Events Archives | Page 3 of 31 | Stop Street Harassment

Boston and NYC Street Harassment Events

November 8, 2015 By HKearl

On Nov. 4, I had the honor of facilitating a focus group on street harassment with Asian-American women in Boston. I will add a summary of the session to our 2014 national study on street harassment by the end of the month. A common theme among the participants was how often the harassment was racialized as well as sexualized and how often they were treated like geishas or fetishes. Many recall the harassment beginning when they were 9, 10, 11 years old. Also, it was almost never Asian-American men who harassed them, rather men of other races, especially white and black men.

Asian-American focus group in Boston

Many thanks to Sarah Chang for suggesting it and hosting it and thank you to her and the eight other women who bravely shared their stories.

Then on Nov. 5, Bluestockings bookstore in New York City hosted a book event for my new book Stop Global Street Harassment: Growing Activism around the World. I was joined by seven co-presenters. Bisi Alimi is from Nigeria and lives in London; Gaya Branderhorst of Straatintimidatie is from the Netherlands and lives in New York; Alicia Wallace of Hollaback! Bahamas is from the Bahamas and just moved to New York; Ileana Jiménez is a high school teacher in New York City who talks about street harassment with her students; she brought two of her students who shared their stories, Shana and StellaRose; and Brittany Brathwaite is a community organizer for Girls for Gender Equity (GGE) in New York City.

Bluestockings bookstore, NYC

We discussed what street harassment looks like in our communities, various activism actions underway to address it, and why it is so important to talk to youth about it (because they may already be experiencing it and perpetrating it and because street harassment is learned behavior that can be unlearned — or ideally, never learned). There was a rich Q&A with the audience. Two women documentarians filmed the event and will be sharing the footage with me soon. I’ll post it when I have it.

GGE, Ileana’s and Alicia’s work are all featured in my book.

High school class, NYC

Lastly, on Nov. 6, I spoke with Ileana’s high school students at Elisabeth Irwin High School in New York City. Many of them are already routinely experiencing street harassment as well as sexual harassment in schools. Many thanks to Ileana for bringing this issue into the classroom and for caring so much about his students.

USA: Teens Educating Teens

October 29, 2015 By Contributor

Our four Safe Public Spaces Mentees are half-way through their projects. This week we are featuring their blog posts about how the projects are going so far. This post is from our team in the USA. Their projects are supported by SSH donors. If you would like to donate to support the 2016 mentees, we would greatly appreciate it!

Hey, I’m Tena, the founder of Me=You: Sexual Violence Awareness (MYSVA for short). My friends Jineth and Ash and I make-up MYSVA. We are a teen activism group that aims to get fellow teenagers talking about and preventing gender- and sexual orientation-based violence.

For the past few months, we have been working on the administration and promotion of MYSVA (setting up social media accounts, partaking in the SPSM program, setting up a bank account, and more). Just this month, I finally secured approval from the Palm Bay (Florida) City Manager to host MYSVA Chalk Day on Sunday, December 6; a day we, our friends, and passersby will write testimonies and anti-street harassment messages in chalk along the sidewalk outside the local library, Degroodt.

A few weeks ago, on October 13, MYSVA presented about violence issues to an audience of 15 teenagers at the Degroodt Library Teen Advisory Group Meeting.

First, via power point slides, we covered different types of sexual violence (street harassment, teen dating violence, domestic violence, etc.) and how to recognized them. Then, we role-played street harassment scenarios, with me as the bystander, Ash as the street harassment sufferer, and Danny (a person from the audience) playing the harasser. The bystander just watched and made excuses for the harasser, like “maybe he is just being nice” or “maybe he knows her”, as the victim was followed and catcalled.

The audience laughed when Danny’s character exclaimed, “Are you a beaver, ‘cuz DAMN!” but we made sure to emphasize how uncomfortable this is for a stranger to hear this from a random being off the street. We brainstormed different ways a bystander can intervene.

Also, we collected surveys on the teen audience’s experiences of harassment (to be analyzed in the near future). All in all, our audience was really receptive and we got positive feedback from them.

Plus, on October 6, I interviewed Ms. Sue Kiley, a licensed counselor and the director of program’s at the Brevard Women’s Center in Melbourne, Florida. I learned lots of new informatiom on the motivations behind harassment, especially stalking, and support available for those who have experienced it. I hope to share my new-found knowledge when we launch our website (coming soon!)

Tena Gordon is a high school student in Florida and the founder of MYSVA.

Stop Global Street Harassment Book Release Event!

September 24, 2015 By HKearl

Last week the Center for Diversity and Inclusion at American University in Washington, DC, kindly hosted my book release event. I am so grateful to them (especially staff member Kerry Diekmann), to everyone who came, to my co-presenters (who are all featured in the book), and to local groups Defend Yourself and the Queer Review for tabling/supporting. After our presentations, we had a rich Q&A, discussing the issue with attendees who hailed from countries like Afghanistan and Belgium. And my mom even flew in from out of state to be there as a surprise!

(Holly and Sawsan (back) | Patrick, Noorjahan, and Lauren (front))

In my presentation, I gave an overview of the topic and why it matters. I noted that, “When I wrote my master’s thesis on street harassment in 2007 at GWU and started the Stop Street Harassment blog in 2008, I was one of the few visible and public voices speaking out on this issue. I am so thrilled that just a few years later, there are hundreds of people taking a stand.

My new book focuses on many of those people and what they have done over the past five years to work to help end the normalization of sexual harassment in public spaces globally.”

And then I gave examples of some of the changes we’ve seen in the past five years, like more research on the topic, international entities like UN Women and Huairou Commission overseeing international efforts, more individuals using the Internet to launch awareness campaigns, several viral documentaries, concrete changes wrought by advocacy groups like Paremos el acoso callejero in Peru, and an increase in actions individuals have taken, like writing sidewalk chalk messages, distributing cards against harassment and working with youth.

ssh blog — *Noorjahan speaking during Q&A. SSH board members Holly, Patrick and Maureen. Defend Yourself founder Lauren Taylor.*

I talked about how it is an exciting time because so many people are refusing to be silent and are making more and more people aware of what street harassment is and why it is unacceptable. You can read all about these efforts and much more in my new book, Stop Global Street Harassment: Growing Activism Around the World (Praeger, 2015). (20% off for the ebook) See upcoming book events.

I took iPhone videos of my co-presenters and they gave me permission to share their words below. (Transcripts to come.) They are amazing and I’m so honored to have their words in my book and to have had them join me at AU!

Tomorrow: Nottingham Street Harassment Summit

September 23, 2015 By HKearl

“Nottingham Women’s Centre is coordinating a summit on Thursday 24th September which will explore ways in which attitudes can be altered and behaviour changed to make public places safer for women. The summit will bring together representatives from the Police, local transport providers, universities, businesses and the City, District and County Councils, to discuss the behaviour women are subjected to in public. The most effective ways in which women can be encouraged to report incidents of harassment – confident that they will be taken seriously and that appropriate action taken – will be considered in a bid to ensure Nottinghamshire is the destination of choice for women in terms of work, study, socialising or retail.

The event will culminate in a call for individuals, agencies and businesses to make a pledge towards a new Women’s Safety Charter for Nottinghamshire. Nottingham Women’s Centre is welcoming messages of support for the summit and examples of the everyday harassment that women face. Please use the hashtag #Nottacompliment to show your support or share your examples. More info.”

NYC Street Harassment Play on Sept. 2, 2015

August 13, 2015 By HKearl

Shaun Bennet Fauntleroy is a theatre artist in New York City who is producing an event focused on street harassment in collaboration with Flux Theatre Ensemble. The event is called #SpeakUp: The Street Harassment Plays and it features five monologues written by playwrights who have been asked to reflect on their feelings as victims of street harassment.

Where: Judson Memorial Church’s Assembly Hall, 239 Thompson St, NYC

When: September 2, 2015 at 7:30 p.m.

RSVP here

You can read more about the event here. (The following is an excerpt of that article.)

“Earlier this spring, a man walked up to me on a subway platform, complimented me rather aggressively, and then punched me repeatedly when I didn’t respond favorably. It happened during a rather hectic period in my life so I didn’t have time to dwell much on it. I did, however, have a strong impulse to write my thoughts about the incident down. I shared those thoughts on social media, because that’s what you do these days, and followed it up with a blog post. Doing so was cathartic, not only because I’d purged my thoughts on what happened, but I’d reclaimed my voice, the voice and agency that this unknown man had attempted to silence.

Over the next few months I was both heartbroken and inspired by two separate incidents. First, a friend e-mailed me to tell me that she had just been similarly attacked and was re-reading what I’d written as she processed her own feelings. Not long after that, a different man attacked another woman (whom I didn’t know) on a subway platform after she rejected his advances. I was becoming enraged.

The second thing that occurred was that I had the privilege of witnessing New Black Fest’s HandsUp: 6 Playwrights⎪6 Testaments , which featured six powerful and evocative monologues written by emerging black male playwrights that reflect on being an American black male in a culture of racial profiling (I believe they have plans to remount this, so if you get the chance to see it I highly recommend it. You can read excerpts here. ) HandsUp gave a personal voice to a national ache and I was reeling from what I’d heard/seen.

After my friend’s e-mail I knew that I wanted to do something. Being a thespian, the theatre was the battleground I chose and with HandsUp fresh in my mind I had an urge to create something similar to New Black Fest’s stunning piece: a handful of plays that reflect on the playwright’s feelings of being the targets of street harassment and catcalling. Almost instinctively, I contacted Gus Schulenburg from Flux Theatre Ensemble and said, “Gus, this just happened. Let’s make some theatre.” Gus shared the vision with the rest of the team and they, being all Fluxy and fabulous, said, “Yes, let’s.” Together we have created #SpeakUp: The Street Harassment Plays. I hope you’ll join us.”

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