LGBTQ Archives | Page 6 of 10 | Stop Street Harassment

“Hid in the grounds for three hours before I felt safe enough to come out.”

May 14, 2015 By Contributor

I am a transgender man (pre-hormones and surgery) and I have been homeless since November 2014. I have spent some time on the streets and one day I was sitting under a shelter at the beach, smoking a cigarette and taking in the sea air and just relaxing for a while before having to think about finding a place to sleep for the night.

These two young cisgender men came and sat on the bench next to the one I was sitting on, in spite of there being other free benches further from me, and I felt uneasy about them from the second they sat down. Maybe because they were both drinking beer and being quite brash in their manner. I didn’t want to move though in case they followed me, so I put in my headphones and just stared ahead at the water, although I could feel their eyes on me as they talked to each other in what sounded like South African accents.

Eventually I couldn’t help but look back at them because they’ve been gawping at me for the past 20 minutes, and one of them says, ʺAre you going to get yourself sorted out?ʺ gesturing to my backpack and sleeping bag. I feign ignorance and say, ʺWhat do you mean?ʺ He says ʺI see you have a sleeping bag thereʺ, and I tell him I’ve been camping. He wants to know where, and I tell him it’s none of his business and look away. But I know they have clocked me as a rough sleeper and by now I am really scared because I don’t know what their intentions are. I want to leave but I am still afraid of them following me, so I watch a long YouTube video on my phone and try to distract myself while sending out very clear ʺI don’t want to talkʺ vibes.

The video was 45min long and when it was finished they were still there, still looking. I took my headphones out and one of them asked me if I’m all right and they didn’t mean to make me uncomfortable. (Evidently they knew what they were doing, and if they cared that much they would have moved or at least stopped ogling me!). I lied and said they didn’t, and then said, ʺI am going home nowʺ and got up and started walking off. The seafront road is long and straight and I could feel them watching me still. I tried to walk confidently and forced myself not to look back until I could turn off the main road. They hadn’t followed me, but even so I ducked into a church and hid in the grounds for three hours before I felt safe enough to come out.

I do not identify as female, but I am still read as female and as such I face many of the same issues. One day I will start hormones and eventually I will pass as male 100% of the time. When that happens I will be even more mindful of how I interact with women and those with feminine gender expressions in order to ensure their comfort and safety. I just wish I had told those men that yes, they WERE making me uncomfortable and I would appreciate being left alone. But maybe if I had, the outcome would have been worse. Who knows?

I am moving to a new town soon and will no longer be homeless homeless, and when I am settled I will become involved in starting a new Hollaback group. I want people to know that street harassment is not something that only happens to women and for other trans/queer people to see one of their own community at the forefront of this issue.

Optional: What’s one way you think we can make public places safer for everyone?

Make harassers directly and immediately accountable for their actions. Introduce on-the-spot fines for street harassers and make citizen’s arrests an option, with incentives to encourage intervention and prevent ‘bystander syndrome’. If the harassment occurs from a vehicle, the offender should incur penalty points on their driving licenses. The UK has so much camera surveillance already in place that gathering evidence should not be a problem in most areas.

– Vince

Location: Worthing, England

Share your street harassment story for the blog.
See the book 50 Stories about Stopping Street Harassers for more idea

Harassment for Holding Hands

January 14, 2015 By HKearl

Check out the latest Huffington Post article by our board member Patrick McNeil. Here’s an excerpt:

“During a talk called “All The Little Things” posted on the TEDx Talks YouTube channel last week, Irish drag queen Panti Bliss – appearing before a crowd in Dublin last September – explained why an act like holding your partner’s hand isn’t so thoughtless for everyone.

“I am 45 years old and I have never once unselfconsciously held hands with a lover in public,” Bliss says. “I am 45 years old and I have never once casually, comfortably, carelessly held hands with a partner in public.”

Why? Because around the world still today, street harassment is a major problem for women, LGBT people, people of color, people with disabilities, and low-income people. Bliss’ focus is on homophobia, as was her similarly personal and impassioned speech about a year ago when she asked, “Have you ever been standing at a pedestrian crossing when a car drives by and in it are a bunch of lads, and they lean out the window and they shout “fag!” and throw a milk carton at you?”

“Now it doesn’t really hurt. It’s just a wet carton and anyway they’re right – I am a fag. But it feels oppressive.”

Bliss’ experiences aren’t unusual. Actually, they’re common. In the United States, LGBT people are more likely than straight people to report experiencing street harassment (both verbal and physical), according to a national study released last year by the nonprofit organization Stop Street Harassment. And the harassment starts young: 70 percent of LGBT people said they experienced it by age 17, compared to 49 percent of straight people (still a significant figure).”

Why We Shouldn’t Lose Sight of Full Equality

October 30, 2014 By Contributor

Cross-posted with permission from the author Patrick McNeil, our board member, from the Huffington Post

Late last week, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel found that the Department of the Army had discriminated against Tamara Lusardi based on her gender identity in a significant ruling that said Lusardi’s restricted daily movement “constituted discriminatory harassment under the guiding principles of Title VII [of the Civil Rights Act].”

At the same time, marriage equality is becoming the new normal, and the United States has suddenly become a nation where nearly two-thirds of same-sex couples live in a state where they can get married. Just this past Saturday morning, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that same-sex couples in six more states would receive federal benefits and have their marriages recognized by the federal government.

This is all very good news, but GLSEN’s annual school climate survey, also released last week, is a good reminder that – while LGBT Americans live in an increasingly evolving society – there’s still a long way to go.

At school, according to the survey, LGBT students really don’t feel safe. More than half (55.5%) of LGBT students feel unsafe because of their sexual orientation – and more than a third because of their gender expression. In the past month, almost a third missed at least one day of school because they felt uncomfortable, while more than a third avoided certain gender-segregated spaces (like bathrooms and locker rooms) for the same reason. More than two-thirds frequently or often heard homophobic remarks, and more than half heard negative comments about gender expression – like not being “masculine enough” or “feminine enough.”

LGBT students are particularly susceptible to verbal and physical harassment at school, and about half (49%) said they’ve experienced electronic harassment in the past year – such as via texting or on social media. What this all leads to is higher levels of depression and lower levels of self-esteem.

These findings, which are actually much improved from just a few years ago, are still very terrifying, given that schools are meant to be safe spaces where children spend a significant portion of their day. The findings are also very parallel with what we know about how LGBT people navigate and experience public spaces.

According to Stop Street Harassment’s (SSH) national study released earlier this year, LGBT people were more likely than straight people to report experiencing street harassment (both verbal and physical) – and it starts young. Seventy percent of LGBT people said they experienced it by age 17, compared to 49 percent of straight people (which is still very significant). In the same way that students in GLSEN’s survey reported avoiding certain activities because they felt unsafe, SSH’s study found that LGBT people were more likely to give up an outdoor activity for the same reason.

In my own research on the street harassment of gay and bisexual men – an admittedly much narrower group – survey respondents also reported high levels of avoiding specific areas or neighborhoods and crossing the street or taking an alternative route in order to sidestep unwanted interactions in what they felt were unsafe environments. In addition, 71.3 percent said they constantly assessed their surroundings when navigating public spaces.

That’s not healthy.

Whether at school or in public spaces, many LGBT youth don’t feel safe and continue to face disgraceful levels of discrimination (and some don’t feel safe at home, either). But when they enter the workforce, disadvantages persist.

In the absence of federal legislation like the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), it’s still legal in a majority of states to discriminate against employees simply on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity (even in some states where same-sex marriage is now legal). On the job, report after report notes the existence of persistent harassment and discrimination for LGBT people. And this is layered on top of pervasive race and gender discrimination.

This year, 50 years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed, it’s certainly satisfying to know that the Act continues to guide favorable, groundbreaking rulings, like in the case of Tamara Lusardi. But we shouldn’t allow extraordinary advances to overshadow the amount of progress we still need to make toward full equality at school, in public spaces, in the workplace – and everywhere in between. Indeed, we’ve only just begun.

Serbia: Surveying Youth about Street Harassment

October 20, 2014 By Contributor

Our six 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 first post is from our team in Serbia. Their projects are supported by SSH donors. If you would like to donate to support the 2015 mentees, we would greatly appreciate it!

After the political change fourteen years ago, the civil sector in Serbia has been dealing with the transformation of extremely violent society. There are high rates of domestic violence, juvenile delinquency, slow judiciary, inadequate laws and even less adequate penalties, and a society that was not ready to change. These are just some of the problems that demanded immediate reaction. Thanks to consistent efforts of feminist groups and NGOs, we have a new set of laws and certainly more awareness about gender-based violence.

However, these circumstances led to the minimizing the issue of street harassment. Since there was no published survey, members of our group, Equity Youth Association, believed that the right way to start dealing with this issue is to collect the data, first. In Niš, Serbia, there is a University and over 19 secondary schools, so we decided to focus our survey on youth between 18 and 30 years old.

So far, we have conducted a survey in three secondary schools and at two Faculties. We weren’t very optimistic about how open schools and Facilities would be for collaboration since the education system had various difficulties at the beginning of the school year. We have been pleasantly surprised that we haven’t been rejected, yet.

Oct2014-SerbiaSHsurvey — Students taking their surveys!

What has encouraged us the most is the reaction of the psychologist of the school that has mostly female students: “I’m so glad you have brought up this subject. Our girls are completely unaware of what harassment is. And how couldn’t they be? We live in society where it is normal to stare and comment on everybody and everything. They are expecting to be looked at. They are taught that looking good is the only thing that matters. They validate themselves through how many offensive, primitive comments they receive daily. It’s disturbing.”

It was upsetting to hear that most of the described behaviors from our survey are seen as “normal” and an “every-day thing”. But, the fact that majority of girls aren’t feeling pleasant when they experienced these things was an indicator that this is something that can be changed.

Boys were quite honest, as well: “Of course I have done this. What is the other way to approach a girl, anyway? I have to draw her attention somehow. Once she meets me, she will know that I’m better than that.” So, they are aware that is wrong, they just don’t know what the alternative is.

One of the teachers shared her story with us: “During my class, in the classroom on ground floor, a man approached the window and started masturbating. Kids started to scream and he luckily ran away. But, I was so shocked that I was unable to move. When I come to think of it, I didn’t tell anybody about this, until now.”

We have also noticed that there are city parks where usually young people are gathered that are recognized as places where harassment occurs. Strangely enough, even though they are always full with young people, especially during the summer, street lighting in these places is not very good.

There are, as well, a few questions in our survey about the LGBT population, or people who are perceived as LGBT because of the stereotypes. These questions, as we have expected, were the one that have received the most reactions. One of the principals said that kids in his school are “normal” and have no idea what those words like gay and lesbian mean.

One of the girls got very angry when she read these questions. She had marched to her teacher and screamed: “Look what they are asking us. They are probably thinking that it’s ok to be a faggot or a dyke, but I would kill them all.”

The teacher was visibly uncomfortable because of the girl’s reaction and this is how she tried to make things right: “But, it’s not “their” fault that “they” are like “that”. I read about this. Something happens in mother’s body during third month of pregnancy that causes them to be like “that”.”

Living in homophobic society, we were expecting to get all kinds of reactions, but we weren’t prepared for this amount of ignorance. It is more than obvious that we need education among all structures of society.

The last set of questions in our survey is about legislation and the lack of the definition of sexual harassment in public places in our legal system. The students’ answers were rather discouraging. One law student wrote, “Making a legal frame won’t change a thing. Prosecutors are not able to prove there was a murder, let along street harassment. Rule of law is unattainable for us.”

However we are grateful for each and every reaction we get and every question answered. Hopefully, the results will indicate what should be our next step and what could really make a change.

Marija Stanković, Equity Youth Association and the lead SSH Safe Public Spaces Mentee in Serbia.

News Highlights: Oct. 6, 2014

October 6, 2014 By HKearl

Here are some of the stories I’ve been reading the last few days:

Egyptian Streets:

“Ahmed Fayed, 17, was stabbed to death on Sunday while attempting to rescue women from sexual harassment, reported activist group Shoft Ta7arosh (‘I Saw Harassment’).

According to local media reports, the young man was stabbed in the heart after intervening to stop the sexual harassment of a group of women in the town of Ra’as Al-Bar, located in the governorate of Damietta….

Ahmed Fayed, 17, was stabbed to death on Sunday while attempting to rescue women from sexual harassment, reported activist group Shoft Ta7arosh (‘I Saw Harassment’).

Medium:

For one full week in September, we asked women from 10 different cities around the globe to keep a diary record of any kind of unwanted attention they received, including every untoward advance from a stranger, every leering stare and smile and “Hey baby” directed their way.

Your Local Guardian:

“Bin men working for Kingston Council have been suspended after a 13-year-old girl claimed they blew kisses and wolf-whistled at her.

The girl was waiting at a bus stop in Chessington on Tuesday, in her school uniform, when the Veolia workers are said to have passed her and made the lewd gestures.

The girl’s father said: “At the time of the incident, this caused her alarm, panic and distress and she immediately contacted me on my mobile.

“This in turn caused me stress, anger and panic because I was travelling to work and helpless at a time when she felt she needed me most.”

A spokesman for Veolia, the council contractor employing the men, said: “We have been made aware of these incidents and have acted swiftly to identify those involved, who have now been suspended pending our disciplinary process.”

CHR Michelsen Institute’s new report “Sexual violence and state violence against women in Egypt, 2011-2014”

“Egyptian women were crucial to the movement that overthrew Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in the 2011 revolution. However, both in the revolutionary and post-revolutionary period women have also become targets of sexual violence, including by the state. This CMI Insight will analyze how we can understand sexual assaults of women in the context of political unrest in Egypt.”

Al Jazeera America:

“New York City has launched a Web page aimed at curbing sexual harassment on public transportation, joining a number of cities worldwide that have taken the fight against assault online.

The page went live on Oct. 1 on the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) website. It features a reporting tool for victims of harassment that allows passengers to file reports anonymously, submit of photo evidence and listen to safety tips.

Sexual harassment, which can range from leering and nonverbal gestures to comments and unwanted sexual contact, affects the daily commutes of countless people around the world.

The MTA’s new effort will also bring video cameras inside subway cars, where much of the harassment takes place.

According to Kevin Ortiz, an MTA spokesman, the agency will order 940 new subway cars equipped with cameras that will come into use over the next few years.

While there are many cameras throughout the subway system, Ortiz said, there are currently none inside subway cars.

“The cameras inside the cars will act as a further deterrent,” he added.

The new initiative resulted from conversations between MTA officials, the city’s Public Advocate Letitia James and organizations committed to supporting victims of sexual violence.”

Outlook India:

The pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong took an ugly turn with women protesters alleging sexual assaults by men opposing the Occupy Central movement, which entered eight day today.

A woman protester has alleged that she and other male pro-democracy activists were sexually assaulted by a man opposing the Occupy movement in Causeway Bay on Friday and police did nothing about it.

A video uploaded on the website of the Hong Kong based South China Morning Post showed an older man in a white polo shirt violently groping a young woman while arguing with her.

A woman identified as Christine was quoted by the Post as saying that she was standing as part of a human chain when the man lying on the ground sexually assaulted the girl.

“I felt very, very scared, insulted and threatened,” she was quoted as saying by the Post.

Human Rights at Home Blog:

“The movement against street harassment is growing. And leading anti-harassment advocacy groups like Hollaback and Stop Street Harassment characterize it as a basic human rights issue…

Wide access to social media is an important factor fueling the resurgence of interest in, and activism on, this issue, as women can easily share their experiences on-line and provide support for confronting the harassers or seeking policy changes. Indeed, the Belgian film went viral and prompted new legislation in Belgium to criminally punish harassers with fines or even imprisonment. In India, Egypt and a growing number of other locales, activists are using on-line mapping to pinpoint areas where street harassment most often occurs and to call for a greater law enforcement presence.

Socially-engaged art has also helped build momentum to take this issue seriously. For example, feminist artist Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, who will be in residence at Northeastern University next week, has traveled around the country with her participatory public art project on street harassment, Stop Telling Women to Smile.”

Logan Squarist

“Some people still think that men and women are at least generally on an even footing,” says Sara Tebeau, a new resident of Logan Square. “But a prime example of why we aren’t is that there are no women yelling at men on the street. None.”

Boamah-Archemapong agrees: “I don’t think you’d ever see a man walking around in Logan square—or anywhere—who feels uncomfortable because he’s being looked up. It’s crazy that it’s 2014 and we’re still fighting this kind of thing, but you’re going to hear about it until my 70 cents is no longer a problem, and until I’m not afraid to walk down the street or have people think calling me a b-tch or slut or ho is OK.”

Gender & Society (written by our new board member Dr. Laura S. Logan)

“It is important to look below the surface of street harassment to see why it might influence queer women’s community involvement and sense of safety and security. Some incidents of homophobic violence against members of queer communities begin with street harassment (here) but research suggests that gay men who are victims of hate crime are often targeted when they are in gay spaces, such as gay-borhoods and near gay bars. Those who attack gay men often premeditate the attack and operate in groups to outnumber a lone gay man or a gay male couple.

However, frequently when lesbians are victims of anti-gay harassment and violence, they are attacked in everyday spaces such as parking lots and college campuses (here and here). Perpetrators who target lesbians are most often men and alone; however, the lesbian is often not alone but is with another woman or more than one other woman. Typically the attacker is a man but he has not gone to a gay area to find his lesbian victim/s and he hasn’t premeditated his verbal, physical or sexual assault. Rather, the harasser has chosen to act in that moment, likely as he interprets visual cues that for him identify the women as queer. In other words, violence in public space against queer women surfaces in the moment – as does street harassment.

Feminists, queer scholars, and activists have long argued that street harassment and violence against gay men and queer and straight women is about policing gender and sexuality, and that the “police” are almost always heterosexual men. But the pattern here, the difference in the characteristics associated with attacks on gay men versus attacks on lesbians, suggests that harassment and violence against queer women (and indeed all women and queer individuals) is linked to rape culture where the male gaze conveys and embodies domination, entitlement and ownership.”

Sarah Makes Maps:

“After hurting my foot and winding up on crutches, I noticed an increase in comments I was getting on the street. I decided to record and map all the comments I received on my way home from work for the rest of the week.

The map was part whimsical, and part born from frustration. I’m not the first person to talk about street harassment, and this wasn’t the first time that I experienced it. Something about being on crutches made the experience more potent, as if I was being targeted specifically, if not deliberately, because I appeared more vulnerable.

The comments I received fell on a wide spectrum. Some were kind, playful, or sympathetic. Others were a bit infantilizing or bordered in offensive or intrusive. Others were clearly sexual, offensive, or even predatory. I’ve chosen to group them all together for an important reason.

I do not believe that a single man who made any of the comments on my map wished me harm, physically or otherwise. I believe they all had benign intent, and some probably thought they were encouraging me. I believe each man regarded his comments in isolation: as a single, direct interaction. However, pieced together over a 2.5 block commute, over four days of a week, and more, the comments affect me and my thoughts the same way they affect my map: they overwhelm, they disrupt, and they engulf.”

Cafe.com

“Recently a friend of mine told me that she’s bothered by men on the street commenting on her four-year-old daughter’s looks. My first thought was, “Oh, people compliment little girls, it’s harmless.” But she did a little imitation of the men—the squinty eyes, the “so pretty” in a tone thisclose to crooning and teeth-sucking—and I believed her. Any woman can identify the tone of a catcall versus a friendly comment, and this was firmly in the zone of catcall. For a four-year-old girl.

So I decided to conduct my own amateur sociological survey. I posted, to our neighborhood listserv, a question to my fellow Brooklyn parents about the comments they get on their kids’ looks when they’re out on the street. Including my friend, I got 11 responses, all from mothers, for about 15 kids ranging in age from 18 months to six years. Nine of the kids were boys and six were girls….”

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