Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

USA: When will street harassment finally be categorized as a crime?

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Brittany Oliver, Baltimore, MD, USA, SSH Blog Correspondent

Minister Omonte. (Photo Credit: Ministerio de la Mujer/Flickr)

In case you missed it, Carmen Omonte, Peru’s Minster of Women and Vulnerable Populations, announced her intention to include sexual street harassment in the penal code as a crime.

It’s been reported that sexual harassment and assault on the streets of Peru has recently sparked outrage after actress Magaly Solier was assaulted by a man who masturbated behind her at a bus station. In Peru, sexual street harassment is categorized as a civil offense, not a criminal offense.

While I am all for the idea if making sexual street harassment a crime, how many women need to be harassed before people realize it’s a serious issue? Women and girls experience street harassment every day, so why did it take an actress to be harassed for it to be considered a crime? I truly believe if we just dealt with sexual street harassment in the appropriate manner, we wouldn’t need to wait for someone famous to do something about it.

In Baltimore, I really think we could do a lot better. There’s a lot more we can be doing to protect women and girls from street harassment, and as a whole, we just aren’t doing enough. The only organization I know that’s actively doing work on a consistent basis is Hollaback! Baltimore. They have been doing a great job on educating people on what street harassment is and how people can help to stop it.

Here are a few upcoming summer events on their radar:

June 19 – Hollaback! Baltimore will host a Baltimore Bartenders Safer Spaces Meeting, in which they’ll be chatting with bartenders & bar staff from all over the city face-to-face on crisis response skills and ways to intervene while maintaining a women & LGBTQ-friendly environment.

June 24 – Hollaback! Baltimore will be tabling at the 2014 Baltimore Youth Sexual Health Conference, which is geared towards increasing knowledge & skills among youth to promote health behaviors, especially around sexual health.

June 28 – Hollaback! Baltimore will be co-hosting two “Make Your Own Quilt Square” workshops at the Monument Quilt with FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture. They’ll be working on quilt squares to add to the public monument to support victims of rape and abuse.

While I appreciate everything Hollaback! Baltimore is doing, I still think there are other organizations that can do just as much advocacy around this issue. Just as Carmen Omonte took a stand to stop street harassment in Peru, I feel that our mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, should take a stand too. Not only should she develop a campaign to educated people on street harassment, but she should also work on making it a criminal offense.

I certainly applaud Peru for it’s efforts, but I really hope Baltimore is not waiting for a celebrity to experience street harassment to push forward in stopping it. Street harassment needs to stop now because it’s affecting people who have to deal with it daily.

Instead of clearing out the encampments of the homeless and criminalizing youth, our mayor and every other politician in the state of Maryland need to focus their energy on real challenges. And street harassment for women, girls and the LGBTQ community is most definitely one of them.

Read more on Peru’s initiatives to ending street harassment.

Brittany Oliver is a recent graduate of Towson University and works in the non-profit communications sector and supports local anti-street harassment advocacy through Hollaback! Baltimore. She blogs at brittuniverse.wordpress.com and publicly rants on Twitter, @btiara3.

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USA: Spokane Talks About Street Harassment

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Lorna M. Hartman, Spokane, WA, SSH Blog Correspondent

Spokane is the second-largest city in Washington state by population, located in a mostly rural area in eastern Washington. Despite its size, to visitors and many residents, it still has a distinctly small-town feel.

Unfortunately, small town or not, street harassment has not passed us by. Fortunately, the discussion about street harassment has not passed us by either. The conversation has at least begun in the Spokane area.

On June 3 our local newspaper, The Spokesman-Review, re-posted a USA Today article by Jaleesa Jones titled “4 Free Apps That Could Help Prevent Sexual Assault.” While the article headline specifies “sexual assault” as a general topic, all four apps listed (bSafe, Circle of 6, Hollaback! and Guardly) were intended to be used as people go about their lives in public spaces—precisely where women suffer street harassment. These apps are useful to anyone out in public who feels unsafe.

The article referenced the recent tragedy of Elliott Rodger’s shootings and the #YesAllWomen hashtag. Jones wrote, “The amount [of] interest in the hashtag points to a blatant truth: Sexual assault and street harassment are far too common.”

Inlander is a local alternative weekly newspaper that publishes news and entertainment pieces for a large geographic area around Spokane. On May 29 it ran a story called “One of the billion tales that yes, all women, can tell about sexism” written by Taylor Weech, a local writer, photographer and radio host. Weech actually began writing her piece on street harassment before Rodger committed his murders, and she finished writing it after the news had spread.

Weech wrote before the shootings, “I felt a lot of pressure from past conversations to pre-empt the commenters in proving that street harassment is not flattering, that it is one of many disturbing expressions of male entitlement to sex and women’s bodies, and that it is part of a continuum of disrespect for female autonomy that too often culminates in severe or even deadly violence…”, citing the new Tumblr site “When Women Refuse.”

After the attacks, Weech wrote, “In an unfortunate twist of fate, the proof of that statement became the most visible news story of the weekend…”

Weech tells several of her own stories of harassment–#YesAllWomen have those stories to tell—and concludes with an appeal to teach our children differently for the sake of both girls and boys. One commenter in the thread of her article wrote of how sad it is that “it takes a man writing a hate-filled manifesto and then going on a killing spree to really make a conversation about this problem hit the mainstream.”

Rodger’s murders, while I give them no credit for anything good, have resulted in a more open discussion of what it’s like to walk around female in Spokane. It hasn’t always been a welcome discussion or a wanted topic—but now it’s out there and it isn’t going back. We will all be better for continually shining a light on it.

SRTC is Spokane County’s designated metropolitan transportation planning organization. The SRTC Transportation blog featured a piece on street harassment back in 2012 called “Website Aims to Stop Street Harassment” and described StopStreetHarassment.org. (I didn’t know SRTC was so plugged in!)

The writer, an unnamed female SRTC staffer, mentions a few of her own experiences with street harassment. She says of Spokane, “Besides being irritating and in some cases scary, street harassment limits people’s mobility and access to public spaces. It is a form of gender violence and makes our downtown and other areas less inviting and therefore less vibrant.” She’s right. People don’t realize how different downtown Spokane would be, particularly in the evenings, if no one ever had to worry about being harassed or followed. It’s an extensive problem, and Spokane unfortunately isn’t unique at all in facing this problem.

Spokane does, however, have the beginnings of action and conversation around street harassment. Even further back, in mid-2011, activists organized SlutWalk Spokane. SlutWalk, you might remember, started after a Toronto police officer participating in a law school campus safety session counseled female students that if they didn’t want to be sexually victimized, “Don’t dress like a slut.” The group’s Facebook page is still active today.

While the reality is still depressing, these lights shining publicly give me hope for the future.

Lorna is raising three young, kindhearted male allies and has worked on rape and interpersonal violence since the 1990s, including serving on the local rape hotline, answering calls, and driving to emergency rooms to advocate for victims and connect them with resources they needed.

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Meet Our Correspondents for June – Aug 2014!

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I am thrilled to announce our new Blog Correspondents cohort! These passionate women will spend the next three months writing about street harassment in their communities/countries, including various aspects of the problem and initiatives underway to see the end of street harassment. You will be able to read their blog posts here, starting next week.

Lorna M. Hartman, Spokane, WA, USA

Lorna has studied and written about rape and interpersonal violence since she was a teenager. In the 1990s she spent a year in Thailand as a teacher. She will never forget some of the things she experienced and saw Thai women experience that year. She has a bachelor’s in journalism, and this past June she graduated with a second bachelor’s in interdisciplinary studies, taking classes in journalism, computer programming and design. She is raising three young, kindhearted male allies. In between babies she served on the local rape hotline, answering calls and driving to emergency rooms to advocate for victims and connect them with resources they needed. She likes singing and playing music, traveling, and constantly learning new professional skills. Her favorite dessert is sticky rice with mango and coconut milk.

Kasumi Hirokawa, State College, PA, USA

Kasumi is a recent graduate from Penn State with a BA in journalism. Her writing has been published in Valley Magazine, City Weekend Shanghai, Penn State GeoBlog and Shanghai Daily. Kasumi speaks Japanese, English, Mandarin and Shanghainese. She has lived in Japan, China and the United States and visited many more including Morocco, UK and Thailand. She is obsessed with everything Mediterranean and Maghrebi. Her life goal is to visit every single country in the world and perhaps acquire a new language. In her spare time, she can be found either curling up with books, experimenting on a new recipe, hanging out with fellow feminists or belly dancing. You can follow her on Twitter, @kasumihrkw

Kirstin Kelley, Monterey, CA, USA

Kirstin is a Master’s Student in Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies and a news editor at the Women’s International Perspective (The WIP). She discovered her passion for feminism while studying Psychology and Sociology and Anthropology at Green Mountain College. Kirstin has been a human rights and environmental activist since early childhood. Her research focuses on how otherwise normal people can treat others inhumanely, with a focus on stereotypes. Now she is most interested in how ecofeminism can pave the way to a better world, transactional feminism, and deep ecology. You can follower her on Twitter at @KirstinKelley1, where she regularly posts about human rights issues around the world.

Jessie Koerner, Denver, Colorado, USA

Jessie is a longtime human rights activist with a feminist focus. She’s been involved with multiple organizations, including founding the Amnesty International chapter at her undergrad, being an active participant in JustWorld International, and managing the social media accounts for the Global Women’s Network and winnovating.com, where she also blogs. In addition, Jessie will also be part of the Hollaback! fall class, and starting a chapter of the anti-street harassment group in Denver in late 2014. With an M.A. in Global Health and International Security, she’s committed to making this world a better place. Jessie is also an expert in cheap red wine, Pinterest crafts, and over-sharing on Twitter. Find her @pearlsandspurs there and on Instagram, or at pearlsandspurs.com, where she swears she’s going to start writing more.

Cristina del Mar Quiles, San Juan, Puerto Rico

Cristina es una periodista y productora de noticias de San Juan, Puerto Rico. Posee un bachillerato de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, Recinto de Río Piedras, donde también completa su maestría en Consejería. Ha trabajado como reportera para medios impresos y digitales. Actualmente, es una de las productoras de Hoy en las Noticias de Radio Universidad de Puerto Rico. Su interés en luchar contra el acoso callejero comenzó durante sus años como estudiante universitaria, cuando lo sufrió, más que nunca, mientras caminaba desde su hospedaje hasta el campus. Le apasionan los temas relacionados con la justa representación de la mujer en los medios, la alfabetización mediática y la educación. Además, disfruta de viajar y de la jardinería. Cree en un Puerto Rico y en una sociedad entera libre de prejuicios, donde las oportunidades sean accesibles para todas las personas, sin importar su clase, raza o género. Puedes seguirla en Twitter en @cristinadelmarq.

Cristina is a journalist and a radio producer. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism and is finishing her Master’s in Counseling, both from the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus. She’s worked as a reporter for print and web media and now she is news producer at Radio Universidad de Puerto Rico. Her interest in fighting sexual and street harassment started through personal experience as a student living at one of the main urban areas in San Juan, where she walked everyday from home to college campus. She’s passionate about the equal representation of women in media, education, media literacy, storytelling, traveling and gardening. She envisions a Puerto Rico and an entire society where opportunities are available for everyone, despite the class, race or gender. Follow her on Twitter @cristinadelmarq.

Brittany Oliver, Baltimore, MD, USA

Brittany is a recent graduate of Towson University and holds a B.S in Mass Communications with a focus in Public Relations. She is an advocate and thought leader for civic and societal issues related to feminism, social justice and civil rights. Brittany works in the non-profit communications sector and supports local anti-street harassment advocacy through Hollaback! Baltimore. She is also an organizer for One Billion Rising 2014 and is an avid volunteer within in community. Her goal in writing for SSH is to educate people about the harassment that takes place on the streets of Baltimore, which she’s experienced her whole life. Her offline activities include salsa dancing, arts & crafts, reading and attending local community events. She blogs at brittuniverse.wordpress.com and publicly rants on Twitter, @btiara3.

Dearbhla Quinn, Dublin, Ireland and Brussels, Belgium

Dearbhla (pronounced Der-vla) loves the four ‘Fs’ -Food, film, fiction and feminism. She graduated from BESS (Business and Sociology), in Trinity College Dublin, last year. Since then she’s been deciding what to do with her life, and that journey has brought her to Brussels, Belgium where she is in the midst of a think-tank internship working in the areas of gender, equality and employment. On the weekends she’s a tour guide and enthusiastic wine and Belgian beer drinker. She’s decided to combine here love of books and feminism into the novel idea of, during June, reading exclusively women authors. Feel free to join #WomenAuthorMonth and tweet your experience. You can find her discussing her life, politics and the four F’s on Twitter @imoshedinheels and her blogs. Au Revoir!

Corina Thorose, Melbourne, Australia

Corina is a journalist who is currently in a Masters’ program in Professional Writing. In addition to writing for Stop Street Harassment, she volunteers with White Ribbon Australia and the Women’s Domestic Violence Crisis Service. Her passions include music, literature and pyjamas, and she spends her free time reviewing theatre and film. Corina’s creative and critical work can be found at Thehumbleopinion.me and her women’s opinion pieces can be found at Theirownbells.com. You can also view her articles on social media: @BrandosBride, www.facebook.com/theirownbells, instagram.com/theirownbells.

Suzanne Vyborney, Oakland, CA

Born in South Korea and raised in Northern California, Suzanne studied philosophy and environmental ethics in college and is currently plotting ways to make the corporate world more socially responsible. Often found ranting about the patriarchy, racism, and the prison industrial complex, what Suzanne loves most about her social justice work is connecting with and being inspired by her amazing community in Oakland and beyond. Suzanne is also an editorial board member of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights’ blog, Ella’s Voice, the special events chair for the brand new Oakland chapter of the national progressive leadership training institute New Leaders Council, and a volunteer for the nationally renowned anti-street-harassment campaign, Stop Telling Women To Smile. In between, Suzanne can be found making mosaics, working on social justice-infused comedy sketches, sending many an unsolicited cat video and recovering from brunch. You can follow her on Twitter @zantropa.

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Hey Bloggers: Join the May – July Cohort!

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DEADLINE EXTENDED TO MAY 28

Do you have something important and/or unique to write about street harassment?

Stop Street Harassment is now accepting applications for the second 2014 cohort of our Blog Correspondents Program. This is an unpaid, volunteer opportunity. It is a great resume-builder and chance to make a difference on an important global topic!  And your words will be read: the SSH blog has around 20,000 unique readers each month.

Assignment:

From May through July, correspondents in the second cohort must commit to writing one blog post per month about street harassment issues in their community, region or country. This means three posts total. The topics could include incidents of street harassment in the news, activism to stop it, interviews with activists, and street harassment in popular culture, traditions or the news.

We aim to have geographic diversity among our cohort members and people of all genders, ages, backgrounds and locations can apply.

Applying:

By May 26, 2014, please e-mail: 1) your name, 2) the region of the world or the USA where you’re from, 3) a writing sample of a blog post or article (in the range of 500-1000 words), and 4) a few sentences about why you want to be part of the Stop Street Harassment team.

If you prefer to write in a language other than English, please also indicate what language is most comfortable for you and you can send your writing sample in that language.

E-mail to: hkearl @ stopstreetharassment.org. Address it to me, Holly.

Applicants will be notified of the decision by May 28. Accepted applicants will then receive blogging guidelines, information about the submission process and a calendar to sign up for their dates each month.

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USA: Interview with “Streets To Call Our Own” Filmmaker

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Katie Monroe, Philadelphia, PA, USA, SSH Blog Correspondent

Kara at her film premiere

I had the honor of sitting down with Kara Lieff, a Temple University senior getting ready to graduate with a degree in Film & Media Arts and a minor in Women’s Studies. Over the course of her undergraduate career, she’s become a documentarian of street harassment and anti-street-harassment efforts in Philadelphia. Her fifteen-minute documentary on the topic, “Streets To Call Our Own,” premiered last week at Temple University.

What inspired you to make films about street harassment?

My first interest in the topic of street harassment came from my older sister. She has done workshops on street harassment. She was a women’s studies/gender studies major…a super feminist. So I got a lot of that kind of stuff from her; she definitely influenced me. When I moved to Philly for school, it was different from [living in the suburbs.] That kind of opened my eyes.

I did my first project on street harassment during my sophomore year. We had to do an “action project” – something that propelled viewers to action. I wanted to propel viewers to talk about street harassment, or if they engaged in that behavior or see it, to do something about it. So I made this short PSA: Asking For It. Then I did another one junior year for another short class project: “Make A Woman Smile.”

And from there you decided to do your Senior Project about street harassment. It’s such an under-discussed topic – did that affect your choice?

Yeah. There’s not a lot of media about it. Compared to other things…and I feel like a lot of times, the media that’s out there is within “the circle.” So that’s one of my biggest challenges – I have this project, now how can I show it to people who don’t know about the topic, who I actually want to reach? Of course it’s great to have people within the community watch it and appreciate it, but that might not make as big of an impact.

How did you get started?

Last April I filmed the sidewalk-chalking and subway discussions for Anti-Street-Harassment week, which was how I got in touch with Nuala Cabral [she was the organizer]. And I think that’s where I met Rochelle Keyhan and Anna Kegler [from Hollaback! Philly].

“Meet Us on the Sidewalk” | “Meet Us on the Subway, Part I” | “Meet Us on the Subway, Part II”

Then there were a couple of things happening last November. Hollaback! Philly hosted a talk at Wooden Shoe Books, and then the next morning was the City Council Hearing. So I went to the City Council hearing and I filmed that. [Side note – the hearing was where I met Kara!] The following weekend, I did sit-down interviews with [Hollaback! Philly leaders] Rochelle and Anna. And then it just kind of snowballed from there. I wanted them to keep me in the loop about what they were doing, and they’ve been so helpful…they’re so busy themselves, but they’ve taken the time to sit down with me, to answer all my crazy questions, email back and forth a billion times.

And this point I’m geeking out – because I look up to them, you know what I mean? And now I know them as people, not just as “Hollaback Philly.” I feel weird talking about myself, promoting myself…so I never would have imagined that I would be one to know all these people in the community. And now I do!

That’s great! I feel the same way about the bike community in Philadelphia – so welcoming, incorporating me into the fabric of what’s going on…it’s amazing. So what happened next?

At the City Council hearing I met Jordan Gwendolyn Davis, and I knew that I wanted to interview her, because she has a unique perspective on street harassment.

What changed over the course of the project?

Well, my original proposal was just to talk about the Anti-Street-Harassment movement in Philly. And then I realized that I really needed to have people share their stories. I can’t just talk about what people are doing to fight this problem without explaining what the problem is.

Especially if you want it to be accessible to a broader audience.

Yeah. So at some point I made that shift. And I decided I wanted to interview people about their experiences with street harassment – just regular people [not necessarily involved in the movement]. So I interviewed three people – and we went to the location where they were harassed to film. Everyone had such unique perspectives – I didn’t have time to fit it all into my 15 minute project.

My first subject was harassed at Temple. Basically she was taking off her sweater, because it was hot out, and this man driving by yelled out, “Ooh yeah baby, take it all off.” And it really affected her – first of all, it ruined her day. I mean it happened in September, and she still remembers that incident. She reported it to Temple Police and that got nowhere, which is very disappointing…

And the next person talked about how every morning, she walks one block to the train, and she called it “a gauntlet of street harassment.” And someone actually said something to her while we were filming! And she brought in the aspect of how she used to go [a different block], but that’s out of the way, and why should she have to change her route? She should be able to go wherever she wants.

And then a third woman I interviewed was harassed in Fishtown. And she talked about how a bunch of workers harassed her, and so she called the number on their truck and reported it to their supervisor. And she doesn’t know if anything actually happened, but at least the person she talked to was really supportive, which was kind of a nice story. A lot of times don’t want to report it, because they think they’ll be laughed at – and that could totally happen, but at least in her case that didn’t happen, which was really validating.

And then I included Jordan and Sarah’s story from the testimony. And then Erin from Hollaback animated some of the stories – so there’s animation in the film.

Have you gotten any negative feedback as you’ve been filming?

Well, most of the people who’ve seen it are my classmates at this point. One of the criticisms is that my classmates wanted me to include the other side of the story – like, a man who didn’t think it was a big deal and why he thought that. But for various reasons, I ended up not having that viewpoint in this film. I think it’s really nice to have these people [folks who have been harassed] just tell their side of the story and not necessarily have a rebuttal in there. In a longer piece, that might work better…

When will this get screened?

It premier[ed] on April 30th at Temple University, with all of the senior projects.

And then on May 6th, it’ll be part of Diamond Screen, a film festival at Temple. It’s been nominated for Best Nonfiction Film. [For more info on that screening, see the Diamond Screen Film Festival website. Good luck, Kara!]

Will it be available online?

No – it disqualifies me from entering it into other film festivals if I post it online, and also some people who donated to the Kickstarter get the DVD, so I didn’t want to take away from that.

What was the Kickstarter experience like?

We were paired with producers for our projects, and my producer pushed me to do it. And honestly, I really just wanted to pay the people who were helping me: my Editor, my Director of Photography, and Erin who was doing the animations, and then music and sound. So that was most of the budget!

It was a nerve-wracking process…but towards the end, everyone donated – I got alerts on my email, so I’d be checking…but it’s a great feeling when someone you don’t even know donates to your project! And we did make our goal.

So the film will be shown at these screenings, and then is your long-term goal to do a bigger project?

Yes! I have so much more material, and there’s so much more material I could get. My obstacle after graduating will be the equipment – because right now I can rent equipment from Temple – but I won’t have access to it once I graduate. So my first step is saving up to get at least a camera.

Long term, I definitely want to make a longer film. Realistically, features take years…so I’m not going to stress too much about it right now, but I definitely want to at some point. And I really want to plan events over the summer using Streets To Call Our Own – programs, talkbacks, stuff like that. Cause I don’t want to just make it and have it sit there – not do anything with it.

Any closing thoughts?

Well, the structure of the film is that first I want to define what street harassment is. And then move into people’s personal experiences with it, and then end with what people are doing here in Philly to fight back against it. I guess ultimately I just hope that it helps people understand – on some level – this issue. For the people who don’t know about it at all, hopefully I can teach them something. And with the personal stories – I want to humanize the issue. To say, “Look, these are real people in your city who are experiencing this! This is a real thing that happens all the time!”

In talking to Kara, I was struck by two things – one, how inspiring it is that Kara has incorporated this issue so fully into her undergraduate work and is using her filmmaking skills to make a real difference in our community. Two, how lucky Philadelphia’s Anti-Street-Harassment movement is to have a documentarian in its midst – I’m so excited to see what’s next for both this movement and Kara’s career!

Learn more about Streets to Call Our Own by checking out its website, Facebook, and Twitter (@STCOOfilm).

Katie Monroe founded the Women Bike PHL campaign at the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia and she works at the Philly nonprofit Gearing Up, which gives some of Philadelphia’s most marginalized women – those in transition from incarceration, addiction, and/or abuse – the opportunity to ride bicycles for exercise, transportation, and personal growth. Follow her on Twitter, @cmon_roe.

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