Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming
We’re looking for writers to join our final 2016 cohort of Blog Correspondents. You can be based anywhere in the world, be of any gender, use any native language, etc. You just have to commit to writing four articles between September and December on topics relevant to street harassment.
Deadline is August 31, 2016.
Mariel DiDato, NJ, USA, SSH Blog Correspondent
“Hold on” You may have thought to yourself after reading the title of this article, “I’ve told my sisters that they throw like ‘girls.’ It was just a joke. It has nothing to do with sexual violence.”
Directly speaking, no, it doesn’t have to do with sexual violence. However, telling a kid that they “(insert verb here) like a girl” is saying to that kid, boys are better at that thing than girls, and that they should emulate boys if they want to be good enough.
Or quite possibly, you thought, “Woah! I’ll tell a woman she’s sexy if I see her on the street, but I wouldn’t rape her.”
Fair enough. A street harasser may not ever think to rape someone, but somewhere along the line, they were taught that it is normal and acceptable to disregard a woman’s comfort so that they could tell her how sexy she is. Maybe someone else takes it a step further and follows a woman, demanding her attention. The next person might take it one step further and grab a woman inappropriately on a crowded street or bus. The next might become violent upon rejection, because his right to her body is more important than her right to say no. The line between any of these acts is a fine one, especially if they take place on a regular basis.
Ever ask for a woman’s number and then threaten to call it before she leaves to make sure she put in the correct number? Ever think that maybe she doesn’t want you to have her number?
Ever pressure a woman to have sex after multiple “No’s” or “I don’t want to’s,” for her to finally give in? Ever think that maybe she doesn’t want to have sex and that she’s either tired of saying “no,” or afraid of what you’ll do if she doesn’t eventually say “yes”?
Rape culture isn’t a myth that the progressive left came up with to place blame on men who have never committed sexual violence. It’s a term studied and used by professionals in this field to describe the aspects of society that condone and encourage violence against women.
“Woah, hold it!” You might be thinking, “Rape is one of the worst crimes someone can commit! Our society doesn’t condone rape!”
Stay with me, and just hear me out. It’s a more complicated idea than that.
The violence pyramid is the concept that sexual violence wouldn’t be so prevalent if sexual harassment wasn’t condoned. In addition, sexual harassment wouldn’t be condoned if sexist attitudes weren’t taught from childhood. From “You throw like a girl!” to “Nice tits, sweetheart!” to “She shouldn’t have gotten drunk if she didn’t want to be raped,” these themes are connected. Victim-blaming, refusal to believe survivors of sexual assault, and physical manifestations of sexual violence cannot proliferate without first building the primary bases of sexism. If boys are just naturally better and more valuable than girls, boys’ desires must be more valuable than girls’ comfort. If young boys see men harassing women in public, maybe it’s okay to harass girls at school in the hallways. If the people around boys make jokes about sexual assault, and blame victims of rape more than abusers, maybe committing rape isn’t even such a big deal to begin with. And if all of this is something that “only happens to girls,” what happens when a male becomes a survivor of sexual assault?
If sexual assault is the victim’s fault because “Some people are just psychopaths. You can’t prevent it. You can only take measures to protect yourself,” why are rape and molestation far more common than murder? If society truly believed that sexual violence is truly only committed by “psychopaths,” why are we quick to ignore the acts of Nate Parker, R. Kelly, and so many more abusers in favor of their careers? Is it any wonder that convicted rapists such as the infamous Brock Turner, and more recently Austin James Wilkerson, received laughable sentences for committing a serious felony? Society is quick to decry the effects of rape culture, but quick to deny its existence. We need to acknowledge the ugly parts of our society that allow for these occurrences to be so commonplace and unpunished.
Throw out the ideas that men should be sexually dominant and promiscuous, and women should be sexually inexperienced and submissive, that it’s okay for boys and men to shout sexually charged “compliments” to women in public, and that men are entitled to women’s time, attention, and sexuality. Replace these with the concept that rejection is okay, and shouldn’t be met with persistence. Reinforce the fact that people on the receiving end of harassment and assault are never at fault. Stress to young children that doing anything “like a girl” is just as good as doing it “like a boy.” We can only work towards long-term solutions if we acknowledge the root of the problem. It’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks, but it’s easier to teach young children that all people, regardless of demographic, are worthy of respect.
Mariel is a recent college graduate, feminist, and women’s rights activist. Currently, she volunteers for a number of different organizations, including the Planned Parenthood Action Fund of New Jersey and the New Jersey Coalition Against Sexual Assault. You can follow her on Twitter at @marieldidato or check out her personal blog, Fully Concentrated Feminism.
By LB Klein, former SSH Blog Correspondent
There is a joyful moment during which applicants to institutions of higher education turn into admitted students. This moment is perhaps best captured by students sporting newly-acquired campus swag such as a sweatshirt in official colors with the campus name emblazoned on the front or a t-shirt with a mascot. However, for survivors of sexual assault on many campuses who felt their schools did not support them, these coveted items quickly become a tangible reminder of a dream promised and nightmare delivered. To capture the hollowness of institutional betrayal, Wagatwe Wanjuki and Kamilah Willingham, two prominent Black feminist survivor activists and founders of Survivors Eradicating Rape Culture, are literally setting these items on fire.
Willingham and Wanjuki are burning their once-prized possessions and asking for other survivors to do the same until their alma maters do what they see as the bare minimum: acknowledge their experiences by apologizing. Through this #JustSaySorry campaign Survivors Eradicating Rape Culture is asking for “public acknowledgements of past failures” to “restore a sense of trust in the school’s intention and ability to approach campus gendered violence with integrity.” They argue that this action is simple but would have a huge impact on survivors who often feel their campuses see them as numbers in a crime statistics report and not treasured students or alumni who deserve restoration.
A few years have passed since Wanjuki and Wilingham were sexually assaulted while students at Tufts University and Harvard Law School respectively, they discuss the long-range impact of institutional betrayal. In a recent article she penned for The Establishment, Willingham mentions the “PTSD and a six-figure student debt amount” that linger, while her pride in her Harvard Law School attendance have faded. Much like movements to address street harassment, #JustSaySorry uses a grassroots and community approach to ask institutions to move beyond the often clinical official statements often issued by college and universities. #JustSaySorry is calling for acknowledgment of survivors as people and to consider the human impact of sexual violence and its aftermath when handled poorly.
Survivors Eradicating Rape Culture and the #JustSaySorry campaign come at a time during which there is increased attention to the issue of sexual violence on campuses, but the road to accountability can be a long and fruitless one for survivors. No matter how well we enhance our university systems (and we should) we are in need of more than just more laws and more policies. Our processes for holding institutions accountable for the harm they have caused survivors frequently mirror the failings of systems of perpetrator accountability.
Wanjuki and Willingham are reminding us through their deeply personal and cathartic actions that genuine apologizing is a rare, critical, and distressingly radical act for administrators and institutions. Survivors Ending Rape Culture is calling on survivors to send them items from alma maters who failed them or to post videos or photos of themselves withholding their donations to their institutions.
Anyone can show solidarity for their work by using the hashtag #JustSaySorry to call out institutions that have caused survivors harm or by tuning into their live broadcasts of burning protests. To create more survivor supportive cultures, we cannot rely solely on strengthening formal systems. As Willingham and Wanjuki are demonstrating, we must also recognize the powerful role that the people who make up institutions and communities have to help survivors heal.
LB Klein, MSW, MPA has dedicated her professional and academic life to ending gender-based violence, supporting survivors, and advancing social justice. She is a doctoral fellow in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Social Work and serves a lead trainer and curriculum development specialist for the Prevention Innovations Research Center at the University of New Hampshire.
Hope Herten, IL, USA, SSH Blog Correspondent
Warning: This is cheesy! 🙂
If you have been keeping up with my posts throughout the summer, I hope that you were able to relate to my message and learn a little bit about who I am and what it’s like being a young woman in Chicago. Unfortunately though, my own personal experience and the experiences I have shared from my friends are barely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to street harassment and the other obstacles women, people of color, and trans people face trying to live independently in the US today. There are people all over the spectrum of marginalized groups that face different kinds, and an array of severity, of harassment.
Despite my limited experience, it is always my hope that my voice will be heard and will open a door so that those less privileged than me can have a chance to live in a world where their lives are valued more; that their safety and prosperity is prioritized. The topic of street harassment and other feminist movements have helped all kinds of women come together, recognize intersectionalities, and fight for causes that improve the lives of all.
I am using this final post as a platform to call out anyone who reads this and ask them to do one thing this week to make their voice heard and fight back against street harassment. Help out that woman you see on the street or on the bus facing harassment, stop passive aggressively tweeting about sexist colleagues and TAG THEM, say something in your group chat about offensive jokes, anything. The conversation has already been started. Use links to inform your message and utilize hashtags to contribute to the larger conversation. Thanks to social media more than ever voices can be heard. So make yours matter.
Side note: The Slut Walk is a great way to show your support and fight street harassment. Dress however you’d like and bring your friends! If you live in or near Chicago, it’s on August 20th! See you there!
Hope is a full-time undergraduate student studying public health and Spanish in Chicago, IL. If you want to keep up with Hope you can follow her on Twitter @hope_lucille or check out her public health blog.
Deborah D’Orazi, LMSW, NY, USA, SSH Blog Correspondent
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton is one of the most popular musicals on Broadway and is continuously gaining accolades the world over for its music and multi-racial and gender inclusive casting. In creating an alternative to the typically white male narrative American history often presents as the norm, Miranda constructs a piece of theater that creates a nuanced critique of who and what is deemed most important in American history and society. Women and people of color not only tell the story of Alexander Hamilton, the American Revolution, and the early American Republic, they tell the story of the very men who often ordered their subordination and inferiority through philosophy, politics, and violence.
More importantly, they represent the stories of the very people and experiences purposefully erased and forgotten in order to create American society. This is a narrative demonstrating the United States’ founding ideals and oppressions on full display through expert storytelling and representation that not only represents a critique of the Founding Fathers and ideals, but of the progress made and still needed for those still experiencing oppression in our society.
One of the ways in which oppression is explored in Hamilton is through the presence and absence of women in public life due to racial and gender norms. While women of all races are featured in the ensemble, the only prominent female characters are the Schuyler Sisters (Angelica, Eliza, and Peggy—prominent, upper class white women played by women of color). Most of the songs in the play demonstrate the women’s influence in Alexander Hamilton’s life and the frustration that they have such little influence on their own. Father’s must approve marriages and the only political influence they have is through corresponding and talking to men. And, what is most telling, is that the only song where the women are by themselves, and in a public place, is when they are subjected to street harassment.
The Schuyler Sisters is a song introducing the three women exploring Manhattan on the eve of the American Revolution, despite their father’s warnings. While Peggy worries about the inevitable oncoming violence, Eliza and Angelica express enthusiasm for the revolutionary ideals being expressed throughout the city and colonies. The women state they are “looking for a mind at work” and while the male narrator and ensemble seem to suggest they are looking for a suitable male partner, there is a lack of acknowledgement from the men of the times (and in the play) that women and people of color may actually be looking for a say within the narrative of revolutionary politics. This willful ignorance and prejudice comes into full force when Aaron Burr interjects his harassment into the women’s narrative:
[BURR]
Wooh! There’s nothin’ like summer in the city
Someone in a rush next to someone lookin’ pretty
Excuse me, miss, I know it’s not funny
But your perfume smells like your daddy’s got money
Why you slummin’ in the city in your fancy heels
You searchin for an urchin who can give you ideals?
[ANGELICA]
Burr, you disgust me
[BURR]
Ah, so you’ve discussed me
I’m a trust fund, baby, you can trust me!
[ANGELICA]
I’ve been reading Common Sense by Thomas Paine
So men say that I’m intense or I’m insane
You want a revolution? I want a revelation
So listen to my declaration:
[ELIZA/ANGELICA/PEGGY]
“We hold these truths to be self-evident
That all men are created equal”
[ANGELICA]
And when I meet Thomas Jefferson
I’m ‘a compel him to include women in the sequel!
[WOMEN]
Work!
This dialogue represents many things. On one hand, it demonstrates the underrepresented historical narrative that street harassment existed for many centuries before it became noticeable in popular culture and within the Stop Street Harassment movement. As a form of racial, homophobic, and gender violence, street harassment has been used to discourage and harm people fighting for civil rights, suffrage, or any personal or human rights issue. As a woman, LGBTQ individual, or racial minority, etc. even existing in a public place or taking part in a public activity or using a public space becomes an act of resistance when people use harassment to question your right to live and exist within a space near or with them. Thinking of events like the Orlando Club Shooting, the death of Sandra Bland, and the shooting of Malala Yousafzai by the Taliban only highlight even more strongly how existing and living and/or advocating in public for yourself and others can lead to harassment, violence, and death.
The question then becomes, how do we deter attitudes like Aaron Burr’s? How do we change the default where people are willfully ignorant and prejudiced about the many people and voices that exist in this world? That would be willing to use street harassment to quiet those using and existing in public spaces that they wish to use for their own gain or harm?
And I ask the Stop Street Harassment community,
Deborah is a recent MSW graduate who also received certification from American University’s Women and Politics Institute and Rutgers’ Center on Violence Against Women and Children. In addition to social work, Deborah is looking to pursue an MPP/MPA and she is also extremely passionate about the arts (theater, writing, film, television, fine art, poetry, performance art), history, and Hamilton.