Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

USA: Wednesday Addams and Street Harassment

By

Tyler Bradley, Michigan, USA Blog Correspondent

YouTube star Melissa Hunter is an online sensation, with 186,000 subscribers, and her biggest hit video reached the digital viewing screens of more than 2.25 million, just last week. This video hits the point home on catcalling by examining what an adult Wednesday Addams would do.

This series features many comedic videos, several hinting at women’s issues, tackling reproductive rights, one night stands, and internet dating, but nothing has been so direct in terms of activism as the street harassment video.

This sketch demonstrates how Hunter visualizes Addams Family character Wednesday would respond to street harassment.

In this video, two stereotypical dudebros call at her, “You’d look a lot prettier if you smile,” and obscene phrases.

Then Wednesday Addams appears at the home of the two catcallers to confront them. At first, the two are convinced she has come to repay the compliment in a consensual way, but she has something else up her black Victorian-age sleeves.

Wednesday brings in three of her most masculine and muscular friends — not to physically harm them, but to compliment the harassers all day long.

The men engage in ironic conversation, twisting their actions against them. “They’re not welcome in our house,” they rant, expressing their concern that the compliments are unwanted and a form of harassment.

After the harassers threaten to call the cops, Wednesday tells them, “Most forms of verbal assault on public property are perfectly legal – isn’t that just twisted?”

She nails the coffin with her last quote, “Cheer up. You’d be prettier if you smiled.”

Similar to social experiments like “When did you choose to be straight?”,  Adult Wednesday Addams reverses their argument by using their excuses against them.

Fighting fire with fire against sexual harassment by gender role reversion usually results in reinforcing gender stereotypes, like Buzzfeed’s “If Women Catcalled Men” or Funface’s “Women Catcalling Guys.” Hunter avoids this by not showing the different unwanted compliments her three friends would have said, with the exception of the heavy breathing by Bob.

It may alienate the male audience by depicting such a stereotypical hyper-masculine duo, making them less relatable to those participating in the institutional harassing culture. But, I don’t think Hunter should be too concerned. Creating parodies of fictional characters with strong cult followings can push the extremes of how viral a message can go, and this is just what Hunter has done.

Buzzfeed Video recently proved this is successful after releasing a strong feminist piece by creating a social justice parody of Harry Potter from Hermione’s perspective. They also address catcalling in this video, by the way. This video, much like Hunter’s, increases the viral state of a video, just by incorporating fictional figures with cult followings.

The lesson we’ve learned from Hunter is that popular culture is an excellent venue of advocacy and activism. They offer relatability in terms of massive followings, they’re comedic, and they help advance under-recognized causes.

Thank you, Melissa Hunter, and let’s hope you bring more of your third wave feminism to your future uploads!

Tyler is a senior majoring in graphic design at Saginaw Valley State University and plans to undertake a graduate program in higher education in the fall. Follow Tyler on Twitter, @MysteriousLuigi.

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Brazil: “The ‘Forced Kiss’ Incident”

By

Juliana Guarany, Brazil, Blog Correspondent

(In Portuguese)

So this happened: I was enjoying Carnaval in São Paulo, following a nice bloco down the street when I saw him stop and force a girl to kiss him. She was uncomfortably laughing, in an attempt to get rid of him without spoiling the fun of the party. He grabbed her and kissed her for less than 30 seconds and then he was gone, and she was back with her friends, probably telling herself that this is normal during this time of the year and she should just let it go. I had the same reaction as her. It was too fast and I knew that, if I intervened, things could get uglier, so I didn’t do anything at that time even though it upset me.

French kisses during Carnaval are a tradition. Even singer Claudia Leitte wrote a song about it and broke the record of couples kissing at one of her concerts. Unfortunately, forced kisses are also very common. I have heard stories from friends being kissed against their will on micaretas (out-of-season Carnaval parties) since I was 15 years old. I also heard stories of men’s tactics, like this guy who used to take a tube of lança-perfume (an illegal mixture of ethyl chloride that gives a quick sense of euphoria, but can cause arrhythmia) and hold the girls, forcing them to inhale it until they passed out so he could kiss them. I guess every stupid action has its extreme.

Right before Carnaval started this year, a man was charged with seven years in prison for forcing a kiss on a girl in Salvador, Bahia, in 2008, which was considered rape. He was arrested at the scene and spent one year in jail before getting the right to appeal.

The main TV channel in the region used the story to give us a great “why we need feminism” moment when they released a poll for their Internet users, asking if “the forced kiss during Carnaval should be prohibited” (SEE PHOTO).

Unlike me and the bloco I saw, people on social media did not let this go. They even remembered the famous forced kiss after the end of World War II and the glamour behind a scene of violence (the girl says she hates that image.)

This year is no different from 30 years of Carnaval… forced kisses are common. But at least the debate about forced kisses and harassment in general is rising. Let’s hope next year brings us an even better party, in which we will not hesitate to intervene when a forced kiss happens in front of us.

Juliana is a fellow from Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and, together with Hamburg University, in Germany, is creating a digital campaign to connect all feminist initiatives around the globe. Read her blog Whistleblower and follow her on Twitter, @juguarany.

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USA: Dear Men of New York

By

Dr. Dena Simmons, New York City, USA, Blog Correspondent

Dear Men of New York City,

Please let me walk the streets without your sweet-nothings, your unwanted advances. I don’t care for the elaborate details of what you’d like to do to my body.

No, you cannot take a picture of my badankadonk,
lick my thighs,
suck my toes,
ravage me with your hard cock,
join me on my run,
have my number,
bang me silly.
No, no, no!

I am more than my body. I don’t owe you a smile, a thank you, or a hello. I am not a bitch for ignoring you. I don’t deserve your street-abuse just because I don’t give you my attention or affection.

Please, please, please let me walk down the streets without having to map out a route to avoid your verbal daggers. I don’t like the way you devour me with your eyes, the way you make me feel unsafe, the way you strip me of my humanity.

Your disrespect massacres me.

Please leave me alone. Please don’t touch me. Please let me walk in peace.

My body is not yours. I do not exist for your pleasure.  I exist for me.

Respectfully,
Dena

Dr. Dena Simmons serves as the Associate Director of Education and Training at Yale’s Center for Emotional Intelligence. She is a recent graduate of Teachers College, Columbia University, where her research focused on teacher preparedness to address bullying in the middle school setting.

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USA: Turning to the Research

By

Madison Ford, Texas, USA, Blog Correspondent

By Amy Mastrine

Talking about street harassment with people who aren’t familiar with the issue can often be frustrating, especially when not knowing leads to not believing that it’s a serious problem.  Writing my honors thesis on street harassment has led to this type of interaction more times than I can count. When I speak with somebody who believes street harassment isn’t a big problem, my imperfect solution is to turn to the research.

Why is this imperfect? Well, studies all have some flaws and limitations. Science can never be 100% certain, and social science is often beneath the proverbial microscope rather than looking through it. Some people don’t trust statistics and cling to anecdotes that support their own worldview. I believe everyone is guilty of this, even the researchers who try very hard to avoid it. The point is, nothing is ever perfect or certain. That’s why continuing to study street harassment is integral to the fight against it: the more research we have about its prevalence, how it affects victims, and the mechanisms involved in changing the way women navigate public space, the more scientific evidence illuminates the realities of harassment.

Here are some of the things we know about street harassment, in addition to its prevalence, thanks to the blood, sweat, and tears of researchers.

1. All kinds of street harassment have negative effects on women.

In Dr. Harmon B. Sullivan’s 2011 study, women were separated into two groups. One group watched a video of a woman being harassed on the street and the other watched a scene on a street with no harassment. In the experimental group, women who had experienced more street harassment themselves reported more negative feelings than those who experienced less harassment. This held true for women who mostly experienced hostile or threatening harassment and for women who experienced mostly “benign” harassment. This goes to show that “compliments” or “just saying hi” are not as innocent as they seem to be.

Rachel H. Pain’s 1997 study shows how different types of harassment may lead to fear of sexual attack. More than 20% of respondents reported that unwanted sexual comments or being leered at made them fear sexual attack. Forty-two percent of respondents indicated that being touched up made them fear sexual attack and almost 50% reported that being flashed at incited that fear. Finally, a whopping 85% of women who report being followed in public say that this makes them fear sexual attack. Less intense types of street harassment show corresponding lower levels of fear, but fear remains nonetheless.

A study released in late 2014 conducted by researchers at the University of Mary Washington found that sexual harassment is traumatizing for women, especially for those who have experienced sexual abuse.

2. Street harassment and fear of rape are highly correlated across multiple studies.

Street harassment is an active factor in preventing women from going out in public on their own. Cynthia Grant Bowman refers to this pattern as the informal ghettoization of women in her legal article “Street Harassment and the Informal Ghettoization of Women,” and that if women are going to continue fighting for social equality, they must be able to leave their homes without crippling fear. In her book Back Off! How to Confront and Stop Sexual Harassment and Harassers Martha Langelan wrote that for women, an underlying tension is always wondering how far the harasser will go, if he will become violent.

More recently, in early 2015 researchers at the University of Missouri-Kansas City released a study showing that the treatment of women as sexual objects – including through street harassment – contribute to increased feelings of anxiety about their physical safety, causing them to fear both physical and sexual harm.

3. Stranger harassment can be more damaging than harassment from people the victim knows, and the consequences could be dangerous.

In a 2000 study of Canadian women, findings suggested that women’s perceptions of safety were vastly influenced by their experiences of stranger harassment. While non-stranger harassment had very little effect on perceptions of safety, for each additional type of stranger harassment experienced, the odds of feeling safe decreased by 17-23%.

Knowing this, it makes sense that Pain’s 1997 study also discovered that women are almost twice as fearful of sexual attack from strangers than non-strangers despite the fact that “86.1% of women who have experienced rape, physical violence, and/or stalking during their lifetime reported that the perpetrator was a current intimate partner at the time when the violence first occurred.” Street harassment directs women’s fear of rape towards people who may very well not assault them and confuses an already messy discussion about sexual assault.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of all the things we know about street harassment. Social scientists continue to search for answers and anti-street harassment organizations are conducting surveys of their own. If you’re committed to the fight against street harassment, take a look at these studies – or even better, start your own research project! Distribute a survey to your peers, coworkers, or friends and find out how street harassment affects the people around you. Then in your discussions about street harassment, you’ll have the tools to keep everyone informed.

Madison is a soon-to-be graduate of the University of Texas at Austin studying literature and sociology. Follow her on Twitter, @madiford222.

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USA: Street Harassment Disrupts Private Space

By

Dylan Jane Manderlink, Arkansas, USA, SSH Blog Correspondent

Anti-Street Harassment Week 2013 in Boston

A few nights ago, after being approached by a man on the street in Boston as she walked with a friend, Ellen R. replied, “Not tonight, thank you,” but the the man continued to follow her. She then turned around and said, “Please don’t follow us” and he yelled, “I’m not following you, bitch.”

Ellen told me, “This interaction upset me for so many reasons. Not only did I feel uncomfortable with the man’s initial comment, but when my friend and I tried to defend ourselves in the most polite way possible, the man only got more interested and more angry. I am already scared to walk down the street, so it’s even more frightening to know that even when I try to handle the situation in a calm manner, the man doing the harassing can go from 0 to 10 in a split second.”

Unfortunately Ellen’s street harassment experience is not uncommon. Despite responding with a polite remark, her street harasser met her with petulance, callousness, and an unforeseen temper. In many street harassment awareness and prevention blogs and articles I’ve read, I see the same message being revisited: Street harassment endangers the public space of individuals and disempowers their ability to walk through a public space safely, positively, and healthily. I certainly agree with that because I too, have felt that way when experiencing street harassment. But I would add that street harassment also communicates the message that your private space is no longer yours or never belonged to you.

As you navigate through a public space (a sidewalk, a city, a park, etc.), you also have your own private space within that. The way we personally view the environment we’re in is our private world…our thoughts, our bodies, the space between us and the people we pass on the street in close proximity…those all inform our private world. And when street harassers interfere with that personal, private, and intimate domain of ours, we can feel a different type of violation and discomfort. By understanding the threat we experience on both a private and public level, I believe we can better inform our awareness and advocacy efforts and the dialogues we promote through those modes.

Street harassment tells people that wherever they’re walking, wherever they’re living, whatever space they’re occupying – it’s not theirs. When we are catcalled, groped, eyed, followed, and yelled at the street harasser is claiming that space as theirs and communicating to us that we don’t belong in it. This needs to stop. This is not okay and people are really starting to take notice of how much street harassment is a detriment to our society and to people’s lives. We deserve better. Respecting our public and private space should not be optional, it should be the accepted and expected norm. As activists, the more we make noise and the more we create productive and cooperative pathways to empowerment and awareness, the more we can effect change.

As we approach International Anti-Street Harassment Week (#EndSHWeek) from April 12-18, let’s construct and promote a vigilant and sustainable conversation surrounding street harassment and the private and public spaces that are too often taken advantage of and threatened. I will no longer stand for our space being jeopardized, devalued, and disregarded. In the next couple months leading up to #EndSHWeek, let’s affirm the positive and inspiring efforts of fellow activists, bloggers, feminists, and community members. In doing so, I encourage you to open up meaningful channels of dialogue, spread awareness, and get involved with advocacy that helps make people’s private worlds a better place. Reclaim your space because it was yours to begin with and will always be. No one should be able to take that away from you.

Dylan is a recent graduate of Emerson College and currently teaches 8th, 10th, and 11th grade Digital Communications and Audio/Visual Technology in an Arkansas high school. You can visit her personal blog and follow her on Twitter @DylanManderlink.

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