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Romania: “Small Steps for Change”

October 21, 2015 By Contributor

Our four Safe Public Spaces Mentees are half-way through their projects. This week we are featuring their blog posts about how the projects are going so far. This first post is from our team in Romania. Their projects are supported by SSH donors. If you would like to donate to support the 2016 mentees, we would greatly appreciate it!

The Romanian team at one of their planning meetings. Oct. 2015

Hy. My name is Aila and I am studying my BA in Political Science. Three years ago, I decided to come to the Romanian capital to study at one of the best universities in the field. I chose to stay at the university’s hostel because, as many students think nowadays, all the fun you can have during student years is in hostels.

Well, unfortunately for me and for many other girls, it wasn’t quite like that. I ended up being harassed almost daily by some boys and girls who were studying at the college located near the hostel. After one year I began scheduling my programme after the high school’s programme. In order to avoid the “unwanted attention,” I had to go out of the hostel at specific hours when they had classes, especially during winter when I risked a violent snowball/half-iced fight. Moreover, I always tried not to walk alone or to come home when it was dark outside.

At the beginning, I tried to ignore it sometimes when I heard, “Hey, kitty/gorgeous/baby” as well as the aggressive words connected to my Asian eyes. Then I began to feel so fed up that I started to respond. But it was worse. I was only one and they were always in groups. I had no chance and no help. Sometimes, there were guards but they enjoyed the situation or laughed or only said something mild just to make sure their job is safe.

Today, I can proudly say that I am in a NGO called FILIA that supports gender equality. Today I know that what I went through is called sexual harrasement and it’s a crime. Today I can make something about it.

Thanks to my colleagues from FILIA but also to the Stop Street Harassment team, we are currently developing a mentoring project in that same high school where students harassed me. We want to deliver workshops concerning the topic of street/sexual harassment. It is absolutely necessary for these kids to know about this phenomenon because we consider that they are young and can still change their behaviour.

My group has met a couple of times during the past weeks and we set the framework of the activities. Change can be done. I am not a victim anymore, I am a person who can bring change and can help the other girls who are still living in that hostel.

Aila is a member of the Romanian NGO FILIA.

India: Whistle for Whistle

October 19, 2015 By Contributor

Our four Safe Public Spaces Mentees are half-way through their projects. This week we are featuring their blog posts about how the projects are going so far. This first post is from our team in India. Their projects are supported by SSH donors. If you would like to donate to support the 2016 mentees, we would greatly appreciate it!

Street harassment and eve-teasing are common phenomenon in India, especially in public transport and public places. Girls and women usually ignore this ever increasing scourge which is destroying the social fabric of our society. It becomes a source of continuous mental harassment for them and as they face it regularly, then they suffer from low self esteem. In short, they lose their own existence after some time. For example, they keep themselves confined to their homes and rarely move about.

Since, 2010, Safe-Safar has been working to stop street harassment. We have been working to ensure the safety of women on public transport in Lucknow. Through our latest initiative, we are raising awareness about the issue on the streets, pavements, bus stands, railway stations, schools and colleges etc to aware about ‘eve teasing”.

In essence, the Siti Pe Siti or “Whistle for Whistle” is an initiative started by the Yeh Ek Soch Foundation under the Safe-Safar program and is supported by Stop Street Harassment. “Sitis” are a common form of street harassment. When boys whistle at girls, it is termed teasing and society doesn’t view it to be bad. However, if the girls do it to boys, then it is considered bad.

To address this normalized phenomenon, we have come up with “siti pe siti” concept, “whistle for whistle,” where we empower girls and women with a “siti” or “whistle” and the girls can whistle back at boys who whistle at them as a way to draw attention to what they did instead of pretending to ignore the boys and staying silent. This will give the girls a sense of confidence, especially for those who didn’t know what to do when boys whistled at them.

Our goal is to equip the girls with an arm (siti) for giving a timely response to this ever increasing phenomenon happening in colleges, universities and public places, be it railway station, bus stands, etc.

In short, the thing which was proving to be wrong for girls, has in fact become her strength.

Teams of 10 people are raising public awareness at different places through “dialogues” and “nukkad nataks”. The whole campaign will take place across three months. We held the first events this month. On 10th October, 60 youth joined a discussion about street sexual harassment where they discussed the types of harassment and how they stop it in public places. On 14th October, we did a public “seti pe seti” “whistle for whistle” event where we raised public awareness and had people sign pledges to stop street harassment. We are gearing up to hold street plays and more awareness-raising sessions in public places. We plan to hold two activities on a monthly basis. We will also hold a “Safety-Audit” of Metro routes in different areas of Lucknow.

We will close this campaign with a public dialogue.

Our campaign has received a lot of coverage in local newspapers and we were on interviewed on radio city 91.1, a national radio station.

Mohammad Zeeshan is based in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India and founded and oversees the Safe-Safar program.

Together We Must Change the Culture of Masculinity

October 15, 2015 By HKearl

We have some pretty amazing people serving on our board of directors, including Dr. Laura S. Logan, an assistant professor of sociology at Hastings College in Nebraska. In 2013, she wrote her PhD dissertation on street harassment: “Fear of violence and street harassment: accountability at the intersections.”

Last week, she gave a lecture at her university on street harassment + intersectionality. Her lecture was covered in the campus paper by Mallory Gruben. Here is an excerpt:

“Through her research, Logan found that the underlying theme of street harassment stemmed from socialized gender roles. In the majority of the cases she studied, harassers that were “coded as masculine” targeted individuals they “coded as feminine.” Although this coding is often unique to each case, the harasser was typically male, and he typically identified the target as female or feminine.

Logan closed her lecture by offering a solution to fighting street harassment: stop gender policing. The prevalence of masculinity and femininity in cases of street harassment suggest a fulfillment of socialized gender roles. By allowing people to act within human nature instead of within set gender roles, there would be less expectation for men to be dominant and women to be sexualized, thus changing the culture of masculinity and breaking socialized gender roles.

Logan explains that in order to stop gender policing and change the culture of masculinity, everyone must play an active role.

“I don’t want anybody to be mistaken and think that means that we have to change men or that men are the ones responsible,” Logan said. “All of us—men, women, those who don’t identify as any particular gender, or gender queer—are responsible for changing the culture of masculinity.”

Agreed! You can view/listen to her full speech on YouTube.

Volunteer Opportunities for Fall 2015 (and beyond)!

September 29, 2015 By HKearl

Do you want to do something about street harassment?

Do you need volunteer hours?

Are you a student who needs credit hours doing work for a nonprofit?

If you are any of these things, I have a solution!

Did you know that all of the work that SSH does is by volunteers? It is, and we need a few more volunteers to help out with several important projects!

CAN YOU HELP US?

If you are interested in any of these opportunities, please get in touch with me, Holly, hkearl@ stopstreetharassment.org.

Social Media:

I’m looking for five individuals who are willing to help manage the SSH social media accounts, one day/week (it will be “your” day). Primarily these are the Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr pages, and you will also have access to our Pinterest and YouTube accounts. I especially need help monitoring the Facebook page comments section — as it has grown so too have the detractors and I want it to be a safe space. Volunteers will receive a guide with instructions, etc. People can come from anywhere in the world and knowing more than one language is a plus so we can share content and in more than English.

If you are interested, please email me info 1) about your experience with social media (which platforms, how many years, if you’ve volunteered or worked for an organization managing social media accounts), 2) a few sentences about who you are, 3) where you are based, and 4) and your availability (for how many months are you available and are any days of the week that you typically will NOT be available).

Ideally, I’d like someone who can start by mid-October and help out at least through the end of 2015, but ideally into the spring.

Accessibility:

I need occasional help transcribing videos to make them accessible for all. For example, these four videos. No prior experience with transcription is necessary, but if you have it, let me know about it. Please also send 1) a few sentences about who you are and 2) where you are based.

Research Projects:

I’d love to have one or two people who can assist with a few projects this fall. The amount of work/hours can be flexible. Here are examples of possible projects.

1. Research what cities have LGBT liaison units for their police departments.

2. Look for new laws and update the 2013 Know Your Rights toolkit.

3. Help track new anti-street harassment groups, organizations and campaigns worldwide.

4. Conduct interviews for the SSH blog with groups/activists doing interesting work.

Please send 1) information about relevant work you’ve done, 2) a resume), 3) a few sentences about who you are and 4) where you are based.

Campaigns Against Companies:

For a while I was tracking companies that promoted and/or trivialized street harassment in their marketing and/or product labels but I haven’t been able to keep up with it. I’m looking for someone who can help look for examples, update this webpage, and occasionally take the lead on campaigns, such as creating Change.org petitions (we will work on a strategy and select ones that we think we have the best change of winning and that can have a big impact).

Please send 1) information about relevant work you’ve done, 2) a resume), 3) a few sentences about who you are and 4) where you are based.

** If you have ideas for other ways you’d like to help with SSH’s work, feel free to be in touch with your suggestion. **

Thank You 2nd Cohort and Welcome 3rd Cohort of Blog Correspondents

August 29, 2015 By HKearl

Many thanks to our second cohort of blog correspondents this year. They tackled topics like reproductive rights, school dress codes, slut shaming, hitchhiking, the generational divide, how technology can help street harassment happen, and several of them conducted interviews with street harassment activists in their community.

Meet the Correspondents of the Third Cohort of 2015

Eve Aronson, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Eve is the Director of Hollaback! Amsterdam and dedicates her time to raising awareness and assessing policy on street harassment in the Netherlands and beyond. Her recent work, “Psst Schatje!: Street Harassment in Amsterdam, Online and Beyond” provides a critical analysis of the street harassment landscape in the Netherlands and explores innovative, digital solutions to the problem. Driven by a passion to bring light to human rights abuses and different forms of gender-based violence, Eve devotes her time to shedding light on and combatting street harassment and human trafficking through her non-profit work, previous work as a journalist and on- and offline activism. Originally from the U.S., Eve recently completed a dual Masters program in Women and Gender Studies in the Netherlands and in Hungary. She is an avid backpacker and lover of languages. Follow Eve on Twitter at @evearonson or learn more about her here.

Meghna Bhat, Chicago, USA

Meghna is a doctoral candidate in the Criminology, Law, and Justice program at the University of Illinois at Chicago, with a specialization in Gender and Women Studies. She is currently working on her dissertation, which focuses on representations of violence against women in a widely viewed form of Indian popular culture, Bollywood cinema. Having grown up in the metropolitan city of Mumbai (India) and having lived in the USA for 11 years, Meghna has witnessed and experienced gender-based oppression, including street harassment, from an early age. As a South Asian woman, these unsettling experiences motivated her to pursue this field and be an outspoken advocate for LGBTQI rights, prevention of hate crimes and discrimination, de-stigmatization of mental health taboos, and finding resources and safe spaces for survivors of gender-based violence. Meghna finds painting, walking by the lake, photography, traveling, and dance therapeutic for self-care.

Chelsea Cloud, Michigan, USA

Chelsea is a full-time sales assistant for an advertising company in West Michigan and a part-time Graphic Design student. She is proud to call herself a feminist and feels passionately about speaking up for women’s rights. In the past few years, Chelsea has developed a habit of running (and actually enjoying it sometimes.) Her experiences with street harassment while out on her runs have prompted her to advocate through writing. Her passion for writing started at a very early age, when she discovered the power of words and how even a simple poem can unite and empower. Chelsea loves otters, adventures, reading YA fiction and The Walking Dead. You can find her on twitter @LitSmitten.

Sara Conklin, Washington, DC, USA

Sara is currently living, working, and dancing her way through Washington, DC. With an apparent aversion to land-locked states, Sara has lived in Boston, Miami, San Francisco, and Jacksonville. She professionally works in fundraising events, at an organization that empowers women who face homelessness through recovery, wellness training, and housing. Feeling constantly inspired at work by the tremendous amount of strength from these women, Sara chose to write for Stop Street Harassment to encourage dialogue and to help provide a space of empowerment for anyone facing harassment. In her personal life, Sara is an avid traveler and will have touched down on 6 continents as of October 2015 and plans to play with the penguins on Antarctica sometime in the near future. She runs her own photography company (saraconklinphotography.com) and a popular website that seeks to connect the world through pictures, sarapose.com.

Maryah Converse, New York City, USA

Maryah has an MA in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, and was a Fellow at the Center for Arabic Study Abroad in Cairo. She lived three blocks from Tahrir Square during the Egyptian Revolution, an intriguing, unexpected utopia from street harassment. When that utopia abruptly ended, she became interested in understanding street harassment. She works for the Unitarian Church of All Souls in New York City, a liberal religious tradition deeply invested in social justice work, where she has provided particular leadership in the Racial Justice Initiative. She is especially interested in the ways that the activism of Black Lives Matter intersects with global justice movements for LGBT communities, disability rights, environmental protection, reproductive rights, gender equality, economic justice and Middle East peace. She also translates, teaches Arabic and writes memoir about her experiences living in Jordan and Egypt; occasional excerpts appear in her blog “Arabs I’ve Known.”

Larisa Marina Cristea, Romania

Larisa is a master’s student in Marketing and Advertising, with a newly discovered passion for feminism and gender equality. She has volunteered with institutionalized youth and co-founded the “Drawing your future” NGO. She tends to consider herself a people lover and a pacifist. She has been writing fiction stories since she was 12. She loves reading good books – usually fiction, and afterwards fantasizes about the beautiful places in the books, wondering if she will ever get there. That’s why another passion she has is travelling and meeting new people. She loves to hear their stories, learn their way of thinking and acting and then, share what she’s learned with others. She feels inspired by music, feeling more confident and able to write better. She likes the little things in life, including spending quality time with good, enriching and inspiring people.

Roxana Geru, Romania

Roxana is a 21-year-old who is studying psychology. She plans to do a master’s program in Sexuality and Gender Studies. She hopes to one day work within the LGBT community, with sexual workers and/or with people who are suffering from sexuality disorders. She enjoys volunteering and traveling. She likes to fight for human rights, because she truly believes that you should not punish or bully someone just because they different from you and also, because she wants to see a safe and fair world for the next generations. She recently had the chance to study in France for a semester and then received a scholarship to study at a summer school in Denmark. This changed her thinking: she had fear when she walked down the streets in France and Denmark, but in Denmark you really should not be worried. This helped her realize how stupid it is for her as a human to be afraid.

Hannah Rose Johnson, USA

Hannah Rose often feels like she’s floating through a slow, bright fog. In school she studied a collage of sociology, gender studies, art and writing. She has tea bags of feminism, queerness, madness, and longing steeped inside of herself. You can check her out on the collaborative artistic poetic sound project HotBox Utopia. Hannah will be writing from Tucson, Arizona and Lewiston, Maine (US) as she transitions from the Southwest to the Northeast for a career in sexual violence prevention and advocacy at the college level.

Fasiha Khan, Pakistan

Even with the background in Finance studies, Fasiha realized that she has a love for writing! She decided to do something productive and got a chance to be a Contributor for UN Women Asia & the Pacific. She writes about gender-related issues, mainly gender equality, sexual harassment, and economic empowerment of women. She is playing her part towards the betterment of women in the region and around the globe. She also serves as the Global Champion with UN Women’s program, Empower Women, which focuses on Women’s Economic Empowerment. They are aiming to make working norms equal & justifiable for the women & also highlight the female entrepreneurs who have worked against all the odds. Plus, they also help the institutions and governing bodies to devise better policies for women of the world. With Stop Street Harassment, she looks forward to writing to create awareness so we can work to build a healthy and safer society for women. She loves music, reading, writing and traveling. You can find her on Facebook and Twitter, @FasihaFarrukh

Marinella Matejčić, Croatia

Marinella is a freelance journalist/writer, feminist activist, and soon-to-be administrative law student. Her feminist work is mostly oriented on sexual and reproductive health and rights and she is enrolled in the Women Deliver Young Leaders program. Marinella writes for Croatian portal on gender, sex and democracy called Libela.org and covers CEE stories for globalvoicesonline.org. Her favourite pastime is reading and discussing the essence of life with her eight-year-old daughter. Feel free to follow her on Twitter @mmatejci.

Smriti RDN Neupane, Nepal

Smriti is a feminist who dreams of a world filled with love, kindness and justice. She wishes that the world were a home without any boundaries. She is an optimist and believes that every little thing we do matters. She coordinated Safe cities campaign in Nepal with a team of feminist activists of various organisations, networks and community groups from 2011 to 2014 and is still voluntarily engaged with it. She has been a part of the multi country research team pertaining to women’s engagement in unpaid care work. She advocates for recognition, reduction and redistribution of work burden of women to increase women’s representation at all levels. She is currently engaged in an action research and advocacy on women’s leadership in climate change adaptation focusing on women’s time use. Doing workshops and facilitating training with women and girls on women’s rights issues gives her energy and the drive to work on. She also believes that children and youth are the agents of change that we want to see in our world and engages with them whenever she gets an opportunity. She loves to read and write and has a blog which she intends to make active.

Sara Rigon, Italy

Sara is a registered General Practitioner in Italy and New Zealand; she also collaborates with NGOs that offer medical health care to migrants. A women’s right activist, she is the founder and current lead of the newly established Equally Different group within the European Junior General Practitioners Organization, the Vasco da Gama Movement, branch of the World Organization of Family Doctors. The VdGM Equally Different group tackles gender inequalities in everyday life. We fight conventional stereotypes and gender roles as built-in components of our culture and foundation of prejudice as well as gender violence. The group also collaborates with the VdGM Violence Against Women group to raise awareness on this tragic epidemic phenomenon. When she is not working Sara enjoys making and eating pizza, travelling and twitting @rgn_sr.

Takeallah Serena Rivera, Seattle, USA

Takeallah is a 25-year old queer/Afro-Latinx/Indigenous feminist activist, freelance writer, community organizer, mama, comic book nerd, and wanderlust; her efforts are usually focused on anti-poverty and anti-racism work, domestic violence and sexual assault awareness, and reproductive, sexual, and maternal health. She is currently pursuing degrees in Education, with hopes of becoming a High Science/English/ESL Teacher in a predominately low-income, People of Color area by day, college Gender Studies Professor by night, and Editor whenever she has free time! She joined Stop Street Harassment in order to share her stories from a Queer, Woman of Color perspective and to encourage other Queer Women of Color to do the same. Takeallah spends her free time exploring Seattle’s bookstores, binge-watching documentaries on Netflix, and perfecting her side-eye. Follow her on Instagram @BurningBraRadicalDoula, Twiter @The BurningBra, and check out her monthly column on The Trifecta Tribe, “The Burning Bra Chronicles.”

Yuriana Sobrino, Boston, USA

Yuriana is a drummer and an advocate for domestic violence survivors. She’s from Mexico but is currently living in Boston MA. At the age of 6 years old she started playing music with her brothers. Since then music has been her life and the passion for it brought her to move to Boston in 2007 to study at Berklee College of Music where she graduated with a Performance Degree. In October of 2014, she started working as a domestic violence advocate at the Massachusetts Statewide Domestic Violence Hotline, Safelink, where she is currently the Assistant Coordinator. There she’s been learning about crisis intervention, safety planning, domestic violence and its effects, resources available for survivors and especially about how to understand and listen to them from a non-judgmental perspective. She is very enthusiastic about helping to end abuse in all its forms and specially in creating awareness about how to prevent it. Learn more about her at her website www.yurianasobrino.com and you can follow her on Twitter, @YurianaSobrino.

Tracey Wise, London, UK

Born and raised in London, Tracey is a graduate of City University. She has spent the best part of her life at gigs and festivals and obsessing about music. She considers herself outside of work, best described as alternative. Alongside this, she is politically aware. After a recent trip to a gig that ended with an act of sexual harassment, it seemed natural to combine her love of music with her political awareness. From this, she created the “Safe Gigs for Women” project. Currently based in London, but with plans to expand, her aims are threefold: Firstly, talking to venues to support them in making changes towards safer environments and taking complaints of sexual harassment seriously. Secondly, challenging prevailing attitudes of gig goers. Lastly, getting bands and artists talking about our work, in the hope it provokes wider debate.

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