Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

Street Harassment Snapshot: February 13, 2011

By

Read stories, news articles, blog posts, and tweets about street harassment from the past week and find relevant announcements and upcoming street harassment events.

Street Harassment Stories:

I accept street harassment submissions from anywhere in the world. Share your story!

You can read new street harassment stories from the past week on:

Street Harassment in the News, on the Blogs:

Events:

Announcements:

New:

On-going:

10 Tweets from the Week:

  • nada_rama thats disappointing what happened to the new #Egypt plans ? :/RT: @EngyG sexual harassment was reported during street celebrations
  • ImJDan I’m just shocked by the fact that women can go through street harassment every.fucking.day and men are still “well whose bothering u?”
  • aaw1976 That street harassment is real @Imjdan. It happens to young girls everyday and they can be assaulted if they speak up.
  • abby_go_lucky walk down the street sans fear of harassment/degradation. can someone make that into a pithy protest slogan?! preferably one that rhymes!
  • wandofmirkwood How dare Westerners call the veil oppressive when I can’t even go out in public without getting harassed?
  • sarahsosiak Resolved: My new response to street-harassment will be an academic lecture about the economics of male attention.
  • spokenbeats Call me uptight, but I hate havng 2 deal w/street harassment on a daily basis. It gets old & it always has me on the defense
  • MagneticCrow @littlefluffycat Aw, I used to smile at strangers… But it brought me so much additional street harassment that I stopped. 🙁
  • sarahsosiak Wow. It is way too early to need to come up with snappy comebacks to street harassment.
  • DianeMassage @MTAInsider, please tell yr train conductors not 2 cat-call women as they’re getting off the train. Thx #streetharassment
Share

Let Egypt inspire you! Take action online

By

In a few short weeks, the efforts of the people of Egypt, done largely through online organizing, led to unprecedented political change. Egypt is just the latest (and one of the most impressive) examples of how the Internet gives ordinary people a place to have a voice, share ideas, and create change.

Here are three opportunities for people in the U.S. to participate in small online actions that can, and surely will, lead to larger change.

If you are anyone, anywhere:

The National Museum of Crime and Punishment thinks that intimate partner violence should be described as “crimes of passion” during their Valentine’s Day events this weekend. No – such violence is motivated by issues of power/control, not passion. Support Hollaback DC and sign the petition demanding that the National Crime and Punishment Museum take intimate partner violence seriously.

Washington, DC- area residents or visitors who’ve experienced or witnessed street harassment:

Please help HollaBack DC! better understand public sexual harassment and assault in the DC Metro area by taking their 10-15 minute survey! Your answers will help them identify community needs and directly affect the workshops, programs, and materials that they offer. The data from this survey will also go into a report about the status of the issue in the DC metro area.

Queer women of color in New York City:

Kimberlynn Acevedo is writing about queer women of color* and their experiences in public spaces of New York City, including but not limited to the subway system and the streets, as well as semi-public spaces like restaurants and other businesses. Her goal is to give a voice to women who are, more often than not, underrepresented in the growing discussion around gender-based harassment, violence, and discrimination. If you are a queer woman of color in NYC, please take her survey and share your voices and views.

*queer is open ended and women is also open to self-identification

Thank you! Your five minutes of action is time well spent.

Share

Street Harassment in Trinidad and Tobago via Women Speak

By

Simone Leid

On Women Speak, founder Simone Leid, offers a new online place for women in Trinidad and Tobago to share their stories of discrimination and read related news. Unsurprisingly, street harassment has already come up a few times.

On Feb. 5, a woman shared the following story:

“It was a morning like any other in 2005, except for the fact that on my way to work and as I approached Chacon Street, Port of Spain, absorbed in my own thoughts, a man grabbed my crotch and kept walking. I froze for several seconds, shocked and scared. There weren’t many people around and the few who were there said nothing, so I believe they saw nothing. Physically weak, I took the nearest taxi in silence…” (read more)

Also on Feb. 5, Ms. Leid wrote a post: Harassment is punishable by law!

“A person who pursues a course of conduct which amounts to harassment of another and which he knows or ought reasonably to know amounts to harassment of the other is guilty of an offence and is liable on summary conviction to a fine of two thousand dollars and to imprisonment for six months.”

Good to know that street harassment is illegal there!

On Feb. 8, she featured an excerpt from an article about the commonality and “harmlessness” of street harassment in Trinidad and Tobago:

“But in my 20s I remember the sense of intimidation and fear that ran through me every time I passed a group of boys or men on the street. Would they just say ‘good morning’ or ‘good afternoon’ in that I’m-a-nice-guy way or would there be something disgusting today?”

And yesterday, she posted the video “My Bad Thing” by Chucky, writing:

“Men need to join in the fight against Street Harassment and build loving and supportive relationships with their women by standing up to other men and letting them know that disrespecting women is unacceptable.”

Yes, this is definitely true!


In watching the video, though, I wasn’t sure, is the main guy upset about street harassment because “his” girlfriend was targeted and otherwise he wouldn’t care? I know sometimes it seems like the only way to get guys to pay attention to this issue is by saying, look it’s happening to your girlfriends, sisters, mothers, daughters, and wives. But it’s not a lot of progress if they only care about the issue when it happens to women they feel some ownership over because it threatens their manhood.

Take a look at the video and see what you think it’s about.

I’ve already learned quite a bit about street harassment in Trinidad and Tobago and I look forward to learning more on Women Speak!

Share

Who was the sexist & most violent of them all? Super Bowl commercial Bingo results

By

This is a follow-up to my blog post from Friday.

I didn’t end up watching the Super Bowl yesterday, but my partner watched it at a friend’s house and he brought along the End-It Bingo sheet (created by Riverview Center which I found on the Men’s Anti-Violence Council blog).

My partner and his friends took the Bingo card seriously. Not only did they make a mark each time a commercial fit into a category, but they noted which company’s commercial warranted the mark. They marked off almost all of the squares on the sheet and added a few more categories. “Street harassment” became a category when Pepsi Max included it in one of their commercials.

Overall, my partner felt that the companies that produced the most offensive ads were Go-Daddy (no surprise there), Sketchers, and Pepsi Max. He said he was the most surprised by the Sketchers commercial, saying, “I didn’t think they’d take footwear to that extreme.” When I read through his Bingo card today, I saw that he wrote Pepsi Max the most times in the various boxes. Thumbs down to these companies!

I wasn’t sure how my partner’s friends would react to the Bingo sheet since it would bring up serious subjects during a fun event. But they were really supportive and actively participated. My partner said the Bingo card got them all thinking critically about the commercials and noticing how companies were trying to sell products. It also made them more aware of and appreciative of the companies that didn’t have to resort to violence or sexism in their commercials (the Volkswagen commercial with the kid in the Darth Vader mask was a big hit).

What were your thoughts about the commercials? Did you use the Bingo card?

Share

“El Tigeraso” – Maluca’s music video addressing street harassment

By

Maluca, also known as La Maluca Mala, is a rising star in New York City. She is the daughter of Dominican immigrants who was born and raised in New York City. She says, “New York influences my music. Everyone who’s here…the style…the vernacular…inspires the kind of music that I’ve made, the lyrics that I write, the way I dress, the way I am.”

And the pervasive street harassment in New York City influenced one of her songs, “El Tigeraso,” which is set at Audobon and West 182nd Street, an intersection in Washington Heights, the heart of New York City’s Dominican community.

Via the International Museum of Women:

“The song’s lyrics were inspired by an issue many women deal with every day: cat calls and harassment on the street. [Maluca says,] ‘Dominicans call the bad boys on the corner who are up to no good – but who have mad swag – Tigeres. ‘El Tigeraso’ is the game or swag. Growing up, I would go visit my cousins or grandma uptown. Back then, you couldn’t get from one corner to the next without those ‘Tigeres’ trying to holler at you. It was kinda outta control. Especially if you walked down Broadway. So the song ‘El Tigeraso’ is poking fun at that whole situation.'”


Thoughts on the song and video?

Share