Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

Part 2: Redefining Rape and Street Harassment: 1880-1920s

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“Want to take a ride, little girl?” ~ Street harasser from the early 1900s.

As more and more scholars are uncovering, street harassment is not a new social problem. Stanford University Professor Estelle Freedman is one of the latest people to explore this in a chapter of her new book Redefining Rape: Sexual Violence in the Era of Suffrage and Segregation (the major themes of the book and two lessons for today are covered in Part 1).

Street harassment predates this time period and poor women who have always been in public places for work have likely always faced street harassment (and worse), but once middle-class women began experiencing it in large numbers in the late 1800s and early 1900s, they made it a visible problem.

By the late 1800s and early 1900s, a growing number of people lived in cities instead of farms or small villages and many white men used the new anonymity a city afforded them to harass women without facing consequences. Around this time period, more middle-class women of all races were in public spaces unaccompanied by men as they went to work, shops, and the theater, and as “unescorted women,” some men saw them as “fair game.” Phrases used by street harassers sound the same as today: “Hey, baby,” “Hey, honey,” “How much for you?”

Upset by this unwanted attention, many middle class women — both white and black — spoke out and took action, making it visible in newspapers and other publications.

Via Stanford University

Dr. Freedman graciously spoke with me by phone to answer a few questions for this article and sent me a complimentary copy of the book to raffle off!

1. HK: While the chapter focuses mostly on street harassment in the early 1900s, you found references to it in the 1770s when women expressed their concerns about “sexual dangers” in public spaces and spoke about their desire to have the “liberty to travel freely.” Did you find it surprising that very similar language to what anti-street harassment activists use today to talk about equality in public spaces was used hundreds of years ago by women? Why or why not?

EF: I’m not entirely surprised. Women began to use the language of rights in different historical periods in different cultures. In England and the United States, at the time when women were moving into the public sphere in larger numbers it was also a time of democratic revolutions and women said, “We deserve our rights, too.”

While street harassment was probably going on consistently through the centuries, the condemnation of harassment strongly correlates with the height of the suffrage movement in the early 1900s — and in more recent decades, with the feminist movement — and other claims to space and rights.

2. HK: Throughout your chapter, you cite newspaper articles featuring women who verbally and physically fought back against street harassers and even reported them to the police using laws like disorderly conduct so that the harasser faced a fine or a night in jail. Do you have a favorite story among the many you read?

EF: Two stories come to mind right away. One is from 1924 in New York City when a black woman was riding the subway and a white man from a southern state is trying to pick her up as a prostitute. When she refused his attention, he told her that if they had been in Georgia, “I would have you strung up.” A white woman who witnessed this joined her and detained him until the police arrived and arrested him. This is a really rare example of a black and a white woman cooperating together and bringing in the authorities. It was very striking and atypical.

Another story I like is in Chicago around 1906-1908 when women held self defense classes in parks for other women. The idea was to help them feel less fearful in the streets, to walk with confidence, and to give them a sense of their physical power while in public spaces.

3. HK: After World War I, there was a shift in how street harassment was viewed by the public. For a few decades leading up to the war, street harassment was largely seen as inappropriate and women who fought back were applauded, but then there was a shift to where it was seen as flirting and something women asked for by being unaccompanied in public spaces. There was also a heightened concern for the men accused of being harassers. Can you talk a little bit more about why this shift happened and its legacy?

EF: The new sexual values at that time that acknowledged women’s sexual agency and that encouraged women to not accept that they were passive objects of men’s desires was double edged: in some ways it empowered young women to feel able to be active sexual agents but it also meant that the line between wanted and unwanted sexual attention could be blurred. Once flirting became seen as acceptable public behavior between young people in public places, it became easier for street harassers to say, “I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I was just flirting,” and that was taken as an acceptable response.

In the early 1900s, there were police women (mostly white) who went undercover and arrested men who harassed them. One of the reactions to this was the concern that men were being victimized by women who didn’t like men or by women who didn’t understand the new sexual mores. There was a growing belief that female police officers were arresting men for behaviors that should no longer be criminalized.

In short, the new morality just after WWI made it harder to always know when the line has been crossed between wanted and unwanted attention.

In the white press, there were still some stories about women who fight back and they were applauded for doing so, but after the 1910s, there were fewer stories supporting women’s self defense and more sympathetic stories about men fearing being false accused.

Many African Americans migrated north during this time period and in the black press, however, there was actually an increase in articles focused on white men harassing black women and girls, treating them like prostitutes. The black presses called out white men for this behavior and fought to establish black women’s respectability.

4. HK: Today, sometimes men of color are disproportionately blamed for street harassment and depicted as street harassers. I found it interesting, then, to learn that in the time period you examined, the majority of news stories and reports featured white men as harassers – of both white and African American women.  Can you share why this was, and how it ties into the larger issues of race in your book?

EF: In the newspapers, early nineteenth century mashers were all white and for good reason. For a black man to even chance looking at white woman on the street could lead to lynching. They had much less opportunity to be harassers. It would have been highly dangerous. [The newspapers typically only depicted white men as harassers of black women, too. While black women faced street harassment by black men, they largely kept quiet for fear of fueling the myth that black men were sexual predators.]

By type casting white men as a masher, it reinforced the idea that white men are harassers and black men are rapists. Keeping white men in the role of minor offenders masked white men’s more sever offenses against white and black women.

5. HK: Right now, there is a huge resurgence in attention to the issue of street harassment and what we can do about it. What is one lesson you think we can learn today from how the issue was treated and addressed in the late 1800s to early 1900s?

EF: One lesson is that you can’t separate the issue of street harassment from the larger issue of inequality. Women are underrepresented in legislatures, leadership, and are underpaid, and as long as women occupy a subordinate position economically and politically, they’re going to remain more sexually vulnerable.

Whenever women are mobilizing politically to get more rights, they also seem to have more of a vocal voice opposing sexual violence and street harassment. We need to keep the vulnerability of sexual assault and street harassment within the larger grid of women needing more economic and political leadership. We can’t treat it as separate.

Just passing laws doesn’t make a difference; we have to have a cultural shift, too. It’s really those deeper cultural values that can undermine the legal changes. Keeping an eye on what’s happening in the larger culture around sexuality is important and the more that women gain economically and politically, the more they can gain sexually.

You can find other scholarly articles, books, and theses about street harassment in the Stop Street Harassment resources section.

DRAWING:

Dr. Freedman donated a copy of her book (value $35) for me to give away in a drawing! Because of the cost of shipping the heavy book internationally, I am limiting this to people with U.S. addresses.

There are two ways to enter your name into the random drawing, you can:

1. Tweet out an article or resource from the SSH blog and add @stopstharassmnt #Mashers to it.
2. Submit a street harassment story or street respect story to the blog (include an email address and note in the “other” field you want to be included in the drawing).

I will hold the drawing on October 18.

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“Thrashing the Mashers”: Notes from Dr. Estelle Freedman’s Talk

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Dr. Freedman presenting on “mashers” at the 2012 National Women’s Studies Association Conference

I was so thrilled to meet Stanford University Professor Estelle Freedman last year at the National Women’s Studies Association Conference and hear her presentation about street harassment in history, the focus of a chapter in her book Redefining Rape: Sexual Violence in the Era of Suffrage and Segregation.

I promised not to publicly share very much about what I learned then until her book was released last month, and now the time has come!

These are really interesting tidbits from her talk that I want to share —

* In the 19th century, “Mash” was a crush. A masher may write a love letter. On stage, actresses were the objects of mashers. Then mashers became a description for men who have affairs and/or men who imagined themselves “ladykillers” or “Don Juans.” Men who went to brothels might also be called mashers.

* In the mid to late 1800s, women who were in public unescorted were seen as “public women” aka prostitutes. They were seen as “fair game” by men on the streets.

* As more poor and middle class women entered public spaces unaccompanied by a man to go to work or to go shopping or to the movies, the  mashers were seen as a problem because they “flirted” with women, invite them, ingratiate themselves to them, and touch them at a theater.

* Newspapers started talking about the need to protect women from mashers (by other men) and there was advice given to women about looking serious, having a mantle of reserve, etc to deter men from approaching them.

* The mashers were largely white middle class men, in contrast to the “sexual predator” of black men. When black men were in the news, it was generally for rape, contributing to the idea that they were worse sexual predators than white men. Lynching of black men covered in papers in contrast to not doing much about white mashers or rapists.

* In early 1900s, we started to see more information about women who fought back – “thrashing the street mashers.” There is a shift from the need to protect women to women being self-reliant.

* In 1905-06 there were a series of murders of white women in Chicago, which led to a panic over protecting women. There was a crack down on men loitering on the streets and more police officers. Some women rejected male protection and said they need political rights to advocate for themselves. They become subjects versus objects in the conversation.

* 1905, a Philadelphia stenographer took boxing lessons from her brother and knocked out a masher. She advocated for other women to do the same and advocated for the Society for the Suppression of the Masher.

* There were women who advocated for women to exercise and get strong so they could resist street harassment.

* In 1914, a niece (by marriage) of the president of the USA was so fed up with being harassed that she said she’d send the next man who harassed her to jail. The next man was a Dr. and he went to jail for 10 days.

* By 1916, there were 300 female police officers across the country: mostly white but some black women in cities. Addressing complaints of mashers was often one of their purposes.

* After WWI, there was a more benign image of the masher, in part because of more relaxed views on courtship and dating. By the 1925 there was a stall of recruitment of female police officers because people were balking at the idea of undercover women arresting men who “flirted” with them on the streets.

* “Ofay Mashers” were white men who harassed black women. The Black Press drew a lot of attention to the street harassment and rape of black women by white men. Men often solicited women, assuming they were prostitutes [still happens today] and would walk through the neighborhoods approaching women, or, later, drove through the neighborhoods and pulled over to harass. Not much is available about black men harassing black women – perhaps it didn’t happen much or there was racial solidarity that kept women from speaking out when it happened.

* As more women wanted to be in public spaces alone, mashers were seen as a real problem. However, after a few decades, the fears of mashers gave way to acceptance of it as flirting.

* Today, as then, we have a common goal of contesting male privilege/access to public spaces through speaking out against street harassment.

Also, check out Part 1 and Part 2 of my review of her book and interview with her about the chapter on street harassers.

After hearing her talk, my domestic partner Mark and I have done several hours of research at local universities on street harassment in history. I hope to create an online exhibit and timeline in 2014. Stay tuned.

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USA: Anti-Flirt Club and Hassle-Free Zones, 100 Years of Activism

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By Lauren McEwen, Washington, D.C., USA, SSH Correspondent

A while back, I read an interesting post by a male ally about street harassment in which he attempted to explain to other cis men why gendered harassment in public spaces is not OK. It basically amounted to him saying, “Hey, I know it’s hard to understand that some of the social norms we were spoon-fed as kids isn’t OK, but it’s the 21st century, and we now officially know that street harassment is unacceptable.”

While I appreciate all positive support for something I believe in, here’s the thing: the anti-street harassment movement is not a new phenomenon. It can be argued that street harassment has been a problem since women began moving through public spaces on their own. There have been studies conducted, books written and protests waved to fight against street harassment for generations.

Today’s anti-street harassment movement has something that all of the other efforts did not – the power of the Internet. Each day, I come across about three to five stories about street harassment. I see tweets from people affected by it venting and comforting each other, in turn. The saturation of news and opinions and anecdotes about street harassment all over the web can make it seem like street harassment has been tolerable up until this new generation of overly sensitive, politically correct kids came of age, but it’s not.

This post is about times in the past 100 years when street harassment was both documented and fought.

Early 1900s: Mashing

Street harassment was called “mashing” in the early 1900s, and some women decided to take matters in their own hands, stabbing mashers with their hatpins, and punching or hitting harassers across the face with their handbags. They also reported harassment to the police and in some cases, were successful in getting the masher arrested.

While it’s not advisable to get into physical altercations with street harassers, these accounts prove that there was not a time when street harassment was universally viewed as a “compliment.” It was threatening enough in the 1930s for these women to attack their harassers, and one can only assume that the actual words and actions that present-day street harassers employ are can be even more vulgar than those used by their predecessors.

[Editor’s Note: Stanford professor Estelle Freedman’s new book Redefining Rape includes a chapter about mashers/street harassers from the 1880s to 1920s.]

1920s: The Anti-Flirt Club

In the 1920s, a group of D.C. women formed the Anti-Flirt Club and held the first and only Anti-Flirt Week. During World War I, it became common practice for men to offer female pedestrians rides when they saw them walking down the street as part of their civic duty. But soon, those offered rides became tainted by aggressive flirting on the part of the driver. Although the group’s secretary acknowledged that here were other “flirts” about, the drivers were the most worrisome.

The Atlantic reprinted excerpts from a 1920s Washington Post article that detailed the rules of the Anti-Flirt Club, and although some of the advice seems sound enough, (“Don’t accept rides from flirting motorists—they don’t all invite you in to save you a walk.” “Don’t let elderly men with an eye to a flirtation pat you on the shoulder and take a fatherly interest in you. Those are usually the kind who want to forget they are fathers.”) some of the rules were tinged with slut-shaming (“Don’t flirt; those who flirt in haste oft repent in leisure.” “Don’t use your eyes for ogling—they were made for worthier purposes.”)

The trouble with the Anti-Flirt Club was that, once again, the onus for preventing “flirting” (or rather, street harassment) was once again placed on women. Don’t make eye contact. Don’t smile. But be sure to keep your options open, because you never know where your future husband may be hiding.

The Manhattan-based version of the Anti-Flirt Club was run by men, and placed the burden of ending street harassment on women in another, slightly less oppressive, way. They wanted “to educate public opinion to the point where a woman will consider it her duty to prosecute the masher who attempts to force his attentions upon her. The association intends to have its own counsel, who will aid in prosecuting all masher cases.” (More on “mashers” in a bit.)

According to The Atlantic, it isn’t clear what charges could have been drawn against these early 20th century street harassers, but interestingly, two politicians tried (and failed) to get anti-street harassment bills passed in 1897, and in 1931, the Chicago Tribune quoted the Acting Police Commissioner John Alock saying, “This street flirting has got to stop in Chicago. No longer may young men in automobiles edge over to the curb and honk their horns at pretty girls on the sidewalk. They must quit ogling women from loafing places in front of drug stores, cigar stores and other public hangouts.”

Eventually, the efforts seemed to fizzle – fewer articles were written about the anti-flirt movement – but police and politicians from generations ago at least appeared to take sexual harassment seriously. Seems like we have regressed quite a bit over the years.

1940s: “Hands Off! Self Defense for Women”

In 1942, a book by Major W.E. Fairbairn was published that sought to teach women “basic methods of attack and defense” in order to help them defend themselves should they be attacked. It served as a sort of wartime manual to teach readers some of the self-defense tactics Fairbairn picked up while serving with the Shanghai Municipal Police.

In the foreword, Fairbairn explained what motivated him to write the book. As more American women began to work outside of the home, taking the places of men who were away at war, they would be in new and unfamiliar situations, and should be able to defend themselves in case their safety was threatened.

1980s: The Hassle-Free Zone Campaign

In 1985, several community organizations, including the D.C. Rape Crisis Center (the first rape crisis center in the U.S.), the D.C. Women’s Law Center and D.C. Men Against Sexual Violence teamed up to organize an effort to convert the District into a “hassle-free zone.”

Marty Langelan, the former president of the D.C. Rape Crisis Center and the author of Back Off: How to Confront and Stop Sexual Harassment and Harassers, detailed the 1985 campaign in her book and talked to me about it in an interview.

Posters and flyers were created by Linda Leaks and the African American Women’s Committee for Community Education, local law students researched ways to potentially prosecute harassers and self defense instructors from the D.C. Rape Crises Center taught women confrontation classes.

In September 1985, they focused on street harassment during the Take Back the Night March and the annual Anti-Rape Week program, and got then-Mayor Marion Barry to issue a proclamation asking that all Washingtonians strive to make the District a Hassle-Free Zone. A resolution supporting the campaign was passed by the City Council.

The following spring, the campaign hosted speakouts in street harassment hotspots, like parks and Metro Stations, after work and during lunchtime, when there would be more people on the street. There were skits, speeches and “open mike sessions to give women a chance to sound off about their harassment experiences.” They held their final public speakout during October 1986.

It’s hard to say if it is inspiring or disheartening to realize that groups have been fighting to end street harassment for generations. It does, however, serve as a reminder that we are not battling a non-issue, but something that has hindered the happiness and safety of people for longer than we would like to imagine.

Lauren is a recent graduate of Howard University where she majored in print journalism with a minor in photography. You can check out more of her work at laurenmcewen.weebly.com and follow her on Twitter at @angrywritergirl.
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High School Student’s Year-Long Project on Street Harassment

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Cross-posted with permission from Surayya’s blog.

My name is Surayya I. Diggs, I am a recent graduate of Elizabeth Irwin High School, and I will be attending Cornell University in the fall at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.  I have an interest in science and agriculture, but since I can remember I have also had a tremendous interest in race, feminism, and social justice.  In the more recent future I have become very interested in fighting street harassment.

In early August 2012, I found an opportunity to do something about the issue of street harassment. The ELLA Fellowship Program, a part of the Sadie Nash Leadership Project was an opportunity to carry out a 9-month community development project.

At the beginning of my fellowship I knew I wanted to make a documentary.  I thought that a video would be a great way to reach people because the Internet is becoming such a relevant part of today’s society, but I had never made a film in my life.  I began searching on YouTube for videos about street harassment to find some inspiration and figure out what I wanted to do differently with my film.  One of the videos I came across was, Totally Biased: NYC Women Talk About Cat Calling.  This was a very comedic, and almost offensive, approach to the issue of street harassment, and it only gave examples of street harassment. After watching this video, I watched a few more, and they each seemed to do the same thing, simply talk about cat calling and give alternate ways of approaching women, when the real issue is men feeling like they have the right to talk to women on the street in the first place.  After watching those videos I knew that I wanted my video to strike a different cord, I wanted to paint the picture of street harassment for people living in NYC, then show why it is dangerous, and finally give solutions to combat and end street harassment.

In November 2012, I conducted the first interview for my film on street harassment.  I was able to set up and conduct an interview with Nefertiti Martin at her office at Girls for Gender Equity.  I then spent the next 6 months interviewing and editing my film, converting over 6 hours of footage into a 10-minute documentary.  During the process, I was able to interview and observe the work of many significant players in the fight against street harassment including Chair of the Women’s Issues Committee and Council Member, Julissa Ferreras, Manhattan Borough President, Scott Stringer, Founder of Stop Street Harassment, Holly Kearl, Co-Founder of Hollaback! Emily May, and many educated people that I interviewed on the street.

Here is my documentary:

Here is a shorter film that I made in December that shares the street harassment testimonies of students from my school:

Fishbowl

In addition to these films, I led several workshops in order to reach people on the ground.

On March 25, 2013, I guided a fishbowl at a Youth Summit for Street Harassment.  A fishbowl in simple words is a conversation; I called out different identities like gender, sexual orientation, and religion.  There was a small circle of 10 people in the center and over 100 people surrounding them that were listening to what was being said inside the smaller circle.  The fishbowl was a chance for people to share their personal experiences of street harassment and have people really listen to what is being said, this is something that can’t be accomplished with a simple discussion.  For most participants, their favorite part of the entire summit was the fishbowl.

IYLI workshopNext, I conducted a workshop on May 18, 2013 at the International Youth Leadership Institute where I talked to high schoolers from around NYC about the root issues and effects of street harassment, this was called the roots and branches activity, and then I had them think of an axe, a solution to the problem, which was meant to cut down the tree.   I did an identical workshop on May 20, 2013, for my old middle school, the Little Red School House.

Finally, on June 4, 2013, I directed an all-school assembly at my high school, Elizabeth Irwin High School.  During this assembly I screened my film and brought in Holly Kearl, founder of Stop Street Harassment, and community organizer at Girls For Gender Equity, Nefertiti Martin to speak on specific topics within the issue of street harassment.

Overall, it was a very successful fellowship and I learned a lot about filmmaking, planning, and street harassment.  I learned that filmmaking is about storytelling, which means not including everything even if you want to; because I had to cut out so much footage, there were some things I, regrettably, could not include, such as police harassment of men of color, sexualization of women in the media, and the power dynamic of women and men in society.  I learned that planning a youth summit and high school assembly requires great attention to detail and advanced planning.  I also learned that the most common form of street harassment is verbal, but it can escalate to the physical, such as groping and public masturbation.  Many people don’t understand the threat of violence that women have to deal with and the psychological effects of being called out at like a sexual object for the pleasure of heterosexual men.

The purpose of my fellowship was to educate participants and inspire them to do something about the issue of street harassment. I created my film in order to make men and women more sensitive to the effects of street harassment.  I want men to understand that most women do not appreciate being “complimented” and help women understand that you don’t have to just deal with street harassment, but you can do something about it.  Being able to show my video on the Stop Street Harassment website is a great opportunity and I hope there will be more platforms in the future to share my video.  In the mean time, please direct your family and friends to this article and YouTube to get my videoes out there and educate people on the issue of street harassment.

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