Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

DC Gay & Bisexual Men: Share your experiences

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If you live in the Washington, D.C. area and are a gay or bisexual man, you’re invited to share your street harassment stories and experiences during a discussion group on July 23.

The discussion group is part of  Stop Street Harassment‘s “Documenting Street Harassment in America” initiative that includes a 2,000 person, nationally representative survey and 10 discussion groups with different demographics across the country.

SSH Founder Holly Kearl (me) is teaming up with Patrick Ryne McNeil, who researches the street harassment of gay and bisexual men, to conduct it with gay and bisexual men to hear about their unique experiences with sexual harassment and sexual violence in public places like streets, parks, buses, subways, stores, and restaurants.

Info:

The discussion group will be held on Tuesday, July 23, 7:30 – 8:30 p.m. at Lamond Riggs library by Fort Totten Metro Station. Light refreshments will be provided.

Note:

I will tape record and then transcribe the focus group discussion, but to make it a safe space for participants to share their stories, they can have their names be anonymous if they would like.

More info about the study:

Read more about the study. I hope to complete the rest of the focus groups this summer, conduct the survey in the fall, and release a report in early 2014. Read an article about one of the focus groups I conducted in South Dakota last summer. You can contact me directly with any questions or concerns at hkearl@stopstreetharassment.org or contact Patrick at patrickryne@gmail.com.

More info about harassment of gay & bisexual men:

Washington Blade | Huffington Post

RSVP:

hkearl@stopstreetharassment.org

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Two women attack gay man at pizzeria in DC

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Trigger Warning

Over the weekend, Miles DeNiro, a gay man, was at a a Washington, D.C. pizzeria after a drag performance at the Black Cat. Two women approached him and harassed him, calling him slurs like “tranny” and “faggot” and then attacked him. This is unacceptable!

Image via Queerty

What’s also unacceptable is that several bystanders stood by cheering the women on and some even filmed the incident and posted it on sites like YouTube, before it was taken down for having offensive content.

Via the Washington Blade:

““There were five or six workers behind the counter or in the kitchen area and none of them did anything to stop it,” DeNiro said.

The assault ended, according to DeNiro, when two men walked into the restaurant from the sidewalk and pulled the two women away from him.

“I don’t know who they are but they appeared to have seen what was happening through the window and came in to help,” he said.

DeNiro said two friends who were with him drove him home. He said he chose not to call police at the time of the incident but reported the attack to police Monday afternoon at the Third Police District at 17th and V Street, N.W.”

Police are investigating the incident and it’s expected they will treat it as a hate crime.

As a society, as a community, we need to do more to be respectful and to stand up for human rights!

After the attack, DeNiro, who is white, tweeted messages about it and used racial slurs to describe the women of color who attacked him. He later deleted them and apologized.

This is such a very real example of how we each have some privileges but not others (e.g. he had race privilege but not sexual orientation/gender expression privilege) and how we need to try hard not to oppress others or discriminate against them, including not while standing up for our rights and working to end the discrimination we face.

H/T Collective Action for Safe Spaces

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New Study: Sexual harassment on vacation

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A downside to traveling anywhere is the potential to face street harassment and unwanted sexual invitations.

To discover just how prevalent this is, a team of researchers led by the European Institute of Studies on Prevention (Irefrea) surveyed 6,502 British and German people ages 16-35 in different airports across southern Europe (Crete, Cyprus, Italy, Portugal and Spain). The people they surveyed had just visited tourist hotspots in these countries in summer 2009 and were returning home.

Via Science World Report:

“The results of the study show that 8.6% of people suffered sexual harassment during their holidays and 1.5% suffered sex against their will. ‘2.4 times as many women as heterosexual men claimed to have suffered from sexual harassment. However, gay and bisexual men showed similar levels to women and high levels of sex against their will,’ the expert notes.”

One of the researchers said. “The first preventive measure is to be aware that these problems exist, since we tend to always think positively about holidays. There are measures that depend on tourist destinations, which are often promoted as places with a high level of sexual permissiveness and advertise cheap alcohol. The venues themselves can also avoid these situations by adopting good management in accordance with already established standards.”

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USA: Street Harassment of Gay and Bisexual Men

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Patrick receiving his award

By Sean Crosbie, SSH Correspondent

The event commemorating the fifth anniversary of Stop Street Harassment was held at Vinoteca in D.C. and celebrated the work of many courageous individuals and organizations. Patrick Ryne McNeil was among those honored for his groundbreaking research into street harassment of gay and bisexual men. Patrick’s Master’s thesis at George Washington University here in Washington, D.C. deals specifically on how this street harassment of gay and bisexual men occurs as well as how it relates to – and differs from – women who experience street harassment. I interviewed Patrick for the Stop Street Harassment blog about his research, and his views on how this degradation of gay and bisexual men can be alleviated.

Sean: You have done research on street harassment of gay and bisexual men. What is the most interesting fact you have uncovered in your research on this topic? Did you discover data that surprised you?

Patrick: I think it’s interesting that the percentage of men who reported constantly assessing their surroundings in public was actually larger for the men who perceived their masculinity to be higher than those who perceived their masculinity to be lower. While the figures are relatively close, it is a noticeable departure from what may initially be predicted. It is conceivable that men who perceive their masculinity to be higher are actually hypervigilant of possible stigmatization and therefore are more aware of potential threats to their desired level of masculinity. Men in the lower range may view harassment as inevitable – and have experienced it more frequently – and are thus less concerned with auditing public spaces for potential harassment because they already know how likely it is. At some point for these men, ‘constantly assessing their surroundings’ loses meaning because for them it is simply living. Lower levels may be reported because, although they are assessing surroundings, they are doing so unconsciously because of the ever-present very real possibility of harassment. For men who perceive higher levels of masculinity, guarding themselves against public acts of harassment is a more conscious process and thus reported at higher levels. This, of course, is just my interpretation.

Sean: How common is street harassment towards gay and bisexual men? Does this affect how gay and bisexual men use public spaces?

Patrick: As I’ve written about before, my survey respondents reported sometimes, often, or always feeling unwelcome in public about 90 percent of the time because of their perceived sexual orientation – and this affects how they navigate public spaces. About 71 percent said they constantly assess their surroundings, 69 percent said they avoid specific neighborhoods or areas, 67 percent reported not making eye contact with others, and 59 percent said they cross streets or take alternate routes – all to escape potential stranger harassment.

Sean: How common is street harassment among gay and bisexual men towards one another? Does this affect how gay and bisexual men interact with one another?

Patrick: I don’t have a lot of specific data on this, but did find that there are certain forms of harassment that are more commonly enacted by another gay/bisexual man than enacted by men perceived to be heterosexual. For example, getting whistled at or being touched/grabbed in a sexual way are forms of harassment that my respondents more often reported coming specifically from men they identify as gay, though it’s unclear how often this occurs, if it is specific to particular geographies, what sort of age or race dynamics might be at work, etc. Learning more about this will require more focused research – it’s something I wish I had thought more about before finalizing my survey.

Sean: What do you think can be done by community groups or local governments to alleviate street harassment of gay and bisexual men?

Patrick: It’s difficult to say what community groups or local governments can do to immediately alleviate street harassment, since it will likely take a cultural shift to really get to the root of the problem. Some of the most effective work being done here in DC is the harassment-focused WMATA advertisement campaign and the indecent exposure legislation that passed in February of this year. While there is of course much work to be done, these are very visible efforts that I think are creating real change – change that will lead us, I hope, to that cultural shift. Street harassment is still an issue that receives less attention than many other forms of harassment and violence, so Stop Street Harassment’s awareness-raising efforts are still critically important, such as International Anti-Street Harassment Week and the stories shared on its blog (and on other sites). I think the more we lift up the message that street harassment is occurring at alarming rates and that it affects people very deeply, and the more we call out companies for trivializing and at times promoting street harassment, the closer we will get to achieving equal access to public spaces.

Sean: Do you mind describing one of your experiences with street harassment? What happened, and how did that make you feel?

Patrick: I’ve written on Stop Street Harassment’s blog here and here about two particular times I was harassed on the street, and there are of course many more. And while these incidents are memorable, it’s important to note that not all incidents of harassment involve lengthy exchanges or even words at all. I’ve been harassed for holding hands with another boy, both verbally and non-verbally, and I’ve been harassed countless times while alone in often non-verbal ways. A shake of the head, a stare, an expression of disapproval – these actions force me to over-evaluate and to consider all public interactions as possibly threatening in some way.

Patrick’s work dealing specifically with street harassment has been published on Huffington Post, Fem2pt0, and Feministe, in addition to the Stop Street Harassment blog. You can follow Patrick on Twitter @patrickryne.

Sean has written for Stop Street Harassment since April 2011.  He is a library/research assistant at a labor union in Washington, D.C. and holds a Bachelor’s degree in economics from American University.

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Half of LGBT Members in the EU Avoid Public Places Because of Harassment

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A new study by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) sheds light on the levels of discrimination faced by LGBT members of the EU community, with important findings related to how this demographic experiences street harassment.

According to the FRA’s website, the results of the online survey of more than 93,000 LGBT individuals “provide valuable evidence of how LGBT persons in the EU and Croatia experience bias-motivated discrimination, violence and harassment in different areas of life, including employment, education, healthcare, housing and other services.”

A video on the FRA YouTube page illustrates that one-half of all respondents avoid public places, two-thirds avoid holding hands when in public, and four-fifths frequently overhear jokes being made at the expense of LGBT individuals.
In all countries, when asked “Where do you avoid being open about yourself as L, G, B or T for fear of being assaulted, threatened or harassed by others?” respondents reported the highest levels of fear in public spaces (restaurants, public transportation, streets, parking lots, parks, and other public premises) and lower (though still significant) levels at home, work, and school. Similarly, respondents overwhelmingly identified the “street, square, car parking lot / public place” when asked where their most recent incident of physical/sexual attack or threat of violence occurred.
The most serious incidences of harassment occur, in all countries, when there is more than one perpetrator, and these perpetrators tend to be male and often strangers to the harassed individuals (an indicator that many of these “most serious” incidences probably happen in public). A notable portion of this harassment (second only to ‘someone else you didn’t know’) was perpetrated by teenagers or groups of teenagers, a reminder that, while we tend to think of younger individuals as more accepting of non-normative identities, there is still a culture of intolerance that circulates globally.
This study underscores the importance of Stop Street Harassment’s and other organizations’ goal of educating the public about how critical this issue is to the lives of so many women and LGBT individuals (and women who identify as LGBT). While folks across all identity categories experience street harassment in unique ways, we are united in our goal of research, education, and mobilization so that surveys like these are no longer needed.

This is a guest post by Patrick McNeil. Patrick is finishing his master’s thesis at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C., where he is pursuing his Master’s in Women’s Studies. His work focuses on whether and how gay and bisexual men experience street harassment and how this form of harassment intersects with and diverges from the gender-based street harassment of women. Follow him on Twitter at @patrickryne.

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