Dr. Dena Simmons, New York City, USA, Blog Correspondent

Dear Men of New York City,

Please let me walk the streets without your sweet-nothings, your unwanted advances. I don’t care for the elaborate details of what you’d like to do to my body.

No, you cannot take a picture of my badankadonk,
lick my thighs,
suck my toes,
ravage me with your hard cock,
join me on my run,
have my number,
bang me silly.
No, no, no!

I am more than my body. I don’t owe you a smile, a thank you, or a hello. I am not a bitch for ignoring you. I don’t deserve your street-abuse just because I don’t give you my attention or affection.

Please, please, please let me walk down the streets without having to map out a route to avoid your verbal daggers. I don’t like the way you devour me with your eyes, the way you make me feel unsafe, the way you strip me of my humanity.

Your disrespect massacres me.

Please leave me alone. Please don’t touch me. Please let me walk in peace.

My body is not yours. I do not exist for your pleasure.  I exist for me.

Respectfully,
Dena

Dr. Dena Simmons serves as the Associate Director of Education and Training at Yale’s Center for Emotional Intelligence. She is a recent graduate of Teachers College, Columbia University, where her research focused on teacher preparedness to address bullying in the middle school setting.

Dylan Jane Manderlink, Arkansas, USA, SSH Blog Correspondent

A few nights ago, after being approached by a man on the street in Boston as she walked with a friend, Ellen R. replied, “Not tonight, thank you,” but the the man continued to follow her. She then turned around and said, “Please don’t follow us” and he yelled, “I’m not following you, bitch.”

Ellen told me, “This interaction upset me for so many reasons. Not only did I feel uncomfortable with the man’s initial comment, but when my friend and I tried to defend ourselves in the most polite way possible, the man only got more interested and more angry. I am already scared to walk down the street, so it’s even more frightening to know that even when I try to handle the situation in a calm manner, the man doing the harassing can go from 0 to 10 in a split second.”

Unfortunately Ellen’s street harassment experience is not uncommon. Despite responding with a polite remark, her street harasser met her with petulance, callousness, and an unforeseen temper. In many street harassment awareness and prevention blogs and articles I’ve read, I see the same message being revisited: Street harassment endangers the public space of individuals and disempowers their ability to walk through a public space safely, positively, and healthily. I certainly agree with that because I too, have felt that way when experiencing street harassment. But I would add that street harassment also communicates the message that your private space is no longer yours or never belonged to you.

As you navigate through a public space (a sidewalk, a city, a park, etc.), you also have your own private space within that. The way we personally view the environment we’re in is our private world…our thoughts, our bodies, the space between us and the people we pass on the street in close proximity…those all inform our private world. And when street harassers interfere with that personal, private, and intimate domain of ours, we can feel a different type of violation and discomfort. By understanding the threat we experience on both a private and public level, I believe we can better inform our awareness and advocacy efforts and the dialogues we promote through those modes.

Street harassment tells people that wherever they’re walking, wherever they’re living, whatever space they’re occupying – it’s not theirs. When we are catcalled, groped, eyed, followed, and yelled at the street harasser is claiming that space as theirs and communicating to us that we don’t belong in it. This needs to stop. This is not okay and people are really starting to take notice of how much street harassment is a detriment to our society and to people’s lives. We deserve better. Respecting our public and private space should not be optional, it should be the accepted and expected norm. As activists, the more we make noise and the more we create productive and cooperative pathways to empowerment and awareness, the more we can effect change.

As we approach International Anti-Street Harassment Week (#EndSHWeek) from April 12-18, let’s construct and promote a vigilant and sustainable conversation surrounding street harassment and the private and public spaces that are too often taken advantage of and threatened. I will no longer stand for our space being jeopardized, devalued, and disregarded. In the next couple months leading up to #EndSHWeek, let’s affirm the positive and inspiring efforts of fellow activists, bloggers, feminists, and community members. In doing so, I encourage you to open up meaningful channels of dialogue, spread awareness, and get involved with advocacy that helps make people’s private worlds a better place. Reclaim your space because it was yours to begin with and will always be. No one should be able to take that away from you.

Dylan is a recent graduate of Emerson College and currently teaches 8th, 10th, and 11th grade Digital Communications and Audio/Visual Technology in an Arkansas high school. You can visit her personal blog and follow her on Twitter @DylanManderlink.

Emily Gillingham, Washington, DC, USA, Blog Correspondent

A lot of the conversation around street harassment focuses on harassment in cities. But this post is about street harassment in rural America, from three people who grew up there.

I grew up in a rural, conservative Michigan town. When I say “rural,” I mean that my township’s claim to fame is that it is the self-proclaimed “Kohlrabi Capital of the World.” And when I say “conservative,” I mean that when I knocked doors for Obama in 2008, a guy showed me his gun to emphasize that 1) he supported gun rights, and 2) I needed to get off his property immediately.

I remember the first time I experienced street harassment. I was fourteen years old. My mother and I had just moved closer to my high school. It was the first time I had lived in a place with sidewalks in my neighborhood, and I got in the habit of taking a bike ride downtown after school. “Downtown” consisted of a dozen or so shops, offices, and restaurants and a park. One day, I was biking home and a pickup truck headed towards me suddenly gunned it. Instinctively, I looked up- just in time to see the boy a few years my senior in the passenger seat lean out the window, make a ring with the fingers of his right hand, and vigorously stab his left index finger through it, screaming wildly.

I asked two young men who grew up in rural America, Chris and Tyler, what that was all about. Chris, who is originally from rural southeastern North Carolina, said, “Either he was crudely trying to hit on you, or he was mocking you with a douchey high school boy gesture.”

Why would someone take their time to do something like that? Chris pointed out that in the middle of nowhere, there’s nothing better to do. He told me about the form that street harassment took where he grew up- cruising. Chris said, “You take your pimped out car, and you cruise through town at slow speeds, just circling around. If you see an attractive female, you say something to her, like ‘hey, baby.’” I asked Chris if this something people do with friends, and he said, “Yeah, it would be creepy if someone was alone.”

I asked Chris if he had ever catcalled anyone or gone cruising. He said no, since he’s scared to talk to women in general. He also said it’s “disrespectful” and “weird” to talk to strangers on the street.

Tyler grew up in rural Maryland. I asked him what sort of catcalling he saw growing up. He explained that he never saw any, and when I pressed him as to why, he said that a lot of the places he went growing up were nicer, “family kinds of places where you didn’t do that kind of stuff.” I asked Tyler if he had ever catcalled someone, and he said, “I don’t even like people when I talk to them normally. I think you need to have a bit of an ego to think you’re the star and everyone needs to be looking at you.”

So what are the lessons here? First of all, I think it’s worth saying, explicitly, that street harassment isn’t just a city problem. It’s something that happens everywhere, between all kinds of people. But it definitely takes different forms in different places. I think that Chris was on to something when he said street harassment in rural America is just a way to pass the time. And after spending a few weeks asking my friends if they’ve ever catcalled someone and not getting a single “yes,” I think that there is a social element to it, too. People who catcall, particularly in rural areas, hang out with other people who catcall. And there seems to be a different social group that doesn’t catcall. And somehow, having a bachelor’s degree in Women’s and Gender Studies, I’m not surprised that I would up with a bunch of friends who say they’ve never catcalled anyone.

Emily is a 3L at Michigan State University College of Law, and the president of her school’s chapter of LSRJ. Follow her on Twitter @emgillingham.