Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

Employer threatens to fire anyone who calls police about harassment incident

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This did not happen to me. It happened to a life-long female friend of my sister. To protect their identities, I’m not going to say any names of people or places.

At work, one of her male co-workers drilled a hole in a wall to the women’s bathroom and spied on her when she was in there. When the boss found out, he fired the employee and fixed the wall. He then threatened to fire anyone who reports to the police what happened, because he wanted to protect the place’s reputation.

This is disgusting. He deserves a much harsher punishment than losing his job. Where does the boss get the idea that a gross invasion of privacy like this is not serious enough to report to the police? What if the boss was in the bathroom and someone spied on him? Would he have reacted differently?

She doesn’t want to report what happened because she’s afraid of losing her job that she really needs. What should she do? Should she report it and not care about losing her job? Should she sue, so she wouldn’t need the job? Should she try to tape the boss threatening to fire her and have him arrested for obstruction of justice?

– Anonymous

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Street harassment at Tahrir Square during May 27 protest

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Stop Street Harassment ally has an important post at his blog Rebel with a Cause about the street harassment of a famous Egyptian actress during the May 27 protest in Tahrir Square.

“Yesterday was an important day for the revolution. Protesters took Tahrir square again to assert revolution’s demands. Islamists groups decided not to participate yesterday so it was a test for liberal and secular groups to organize in the streets. It was considered a success given the thousands that showed up, but it was marred by a horrible incident of sexual harassment of the famous diva Sherihan.

Sherihan was an actress and performer loved by Egyptians particularly during the 80s and 90s. She suffered a severe car accident in mid-90s and it was rumored that it was a chapter of love and power saga that involved Alaa the elder son of Mubarak. She magically recovered and came back to the stage, only to suffer cancer a few years later and move away from the artistic scene. Sherihan was one of the few artists who participated in the revolution unlike many artists who withdrew from making a political stance.

My mother told me that this sad video was screened on TV that shows the horrible incident. The setting around her doesn’t look like Tahrir, some reported that this happened as she was leaving Tahrir yesterday.

What really angers me is the lack of attention such incident got and some of the horrible comments of victim-blame that I always hear when sexual harassment is brought up. Some wonder why she went out of her home! It makes me wonder how deep the denialism about gender inequality is in our country. Even activists refrain from mentioning the incident. Is it because they didn’t know? Or is it an attempt to maintain the silver-lining of the revolution? Is not really important to talk about now? Or is it deep-hidden patriarchy?

But the answer won’t be simple and many factors come at play here. What if this happened to one of the famous activists of the revolution? Does the revolution have an authoritarian system that controls who is important and who’s not? What if the victim of mass harassment was an unknown person? Would it get reported at all?

When Lara Logan was sexually assaulted in Tahrir right after Mubarak was toppled, Western media was all over covering her story. Western coverage was very uneven as well with some victim blaming and Islam bashing too. But Egyptian media failed to report on it. Is it because we deny sexual harassment? Is it because she’s a foreigner? Or we were simply overjoyed by Mubarak’s departure?

In gender battles, other factors interfere such as race, age, class, and power. I think we really need to think about these questions and recognize our prejudices. This is how we push the revolution forward.”

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The power of sexism in the United States

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Sex-based male domination in the United States has been present since it’s foundation.  It is a relationship that is based on economics and power: economics because women have and still do make less money than men, and many are dependent upon men for their survival; power because in relation to women, many men exercise their will (whether consciously or unconsciously) over women.

We live in a society in which sexually excessive staring, offensive language, inappropriate bodily contact, and objectification/oppression (even economically) is culturally acceptable.  We live in a society that professes life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for its citizens, but women (like many social groups) are systematically and routinely denied these values, these opportunities, these rights to live a life of their choosing.

If we analyze the concept of power as the exercising of ones will over others, we can see that male domination, and the subjection of women is something that is socially constructed at birth.  Possibly even pre-birth.  We will be able to see that overall women are socialized to think and behave in a way that benefits those with power (men).  On the other hand, overall men are socialized to treat women as an object, as something that is void of human emotions.  Thus this type of relationship creates an invisible social gap between the sexes.

Before the birth of a child, parents who know the sex of their baby purchase items that create gender roles i.e. pink clothing and dolls for girls, and blue clothing and toys like fire trucks, police cars, or construction style items.  Gender roles are reinforced through the use of media images that portray males as being strong, aggressive, and successful.  Opposite are images that portray females as being passive, quiet, and dependent on a knight in shining armor to save her.  I would even argue that under a capitalist society which is geared to make money, gender roles are created even more systematically in the areas education, peer interaction, and modern communication technology.  All of these examples plays into a system that leave women in a state of subjection.  This is a social construct of with men having power over women.

Such images, musical lyrics, toys, and even parenting skills creates a social system i.e. sexism that enforces this system, subjects women to slave/dependent social status, and separates men and women from having positive social interactions, and long healthy relationships.  An in depth analysis of sexism is required to understand and combat this social problem that has left women behind for centuries, and while I am not providing techniques to address this issue, I am telling men that we are responsible for what happens.  We are to put in more effort to tackle the issue of sexism because we come from that position of power, and have more access to change in this system.  We owe it to women to address this issue wherever it comes from because without women, we would not be here.  It is women that has given us life.  Not the other way around.

In conclusion, Audre Lorde once wrote, “The master’s tools will never be used to dismantle the master’s house.”  Frederick Douglass wrote, “Power concedes nothing without demands.  It never has, and it never will.”  I argue that this is the mentality of a fatalist.  A person who does not believe that a better tomorrow is possible.  If Gandhi, Nehru, and the people involved in India’s independence under British rule believed this they may have still be under British rule.  If the abolitionists of the U.S. possessed this mindset I might have been a slave.  If the many people throughout humankind’s history thought like this many people of different societies may have been in worse situations than what we are currently faced with.  The master’s house can be dismantled with his/her own tools, and power can concede without demand.  It is up to both men and women to believe.  If you do not believe in love, justice, equality, liberty, and freedom for all people, and in terms of sexism, the oppressive regime will continue.

– Christopher Smith

This post is part of the weekly blog series by male allies. We need men involved in the work to end the social acceptability of street harassment and to stop the practice, period. If you’d like to contribute to this weekly series, please contact me.

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Parallels of street harassment & police harassment

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Stopping street harassment is going to take women and men. The problem is that it’s often viewed as a woman’s issue alone, which clearly neglects that the majority of those who harass are men. As a Black man, I seldom worry about going somewhere having a person make unwanted advances, touching my person, or live in the constant fear that any moment I could be accosted.

Or do I?

In hearing the testimonies of women enduring street harassment, I couldn’t help but hear the testimonies of young men of color regarding police harassment. While street harassment and police harassment have key difference, in many important ways they’re similar.* Here are three important parallels:

It’s everywhere– I live in New York City, the mecca of diversity. However, when you look at the stop-and-frisk numbers for the city you find that Black and Latino (predominantly male) residents are singled out. In 2009, of 576,394 stops and frisks were performed and 84 percent of them were on Blacks and Latinos. This is astronomically high, given that Black and Latino compose roughly 26 and 27 percent of the population respectively. The harassment that men of color often undergo via the police is a constant pressure. When walking through Harlem, I routinely see Black boys approached by undercover officers and forced to submit to “random searches.”

These searches are anything but random and serve to make young boys and men feel unsafe in their own communities. In the same way that young men of color are subject to an “invisible force” that disrupts their life without consent, young women of color feel the same. Somehow we live in communities where both men and women of color feel unsafe, displaced and harmed by harassment. Neither forms of harassment lead to safer communities or healthy relationships.

It’s illegal- When we look at the stop-and-frisk data from NYC we see the number on reason someone is stopped and frisked is “furtive movement.” Do you know what that is? Me neither. In fact, you’re not supposed to! The goal is to find any reason possible to stop and deter you from going where you’re going or living your life peacefully. Sound familiar?

Of course disproportionately stopping and frisking people is illegal, just as street harassment should be, but too many of us turn a blind eye to both. It’s going to take those that are the most and the least affected by street harassment and police harassment to come together to fight them. One sided action is not enough.

Knowledge is Powerful!

The Center for Constitutional Rights and Hollaback! have begun to carefully documenting the incidents of harassment. But we all must realize documentation is not enough! As organizers and members of communities, we need to create models that reduce levels of harassment, increase feelings of safety, and heal wounds within communities where gender violence, police violence, and all forms of violence have cracked the foundation.

Here in New York, I work with the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement which has developed as Know Your Rights campaign for communities of African descent. The People’s Self-Defense campaign is ultimately designed to give community members the tools to develop healthy communities that are safe spaces for all people, not a select few. Simply pointing at the problem will not cause it to change; instead strategic coalition building and intersectional approaches will be the proving ground for our collective to stop street harassment. The moment is ripe for collaboration and growth, but only if we can see the common harms and develop diverse responses to them.  

*One of the first things I ever learned in organizing and doing work was “don’t do analogs.” While this is good advice, in some cases analogs are essential to creating buy-in from those who may not always see the “relevance” of a social problem. Admittedly there are differences between the two, but as an organizer I’m more interested in getting people to see the common ground so we can develop diverse solutions to these problems.

– Dr. L’Heureux Dumi Lewis, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Black Studies at the City College of New York

This post is part of the weekly blog series by male allies. We need men involved in the work to end the social acceptability of street harassment and to stop the practice, period. If you’d like to contribute to this weekly series, please contact me.

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“If I was a woman, would the harassment have been worse?”

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It’s usually nothing serious, but I ride my bicycle a lot, and sometimes drivers pass me and yell things at me. I can never understand what they’re saying. I’m guessing they’re drivers who think they own the road and cyclists don’t belong there.

It normally happens on campus during the day, so it doesn’t bother me then. But last week, this happened when I was coming back to my dorm at 1:00 AM from a bar that was 3 miles away. I immediately thought, “If I was a woman, would the harassment have been worse? Would they have followed me while repeatedly shouting sexually explicit comments, then gotten angry when I asked them to stop?” Since the cold weather was gone (it was the end of April) and I was riding a bike, it was too warm to cover up. That in combination with the fact that I was coming from a bar means that I probably would have been dressed in a way that harassers would refer to as “asking for it”.

Although I’m a man, male superiority (or any superiority) still bothers me. A woman has just as much of a right to ride her bike at 1:00 in the morning as a man does, and she has the right to feel safe when doing so.

– Concealed Weapon

Location: University of Connecticut

Share your street harassment story today and help raise awareness about the problem. Find suggestions for what YOU can do about this human rights issue.

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