Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

Two Women in Washington, DC Sexually Assault a Man

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womengropemanWhile the street harassment usually centers around women because we experience it and are usually impacted by it the most, some men experience street harassment and violence too. In our 2014 nationally representative study, 25% of men said they’d experienced it, with a disproportionate number of them identifying as LGBQT. While most said other men harassed them, there were some who said the perpetrators were women. This recent news story in Washington, DC, is an example of what that can look like:

Via NBC Washington:

“Ayanna Marie Knight, 22, of Las Vegas, was charged with third-degree sexual abuse, police said late Tuesday, explaining that an “observant pedestrian” alerted them of Knight’s location. Police are still looking for the second woman.

Video released Monday by the Metropolitan Police Department shows the man waiting in a checkout line at a gas station on the 1700 block of New York Avenue NE about 4 p.m. Oct. 7 when a woman in front of him begins to dance and rub her body against him. A second woman, dressed in red, follows the man and appears to grope him repeatedly.

According to a police report, the women “used force and grabbed (the victim’s) groin and buttocks multiple times in a very aggressive manner without his permission and without his consent.”

The victim told News4 he was humiliated by the attack. “I was assaulted sexually,” he said, asking that his name be withheld. “I felt 100 percent violated. I felt really humiliated also, because when someone is just grabbing your body parts without your permission, no matter who it is, that’s just a violation completely.”

The man said he tried to back away, but the woman continued to advance. “As they were grabbing me, it wasn’t like they were grabbing pants or anything like that,” he said.

The victim asked two cashiers at the gas station to call police, but they “just sat there,” he said. Frustrated, he walked outside and started dialing the number himself. He said he tried to get into his car, but the women grabbed his arm and in an effort to prevent him from leaving. He broke free, walked into the gas station’s car wash and called police. The women eventually left, he said.”

Groping, assault, and sexual harassment are never okay. Everyone should be treated with respect and should be asked for consent before anyone does anything physical (even for a hug). I hope he will be okay.

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Costa Rica: A Protest, a Law, and a Campaign Targeting Men

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A boy holds a sign reading “no more machismo” during the “Gracias a Gerardo” march in downtown San José. Lindsay Fendt/The Tico Times
A boy holds a sign reading “no more machismo” during the “Gracias a Gerardo” march in downtown San José. Lindsay Fendt/The Tico Times

This has been a busy month in Costa Rica.

Last week there was a march against street harassment.

Via the Tico Times:

“More than 100 people wearing white and carrying signs marched in the Costa Rican capital San José on Sunday morning to protest against sexual harassment in public places, or street harassment. They also marched in solidarity with the family of Gerardo Cruz, a young man who was stabbed shortly after publicly shaming another man for lewd behavior in the street…

Marchers said they came out for several reasons, ranging from support for the Cruz family to making a stand against sexual harassment and machista culture.

“I came because I’m a mother and I want to support a better world for my daughter and show respect for all the women in the country,” said María Gutiérrez, a 33-year-old judicial branch worker who pushed a stroller with her baby.

Rebeca Pérez, a 33-year-old makeup artist, was there wearing white with her son, Aaron. “I’m here because I want to show my son that we [women] deserve respect, and to set a good example for him, not the negative ones we see every day.”

Pérez said the first time she got harassed in the street was in front of her home when she was 9 years old. A man approached her and started asking her questions about sexual development, she said.

“I hope there’s a change,” she said, carrying a sign that read, “If we teach our children, street harassment will end.”

This month, the women’s rights group Colectivo Acción Respeto Costa Rica and other organizations launched an initiative to draft and submit a bill for criminalizing catcalls and other forms of sexual harassment in public spaces.

Via the Tico Times:

“The groups announced their proposal during a press conference at the Legislative Assembly where lawmakers from the ruling Citizen Action Party (PAC), National Liberation Party (PLN) and Broad Front Party (FA) offered support to promote the adoption of the draft. Among its main goals the initiative asks for the inclusion of street harassment as an offense in the country’s Penal Code.

Alejandra Arburola Cabrera, a spokeswoman with the Colectivo, told The Tico Times that they started working on the initiative months ago, however the recent stabbing of Gerardo Cruz prompted them to speed up the discussion and include lawmakers and citizens.

Cruz was stabbed twice one day after he posted on his Facebook profile a video he shot of another man recording video with his cellphone up the skirt of a female pedestrian in downtown San José. Cruz has since undergone three surgeries and currently remains at Calderón Guardia hospital.

Arburola said Cruz’s case is a reflection of the reality that haunts women from the moment they leave their houses everyday. “We are seen as objects, with no rights and submitted to constant violence. This needs to stop as soon as possible,” she said.

Tuesday’s meeting also allowed the groups’ leaders to call on all citizens to participate in the drafting of the bill, following a number of priorities identified by the group in recent months.

Among them, they believe the bill should clearly define street harassment based on gender or sexual orientation as a criminal offense punishable with prison sentences…

This isn’t the first time Costa Rica considers penalizing street harassment. In 2005, then-Costa Rica legislator Gloria Valerín Rodríguez (Social Christian Unity Party) introduced a bill that would have added street harassment against women to Costa Rica’s penal code.

Valerín proposed a fine of 30 to 50 days minimum wage for perpetrators. The bill was unsuccessful.”

There is also a new social media campaign in Costa Rico to engage men in the issue. The Ombudsman’s office, the National Institute for Women and NGO “El acoso callejero no es cosa de hombre” (Street sexual harrasement is not a man’s thing) launched “videos and messages from artists, athletes, journalists and other personalities saying that real men don’t catcall, make obscene gestures, take pictures or videos on the street.”

Here is one of them.

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Video: Street harassment takes a toll

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Conversations About Street Harassment is an interview series, created by transgender activist Charlie Kerr (the co-chair of The Trevor Project’s Youth Advisory Council) and mixed media visual artist Randon Rosenbohm. It explores a diverse group of young peoples’ experiences with street harassment through an intersectional lens.

This is the first video in the series and includes young people’s definitions of and experiences of street harassment. It was filmed at the LGBTQ Center at Brooklyn College and the Brooklyn College Women’s Center.

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“Lost my urge to grope women”

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Lost my urge to grope women on the subway when I was 17 after some tall blonde 35ish year old lady found it necessary to slam her knee into my junk. That one hurt like a MF. Now, whenever I get the urge to grope, the memory of that knee rings “stop” like a siren ringing in my brain.

Years have passed and now I have a wife, two daughters, a son and two nieces. I tell them this story and why I deserved it. I say, “Don’t be afraid to give the bastard pain because that’s the only way he’ll ever learn to respect you!”

I still respect the tall blond mature woman who kneed me in the junk when I was 17 years old. For the sake of my wife and daughters, I’m glad she stopped me……..

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

Since city budgets are in the red, the cops won’t be able to help you. If a guy follows you, or gets in your face, then you’ll have to give him pain. Or else he might give you some pain. Only when enough strong women fight back will this problem ever end.

– Anonymous

Location: NYC

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

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Afghanistan: No excuse for street harassment

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Painting by Roya Saberzada, 16

Guest Blog Post for International Anti-Street Harassment Week 2015

To be honest, I didn’t understand Afghan women’s problems till I got engaged. Before that, I was living in a family of men. I have three brothers and no biological sisters living with us. My mother is a traditional woman who believes that in-order to go to heaven; she HAS TO obey my father. It is the belief of so many other Afghan women I have met too.

Before, although I knew something is wrong here, but I couldn’t understand or feel it, till I fell in love with Fereshta. I saw the first street harassment to the girl I loved just in the second day of our engagement, and during an interval of two months I had seen at least a dozen instances of street harassments against her.

Sometimes the harassment seemed small and included men at her, but other times, we would be abused because she was driving and I was sitting next to her. It became obvious to me what most Afghans think about women driving. In their eyes, I am an honor-less man who lets his wife drive the car while he is in the car.

Many times I couldn’t control myself and fought back, sometimes even physically, because I love my fiancé and I couldn’t watch people harm her. Harassment makes women angry, but it should also make men who claim to love women angry.

I knew my fiancé was harassed when I wasn’t around, but what made me even angrier was that sometimes they harassed my fiancé even when I was with her. This was their way to denying my masculinity and her respect. The harassers thought that by doing so, they were taking the ownership of her body from me, as if I owned her body. I am not talking about the times that we were in the car and someone started shouting at us. They harassed and touched her even when I was walking right beside her in the bazaar. Most of the times, when confronted they denied the harassment claiming that it was an accident and sometimes they escaped. Other times, in the worse cases, they stood against us and fought back. They even defended her behavior.

After experiencing these instances with Freshta, I was assured that the harassment of women doesn’t have anything to do with women. I knew that it absolutely isn’t women’s fault. Sometimes we hear that some radical Mullahs say: “If women don’t go out alone, it won’t happen to them. It is the consequence of those who go out without a man.” But what about those days when I was with Fereshta and she was harassed in the streets of Kabul?

Some of them say: “The way women dress, grabs the attention of men.” I always think about this and say to myself: “OK, for a moment let’s consider that they are right. Let’s say that it is all because of the way the women dress. But does it mean it is right to harass women in the streets?”

And of course I am not talking specifically about Fereshta.  There are women who are harassed even with Chadori, the most conservative attire in Afghanistan. What excuses their harassment?

So, I can surely say that harassment won’t stop unless men rethink their behaviors.

By Omid Haqbin, cross-posted from Dukhtarane Rabia (Daughters of Rabia): A blog on social justice in Afghanistan.

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