By Sara Schwartzkopf, Colorado, USA, SSH Correspondent

“What was that about?” I asked as we got off the bus.

“What do you mean?” my friend Hoa replied.

“Well, you wouldn’t even look at the guy.”

“My mom always said to just ignore them.”

It was dark, and cold out in Denver that night and my friend and I had just gotten off the bus on our way back home from a kung fu belt test. We were discussing an older man from the bus, who had taken an interest in us when he heard Hoa talking on her phone in Vietnamese. He sat down near us, and then started trying to ask Hoa what language that was. I say he tried, because Hoa didn’t even spare him a glance. She stared straight ahead, not even acknowledging the man’s presence. The man looked incredibly perplexed, eventually shrugged and went back to minding his own business. I had never seen a stranger ignored so thoroughly, much less done it myself. I suppose I thought it would be rude.

Sometimes there is no standard for a proper reaction. There is no “right” way to deal with harassment, just like there is no “right” way to deal with sexual assault. Now while there are many resources on how you can respond to public harassment, most of these come from what works for the author, and are centered in the type of abuse that the author has endured. That’s an important distinction to make. What I go through as a light-skinned young woman in Colorado is exponentially different to what a dark-skinned woman will go through in New York City. How I was taught to interact with strangers was different than how my friend was taught.

Earlier this month an article that was originally published on Luna Luna was reposted on xoJane. This article by Alecia Lynn Eberhardt, titled “Stop Saying ‘I Have a Boyfriend’ to Deflect Unwanted Attention,” posits that using this line is a problematic thing for women to do. It caused quite a stir among feminists of color on Twitter. Now Eberhardt is right about something – it is absolute nonsense that the only way to get a stranger to leave you alone is to claim that you already “belong” to someone else. It should be perfectly normal to go out and enjoy yourself without the assumption that you are looking for a date.

What I find odd is when Eberhardt says that women are bringing this upon themselves. By using an excuse, we act as if the behavior is ok rather than getting to the point of the matter which is that you want nothing to do with this person. In her piece, we stop pushy behavior by being blunt. In part, I agree with her. I should be able to give a simple no and have that be the end of it. And maybe, if I did engage a guy in a talk about his behavior, I would be able to get him to change his actions.

Here’s the thing though – it’s not my job on a night out, walking down the street, grocery shopping, or running to stop what I’m doing and educate a complete stranger on their behavior. I don’t feel as though I’m disrespecting myself or women to say this: My existence is not a teachable moment.

The other thing is that sometimes it’s simply not safe to engage with a street harasser or any sort of overly-persistent man. I assume Eberhardt based her advice on overly-persistent men trying to get a date at a bar. Much of the criticism Eberhardt received online came from women of color. Many of them recounted experiences of being grabbed, chased, assaulted, or being verbally threatened when they tried to get out of a situation. Street harassment looks very different for some women.

While sexual assault and street harassment fall into two different categories (most sexual assaults are committed by someone known to the victim, whereas street harassment normally comes from strangers), they are reflective of how society views women. Street harassment is still socially acceptable to large amount of people, and there aren’t very many studies on it. In fact, I couldn’t find one that looks at street harassment in the United States by race. It is worth noting that, women of color are assaulted at higher rates than White women (the exception being Asian women), with Native American women being assaulted at almost double the rate of White women. Given these facts, it shouldn’t be surprising that minority communities teach their girls to interact with strangers differently. It also shouldn’t be surprising that women of color feel more threatened by street harassment, and respond to this.

I’m incredibly hesitant to offer one-size-fits-all advice for a situation.  I think each one of us can find ways to respond that fit us as individuals, and there are a lot of ways to respond. Heck, there’s even work you can do outside of a situation to discourage harassment. In the meantime, don’t feel bad about not wanting to engage an annoying dude in lengthy debate.

Sara is a recent graduate of the University of Denver where she majored in Sociology, International Studies, and minored in Japanese. She has previously written on issues relevant to the Native American community at Le Prestige Du Monde, pulling heavily on her experiences as a mixed-race Kiowa and Chickasaw.

By: Tilly Grove, London, UK, SSH Correspondent

I remember being jealous of my friend who confessed to being wolf-whistled by the waste collectors she passed on her way to school, regardless of the fact that it clearly distressed her and she was lodging a complaint with the council.

We were fourteen or fifteen years old then. I had already swallowed whole the idea that street harassment wasn’t just something that we had to accept, but it was something that we should appreciate, something that we should want, something that we should envy other victims for. At the same time, these men were harassing a girl in her school uniform. Whether they were behaving in the way they did because they found her sexually attractive, because they wished to intimidate her, or both, they could be fairly safe in the assumption that they were dealing with a child. Clearly, it didn’t stop them. Maybe it encouraged them.

As women, we are acutely aware that street harassment is an accepted part of our lives. In many ways, though, it is more than that; it is the rite of passage we must undertake to be considered women. The moment a girl receives her first catcall, her first wolf-whistle or her first grope, she can consider herself well on the way to adulthood – no matter how unwanted the action was, and no matter how uncomfortable it made her. Such is the brainwashing of our society, she feels that she should be grateful, because it’s a compliment.

If she dares to pluck up the courage and tell someone – a parent, guardian, or teacher, perhaps – she may find her concerns brushed off on the basis that, “It’s just something women have to put up with,” so she needs to get used to it. If she tells her friends, she might find her complaints rejected because, “You love it really!” They’ve been taught to view it as a compliment, too.

The entitlement that men perceive themselves to have over women, their bodies and their lives knows no boundaries, age-related or otherwise. When I tweeted out a request for girls and women to share their earliest memories of street harassment, the majority recalled that it started before they were even teenagers. The eleven-year-old catcalled by builders on her way to get ice-cream, the thirteen-year-old beeped and hollered at by men in cars for wearing shorts, and the sixteen year old who can’t leave the house for even five minutes in a skirt without a man passing comment, all learned that the hard way.

Men began to intimidate them and reduce them to sex objects the moment they hit puberty. That’s the initiation into adulthood.

One thing above all else sticks out as being universal in the stories I heard, though: from the moment these women had their first experience of childhood street harassment, that harassment immediately became a constant part of their lives, and remains so to this day. They graduated into womanhood.

Tilly is studying for a BA in War Studies at King’s College London, where she is writing her dissertation on the effect that perceptions of gender have on the roles which women adopt in conflict. You can follow her on Tumblr and Twitter, @tillyjean_.

By: Taylor Kuether, Minnesota, USA, SSH Blog Correspondent

Last night I was walking to a friend’s house for her housewarming party. It was a Saturday night and I was dressed to go out – not that that should be relevant. I had done my hair and put on makeup, and I thought I looked pretty good.

I was walking alone, which in my mid-sized college town of about 65,000 people, I’ve always felt safe and comfortable doing. I was walking down the sidewalk on a well-trafficked street full of popular bars. Two men walked around the corner, turning onto the street I was walking along. Instinctively, I quickened my pace and averted my eyes as I walked past them, as I do when I pass anyone on a narrow sidewalk and I’m walking alone.

As I passed them, one of the men said (and these really are his exact words), “Well aren’t you just the prettiest little lady in the whole wide world.”

I had not expected that. I don’t know why I was so caught off guard – maybe because I’d been lost in thought as I walked to my friend’s house, maybe because I’d walked far enough down the street that I was no longer in the heavily-trafficked area and I hadn’t expected to run into anyone, maybe because his words were something straight out of a movie. I mean, who says that?

Taken aback, I laughed. I actually laughed! And it gets worse – I laughed and said “thank you.” What?! Why did I do that? I write for a blog that aims to combat street harassment (thanks for reading, by the way!), and I THANKED a harasser for his comment.

That’s why I’m writing about this. How does one respond to street harassment? What should I have said? I know I handled it all wrong, and I’ve been kicking myself for responding with a laugh and a smile instead of a terse retort in – probably vain – effort to quell his future comments. But I didn’t. I’d been so caught off guard and so surprised by actually hearing such a cliché catcall in real life that my first natural reaction was to laugh.

So, readers, what should I have done? Tweet me @taylorkuether with your thoughts!

[Editor’s Note: There is no “right” or perfect response to street harassment! It’s okay if we don’t always speak out against it, there may be a million reasons why. At SSH we hope people know there are a range of responses to try out and that ultimately the choice is YOURS.]

Taylor Kuether is a senior journalism student at University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire in northwestern Wisconsin. She has previously written for The Washington Post and Minneapolis’ Star Tribune, worked as a reporter at her city’s daily newspaper, The Leader-Telegram, and its arts and culture publication, VolumeOne, hosted a local-music centered radio show on Wisconsin Public Radio, and worked as Editor-in-Chief at her student newspaper, where she enjoyed writing biting, slightly rant-y columns about feminist issues.

By: Molly Redding, San Francisco, CA, USA, SSH Correspondent

My last blog post was about Carolyn Criado-Perez, who was harassed on Twitter after fighting to get a woman on British bank notes. I’m sad to say that Carolyn has since decided to shut down her Twitter account due to the barrage of threats she received. I’m incredibly upset by this, an action that says to me that we are a culture that can’t tolerate other people and their different beliefs. I only hope that Carolyn continues her fight for women’s rights both on and off the Internet.

Her story, and two other recent incidents, demonstrates how sexism in the tech sector is strong and how it can influence daily behavior, specifically, street harassment.

First, earlier this month, at the start of one of the biggest tech conferences of the year called TechCrunch Disrupt, two men from Australia kicked off the conference by introducing their new app called, ingeniously, TitStare. It was meant to be a parody, but all it did was highlight the idea that women’s bodies in public are men’s property.

The fact that (1) these guys thought up this app, (2) they not only thought it would be hilarious, they thought MANY other people would think it was hilarious and (3) whomever was approving the sessions ALSO thought it would be hilarious, demonstrates just how numb to the idea that women’s bodies on display are public property our culture has become.

Not only that, but it propagates the idea that being ogled is something to be taken lightly and laughed at, as well as accepts men’s behavior as “boys being boys.” All of these ideas, even in subtle humor, continue to perpetuate the acceptance of street harassment in our culture.

To add insult to injury, a 9-year-old girl was in the audience excited to give her own presentation on an app she had created. What kind of messaging about her body, at an incredibly vulnerable age, do you think she received?

(To be fair, TechCrunch has since issued an apology.)

Second, there’s this video: “Sweeping Women Off Their Feet.” In this video, which has been viewed more than one million times, two men walk around their campus grabbing women they don’t know and carrying them off without permission– under the guise of being “gentlemanly.”

This behavior reinforces strict constructs of masculinity and femininity, and what does it say about our culture that these men feel that it is their right to get into a woman’s space and pick her up without her permission? If this isn’t an example of women’s bodies being assumed as public property, I’m not sure I know what is.

Since this was done in a building on a college campus, the women, I assume, felt relatively safe. What if this had been done on a random street corner? At night? What messages are people who watch these videos consuming?

But technology and the Internet aren’t all bad. Websites like stopstreetharassment.org are using the power of Internet messaging to try and spread the opposite message, to try and make people stop, think, and discuss what appropriate interactions in public spaces are.

This week, I was excited to see Jezebel post about a woman who used the “missed connections” section of Craiglist to fight back against her harasser. She employed the power of language to make herself more “human” to her harasser,  an important idea when many of our interactions online and offline are anonymous, allowing harassers to separate their own humanity from the person they are harassing. The harassers never see their victim’s emotions, and so can ignore the fact that they have the same human feelings we all do.

Finally, if you’re like me, you might think that Tumblr posts are an amazing tool for disrupting the social world. Lucky for you, there are many Tumblr sites devoted to combatting street harassment:

http://stopstreetharassment.tumblr.com/

http://fuckyoustreetharassment.tumblr.com/

http://streetharassmenttumblr.tumblr.com/

http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/street-harassment

I love that these sites use a combination of pictures, words and videos to contest “normal” social order, help victims realize they are not alone, and provide many, many options for making women’s place in the public world just a little bit easier, and a little bit safer.

Just like the street, the internet is a public space where women can easily be harassed and shamed, but they can also claim the space for their own. So let’s keep claiming – keep writing, keep tweeting, keep posting!

Molly received a graduate degree in International Development and Gender from the London School of Economics in 2011, where her dissertation focused on websites allowing victims of harassment to post about their experiences. She has worked in the non-profit sector for over 10 years. You can follow her on Twitter, @perfeminist.