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USA: Street Harassment in India and Beyond

August 28, 2013 By Correspondent

By: Delia Harrington, Massachusetts, USA, SSH Correspondent

Last week, under the username Rosechasm, University of Chicago student Michaela Cross published a CNN iReport that has shaken readers and spurred reactions across the web. The piece, entitled “India, the Story You Never Wanted to Hear” details many terrifying examples of street harassment, staring, groping, and attempted or threatened rape that the author says happened to herself or fellow classmates during a semester abroad in India through their university.

CNN has since called for women all over the world to share their own stories of street harassment and perspectives on Cross’s original iReport as well as potential solutions or methods to mitigate street harassment and other gender-based violence. Many women, including Stop Street Harassment’s founder Holly Kearl, have since heeded that call, and their stories are well worth a read.

Many have misread the article as a universal condemnation of Indian men and India in general. The author expresses repeatedly that her experience in India was one of contradiction, including both those of the positive, once in a lifetime variety and those of a more traumatic nature. While it is hard not to feel lately that some observers and media outlets are holding up India as a problematic “other”, that doesn’t mean people should stop telling their stories or reporting on the stories of others.

Another common criticism is that Cross’s article ignores the treatment Indian women receive within their own country. That was not the focus of her article, and it seems reasonable that Cross would only write of her own experience and the experience of those she knew through her program, especially given iReport’s format. However, since it bears repeating, here are some stories Indian women have since posted to CNN about their own treatment, good or bad. Gender-based violence looks different for local women than it does for foreigners, but as travelers and allies in the struggle against such violence, we must remember that eventually we will leave, and many women don’t have that option.

Finally, many have highlighted the prevalence of street harassment and gender-based violence worldwide, especially within the writer’s (and my) native United states. Again, I think this is rightfully outside the scope of Cross’s article, but the very existence of this blog and others like it demonstrates that street harassment is not limited to India or the developing world. However, that doesn’t make Cross’s experience any less real or traumatic.

Cross’s experience shows how street harassment is unfortunately only one part of the spectrum of gender-based violence, which includes stalking, groping, sexual assault, and murder. For a victim of this type of violence, even the more “minor” incidents can feel (and become) incredibly dangerous. In a statement to CNN, the University of Chicago writes that all students are offered, “extensive support and advice to students before, during and after their trips abroad,” and yet Cross didn’t approach them during her program. In her own words, she thought she was prepared to handle the stress of India:

“When I went to India, nearly a year ago, I thought I was prepared. I had been to India before; I was a South Asian Studies major; I spoke some Hindi. I knew that as a white woman I would be seen as a promiscuous being and a sexual prize. I was prepared to follow the University of Chicago’s advice to women, to dress conservatively, to not smile in the streets. And I was prepared for the curiosity my red hair, fair skin and blue eyes would arouse. But I wasn’t prepared.”

Contrary to what many online commenters have accused, it appears Cross was as fully equipped as a person could be for the potential stresses of travel. Not only that, she seems to have taken all the usual precautions advised to female travelers (and females in their own countries.) If all of the University of Chicago’s years of experience sending students to India, as well as her personal knowledge from traveling to India previously weren’t enough to help keep her safe, would anything be enough? Short of not going to India, which is not an option for many Indian women and isn’t a viable option for travelers, what more could a woman do to avoid this situation? I think perhaps it’s time for the onus to prevent street harassment to come off of women, and be placed on perpetrators as well as our law enforcement and legislators.

I am impressed that Cross was able to share her story so publicly, and I love that so many women worldwide have taken to CNN’s iReport assignment to join her in sharing their lived experiences with street harassment. I’m a firm believer that speaking up and supporting those among us who speak up is one way of fighting back. Instead of devolving into an argument over where harassment is worse, I hope we remember that women in America, India, and the world over have something in common right now: we are speaking up, and we are fighting back.

Delia Harrington is a recent graduate of Northeastern University and calls Boston home. In recent years, she has found herself studying, working, and volunteering in Egypt, Cuba, France, Benin, the Dominican Republic, Turkey, Germany, and Greece. You can read more of her writing on her blog, or follow her on Facebook and Twitter, @deliamary.

New Book Tackles Street Harassment, Other Feminist Topics

August 27, 2013 By Contributor

By: Julie Mastrine, USA

In the fight against street harassment other gender inequalities, our voices are our most powerful weapons.

This is something I’ve always believed. The fight for social justice is difficult and fraught with roadblocks, chief among them flawed cultural attitudes. The best thing we can do to create change and end issues like street harassment is to fight the fear in our bellies and give a face to these incidents. Stories have power, and they can provide the groundwork we need to help others understand the links between personal injustices and how they connect to a broader, global issue.

This was the thinking behind the creation of my new ebook, Make Your Own Sandwich: A 20-Something’s Musings on Living Under (And Smashing) The Patriarchy. Plenty of people have pegged Millennials as lazy, entitled and narcissistic, but the truth is, our generation has championed the use of new technologies as a way to create lasting change in the world away from our computer screens. Opening up about our experiences online through ebooks, blogging and social media has proven an effective and pervasive way to ignite the change we want to see.

And just what change do we want? My book delves into the more subtle ways we harm and oppress others, like creating conflicting media messages about how women should look or act, using language that pegs femininity as weak or trivial, criticizing how — or if — women wear makeup, taunting women who engage in self-portraiture like the selfie, and yes, street harassment.

The following excerpt from Make Your Own Sandwich delves into the issue of street harassment:

“At some point in their lives — often starting at a very young age — 99 percent of women will experience street harassment. One in four will experience it before the age of 12. Some will endure it every day. Some will experience hateful and sexualized comments. Some will be threatened with violence. Some will be assaulted. Some will replay the incident in their head for years, wondering how they could’ve retaliated, what it was they’d done to deserve being the victim of such behavior…

Too often, women and LGBTQ persons are told street harassment should be taken as a compliment, that it’s just “boys being boys.” But street harassment is not a compliment — it is scary, threatening, and a human rights violation.

Men and women have competed for access to public spaces since the beginning of time. Now that women are no longer expected to stay at home tending to house and children, we’re seeing these power struggles being doled out on the streets. And consequently, it’s made plenty of women afraid.

When I told my mother about my first street harassment incident at age 11 — I was catcalled while walking my dog — she brushed it off, saying, “Oh, that’s always happened around here.” We’ve created a culture in which women are often told to take harassment as a compliment, and if we don’t like it, to watch what we wear, travel with a companion, or otherwise police our own behavior to avoid being targeted. And plenty of women and LGBTQ folk simply accept that they should “choose” to restrict their actions to avoid harm…

“It wasn’t until I started to get wind of the anti-street harassment movement — efforts fueled nonprofits like Stop Street Harassment and Hollaback! — that I learned this wasn’t just an isolated incident, but an issue happening on streets worldwide. As a volunteer for Stop Street Harassment, I learned how powerful it can feel to share these incidents with others to take the power back, whether that means standing at a demonstration with the comment scribbled on a sign or simply sending out a tweet. Just telling other people what happened can be an effective tool that affords the incident less strength over our consciousness and sense of self. It opens up others to the idea that this isn’t something we should tolerate, but should fight back against.”

I hope you’ll give my book a read, and hopefully come away not just with an understanding of the complex sociopolitical landscape of gender issues, but with a sense of empowerment to affect change. Make Your Own Sandwich is available for download here.

Julie Mastrine is an activist, feminist, and writer working in the PR industry. She holds a B.A. in Public Relations from Penn State University, and is a social media volunteer for Stop Street Harassment. You can follow Julie on Twitter.

USA: The Act of Cultural Imposition Through Street Harassment

August 25, 2013 By Correspondent

By Nikoletta Gjoni, Maryland, USA, SSH Correspondent

When I recently read about an American woman’s street harassment experiences in India and the negative impact they had on her, I couldn’t help but think about how a) it vaguely reminded me of stories and experiences from my native country of Albania and b) how unsurprised I felt overall reading about RoseChasm’s experiences in a foreign country. Not to say that sexual harassment and lewd behavior doesn’t occur in the good old U.S. of A, but there’s a distinctly different discomfort and fear that courses through you when it occurs in a new place you are unfamiliar with.

People who think street harassment is a form of a compliment driven by attraction are wrong. Street harassment, not unlike rape, is about control. It’s about men claiming their dominance over women and feeling that essential right to comment on or act upon whatever they want. Because boys will be boys.

This can come across as more muted in countries like the U.S. where it is essentially known that no, you cannot just scream out sexually explicit phrases to a passerby or touch someone without their permission. Though today this is general knowledge (or should be general knowledge) in most places a person may live in or visit, the lines become blurred when a society is historically patriarchal to the core, and while women may be respected, they are also kept at a safe distance from men. Just in case.

My country, Albania is steeped in rich tradition, old history, and vast contradictions. Traditionally a patriarchal society with “the man is the head of the house” cliché, it is a country that both honors its women but can easily shame them. Catcalling and whistling is the norm. Being followed for a few blocks by a gaggle of boys is the norm. Being singled out because of your accent is the norm. Most is harmless and amounts to nothing in the end, but sometimes you get the occasional stranger that makes you pick up your step a little bit.

A good family friend of mine (also Albanian) was visiting a few years ago. Out with her mom, aunts, and cousins, she was ahead of the group with one or two other girls. What essentially started out as the “typical” come on (whatever that is) turned into a more frightening experience with the man threatening to take her around the corner and “really show her what he could do to her.” Why? Because she retaliated when he grabbed her while walking by. His ego was bruised and he was humiliated in public.

Forget her humiliation. Forget the fact that she was minding her own business. Forget the fact that had she even noticed him in the first place or made eye contact, grabbing her would still have been a highly inappropriate way to reach out. Forget the fact that he wasn’t even really interested in her as an individual. Forget everything but the fact that he asserted his dominance over a young woman walking down the street and then became verbally abusive when she reacted negatively instead of just walking on.

Is this experience special to Albania? Of course not. One of the first things my friend told me after sharing the story was: “I wished then I had my pepper spray with me.” She’s Albanian, as am I. But we haven’t been raised there. We didn’t grow up with the casual mentality that “girls ask for it” when they dress a certain way, speak a certain way, or act a certain way. And when they don’t—well—just keep on walking and don’t give the perpetrator ammo.

It was a little jarring to see just how often I would get hassled, for one absurd reason or another. And the fact that I didn’t know just how to respond (or whether to respond at all) was what added to the frustration. I am Albanian by blood, traditions, and rearing, but I was a stranger to the minute details that made someone quintessentially from there. And all I could think about was how this kind of behavior just doesn’t happen in the States—a common misconception about the sleek ‘modern’ world vs. everything else that’s old.

But it does happen in the States and it certainly does happen in Washington, D.C. Maybe not to me, not all the time, but to others it does. What we have going for us here is that there is a cultural awareness slowly growing. There are programs, sites, people, and places one can refer to for help. We are becoming better at practicing bystander intervention. RoseChasm didn’t have that luxury in India and there are still so many places in the world that don’t understand the damage caused by victim blaming.

Albania, too is slowly getting there, though it is stuck in a crevice found between tradition and modernity. For all its collective machismo and testosterone driven decision making, it is a beautiful country with much to learn from. I just hope next time I go there will be one less car slowing down on the street just so heads can come out of the windows to whistle and gawk.

Nikoletta Gjoni graduated from UMBC in 2009 with a B.A. in English Literature. After graduation, she did almost four years of freelance work in a D.C. broadcast station, in addition to having worked as a literacy and linguistics assessor for pre-k classrooms in D.C.’s charter schools. To get to know her better, she can be tracked on both her creative blog and Twitter, @nikigjoni.

USA: Interview with Burlesque Dancer Fancy Feast (Part 2)

August 24, 2013 By Correspondent

By: Maggie Freleng, NYC, USA, SSH Correspondent

I met Fancy Feast, a two and a half year burlesque dancer and sex educator, at Murray Hill’s annual Miss Lez Pageant, , an alternative beauty pageant for queer womyn. In part one of my interview with the fearless, fierce Feast, she explained how burlesque is a way for her to dictate how she feels about herself and her body in a positive way to combat the powerlessness she feels being harassed on the street.

In continuation, she explained how herself and many other burlesque dancers are frustrated they are not able to perform their sexuality in non burlesque settings. For example, not having to be concerned with covering up on the street and feeling comfortable and safe no matter what they are wearing.

“Burlesque is always going to be safe and comfortable for me, it offers an outlet to experience joy and pleasure with my body in a public way without fearing violence and reproach.”

Fancy Feast explained a recent incident in the burlesque community where a male fan posted on a burlesque dancers status that she should take unwanted comments as a compliment because she’s beautiful person and should be flattered by the attention.

“Performers analyzed and dismantled the ways this person was thinking…anybody who can’t separate a sexualized performance from the rest of one’s daily experience is really oversimplifying things,” she told me.

“The two experiences are not at all to measure and the two come with their own different set of rules. I am very lucky to work in an industry where there are so many extraordinary people in charge of their own images and own sexuality who are able to call the shots when it deviates from that.”

In Part 1 of the interview, I explained Fancy Feasts nickel idea –setting aside a nickel to be donated to anti-violence shelters every time she is street harassed — as a way for her to mark these constant occasions and make sure something good can come from the bad.

Fancy Feast explained the time she saw NPR was doing a show on street harassment and were asking for individual stories. Fancy Feast thought this was ridiculous.

“It was a way of saying that there was just one experience that stood out when really it is so continual,” she said.

So she wrote to NPR:

“I wish I had “a story” about being harassed on the street, as if it were some kind of discrete experience that stands out as exceptional. It’s not like that. Men say things to me all the time. I’m hot or I’m fat but they’d fuck me anyway, they’d tear me up or hit it from the back. Men touch me too. With their hands, their eyes, erections pressing into my back on crowded subways or clubs. It takes only my most primitive brain to discern what is a compliment and what is not. The men who presume otherwise, saying that women ought to be flattered by these behaviors, assume women to be simpleminded enough not to tell the difference. The difference between “Hey, awesome necklace!” and “You look good enough to get raped.” But the other thing is: don’t compliment me. Interrupting my day to tell me that you like the shape of my dress or the body underneath it asserts that your opinion about me matters. Interrupting a woman to comment on her body or sexuality reinforces that she has no right to public space, to move freely and without comment. The men who assume I will be flattered by sexual remarks from strangers do not understand the reality of living in a woman’s body, the implicit and explicit threats we experience, the keys poised between our knuckles on the way home — just in case.

I wish I had “a story”, but I have thousands, and they get lost or metabolized in the space of a day.These days I set aside a nickel for every time I am harassed on the street. I wanted something to mark the occasion, to not let it simply vanish. I’m donating that money to a women’s anti-violence shelter, so something good can come from something ugly.”

NPR never responded to her story. However, Fancy Feast didn’t write to have her story told, she just wanted to let it be known that for so many people harassment is not just one story, it is a collection of daily, life-long experiences that we just learn and are told to deal with and take as compliments.

We shouldn’t have to deal with street harassment–it needs to end. But in the meantime, while we patiently wait for legislatures and society to finally realize we are suffering, we will find other ways to to reclaim our bodies and sexualities how we want them to be perceived.

For some of us, that is being an over-the-top sex-kitten in a leather harness shaking it on stage.

Maggie is a Brooklyn based freelance writer and photographer focusing on social justice and women’s issues. She currently writes for Vitamin W. Maggie graduated with a B.A in Journalism and English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 2011, concentrating on dystopian literature. You can read more of her writing on her blog or follow her on Twitter, @dixiy89.

“Not something you should say to women.”

August 23, 2013 By Contributor

Yesterday as I was walking home, I stopped at a corner, and a man came up and said something to me. I had my earbuds in and I live in a big city where sometimes folks ask directions on my street, so I took them out and said, “Sorry?” He repeated what he’d said, which was, “Would you call the cops if I said you’re beautiful?” (UGHHHHH.) I used to just say, “Thanks,” or whatever to these comments but I was just in no mood.

I tried to be nice. I said, “No… But that’s probably not something you should be saying to women.”

IMMEDIATELY he launched into how “f***ed up” I am, and why couldn’t I just “take a compliment because you ARE beautiful”… I just had to put my earbuds back in, turn it up, and keep walking.

How should I have responded? I don’t know if I handled it correctly, but I’m glad I let him know that it wasn’t welcome, and I walked the rest of the way home feeling anxious and angry. Major creep.

– Anonymous

Location: San Francisco, CA

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