Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming
Wow, in Dubai all taxis will soon have money stalls for the exchange of money. Why you ask? Because there are taxi drivers who sexually harass women passengers by touching their hands inappropriately when the women pay for the ride! This way there will be no reason for hand touching.
Champ Osmond was charged with public lewdness and harassment after he flashed a woman on the New York City subway. The woman flagged down cops at the Nevins Street Subway station who dealt with the issue appropriately. Nice work, woman and the police. Bad work, Champ.
Over the weekend in the Washington, DC, area, two women survived attacks by male harassers/assailants in public places.
A man with a knife attacked a woman in Rock Creek Park. She was able to fight back and to use his knife against him to stab his hand. Police are looking for any tips about the assailant. Call the U.S. Park Police at (202) 610-8737.
A man with a gun shot a woman in the ankle after the woman refused to give him her phone number. She was on her way home from a party in southeast Washington, DC, walking with her cousin.
In my blog title, I note that I’m glad they didn’t die. I really am. Other women have not fared so well. For example, two of the three teenagers I blogged about in March who were killed by men in public were running in parks when men raped and murdered them. As another example, last fall, a teenager killed another teenager with a gun after the teen girl refused his advances. And here are some other stories about times when men in public have killed women, often after women refused their advances.
When will it end? When will women be safe in public?
A defense lawyer in Australia has devised a solution for ending rape: skinny jeans. Like courts in South Korea (2008) and Italy (1999) that ruled on similar cases, an Australian jury acquitted an alleged rapist based on the defense lawyer’s claim that his client could not have removed the woman’s skinny jeans without her help and therefore he did not rape her.
Of course, in this particular case, the woman the man raped disagrees. But too bad for her, right? It’s her fault, right? What was she thinking wearing provocative skinny jeans in the first place? And good, her rapist is free! He can go attack her or other women again. Yippee!
Umm, no. Everything is wrong with this outcome and the logic behind it.
Clothes can be ripped or forced off of people or people can be coerced into taking off their own clothes. People can be engaged in consensual foreplay or related sexual acts but if one of them takes it further without the other person’s consenst, then they are entering the land of rape. There are just many variables – with or without skinny jeans – that can result in rape.
And let me ask a question. What if a man was wearing skinny jeans and he got robbed? Would he be disbelieved because of his pants? After all, he is the one who must have taken his wallet out of his jeans.
Let me answer my question. I doubt anyone would argue or believe that the kind of pants he was wearing would eliminate the possibility of a robbery. But that’s the kind of frightening logic at work in this case.
So why are there people who believe women are to blame/are lying when women are wearing skinny jeans and men are raping them? It seems like only with crimes of sexual violence do such absurd victim blaming excuse come flying out. And that’s a big problem and a barrier to working to end sexual violence. Now women whom men have raped will probably be even less likely to report the rape if they know that their clothing will be under scrutiny and could result in the rapist walking free. And that is wrong.
Check out the work of Jeans for Justice, a nonprofit organization based in San Diego that was founded in response to a similar jeans-related argument in a 1999 Italian rape trial. Their work focuses on how rape has nothing to do with what a survivor wears. They use fashion as a vehicle to speak out against sexual violence and raise funds to promote prevention through awareness and education, by creating partnerships with cutting edge events, designers, innovators, survivors and advocates. It’s stories like this one in Australia that will keep them busy. Find out how you can get involved.
“Don’t shy away – speak out” is an anti-sexual harassment campaign launched by activists in Lebanon to address the problem in public places and the workplace.
“Raghida Ghamlouch, a social worker with the non-governmental Lebanese Council to Resist Violence Against Women, said Lebanon’s social fabric does not encourage victims to speak out.
‘Lebanese society is still macho and systematically places the blame on the woman,’ Ghamlouch told AFP.
‘Women are told it is their fault if they hitch a cab off the street, if they are dressed a certain way, if they come home late, and so forth,’ she added.
‘And for women who are adults, it is even worse: They are accused of having deliberately provoked the man.’
Another factor that silences victims are Lebanon’s unjust laws, which do not explicitly consider harassment a crime.
And a convicted rapist in Lebanon is let off the hook if he consents to marry his victim.
‘Even police mock women who come in to their station to file complaints of harassment or domestic violence,’ Hashem said….
‘If the complaints increase, perhaps then the authorities cannot discount it,’ Hashem said. ‘Perhaps then they will see it is a real problem.'”
So clearly the activists have their work cut out for them and their work is very much needed!
It’s crazy how world-wide victim-blaming for gender-based violence is, huh? From Egypt to India to the UK to the US of A and now Lebanon…I am tired of hearing that women are to blame!
Anyway, bravo to the Lebanese activists and may they help break down the culture of victim-blaming and empower women to come forward against harassers.