correspondents Archives | Page 21 of 88

India: The Challenges Reporting Sexual Harassment

May 14, 2016 By Correspondent

Tharunya Balan, Bangalore, India, SSH Blog Correspondent

Trigger Warning

The 2012 case of the young woman who was fatally raped and assaulted on a bus in the Indian city of Delhi led to a number of decisions made at the State and Central levels to address violence against women, including several new laws against rape and sexual assault. The new laws include specific mentions of sexual harassment, voyeurism and stalking as punishable offences.

The publicity and international attention around the issue has led to more open conversation on the subject and encouraged more (mostly educated) women to report sexual assault and harassment. Unfortunately, passing laws to criminalize behaviour does little to change the prevalent rape culture and attitudes towards women held by much of the population. Even judges in other countries seem to assume that Indian culture means men simply do not understand boundaries and so cannot be held accountable for their actions.

In May of 2015, Amnesty International India approached the feminist magazine The Ladies Finger about their upcoming Ready to Report initiative, aimed at making it easier for victims of sexual harassment and assault to report incidents to the police. The online magazine then threw their doors open to people who had experienced sexual assault or harassment, and asked if they had tales to tell.

The stories published (a woman assaulted in a car, a woman molested by a friend she was visiting, a woman stalked by an old classmate, a woman molested on the street by a stranger, a team of journalists stalked and harassed by a stranger) include examples of the victims being interviewed in front of their attackers, of them being forced to recount the most intimate details of their assaults in front of a station full of curious policemen, of being browbeaten into recanting or rewriting their stories, and of their being treated as overreactions to minor annoyances, and the police taking it upon themselves to mete out justice as they saw fit.

The campaign also included a twitter hashtag that paints a depressing picture of the narratives that surround victims and stories of sexual assault in the country. Women are hesitant to speak up for a number of reasons, ranging from the fear of reprisals, the social stigma around sexual assault, the fear of being slut shamed for their choices, the stress of filing and following reports while fearing more harassment at the hands of the police force, the fear of negative media attention, and the fear of not being supported by friends and family, and the horror that surrounds medical examinations.

The founder of The Ladies Finger, Nisha Susan writes:

“The variables that affect whether an Indian woman’s claim is taken seriously by the police range considerably, from class, caste, the site of the assault, to the time of day. The more familiar the complainant was with the assaulter/ rapist/ stalker the less likely she was to successfully register a case. Our findings backed up results from the more rigorous studies undertaken by activists: in the legal system, you are likely to fare better if you have been violently assaulted by a working-class stranger in a public place.” (emphasis mine)

This only underscores the fact that marital rape is not a punishable offence, or indeed, a term recognized by the law at all, and it explains why so many reports of stalking are ignored or not taken seriously.

There is a lack of genuine discussion around the way women and women’s bodies are perceived in this country. The original text of the law (section 354 of the Indian Penal Code) defines as criminal the “assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty”, and it is this idea of “modesty” in the India context that is still such a sticking point. It is this idea that lies at the heart of the victim blaming, the slut shaming, and the dehumanizing treatment of rape and assault victims when they do come forward.

It is not just female victims who suffer under our archaic ideas of modesty and bodily autonomy. The sections of the Indian Penal Code that refer to rape are not gender neutral, and they do not acknowledge male victims of rape. There is something deeply embarrassing about a country whose leaders and whose laws are the equivalent of an ostrich sticking its head in the sand and pretending that what it sees does not exist. Treating sex as a taboo, refusing to understand the spectrums of gender and sexuality, ignoring the contradictions between what is portrayed in our media and what is taught to our children in schools and homes, and

What we are in dire need of in our country is real sex education: real conversations on consent and real understandings of the ways in which someone’s body and person can be violated by another’s actions.

Tharunya is an urban planner and architect with a passion for issues of social, environmental and spatial justice, including the gendered ways in which urban spaces are designed and function. She has a bachelor’s degree in architecture and a master’s degree in City and Regional Planning from the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she will be returning to obtain a degree in Geographic Infomations Systems Technology later this year.

USA: Street Harassment is the “Global” Trigger That Re-Traumatizes Victims

May 11, 2016 By Correspondent

By Shahida Arabi, New York, USA, SSH Blog Correspondent

I grew up in neighborhoods where street harassment was an all-pervasive part of living, breathing and communicating. This is not to say any area is exempt from the threat of street harassment – this form of harassment takes place all over the world and across all cultures. In my own country of origin, Bangladesh, street harassment is incredibly common, along with sexual harassment, and this form of “eve teasing” has even led to the suicides of young girls. I found that my experiences with street harassment in the USA did not differ as drastically as one might think from my experiences in Bangladesh.

Starting from the age of fifteen, I was routinely objectified by older male strangers on the street as a part of my everyday commute in New York. I have been followed, stalked, harassed, asked whether I was “eighteen yet,” told that putting my earphones on were against the law, cursed at for not being responsive, bashed for being sassy and talking back in a way that was not to their liking, and at one point, almost assaulted on a train by a man who followed me from train car to train car until two other men intervened.

These experiences were triggering enough without any prior history of sexual assault, but after I also experienced my first sexual assault on the streets in Bangladesh and then a later, more severe sexual assault in the U.S., street harassment became something even more darker and foreboding – it became a constant trigger that reminded me that my body was not considered my own in this society. Women are constantly reminded – through lingering stares, covert and overt sexual remarks and even touches – that their bodies are the property of the men who desire them and that their consent does not matter.

It began occurring to me that although street harassment has and always will be incredibly traumatizing for all women navigating public spaces, it will also be incredibly re-traumatizing for women whose spirits, minds and bodies have also been violated by assault, rape or physical and/or emotional violence. Those with histories of chronic trauma, who may have PTSD or Complex PTSD, will be even further debilitated by this form of harassment every day as a barrier to a peaceful, safe commute because their brain is already on high alert, scanning the environment for potential threats. As a result, these victims will are likely to experience even more anxiety, rage and depression after an incident of harassment.

RAINN estimates that there is 1 sexual assault every 107 seconds in America and an average of 293,066 victims (age 12 and older) each year. With numbers like these, along the prevalence of childhood sexual abuse and domestic violence, I can only imagine that there are many survivors of abuse and trauma who are being subjected to a dual traumatization on their daily commutes that are leaving them feeling further revictimized. It doesn’t help that street harassment in itself is in fact a very real threat, and many have experienced sexual assault when encountering this form of harassment regardless of their trauma history.

Street harassment also has a strong verbal component which can be psychologically retriggering for survivors of verbal and emotional abuse who may have suffered childhood abuse or long-term abuse in an intimate relationship. Being name-called on the streets as a form of retaliation after rejection as well as in the private space of your home by a spouse, partner or family member can be incredibly jolting. It can reinforce and instill a pervasive sense of helplessness and worthlessness that already exists in other facets of a victim’s life and his or her trauma history.

That is why I call street harassment the “global” trigger – it not only has the capacity to affect every country, it also has the potential to trigger every other trauma experienced in one’s life. It’s an assault and a violation on a woman’s right to navigate public spaces without having her body being considered public space.

Those who trivialize street harassment as a “compliment” are not only ignorant about the deep-seated issues of this patriarchal entitlement to women’s bodies and rape culture, they are also ignorant about the effects of trauma. According to Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score (2014), trauma lives in our bodies and rewires our brains. Incidents of trauma add onto each other and make the brain more and more hypervigilant to threat. When we are traumatized, we can “regress” back to the original trauma through visual flashbacks or ones that have a high emotional component; these are what therapist Pete Walker calls emotional flashbacks.

The people who leer, touch, degrade, objectify women and later rationalize their heinous boundary-breaking behavior with a narcissistic sense of entitlement are essentially prioritizing their selfish desires over the very real needs, boundaries and desires of the victim. Like many other forms of abuse, street harassment is not about sexual desire or flirting – it is about power, control, coercion, devaluation, objectification and manipulation.

Unfortunately, every incident of street harassment builds upon pre-existing trauma and societal stereotypes about women. This cumulative effect traumatizes and continues to re-traumatize victims in an endless cycle of sexual violence against women, especially for those who reside in neighborhoods where street harassment is a pervasive problem.

It’s time that society heed the wake-up call. Street harassment is a serious issue that is part of the larger problems of gender violence and rape culture. It is this everyday microaggression, this global trigger, that has the potential to traumatize and even re-traumatize victims, all over the world.

Shahida is a summa cum laude graduate of Columbia University graduate school and is the author of four books, including The Smart Girl’s Guide to Self-Care and Becoming the Narcissist’s Nightmare, a #1 Amazon Best Seller. As a passionate advocate for survivors of abuse, sexual assault and trauma, her writing has been featured on many sites. You can follow Shahida on Twitter, her blog Self-Care Haven and join her Facebook community.

Welcome May – August 2016 Blog Correspondents!

May 9, 2016 By HKearl

Meet our newest blog correspondents! They will write monthly posts from May to August 2016.

Shahida Arabi, NY, USA

Shahida is a summa cum laude graduate of Columbia University graduate school and is the author of four books, including The Smart Girl’s Guide to Self-Care and Becoming the Narcissist’s Nightmare, a #1 Amazon Best Seller. As a passionate advocate for survivors of abuse, sexual assault and trauma, her writing has been featured on sites like The National Domestic Violence Hotline website, Elephant Journal, Dollhouse Magazine, Thought Catalog, and the Feministing Community blog. She studied English Literature and Psychology at NYU, where she graduated summa cum laude and was President of its National Organization for Women (NOW) chapter. Her blog, Self-Care Haven, has over 1.8 million views and has been shared worldwide in all 196 countries. Her work on emotional and psychological abuse has been shared by numerous clinical psychologists, mental health practitioners, bestselling authors, and award-winning bloggers. You can follow Shahida on Twitter and join her Facebook community.

Tharunya Balan, Bangalore, India

Tharunya is an urban planner and architect with a passion for issues of social, environmental and spatial justice, including the gendered ways in which urban spaces are designed and function. As a middle-class well-educated Indian woman in a large cosmopolitan city in the subcontinent, she constantly works to expand her understanding of gender, privilege, discrimination, and systemic oppression in her country and environment. She has a particular interest in including men in conversations around women’s issues and the ideas of safety, respect, and consent. She has a bachelor’s degree in architecture and a master’s degree in City and Regional Planning from the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she will be returning to obtain a degree in Geographic Infomations Systems Technology later this year.

Mariel DiDato, NJ, USA

Mariel is a recent college graduate, feminist, and women’s rights activist. Although she received her degree in Nutritional Sciences, she plans to pursue graduate degrees in the fields of Public Policy and Women’s Studies to turn her volunteer activism into a career. She began her activism as a confidential crisis advocate for sexual and domestic violence survivors for Rutgers University’s Office of Violence Prevention and Victim Assistance. Since her training, she has become completely immersed into the field of women’s health and rights. 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. She is passionate about ending sexual violence, and is determined to see the elimination of rape culture in her lifetime. You can follow her on Twitter at @marieldidato or check out her personal blog, Fully Concentrated Feminism.

Deborah D’Orazi, NY, USA

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 in order to help create policies that empower many different members of society, particularly those who are dealing with trauma. Deborah hopes to use her passion and skills to continue advocating and writing for human rights, gender and racial equity, trauma, HIV and AIDS, reproductive health and maternal care, LGBTQ issues, and economic inequality. In addition to social justice issues, Deborah is also extremely passionate about the arts (theater, writing, film, television, fine art, poetry, performance art), history, and Hamilton.

Hope Herten, IL, USA

Hope is a full-time undergraduate student studying public health and Spanish in Chicago, IL. After graduation in Spring 2017, Hope wants to return to her hometown of Cleveland, OH, and help work on outreach programs to improve the overall health of the community by focusing on minorities and high risk populations. Street harassment is intimately linked to the health of women, and as such is a serious public health issue. During her time in Chicago, Hope has participated in many protests and events trying to call awareness to women’s issues on campus and in the broader Chicago community. Her role model is Michelle Obama, a powerful woman who has devoted her life to many great causes like children’s health equity, the advancement of young women, and gender equality. If you want to keep up with Hope you can follow her on Twitter @hope_lucille or check out her public health blog.

Minying Huang, Amman, Jordan

Minying is a 19-year-old British-born Chinese student from Cambridge, England. She is studying for a BA in Spanish and Arabic at Oxford University and is currently on her Year Abroad in Amman, Jordan, where she spends far too much time gorging herself on syrupy cheese pastries, drinking copious amounts of mint tea, and trying to figure out how best to deal with street harassers. She is particularly interested in transcultural dialogue and intersectional approaches to activism, exploring the ways in which overlapping identities shape both individual and collective experiences of oppression and marginalisation. Outside of study, she likes to read, write, and draw; she has written for Your Middle East, and her poems and illustrations have been published in a number of student publications including feminist and LGBTQ+ zines. You can follow her on Twitter @minyingh.

Manish Madan, Ph.D., NJ, USA

Manish is a Professor of Criminal Justice at Stockton University where his research focuses on examining sexual harassment, gender empowerment, spousal abuse and policing issues. It is grounded in policy, international and comparative research. He teaches both undergraduate and graduate students. His research has appeared in International Criminal Justice Review, Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management, Asian Journal of Criminology, and Journal of Criminal Justice and Security, and in many prominent media outlets including NY Times, India Today and The Economic Times. He was recognized with President’s Outstanding New Scholar Award by the Western Social Science Association in 2015. He frequently consults organizations on sexual harassment and gender issues. Manish earned his doctorate at Michigan State University and has Masters in Statistics, from India (Delhi) and Canada (Newfoundland). You can follow him @Prof_Madan or reach out to him at www.manishmadan.com.

Ginger Skinner, NY, USA

Ginger is a full-time reporter and long-time New Yorker with over 10 years of experience writing about health and wellness. Ginger is also a member of Brooklyn Movement Center’s No Disrespect anti-street harassment team, and is dedicated to deepening the conversations surrounding the causes of gender-based harassment and violence, and the intersections of race. She’s also a poet and essayist, currently working on a collection of poems on the impact of colorism on Black women and girls. She holds a BA from Howard University. Ginger enjoys drinking strong coffee, wearing shoes, listening to podcasts, and biking, and has an irrational fear of small talk and flying insects. Follow Ginger on Twitter at @ginger_skinner.

Turquoise A. Thomas, KS, USA

Turquoise is a 26-year-old freelance journalist, program manager at the Wichita Women’s Initiative Network, and a junior at Wichita State University. Upon graduating she plans to attend a joint Juris Doctor/Masters of Social Work Program. A California native, with a background in youth development and law enforcement, her current work focuses primarily on women, children and gender. In Fall 2015 she expanded her fieldwork and academic studies outward from California to the Midwest with the intention of expanding women’s services in underserved states such as Kansas. Turquoise is an avid public educator and presents regularly as the founder of SHERO Coalition (SHERO Co). Feel free to follow her on twitter @anthroisms or join her growing coalition SHERO on Facebook!

USA: Harmful Oklahoma Court Ruling

April 29, 2016 By Correspondent

Rupande Mehta, New Jersey, USA SSH Blog Correspondent

It was a good and bad week for victims of sexual assault and rape. While former House Speaker Hastert was being sentenced to 15 months (yup, only 15 months after the judge declared him a “serial child molester”) for molesting young boys when he coached as a wrestler, the Oklahoma court shocked everyone with the declaration that state law does not criminalize oral sex with a victim who is completely unconscious.

Right, why didn’t we think of that? An unconscious person is completely capable of giving consent so why prosecute someone who took advantage of the VERY fact that the victim was unconscious and orally sodomized her?

I have to be brutally honest here: some days the fight to make folks understand what constitutes violation of a person’s body seems so hopeless. On days like these, I feel I am transported to the hell holes of Pakistan, India and other countries where rape and other forms of violence against women is a daily fact of life. My mind cannot accept the fact that a verdict of that magnitude was issued by a court in the United States. It seems like the work of moron village elders and other local leaders, who need five witnesses to prove a rape, not that of a judicial body in the United States.

I can’t even comprehend the idiocy of this court. And I don’t even know where to begin.

This is not the court’s fault…not ONLY their fault. This is a system-wide issue that takes pride in victim-blaming. Every day we hear about assault, rape and other forms of violence like street harassment, but the question that takes center stage is “what was she doing” instead of “why did he abuse”?

We as a society have culturally evolved to the point where violence is acceptable if we can shift the onus on the victim. We look for loopholes in her story – why was she there? Who did she go with? What was she wearing? Or as John Kasich famously said, don’t drink at parties so you don’t get raped. I can’t wait for his 16 –year-old twin girls to get to college and avoid parties because their father warned them they could get raped.

We live in a society that victim blames and no one is a better example of this than our judicial system. We let lawyers question victims about abuse in a manner that befits no living being in this world. We sit back and enjoy every tiny detail re-lived by the victim over and over again and then turn around and tell her that her story has holes in it because she cannot remember every single ghastliness that happened to her. We sit back and let lawyers badger victims, not considering their emotional abuse and high levels of trauma that prevent them from being consistent in their narration. We live in a society where it is acceptable to yell and scream at people who have been abused but not okay for someone to falter in their responses. We have made our society into a mockery of human values devoid of empathy, understanding and respect of one’s experiences; instead delving into painful details where even accurate chronicles result into justice failing them at the end of the day.

Our focus is on the victim and what they did or didn’t do right. Did you say no? Did you scream? Why not? If not, how can we believe you were being raped? Or in this Oklahoma case, you were passed out so you could not have said no. But what about her not saying yes either?

This level of victim blaming is nauseating. Besides a severe gap between ideas of rape and consent and appropriate laws, there is a lack of basic understanding of what consent is. And asinine rulings such as the Oklahoma case further propagate a society where such behavior becomes the norm.

We are all responsible for this hideous culture – a social order where women are constantly assessed on how well they defended themselves against harm, how deftly they handled a street harassment situation or whether they made a big deal of the assault at the time it was happening. As far as the abuser is concerned, we are waiting to give them a free pass or sympathize and excuse him the moment a woman cannot fill all holes in her story.

Consent is simple: Yes means yes and No means no. If a person is too drunk, they CANNOT give consent. Consequently, if they are passed out; the question of consent does not even arise. This is a very simple concept but many of us, including the learned individuals on the Oklahoma court, cannot grasp it. Whichever way we look at it, it is time to change the way the rules are written; ones which do not look to place the blame on the victim but on the one who committed the crime. It is time the law takes into account emotional abuse, trauma and, of course, the unequivocal definition of consent.

Rupande grew up in Mumbai, India, and now resides in the U.S. She has an MBA and is currently working towards her MPA, looking to specialize in Non Profit Management. You can find her writing on her blog at Rupande-mehta.tumblr.com or follow her on Twitter @rupandemehta.

April 27, 2016 By Correspondent

By LB Klein, Jen Przewoznik, & Jeff Segal

Every April, for Sexual Assault Awareness Month (SAAM), men all over the country stumble through public parks in high heels to raise awareness for the gender-based violence movement. Walk a Mile in Her Shoes© has been a staple of SAAM programming since 2001, and has been touted as “a world-wide movement” engaging “tens of thousands of men” in conversations on difficult topics like gender, power, and sexual assault in an accessible and fun way.

Men have embraced Walk a Mile in Her Shoes© – it’s very often the most well-attended SAAM event by men, and its popularity has helped raise tremendously needed funds for rape crisis centers and other anti-violence organizations nationally and internationally. However, many activists and organizers have begun to voice serious concerns over the popular event.

It is vital that we consider not only the intent but the impact of our sexual assault awareness events. In Walk a Mile in Her Shoes©, men step into high heels to show their solidarity with women. High heels are therefore held as emblematic of “women.” But while some women wear high heels, many women do not, and furthermore, women are often targeted specifically because they express themselves outside of the normative societal expectations of their gender. By equating high heels with “women,” we remove gender non-conforming women from our conversations about sexual violence entirely, and reinforce the common myth that people who present in ways that are considered masculine are not vulnerable to violence. Walk a Mile in Her Shoes© positions women as victims and men as perpetrators, but we need to also acknowledge that there are survivors of all gender identities, including men.

Walk a Mile in Her Shoes© also creates spaces that further marginalize transgender people. Forge, a national transgender rights organization, says activists should consider “whether they are re-victimizing more than a third of all victims by ignoring their very existence.” According to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, 64% of transgender people have been sexually assaulted in their lifetime. Transgender women are often incorrectly and offensively described as “men wearing women’s clothing,” which is often used to justify violence against them. Transgender women, especially those of color, face not only an incredibly disproportionate risk of experiencing sexual and intimate partner violence but also street harassment, police brutality, homelessness, joblessness, incarceration, and murder. It is vital for people working to end gender-based violence to closely ally with transgender and non-binary people instead of holding events that exclude and further marginalize them.

It is evident that Walk a Mile in Her Shoes© has raised attention, awareness, and funds, but at what expense? We cannot afford to raise awareness by perpetuating an essentialist view of what people should wear, how they should look, act, and be. The Walk a Mile in Her Shoes© narrative is accessible because it is reductive, and oversimplification in our work is, quite literally, dangerous. Of course, communities should still hold awareness raising events, but we must be intentional about changing the exact norms that perpetuate violence instead of reinforcing them. Events that re-victimize, erase, or marginalize survivors in their very concept do not have a place in our field.

So, what else can we do instead to engage men during SAAM?

We can hold events that encourage folks of all genders working together. We can bring smaller groups of men together for meaningful conversation or larger groups for fundraisers that are not built around reinforcing harmful gender norms. Perhaps, as Forge suggests, we should hold events that encourage everyone to break stereotypes about gender and discuss how harmful gender norms perpetuate violence. Then, we will be raising awareness of the true message of the movement to end sexual assault: that to end sexual assault, we must change culture.

LB Klein, MSW has dedicated her professional and academic life to ending gender-based violence, supporting survivors, and advancing social justice. She is a Consultant and Lead Trainer for Prevention Innovations Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. She is based in Atlanta, GA and will begin pursuing a doctorate in the School of Social Work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill this August.

Jen Przewoznik, MSW has over 15 years of experience working with/in women’s and LGBTQ communities as an educator, trainer, technical assistance provider, practitioner, and programevaluator. She is founder of the Queer Research Consulting Collaborative, a project designed to consult with researchers studying LGBTQ issues. Jen is currently the Director of Prevention & Evaluation at the North Carolina Coalition Against Sexual Assault and co-chairs the NC Sexual Violence Prevention Team and the NC Campus Consortium.

Jeff Segal, BS resides in NYC, where he works in the tech sector and moonlights as a professional dancer. He has been a part of the movement to end sexual violence for ten years. Jeff has four years of experience as a sexual violence crisis counselor, and currently is leading initiatives to make social dancing in New York a safer space.

« Previous Page