Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

Nepal: “Public transportation, a hesitation to women”

By

Kriti Khatri, Nepal, SSH Blog Correspondent

Street safety and its relation to women’s independence is connected, from the perspective of women’s mobility. However, rarely has there been an effort to create Safe Streets precisely from the perspective of concerns about women’s mobility. Our street is symbolic of free spirit and freedom itself, but for women the street remains a place to get victimized from various kinds of harassment activities and women have to go through traumatizing experiences of sexual and emotional harassment. A woman being more vulnerable towards various kinds of harassing activities their safety during travel is important.

While we raise voices against street harassment, one important aspect to concentrate on is harassment activities on public transportation. Reports showcase that harassment on public transportation on buses, trains, etc is more frequent for women than on the streets.

Horrendous acts of physically and mentally harassing women via gesture, touch, grabbing, verbal abuses or even constant gazes make taking public transportation a big hesitation for women. In thickly stuffed buses or other means of transportation like trains and metros, women get easily victimized from physical touching, grabbing etc. And since the crowd is a good excuse, it rarely get noticed or exposed. Sexual harassment activities make women feel emotionally left out and drained. As a consequence, women can develop negative attitudes towards their relationships with their male partners and family ties as well. Psychologists says harassment activities not only make women feel raged with the male genre, but also go through mental irritation concerning their body image and social behavior which in the long run can cause depression and other emotional issues.

A report conducted by Astitwa foundation shows that about 90 % of women has been suffered from street  harassment activities among which harassment in public vehicles is the most encountered in Kathmandu. Such harassment activities have been found occurring on school buses, by bus staff, public buses and other travel means. As per the report, most women have been found to experience uncomfortable touching and sexually explicit behavior. While women share their stories of harassment activities, in terms of response, most of them seemed silent. Respondents to the topic of harassment in public vehicles were hesitant about reacting to such activities. Many women seem to remain quiet about this issue by either adjusting in the crowd or dropping in nearby bus stop as their immediate self protection act.

“As for talking we can say I will take immediate action but when such incident happens, we go through emotional hold back, I felt raged but helpless and disgusted when the fellow passenger make uncomfortable gestured towards me, here I can say I wanted to slap him but at that time all I wanted was to get out of the bus.” — a 25 year old school teacher from Kathmandu.

Sexual harassment in public vehicles has been an issue raised by many social organizations in international level. With ever raising incident of harassment activities which has even lead to cases like gang rape and murder of women in public vehicles, this issue has been a concerned area in relation to women safe mobility and independence.

Concerned with the growing number of harassment activities, Nepal Police has initiated strict monitoring of the public transportation system. As per the Nepal police, travel safety of citizen and especially women is on their top priority after getting multiple reports filed against sexual harassment in public bus. According to the information of the Nepal Police, cases regarding public bus harassment are registered more than any other kinds of street harassment cases. As of now, women police are allocated in various bus stations to check inside bus which at least give a chance for victim to complain or make people aware of their act. In future Nepal police aims to monitor bus activities via closed caption cameras. There has also been initiation from nongovernmental sectors to make legal reformation against harassment activities collectively under violence against women in which there should essentially be strict provisions regarding street harassment.

Apart from the legal provisions, effort should also be from bus-driver, conductors and fellow passengers to discourage such activities in the vehicles.  Their effort can demoralize the doer, at the same time make women feel safe and comfortable.

“I was standing on the bus and a guy happen to stand right beside me with his hand around my shoulder from backside, the bus driver saw that and ask the conductor to make him step out of the bus saying that such cheap activities won’t be tolerated in his vehicle, It really felt so nice to find  bus drivers with such attitude towards activities going on his vehicles.” — 23 old employee who make 14 km of bus travel every day for her job in Kathmandu

The act of harassment and violence against women is more of a moral matter than legal. Unless individual understands that harassment activities against women are immoral, eliminating such acts won’t be easy with just legal threats. Women free conduct in the street or elsewhere is only possible when there is assurance of Safe travel and such safety can only be assured in morally governed society and justice run state system.

Kriti Khatri is student of MSc chemistry. She is engaged in different social organization in Nepal and currently she is working on anti-street harassment issues with the Astitwa Foundation. Find more of her writing on her blog.

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USA: Winter Street Harassment

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By: Delia Harrington, Massachusetts, USA, Former SSH Correspondent

Delia Harrington

“What were you wearing?”

It’s one of the most common questions people ask me after I tell a story of experiencing street harassment.  Some people seem to genuinely believe that there is a combination of precautions that will protect us from street harassment.  Go out at the correct time of day, in the right part of town, wearing certain clothes, taking specific modes of transportation, and accompanied by the precise number and gender of companions, and all will be well.  They see my stories as parable, and want to know how they can avoid a similar fate.  If we focus on the clothing of the person who was harassed, it makes the solution seem simple: don’t wear that skirt/tight clothes/short hemlines/pants/leggings as pants/fill in the blank, and you will be safe.

Unfortunately, this common line of thought (even amongst otherwise-progressive, well-meaning people) excuses the bad behavior of the harasser,  unfairly labels men as incapable of resisting the allure of certain articles of clothing, puts the responsibility to stop street harassment on the victim, and ignores the reality of the situation.  It shouldn’t matter what any of us wear, we still have the right to move through public spaces safely and in peace.  We shouldn’t spend time on the regressive excuse that “boys will be boys.”  Men and boys are capable of being kind and respectful individuals, but this logic assumes that’s not true when it expects so little of them.  Changing what we wear is an individual solution for a collective problem.  It may keep you from being hollered at, but will it help anyone else?  And how safe do you really feel when you see someone else harassed, even if you are left alone?  Finally, as many of you who have been harassed in a  variety of outfits know, street harassment happens no matter what we wear, so why should we attempt to conform to an ever-moving standard of what clothing is the kind that will keep us safe.

In Boston it has been extremely cold this winter, and the Polar Vortex has brought snow not just to us, but to Washington DC, Texas, Alabama, and many other areas that do not generally experience such a harsh winter.  With this bitter cold, many of us have taken to wearing big puffy hats, long coats that resemble sleeping bags with arms, fluffy scarves, and other cold weather gear.  It’s not uncommon to see people walking around with not much skin showing other than a little red nose.  How then do we explain street harassment in cold weather?  Surely there is nothing suggestive about my utilitarian boots and shapeless coat.

If street harassment were really a product of what we wear and how sexually appealing our clothing is, winter in New England would be a harassment-free zone.  No one would ever bother me when I’m sick and wearing ratty sweats, and I wouldn’t hear so many stories of people wearing work-appropriate outfits or jeans and t-shirts when they were harassed.  But the posts over at Hollaback! Boston (as well as NYC and Chicago) show that even cold winters, when people are bundled from head to toe, are not immune to street harassment.  Women wearing abayas, niqabs, hijabs and burqas are victims of street harassment and even assault.  How much looser could their clothing have been?  How much more covered could they be?  The only plausible answer is that they could have simply never left the house.  If you listen to people who attempt to police women’s clothing in the guise of concern for their safety and well-being, you will soon realize that no article of clothing will ever be modest enough, because the real goal of street harassment is to exercise power.  Power to make women and LGBTQ folks conform to the desires of the harasser, feel unsafe, and feel like disappearing from public spaces is the only safe option.

Unfortunately, it is simply not that easy to escape street harassment.  We cannot simply check off the right boxes and proceed to walk around without bother.  It is important that we continue to speak up when we hear this faulty logic, and remind our communities that people are harassed in all kinds of outfits, at all times of day or night, by all kinds of people, all over the world.

The next time someone asks you what you were wearing when you were harassed, ask them why that matters.  Remind them that people are subject to street harassment no matter what they wear, and that harassers are the only people responsible for their behavior.

Delia Harrington is a recent graduate of Northeastern University and calls Boston home. In recent years, she has found herself studying, working, and volunteering in Egypt, Cuba, France, Benin, the Dominican Republic, Turkey, Germany, and Greece.  You can read more of her writing on her blog, or follow her on Facebook and Twitter, @deliamary.

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Scotland: Good Things

By

Rocío Andrés, Scotland, SSH Blog Correspondent

Trigger Warning

At the beginning, you think you are ready to read about sexual violence against women. You really think. And then, starting with the first page, the testimonies are difficult to forget and the women´s faces stick heavy in your days. The mind is a demon, you say, while trying to estimate how human the barbarity is – how big and open the door. One day, counting on your fingers, you remember since when – beyond the index, the pages-, you have the sexual violence at home.

But we frequently underestimate this. Libraries are full of books on sexual violence during wars, in conflicts or any, apparently far, turbulent crisis context. We love durings. As if there were neither after nor before.

I, myself, read books. And articles, analysis, surveys and piles of good intentional measures. All of them related to the brutal, predatory violence during conflicts. I read about the rapes, the gang-rapes, the assaults, the trafficking, the mutilations, the feminicides and the pain. I read about the thousands of victims, the number of rapers, the datas of deaths, as it happens/ed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, Colombia, Rwanda, Somalia, Afghanistan, Syria, Bosnia-Herzegovina and etcetera. In Egypt, over the three years of the revolution, there have been demonstrations in which more than 80 women were violently attacked in the course of only one night, many of them gang-raped. These are the durings I´m used to.

Now, as I read, I also wonder about the days before, about the “peace times.” The days when women go to work and on their way back, a 9-year-old is telling them obscene words. They are sexually harassed, assaulted or raped in public spaces.

These instances are not put in numbers, groups, patterns like during war. They are just drops. Sometimes, they belong to a new form of sexual violence, which is usually and, due to its spatially diffuse-unknown nature, an almost unmeasurable data, as in the Internet cosmos. Sometimes, they are not marketable enough – like the sexual violence in prisons. Usually, they´ve always been there – unreported, unattended, unheard-, until somebody, tired of holding the keys as a carver, as a weapon, gave them a name, a voice: domestic violence, sexual harassment, street harassment.

How you reach and/or face street harassment might differ in form. However, among the many faces of sexual violence, this one, even without visiting libraries, I know is true: from a softer to a more hardcore level, as a little girl, as a woman, in the bus, in the metro, a lift, a shop, the streets-, all women are aware of. It´s your neighbour violence.

Fortunately, many actions are increasingly taking place to address street harassment, to fight it, including upcoming events in Scotland, Egypt, and the USA.

In Edinburgh, on 17th March, Hollaback! Edinburgh will be at Stirling University for “Challenging Everyday Sexism,” a day of talks, workshops and debates about challenging sexism in public and private life. They will also be holding workshops at Abbey Mount Centre on 26th April, as part of the Pussy Whipped Festival 2014.

In Egypt, after flash mob dancing against sexual harassment on St Valentine´s Day, women are also preparing a two-day training course on self-defense techniques and reactions on harassment with the voice, looks and body language. There is also a film you can now watch online 678, (created in 2010 – before the revolution) directed by Mohamed Diab and focusing on the sexual harassment of women in Egypt. In 2010, it was awarded in Muhr Arab category at the Dubai International Film Festival.

In the USA, Stop Telling Women to Smile will have a week full of workshops, discussions and exhibitions in Oakland (California), with the involvement of artists like Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, who will be portraying local Bay Area women.

These are just some examples showing that good things can also happen.

Rocío Andrés holds a Bachelor´s degree in Audiovisual Communication, History of Art (both Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain) and a Master´s in Education (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain, 2010). She has six years experience as a TV and advertising producer.

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India: Blank Noise is making a difference

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By Pallavi Kamat, Mumbai, India, SSH Correspondent

All of us at some point in time have faced street harassment in one form or the other. But most of us choose to remain silent and bear it. At times, we may discuss it amongst our group of friends and curse the eve-teasing that we are subject to.

But not Jasmeen Patheja. She initiated a community/public art project called Blank Noise in August 2003 in Bangalore which seeks to confront street harassment.

Blank Noise asks women to be active ‘Action Heroes’ and reclaim the streets which they seek to make safe. At the same time, it also asks men to get involved in their events and activities. Jasmeen believes that making cities safer for women is not a woman’s responsibility alone.

The project is run almost entirely by volunteers who are keen to make a difference. It works on the premise that while individually we may face harassment, collectively, as a group, we can stand up to it; we can share our experiences and resolve it.

Some of Blank Noise’s campaigns include ‘I Never Ask For It’ [the typical response when a woman is assaulted on the street is that she probably asked for it – by staying out late, by dressing in a particular way, by taking an unsafe street, etc.], ‘Safe City Pledge’ and ‘Talk To Me’.

One of their experiments involved women standing on the zebra crossing at a traffic signal in a bid to assert themselves and reclaim the streets from lecherous glances and other unpleasant experiences. Each of the volunteers had a letter pasted on the front of their clothes – collecting the letters read ‘Y R U LOOKING AT ME?’ Some passers-by even questioned the volunteers about the same.

Another experiment (‘Talk To Me’) involved putting up a couple of tables in Bangalore’s infamous Rapist Lane where volunteers invited complete strangers to stop and talk with them. At the end of the conversation, the volunteer offered a rose to the stranger.

The ‘Safe City Pledge’ initiative, which was launched following the gruesome rape in Delhi in December-2012 focuses on building safe cities and identifying an individual’s role in making his or her city safe.

Blank Noise can be contacted at http://blog.blanknoise.org/ or on Twitter at @BLANK_NOISE.

Pallavi is a qualified Chartered Accountant and a Commerce Graduate from the University of Mumbai, India, with around 12 years of experience working in the corporate sector. Follow her on Twitter, @pallavisms.

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USA: Teen Dating Violence and Street Harassment

By

Heather Frederick, USA, SSH Blog Correspondent

The month of February in the United States is Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month. Before making the link to street harassment, let’s start with a little education about the issue from LoveIsRespect.org:

* One in three adolescents in the U.S. is a victim of physical, sexual, emotional or verbal abuse from a dating partner, a figure that far exceeds rates of other types of youth violence.
* One in 10 high school students has been purposefully hit, slapped or physically hurt by a boyfriend or girlfriend.
* Approximately 70% of college students say they have been sexually coerced.
* Girls and young women between the ages of 16 and 24 experience the highest rate of intimate partner violence — almost triple the national average.
* Violent behavior typically begins between the ages of 12 and 18.
* Violent relationships in adolescence can have serious ramifications by putting the victims at higher risk for substance abuse, eating disorders, risky sexual behavior and further domestic violence.
* Being physically or sexually abused makes teen girls six times more likely to become pregnant and twice as likely to get a STI.
* Only 33% of teens who were in a violent relationship ever told anyone about the abuse.
* Eighty one percent of parents believe teen dating violence is not an issue or admit they don’t know if it’s an issue.
* A teen’s confusion about the law and their desire for confidentiality are two of the most significant barriers stopping young victims of abuse from seeking help.

As you can see from these shocking numbers, dating violence has a huge impact on youth culture in America.

The link between street harassment and intimate partner violence couldn’t be more glaring. Early on children are subjected to bullying, street harassment, and domestic violence. Even if they are not the ones being directly hurt by the words or actions, they are affected too.

Children can hear catcalls and see lewd gestures as easily as any other bystander, and for some women their personal experiences of being harassed in the streets start when they are still children. When kids of all genders grow up seeing and hearing such behaviors they become normalized and acceptable. Boys pull girls hair to show they like them and then we collectively wonder why grown women don’t feel they can go to the police when they are harassed, assaulted or abused.

We each have control over our own words and actions, so there is no excuse for violence. Whether in the form of street harassment or dating abuse, violence is always a choice.

Sometimes though things you experience aren’t so black and white, and it becomes difficult for people to distinguish whether or not something is abuse or harassment. The easiest rule for harassment is that if it makes you uncomfortable, it’s probably harassment. As for abuse, if it’s about power and control, it is abuse.

One thing that can help put a stop to this cultural cycle of violence is to teach children from a very early age about setting boundaries they are comfortable with, and teaching them that their bodies are their own, just as their friend’s body is his. Teaching every individual that if their boundaries are violated they have a right to seek help will not only empower those individuals to speak up for themselves, but will help all of us heal knowing that we’re in this together for a better future.

Want to get involved? There are so many fun things you can do to get involved in #TeenDVMonth! Are you wearing #Orange4Love? Post your pics on Twitter (@loveisrespect) and Instagram (@loveisrespectofficial) with #TeenDVMonth and #RespectWeek2014 or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/loveisrespectpage. You can also participate in the National Respect Announcement Thunderclap on Valentine’s Day, February 14th!

If you or someone you know is experiencing dating violence you can contact Love Is Respect 24/7 at 1-866-331-9474, by chatting at loveisrespect.org, or by texting “loveis” to 22522. No one ever deserves any kind of abuse.

Heather Frederick works a Supervisor for The National Dating Abuse Helpline, www.loveisrespect.org. Her passions include intersectional feminism, reproductive justice, languages, travel, blogging at www.FeministActivism.com (@FeministSNVA) and bringing an end to human rights abuses.

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