Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

“I should also be allowed to ride the bus in peace”

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Maybe this is not the worst kind of occurrence, but I would still call it harassment.

I look alternative, with piercings and ear tunnels, and although this should not even be an issue, I tend to dress in a way that covers me up pretty much.

So, I was on the bus, minding my own business, surfing the Internet on my phone, when this posh guy sat down one seat away from me and put his man-bag on the seat beside me. He asked me where the bus was going, and I told him very, very curtly. It was pretty obvious I am not a person up for small talk. Two minutes later, he asked me where I was from, and he had to ask, like, 3 times until I even looked up, startled, because I was so immersed in texting a friend. I started shouting at him so that the whole bus would hear and I told him to stop harassing me. Of course, the inevitable nonsense followed, he called me rude and badly educated (as if that mattered) and made it seem like I was the aggressor.

Maybe I don’t get something here, but I was quiet, I was sitting in the corner minding my own business, and I paid for the bus ticket like everybody else, so I should also be allowed to ride the bus in peace. It was so clearly a power thing, because that type of person would probably call the police if an alternative/goth etc person moved in next to them.

We must react, we must shame these men, let everyone know their real face, and we need laws to protect us, asap!

Do you have any suggestions for dealing with harassers and/or ending street harassment in general?

We need laws, simple as. Behavior like this must be punished. There should be a class for boys only in school teaching them to behave properly, so they don’t grow into creeps. We need to scream, shout and do everything possible to alert everyone around us to these men. Don’t be afraid to voice your feelings!!! We need to show that we can retaliate!!!

– Anonymous

Location: London, UK

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“My clothes do not define who I am”

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I am a dancer who is fairly curvaceous for my age (15) and tend to walk to my dance classes. The weather is usually nice and I really don’t see a problem with it.

Because I’m going to a dance class it’s uniform to wear tight fitted clothes to show muscles as we work and stretch, unfortunately this has made me a target.

It can be something as a wolf whistle or a ‘ay baby’ to something as full on as being smacked on the ass and it terrifies me. I am not your property, I am not something you can touch or look at. You have NO right to make me feel scared.

My classes tend to be pretty late and I would not classify were I live as a dodgy area but something happened a few nights ago that has changed the way I act.

I was walking home, hot, tired, sweaty and in a pretty good mood. I saw a group of teenage boys, older and taller then me sitting near the place I had to walk. I made it clear that I didn’t want to be talked to, stuffed my headphones in my ears, pulled my jacket together all the while thinking, “You’re being paranoid, they’re probably decent human beings,” I was wrong.

As I walked past I felt a hard smack across my butt, I whipped around angry, ashamed and humiliated, I yelled at them asking them, “Who the hell do you think you are? What gives you the right to touch me in that way? Oh right NOTHING!” I was about to continue when a passing woman intervened.

I thought she was going to help, instead she yelled at me, saying it was my fault for dressing that way, my fault. They were just innocent boys that I had seduced. I was crying by now and so mad. I turned to keep walking home only to be followed by the woman for half a block still yelling at me called me a whore, slut, a skank.

I am embarrassed. How dare you call me out for clothing that was simply a pair of leggings and a tight fitting t-shirt, how dare you yell at me, how dare you support blatant sexual harassment.

I told my parents this story only to be asked, “What were you wearing?”

No, that doesn’t matter, that shouldn’t matter. My clothes do not give ANYBODY the right to touch or speak to me in a manner that’s different to their peers.

My clothes do not define who I am, my clothes are not consent.

– Anonymous

Location: Auckland New Zealand

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England: Street Harassment, sunshine, and… shorts?

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By: Levi Grayshon, Manchester, England, SSH Correspondent

Image via Denim Blog

Here in the UK, we are in the midst of a heatwave. The sticky, sunny days are sprawling in front of us, and have been rolling on for the last fortnight.

Sometimes, though, finding something sun-suitable is difficult. When the sun comes out, the clothes go away. Jeans and jumpers are stuffed into the back of the wardrobes and the skirts and shorts are dusted off and worn with pride. Or are they?

Two years ago, I was strolling down the street in a pair of shorts. I was alone. A pair of men walked up to me, sniggering and making comments on my legs. On the way home, another man stopped directly in front of me, looked me up and down and told me that my legs were “too pale to be wearing that.” Since that incident, I have been uneasy about exposing my legs on hot days. What gives people the right to act like this?

Nothing.

Seriously. Not only are magazines scaring us into doing 200 squats a day, and music videos convincing us that we must shave and apply sparkly goop to our legs in order to look passable, strangers feel need the to reinforce the idea that your body does not reach their standards. This is hideous. It is easy for others to tell you that their opinion does not matter. It is also easy for people to say “well why don’t you work out more/tan/go on a diet/stop wearing shorts?”

As simple as it sounds, the only person that you should listen to is yourself. No one has the right to make you feel uncomfortable about your body. It is hard to block out those voices when their words scratch and stab at your self-confidence, and feel as those they are branding themselves onto your thighs like a hot iron, but there is only one person that you should listen to when getting dressed in the morning, and only one question that you should ask: “Do I feel comfortable?”

Legs are legs. Shorts are shorts.

As Laura Bates from The Everyday Sexism Project quite rightly stated this week on Radio 2: “What women wear does not make them responsible for men’s reaction to them.”

She is spot on. If a person on the street harasses you over your outfit – whether honking their horn at you, shouting comments, or even following you – then they are the ones in the wrong. Don’t feel pressured to change anything about yourself – you are not to blame for their ill-judged actions, and don’t allow anyone else to make you feel that you are.

Levi graduated from university with a degree in Film and TV screenwriting this summer. As a freelance writer, she has been writing for The F-Word and Gamer-UK. You can follow her rants and ramblings on Twitter, @part_heart.

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South Africa: What men need to understand about street harassment

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Trigger Warning

By: Gcobani Qambela, South Africa, SSH Correspondent

Duduzile Zozo. Image from International Business Times

I spent much of this past week speaking to self-identifying lesbian women in the rural town of Peddie in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. South Africa, despite progressive same-sex legislation, still presents an extremely hostile environment for non-heterosexual sexualities. It was just two weeks ago when we heard of the brutal murder of Duduzile Zozo.

Zozo was a 26-year-old lesbian woman who passed away in a lesbian hate crime, and was found dead with a toilet brush stuffed into her vagina. Such crimes are however not primarily against lesbian women for heterosexual women too are often also victim to such violent crime. A few kilometres from Peddie for instance, in Grahamstown, Thandiswa Qubuda was beaten, raped and died after having been rendered brain dead after the assault on her.

The women I spoke to this past week were full human beings who possessed so much joy, love and happiness. They had sexuality, and were not afraid to express it both inwards and externally. They all however said showing their love and sexuality publicly was often eclipsed by complaints of men (and sometimes even women) that they say chase them in the streets harassing and doing other ignorant things. Thenjiwe* for instance told me that it is not uncommon for men to harass her in the streets asking things like, “How do you lesbians do it?”**, or men telling her that they can “fix” her from being a lesbian through their penis or even other women uttering homophobic remarks and threats at her.  As a result of this, she said her worst fear is rape for she often walks through a dark park home.

In South Africa it is often the major crimes that make the national headlines that are taken seriously, while the daily harassment which many women and (gay) men experience in the street falls to the side. It is important that the government and individuals make the connection between ‘everyday misogyny’ and the larger societal problems that we have in South Africa like rape and patriarchy.

Many people for example are shocked when there is news of lesbian women that have been raped and murdered and see this event as something that is separate from their lives – something that they would not do yet they participate in it daily.  Men who harass lesbian women in the streets uttering homophobic slurs do not seem to understand that they are participating in the same process as the person who eventually rapes and kills a woman.

Many men would say they would never rape a woman or have sex with a woman without her consent, yet why then is it okay to harass (and humiliate) lesbian women in the street when this is clearly something that they do not desire? Everyday misogyny experienced by many women from largely men who find it okay to whistle, harass and touch women inappropriately ultimately sends the message to other men watching that it is okay to mistreat women.

This creates an enabling environment for other opportunistic miscreants to take this mistreatment further by assaulting, raping and ultimately also murdering women. Men need to understand, stop and speak out against not only the ‘big’ crimes like rape, assault and murder, but also especially against the ones that are regarded as the ‘smaller’ one like street harassment which makes it difficult for so many people to enjoy their freedom of movement.

In South Africa where we have a painful history of oppression, we better than anyone else, should realise the importance of allowing people full freedom regardless of gender or sexual orientation to live peacefully and freely in the country. Until South Africans start seeing the connection between everyday street harassment and societal issues such as rape – we are not going to be able to get to the heart of these and we are unfortunately going to continue to see more of this patriarchal violence inflicted especially on women.

*Name has been changed.

**They are asking how lesbian women have sex for they do not have a penis.

Gcobani is completing his Masters in Medical Anthropology through Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa. His research centres around issues of risk, responsibility and vulnerability amongst Xhosa men (and women) in a rural town in South Africa living in the context of HIV/AIDS. Follow him on Twitter, @GcobaniQambela.

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“He reached out and grabbed my breast”

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Near the beginning of seventh grade, I was walking home from school with a friend. A man in his early twenties, presumably a student at the community college a block away, rode down the opposite side of the sidewalk on a razor scooter. He was going south while we were walking north, and when he passed us, he reached out and grabbed my breast. It hurt a lot; he pulled on it and kind of twisted it around. He had red hair and pale skin, and wore a hoodie attached to a Jansport backpack. I remember him laughing as he scootered away. When I told someone, they asked me what I was wearing. I was 12.

– Anonymous

Location: Glendale, CA

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