first time it happened.

Girlguiding UK produced the Girls Attitudes Survey 2016, which among many other findings, showed that 37% of girls aged 11 – 16 experience street harassment sometimes or often. Even more recently, the Fawcett Society released a new report, Sounds Familiar, which shows women experiencing high levels of hostility in all areas of life. It highlights the disproportionate targeting of Muslim women by abusers, and shows that the tired old trope of blaming women for what they were wearing is alive and well.

It is my view that street harassment is grossly underestimated as a problem in the UK. I believe most men are blind to its existence, or think it only happens on isolated occasions. I don’t think most men understand the extent and forms of sexual harassment that women experience in public every day, or the impact it has on women. Furthermore, I believe there is little understanding of how street harassment connects with and enables other forms of violence and oppression women face in the UK. A woman is raped in Britain every six minutes. Two women a week are murdered by a partner or ex. 1220 cases of forced marriage were reported in 2015. Almost two thirds of young women have experienced sexual harassment at work.

These facts do not stand apart from one another, and neither do wider cultural ones: on average, boys first view porn at the age of 11; only 7 of the FTSE 100 companies have a female boss; the gender pay gap is 18%. I suspect some perpetrating harassment do not truly know that is what they are doing, so accustomed are they to seeing women as existing for their entertainment.

As SSH reported, in 2016 Nottinghamshire police became the first police force in the UK to classify misogyny as a hate crime. To me that indicates just how far society is lagging behind in its understanding of this issue. Whether it’s a “cheer up love” or a sexual comment, a leer, being followed home, a hand up the skirt or rape, we all know we are targeted because we are women.

But all is not lost. There are many powerful and inspiring women tackling street harassment here, and over the next few months I’ll speak to activists standing up to this pervasive culture of objectification and abuse.

Annabel is involved in campaigns for human rights, mental health, environmental issues and social justice. She has an honours degree in Classical Studies, a diploma in counselling, and works in Higher Education.

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