Pamela Segura, NY, USA, SSH Blog Correspondent

When I was younger, I delighted in music videos. I enjoyed how fantastical and formulaic they seemed. Pop music videos featured a series of dancers, many of whom were female and often displayed a great deal of coordination and agility. Hip-hop videos were equally as methodical: men delivered rhymes with fervent hand motions while women pranced about.

Many of these videos sent a complicated, deeply fraught message to me: girls were spectacles to be admired and assessed in a particular setting.

The hip-hop videos, however, engaged me because they frequently contained women in a decidedly urban space.

Of course, I didn’t understand the notion of “urban space” when I was eight. To me, every child knew the same images and sensations I did while growing up on East 198^th Street and Grand Concourse in the Bronx: stairs leading to the B and D trains, fading streetlights, blaring music and shouts from passersby, greens trees sporadically playing with the grayness of concrete. I felt comfortable in this environment, in this home that would only later become an “urban space.”

I gravitated to hip-hop music and videos because they felt like an extension of that home. I heard rap tracks swimming through my building’s hallways, or down by the corner of the street during mixing with the ice cream truck’s refrain. And I saw those buildings in the same videos. My younger self was engaging in an affirmation of her identity: there’s me, there’s my home, and there’s my music.

This changed when I was eleven. My sister and I were making our way home from our school, a quaint parochial school that sat on the left side of Grand Concourse right before Bedford Park Blvd. We were in uniform: skirts, knee-high socks, heavy black shoes. I noticed a group of teenage boys walking towards us, one of whom carried a radio playing Nelly’s “Hot in Herre.” One boy said something quite loudly to his friends: “I love Catholic school girls. They give the best head.”

Even now, at the age of 22, the vulgarity of that statement shocks and shames me. It strikes within me a strange mixture of anger and frustration, sadness and confusion. These teenagers perhaps didn’t possibly understand what they were indirectly doing: fetishizing girls and their Catholic school uniforms. These teenagers perhaps didn’t realize that they limited my ability to feel safe, to feel empowered and healthy in my own space. These teenagers perhaps didn’t realize how young my sister and I were.

As a young girl, however, I just knew that it was…not right. I obsessed about the comment—and the uniform and music that contextualized the comment—for several days. I wrote about it in my diary and slowly began to interpret Nelly’s lyrics and video. There isn’t much of an urban space in this video. Much of the video’s narrative consists of men and women packed tightly into a nightclub; the women eventually take off their clothing because it’s “hot in herre.” The lyrics dictate the visuals: Nelly eyes women in the club and clothes slide off bodies.

But I heard the song in my urban space.  And the specific attention to women’s clothing in Nelly’s song altered something in me. The connections were too vivid, too coincidental to ignore. My sister and I were walking, enjoying our time on Grand Concourse, chatting away the day and passing the train station. A comment from some other place, a far different and darkly mature place, penetrated that naïveté.

As I got older, the streets that shaped my childhood perspective became an “urban space,” a locale to be probed, theorized, considered, and written about. I developed a fear of the train when I was entering my teenage years. The train system in New York City seemed the ultimate irony. It gets you everywhere, opens up your world to the most famed and most hidden corners of the city, grants you that liberty with limited economic commitment. Yet, it’s all about cramped spaces; it removes the idea of privacy. Certain stops, moreover, had—and still, unfortunately, have—no lighting.

While my awareness of the “urban space” grew, my experiences with street harassment increased. And so did those of my other female friends.

Now that I’ve graduated from college, the Bronx still seems like a geographical puzzle, one that is shaped and reshaped by so many different factors. Hip-hop is a culture that sprang from there, and its nuances—musical sampling, lyrical realism and sensationalism, awareness of social ills—highlight just how beautiful and complex the Bronx will always be. But this music also reveals the strangeness “urban space” and, most important, how that space makes the body seem open, public, ready to be expressed.

Pam recently graduated from Manhattan College and she writes for SciArt in America. You can follow her on Instagram or Twitter @pamlivinlovin.

Andrea Flores Hernández, Santa Cruz, Bolivia, SSH Blog Correspondent

Escuché ese dicho meses atrás, de parte de una compañera de universidad. Quisiera decir que le discutí esa afirmación, que le demostré argumentos que mostraran el craso error en el que ella se encontraba, pero no lo hice. La frase me dejó sorprendida. Esa frase me mostró cómo el acoso callejero está tan inmerso en nuestra vida cotidiana que ya lo encontramos usual. Algo “inevitable” de todos los días. Y quizá por encontrarlo tan común, es que en Bolivia poco se habla de este problema.

¿Desde cuándo el acoso callejero comenzó a formar parte de aquello que las personas consideran “común”? o peor aún, ¿desde cuándo las mujeres se han acostumbrado a esto?

Sé que no son todas las que consideran normal caminar por la calle y recibir silbidos o miradas lascivas. He presenciado con gran admiración a mujeres que no se quedaron calladas ante tal acoso. Aquellas mujeres son las que han dicho “basta” a esta situación y dejaron de sentirse culpables por algo que ellas no provocaban.

Escribir acerca de esto es fácil, pero vivirlo no lo es. Para decir “basta”, una mujer ha tenido que pasar por un largo proceso para entender que no es su culpa. Que no es culpa de la falda corta que usa, que no es culpa de su cuerpo, que no es culpa de su manera de caminar. Ha tenido que soportar durante años silbidos, frases sexuales, comentarios denigrantes e incluso manoseos de parte de hombres que no entendían que el cuerpo de esa mujer no era de su propiedad. Ha tenido que dejarse de ver como la causante del problema, para entender al fin que ella es la única víctima.

Todo esto no significa que una vez que la mujer se da cuenta de aquello, los hombres comenzarán a respetarla en la calle. Nunca sucede así. Es más, a veces, recién comienza  a llegar lo peor. Porque cuando una mujer responde a un silbido, a un comentario, o hace algo al respecto; el hombre lo toma como un chiste, o se siente amenazado en su “derecho” de dirigirse de esa manera a una mujer, e intensifica su agresión.

Y lo admirable de todo esto, es que estas mujeres no se rinden. Ellas saben muy bien que no son las culpables. Ellas reclaman el derecho de circular libremente por las calles sin ningún tipo de comentario acerca de su cuerpo.  Estas mujeres tienen fuego en los ojos y no permiten que nadie las denigre. Ellas entienden que aún falta mucho camino por recorrer para que hombres y mujeres comprendan el porqué de su lucha. Una lucha con una premisa tan simple pero demoledora: “El cuerpo que tengo, es mío”. Y yo, como mujer que ha sufrido este tipo de acoso durante bastante tiempo, me uno a la lucha. Porque, aunque parezca increíble, muchos hombres todavía no se dan cuenta de que cuando una mujer sale a las calles, no es para entretenerlo. No se dan cuenta de que ellos no tienen ningún derecho sobre nuestro cuerpo, no pueden denigrarlo, insultarlo, comentarlo ni tocarlo sin nuestro permiso. Nosotras tenemos el derecho de vestirnos como queramos, de sentirnos atractivas sin que eso sea motivo de acoso.

Y, con respecto a la frase “Si no te silba un albañil, quiere decir que eres fea”; en caso de que no me silbe, no me sentiré “fea”. Me sentiré libre; libre de circular por las calles sin miedo a nada. Porque en esa situación, podré ver que nuestra lucha, está dando resultado.

Andrea is in her second year of university, studying Social Communication. You can follow her on Twitter: @AndreaFlores116

Bolivia: “If a construction worker does not cat-call you, you are ugly”

I heard that expression months ago from a college classmate. I would like to say that I discussed her affirmation, I showed her some arguments that could let her know that she was mistaken, but I did not do anything. That phrase really surprised me. That expression demonstrates to me how greatly street harassment is immersed in our daily life. It was so “usual”, something almost “inevitable”. And maybe because of that thought, in Bolivia people do not talk too much of this issue.

Since when did street harassment form part of what we consider “normal”? Or worse, since when did women consider “normal” to be street harassment?

I know that not all women find it “usual” to walk down the street being cat-called. I have seen women that were not silent by street harassment. Those women are who have said “enough” to that situation and they stopped feeling guilty about something they did not provoke.

Writing about this issue is easy, but living it is not. To say “enough”, a woman has had to go through a long process to understand that is not her fault. That it is not the fault of the short skirt that she is wearing, that it is not the fault of her body, and that it is not the fault of the way she walks. A woman who has had to endure years of cat-calls, sexual phrases, and even degrading comments from men who did not understand that the body of the woman was not his property. She has had to leave, watching herself as the cause of the problem, to understand that she was only the victim.

This does not mean that once a woman realizes this that the man begins to respect her on the street. It never happens like that. Moreover, sometimes, it just gets worse. Because when a woman responds to cat-calls, comments, or does something about it; the man takes it as a joke, or he feels threatened in his “right” to treat a woman that way, and he intensifies his harassment.

And what is admirable in all of this, is that these women do not surrender. They know very well that they are not guilty of this situation. They claim the right to move freely in the streets without any comment about their body. These women have fire in their eyes and they do not let anybody denigrate them. They know that there is still a long way to go before men and women understand why they fight. A fight with a premise so simple but devastating: “The body that I have is mine”.

And I, as a woman who has suffered such harassment for quite some time, I join the fight. Because, incredibly, many men still do not realize that when a woman goes out to the streets, it is not to entertain them. They do not realize that they have no right on our bodies, and they cannot denigrate, cat-call, nor touch us without our permission. We have the right to dress like we want, to feel attractive without that causing street harassment.

And with regard to the phrase “If a construction worker does not cat-call you, you are ugly”, I say that if he does not cat-call me, I will not feel “ugly”. I will feel free. Free to walk on the streets without the fear of being harassed. And I will see, in that moment, that our fight, is working.

Andrea is in her second year of university, studying Social Communication. You can follow her on Twitter: @AndreaFlores116

Siel Devos, London, England, SSH Blog Correspondent

I spent last year studying Arabic in Amman, Jordan. Overall it was an amazing and unforgettable experience, although there is always one thing I bring up when asked what living in the Middle East is like.

In Amman I was living only two blocks away from an all-boys secondary school. Just like all 12-14 year-old boys, these kids’ favourite after-school activity was spending their pocket money on candy and soda, holding a ‘who is the most macho of all’ contest and hanging around the local park. Unlike all 12-14 year-old boys, harassing girls and women was also part of their daily routine. When boys who have barely outgrown the cartoon-watching phase ask you if you would like some “good sex” and grope you in the middle of the day, you realise something is very wrong.

You could say there is a general lack of respect towards women in the Arab world, and not only foreign women: I’ve talked to Jordanian women who experience harassment on a daily basis. The argument that is still put forward by men to justify harassment in a way – “most women bring it on themselves by the way they are dressed” – doesn’t really apply here. Almost all Jordanian women wear a variety on the headscarf, ranging from a hijab in fashionable colours to the black niqaab that only leaves the eyes uncovered. If this way of dressing is still considered as asking for harassment, what isn’t? Should women just never leave their houses anymore out of fear of getting shouted at or catcalled?

I caught myself postponing errands because I wanted to avoid leaving my apartment around the time school finished. I took a different route to the supermarket because I glimpsed boys hanging around the street I usually go down. I realized I had changed my behaviour because of men – no, boys – and that there was pretty much nothing I could do about it.

Getting harassed on the street always puts you in such a vulnerable position – react and you might get an even worse response, ignore and they just go on to harass the next person to come along. Now imagine getting shouted at in a language that you don’t completely master (although the tone doesn’t leave too much to the imagination) and trying to defend yourself. Because you don’t want to be the white girl who yelled out insults in Arabic (if I knew any) or any other language on the street, the only other option is to let it pass and make them think this is acceptable behaviour?

A recent survey conducted by 4Youth Magazine in Jordan of 3000 youth ages 18-25 found that 53% felt a lack of education about harassment was the main cause of it, while 20% believed Jordanian customs and traditions cause it.

For these teenagers who harassed me, harassment might only be a way to act cool around their friends, but what if they never outgrow this phase? We need to teach children about basic respect towards women in school. With one step at the time, we can try to create a gender-equal society. Inshallah…

Siel is a master’s student in Middle Eastern studies with a major in contemporary Islam at SOAS University in London. Find her on twitter and instagram under @mademoisielle.