By Britnae Purdy, SSH Correspondent

My boyfriend and I live near a great little college town. It’s not the party center of Virginia, but there are plenty of fun bars, unique restaurants, and quirky shops within walking distance, and one of our favorite things to do on free nights is to wander around, enjoying the warm weather and nightlife.

The last time we went out, I was feeling particularly hot – you know that feeling, when your hair is, surprisingly, just right, your outfit strikes that perfect balance, and you’ve applied your makeup without stabbing yourself in the eyeball with your mascara wand. We were going to a small show downtown, and I was happy.

As we walked, a pick-up truck pulled up beside us. A man (Boy? Guy? Dude? Man carries a connotation of respect of self and others that I typically don’t think applies in situations like this) leaned out and leered, “DAMN, girl!”

Let’s be clear here: I was feeling pretty DAMN girl! that night. My boyfriend probably agreed. Heck, in my mind everyone in town that night should have agreed. But hearing that call, in a stranger’s slightly slurring drawl, made me immediately want to go home, scrub clean, and burn my clothes.

As he drove away, my boyfriend muttered a curse, and feeling on edge already, I got angry. Why couldn’t you have said that to his face?! I thought. Throw a punch? Defend my honor (whatever that means)? Make him pay? And on that note, where were you the last time this happened to me? Why can’t you make it stop? I thought I was at least safe from getting harassed when I was with my boyfriend!

Hold up. Wait a second. What is it about street harassment that suddenly gives me princess syndrome?

As in, where is my knight in shining armor to rescue me?

No, I don’t want my boyfriend to start a fight with my harassers. I cannot react to one misplaced display of supposed hyper “masculinity” with another.

Nor am I asking my harassers to suddenly turn into the epitome of chivalry, lay down their coats so that I may walk over puddles and whatnot. But clearly something needs to change. Where can we start?

Before we had even left our apartment that night, I had brought up the problem of street harassment. I had said to my boyfriend, “I really want to wear my cute new heels. But I really don’t want to get yelled or honked at when we go out.”

He seemed very sad all of a sudden, and looked at me and said, “I really wish you didn’t have to deal with that.”

YES. That’s it. We don’t need princes. We don’t need every male to suddenly become feminist (though really, how great would that be?) What we need is for more and more men to realize, in similar moments of wrenching clarity, that their girlfriends, sisters, mothers, are facing sexually-based threats and harassment every single day, and that that simply should not happen.

For our part, women need to stop fooling themselves into thinking that street harassment, because it is so common, should be the norm, or that being sexually objectified by strangers is somehow a compliment. We need to insist on holding men to a higher standard, and we need men to rise to the occasion.

This is a united effort – no room for princesses here.

Britnae is a graduate student at George Mason University, in Virginia, where she is pursuing a Master of Arts in Global Affairs with a specialization in Security and Conflict Studies. She also writes for First Peoples Worldwide and you can read more of her writing on their blog and follow her on Twitter.

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

Glamour magazine is one of my favorite guilty pleasures. Not quite as insipid as Cosmopolitan, nor as unattainable as Vogue, the magazine is a happy medium. When I read things inside its pages I find incongruent with feminist ideals, I can shrug it off – it doesn’t claim to be a feminist magazine, like Bitch or Ms.

So when I gleefully tore into the September issue – the thickest, most important issue of the year – I was startled to find the following on the magazine’s recurring “Hey, It’s OK!” page, usually a collection of quirky things many women do and shouldn’t feel bad about: “If catcalls offend you one day and make you totally happy the next.”

Hey, that’s not ok. If we’re going to fight street harassment, we can’t be “ok” with being objectified as we go about our day. It got me thinking: do women really find catcalls flattering? Do they really take street harassment as a compliment? I posed the question to my female friends and it turns out that, yeah, they do.

One friend confessed that, before she took a women’s studies class in college, she used to feel flattered upon hearing a catcall directed at her. She’d think, “Hey, I guess I look good today.” She described walking to campus, about a six block walk, and hearing everything from wolf whistles to horns honked to words like “slut” tossed at her. As time passed, she said, she went from feeling confident, to feeling bad about “feeling good” about the harassment, to finally feeling downright disgusted.

I appreciate my friend for allowing me to share her story on the blog, because I know she’s not alone. She’s not the only woman in the world who feels good about herself after being catcalled at. The feeling good part isn’t what’s problematic; it’s the source of the validation. That’s what we need to change.

We live in a society that raised us to seek external validation. We were raised to make ourselves attractive to the opposite sex. When we hear that positive reinforcement, be it anything from a friend telling us we look nice to a lewd comment on the sidewalk, we believe we are attractive. In this paradigm, a catcall is praise. A catcall means we’re doing it right.

I say screw that. Make yourself look the way you want to look for YOURSELF. For as long as we feel complimented by catcalls, we are losing the battle. The bigger compliment should be our ability to walk down the street in peace, knowing we’re fabulous and not needing a honk from a passing car to prove it.

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: Lisane Thirsk, Ottawa, Canada, SSH Correspondent

Following a sexual assault near a bus station in Ottawa, our transit company OC Transpo dragged its feet before commenting on the incident. This was exasperating, as repeated assurances by them that our transit system is safe have been ringing hollow to many of us, especially in light of other recent gender-based crimes, as well as these survey results from Hollaback! Ottawa.

The good news is that since the assault, OC Transpo announced a new transit safety plan. However, specific efforts to prevent harassment are still unclear, as is the extent of collaboration we can expect among city officials and the community organizations that have tirelessly advocated around this issue.

In the meantime, I’ve had plenty of time to reflect on what an effective public education campaign against street harassment might look like here in Ottawa.

For those unfamiliar with Canada’s capital, you may be surprised to learn it’s small and relatively tranquil – not the characteristic bustling, overpopulated capital city. It’s the kind of place where I often bump into people I know, even though I haven’t lived here very long.

Ottawa is home to Parliament Hill and civil servants with a reputation for being obedient, conservative government employees. The city is considered “a nice place to raise kids” with vast green areas, good museums, and a lovely tulip festival.

Ottawans are required to have permits to do just about anything. And we’re generally the types to wait for the pedestrian light and cross at crosswalks.

To put it bluntly, we aren’t known for challenging the status quo. (However I happen to know enough local shit-disturbers to assure you the stereotype is far from reality!)

These narratives about Ottawa are in the background when we try to have conversations about street harassment.

It shouldn’t be hard to believe that Ottawa has “big city problems.” After all, street harassment happens everywhere there are streets, including small towns.

Most discouraging is that we are failing each other by remaining passive witnesses of this blatant violence. Many transit riders have reported to Hollaback! Ottawa that when they were harassed on a packed bus, no one bothered to help them.

Sadly, transit riders have also indicated that when facing harassment, they either wouldn’t consider it worthy of pushing the bus’ emergency button or worry about receiving a fine for activating the alarm.

From meetings I’ve attended, I know OC Transpo views this as a problem, as do women’s organizations. That’s why a public education campaign is crucial. And there’s reason to believe that a well-designed one would be effective.

I’ve repeatedly heard about a series of ads on buses featured a number of years ago, known as “Busology,” that many Ottawa residents remember fondly and want to see on buses again. They targeted common transit “incivilities” with messaging like:

Double, double, toil and trouble / Music blares and tempers bubble

O what a tangled web we weave / When by the forward door we leave

Other ads encouraged riders to set their backpacks on the floor to prevent bumping people, and to avoid wearing strong perfumes.

It seems there was a receptive audience for those simple ads discouraging behaviour that imposes on other people’s space and their ability to enjoy a peaceful bus ride.

Stereotypes about polite Canadians aside, it seems that what Ottawans need, far more than Bus Manners 101, is a campaign to identify street harassment and empower bystanders to do something about it.

It’s certainly incredible that riders need to be reminded to practice common courtesies like moving big bags away from doors so people can exit, or respecting Priority Seating areas. But it’s no less important to build a culture where everyday street harassment is not only considered socially unacceptable, but acknowledged as gender violence.

How disgraceful that a bus full of people will watch a man follow a woman from seat to seat or grope her as she tries to escape – and then look away, return to their books, glad it’s not them in that humiliating situation.

In those situations, wouldn’t it be great to see people taking up more room, making more noise? If it’s safe to do so, for example, drop a bag to create a distraction. Move next to the target. Speak up! (Check out these Badass Bystander Moves: direct, distract, delegate).

It’s not that this is unheard of in Ottawa – here’s an example of bystander intervention on the bus a few months ago.

But there’s something about Ottawa’s image that has played a part in delaying action, be it our supposedly “mild-mannered” nature, or our city’s beloved “safe” image.

Could we change our reputation in favour of the anti-street harassment cause? Use that small town feel to hold perpetrators accountable in Ottawa.

We need to dismantle the idea that things don’t need to be shaken up in Ottawa. Because we are not living in a safe city when sexual assaults occur on buses and at transit stops.

We can be that place where people don’t hesitate to take up more room when they witness gender violence. Hopefully city officials will have our backs now in this endeavor.

Lisane works in the non-profit communications sector and supports local anti-street harassment advocacy through Hollaback! Ottawa. In 2012, she completed a Master’s in Socio-Legal Studies at York University in Toronto, where she wrote her Major Research Paper on gender-based street harassment. She holds a B.A. in Latin American Studies and Spanish from the University of British Columbia

By: Gcobani Qambela, South Africa, SSH Correspondent

August 2013 was declared “Women’s Month” by the South African government. This is in effort to commemorate the historic march organised by the Federation of South African Women on August 9, 1956, that was attended by over 20,000 women who marched to the Union Buildings in the then apartheid South Africa. The women who came from diverse backgrounds were protesting the extension of “Pass Laws” to women. As they marched, they sang:

Wathint’ abafazi,
Wathint’ imbokodo,
Uza kufa!

[When] you strike the women,
You strike a rock,
You will be crushed [You will die]!

The post-apartheid South African government has since declared the 9^th of August “Women’s Day”, an annual public holiday celebrating the courage of these women. Yet, as many have noted, despite the contribution of South African women to the anti-apartheid struggle, many women still have to battle many other oppressions in post-apartheid South Africa. Kamaria Munti for instance notes that “… rape, relationship terrorism and general cultural disparities remain critical issues for South Africa’s women.”

This was no more evident than this month of August ironically dedicated to celebrating women. The secretary-general of the largest trade union in South Africa, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), Zwelinzima Vavi, was accused of rape by a junior employer (who later withdrew the accusations). But what was worrying about this case, is not whether it was true or not, but as TO Molefe shows us, it demonstrated to us the various ways in which rape culture is still woven into the fabric of South African society. Molefe notes for instance that “From the moment the story hit the pages of the weekend newspapers, her claim was treated with doubt and judgement. Pronouncements were made about how and why her actions discredited her claims of sexual harassment and rape, yet no scrutiny was directed at the actions of Vavi and how and why they discredit his claim that he did not sexually harass or rape her.”

What was more disturbing to me is how this showed an element that is still ignored in the South African legal framework. The woman in question was harassed on Twitter with many people tagging and mentioning her in very vile messages which often centred on blaming her for being raped and sexually assaulted. An image that landed on my Twitter feed for instance showed an image of the women with an inscription saying how “who could resist?” raping her if she looked that attractive.

Victim blaming and harassment is not new in South Africa. When our own current President, Jacob Zuma was also accused of rape, there were many reports of victim blaming where the woman in question was called many violently misogynistic names. This, as the Sonke Gender Justice Project notes, happens in a country where the Bill of Rights enshrined in the Constitution proclaims in Section 12, subsection 2, that everyone regardless of gender, race or sexual orientation “has the right to bodily and psychological integrity, which includes the right to security in and control over their bodies”.

These cases the Sonke Gender Justice Project tells us that they teach and remind us that “sexual violence is endemic and that very little is done to stop it [and further that] men’s violence is still explained away by crude victim blaming.” The increasingly accessibility of social media platforms like Twitter, have increased access to victims (especially when they have been named publicly as the case with Vavi) and thus consequently opened a floodgate opportunity for sexism, rape culture, victim blaming and harassment that much easier.

This is made worse by the lack of channels to report (cyber) assaults. Last year I reported for instance on the Twitter misogynistic attack that was levelled again popular South African actress Bonnie Henna on Twitter. Some of my women and (gay) male friends have been harassed online, especially on twitter and told to “go eat a dick” or called “faggots” as a means to silence them online.

As we move into September, leaving behind “Women’s Month”, my hope is that we do not only remember the march of 1956, but that we start realising the vision they had for South Africa. The women marched not just to end systematic racialised oppression, but they marched [amongst others] for the right to own their bodies fully, to have complete freedom of movement free of harassment and full control over their humanity.

If this 2013’s Women’s Month taught us anything as South Africans however, it should be that the sacrifices of those women in 1956 are yet to be fully realised, and they deserve better. They deserve a country where women are not subjected to the harassment, sexism and oppression that they are currently subjected to in South Africa. They deserve much better than this.

Gcobani is completing his Masters in Medical Anthropology through Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa. His research centres around issues of risk, responsibility and vulnerability amongst Xhosa men (and women) in a rural town in South Africa living in the context of HIV/AIDS. Follow him on Twitter, @GcobaniQambela.