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“They were trying to pull her into the van”

November 2, 2011 By Contributor

Trigger Warning

A white van pulled up on a zebra crossing as I was walking along the pavement. Two men got out of the van and started to walk towards me. I said, “What do you want?” because I had suffered street harassment all evening, and one of the men said, “You.”

I swore at them and ran away. I composed myself for a moment and continued on my journey. As I turned the corner, the same two men were trying to pull another woman into the van. They had actually taken hold of her arms and were trying to pull her into the van. When they saw me, they got into the van and sped off. I asked the woman if she was okay but she was in shock.

– Anonymous

Location: Playa de Las Americas, Tenerife, Canary Islands

Share your street harassment story today and help raise awareness about the problem.
Find suggestions for what YOU can do about this human rights issue.

Street Harassment Snapshot: Stories, News, & Tweets: October 30, 2011

October 30, 2011 By HKearl

Read stories, news articles, blog posts, and tweets about street harassment from the past week and find relevant announcements and upcoming street harassment events.

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Street Harassment Stories:

Share your story! You can read new street harassment stories on the Web from the past week at:

Stop Street Harassment Blog | “Street Respect” stories

HarassMap Egypt

Resist Harassment Lebanon

Hollaback Tegucigalpa

Hollaback West Yorkshire

In the News, on the Blogs:

* Racialicious, “Unsafe in Seattle”

* Feministe, “So There’s a Woman Dressed All Sexy-Like: Your Role as Observer“

* Huffington Post, “Street Harassment is Everywhere; What do We Tell Our Daughters?“

* Negin Dahya, “Big City Etiquette“

* HR Daily Advisor, “I Stopped My Harasser in His Tracks” and HR Daily Advisor, “How to Respond to a Harasser? 10 Things to Say“

* The Times of India, “On Diwali eve, many roads without street-lights“

* Reuters, “NY may close bus service that makes women sit in back“

* Gender Across Borders, “Street Culture“

* Her campus University of Leeds, “Street Harassment – The Daily Battle“

* Cool Age, “That evil called ‘street harassment‘”

* NY1, “Police Ramp Up Search For Queens Sexual Assault Suspect“

* LiveMint.com, “A girl’s guide to public speaking“

Announcements:

New:

* Sign the petition to tell Toronto Police to stop blaming victims for street harassment and sexual assault!!

Reminders:

* Participate in a “Taking Back Halloween” contest and show off your creativity for creating non-sexy costumes

* Donate to Students Active for Ending Rape so they can mentor and teach students to advocate for safer campuses!

* If you’re in London, help a Ph.D. student out with her dissertation research by meeting to share your street harassment stories.

* Contribute to the Monday “Street Respect” series that highlights the type of stories we want to see instead of street harassment stories!

* Call for men to share views/stories about street harassment

* Sign Mend the Gap’s petition to address subway harassment in Delhi, India

* Are you in Egypt? Use HarassMap to report your street harassers

* Have an iPhone? Download the Hollaback iPhone app that lets you report street harassers

10 Tweets from the Week:

1. Karnythia What I will do to protect myself is nothing compared to what I will do to protect my child. You won’t be here to engage in #streetharassment

2. nualacabral Excited to speak out on #streetharassment at the Media That Matters Film Festival this wk in NYC. mediathatmattersfest.org/news/media_tha… #p2 #fem2

3. feministteacher Students @lreinyc are writing their own responses to #streetharassment via spoken word, poetry, response yfrog.com/h7bltugj @GGENYC

4. rlalita @Bell_Bajao censors should ban every Bollywood movie with eve teasing, street harassment, & any form of abuse against women. #rewrite

5. cathredfern YES. Just successfully challenged street harassment i am shaking now so much

6. MarwanAnwar #EgyptianMisconception Hitting on random girls on the streets would make you the coolest person ever born

7. VAWMonth Read today’s live chat with @BLANK_NOISE on Street Violence Against Women by following #VAWAM.

8. HollabackCHD #KeenanSantos lost his life standing up against #streetharassment He chose to speak up. Will you? chd.ihollaback.org/2011/10/keenan…

9. PamelaScully Street harassment against women is most visible symptom that society uses fear to control more than 1/2 the population. huff.to/vclgbY

10. HollaBackBmore Women don’t always have the time or safety margin to determine between #streetharassment and a compliment. ow.ly/7d6au

Harassment in an Italian Doctor’s Office

October 28, 2011 By Contributor

I was standing in a doctors office with my three month old baby, waiting for my husband. An older Italian man was staring at me nonstop for at least ten minutes. It made me feel uncomfortable so I looked up and blinked and looked away again. I had my daughter in a papoose. The man walked towards me, and grabbed my arm very tightly which angered me. I broke away and began yelling at him in English. People stood around and just watched as if it was nothing.

I felt like a piece of dirt and knew that had I not been a woman of color, people would have rendered assistance. I am an American woman married to an Italian. I am not in the country to freeload off of the Italians. I am a business owner, and a degreed professional in my former life. Yet, I get the impression that women of color, as well as very blond white women are associated with sexual trafficking based on color and not respected.

-Anonymous

Location: Livorno, Italy

Share your street harassment story today and help raise awareness about the problem.
Find suggestions for what YOU can do about this human rights issue.

Occupy Wall Street Video Objectifies Women

October 26, 2011 By Contributor

Occupy Wall Street and people following the movement now have one more item on their list of things to protest: sexism in a video portrayal of the movement. Dubbed “Hot Chicks of the OWS” by its creator, Steven Greenstreet, the video shows several young women speaking about the movement and what it means to them. In and of itself, that should not be a problem. However, many aspects of the video objectify women.

On his own website, Greenstreet says of himself and his camera crew, “Our original ideas were admittedly sophomoric: Pics of hot chicks being all protesty, videos of hot chicks beating drums in slow-mo, etc. But when we arrived at Zuccotti Park in New York City, it evolved into something more…. It made me want to pack my bags and pitch a tent on Wall Street…. And we hope it makes you want to be there too.”

Even after the final editing, the video arguably treats women as objects. More than one shot focuses on a woman’s chest. The tune that plays throughout has been identified by Salon.com as “Fast, Cheap and Out of Control”—hardly the anthem of an educated individual with an online PhD. And while the women interviewed say intelligent, astute things, the fact remains that only young, able bodied, conventionally pretty women get to speak to the camera.

No woman older than her twenties is interviewed, although the Occupy Wall Street Movement spans a wide range of ages. Likewise, no woman who appears on camera is obviously disabled or homosexual, accompanied by a man or outside the conventional definition of “pretty.” Like contestants in the Miss America pageant, all the women interviewed by Greenstreet are “available” for men, or at least appear to be.

Greenstreet’s own comments imply that the value of women in the movement is that they will attract men—not what the women themselves bring, and certainly not what they have to say. The “you” in his “we hope it makes you want to be there” does not include women.

A staff debate published at Salon.com offer multiple viewpoints about this video, to which the online publication offers the provoking title “Occupy Wall Street Gone Wild.” Some of the staffers, mostly men, felt there was nothing wrong with the video itself—only with Greenstreet’s comments. Others, primarily women, point out that the underlying message is entirely sexist.

It remains unknown what the women interviewed by Greenstreet knew about his intentions. Did they know they were being filmed? If so, what were they led to believe was the purpose of the video? It is quite likely that they believed their statements would be the central theme, and didn’t realize they would be portrayed as eye candy.

Across the Internet, bloggers and commentators alike have been raising these various points. A series of posts by blogger Jill at Feministe acknowledges that, while people may indeed meet people they find attractive at a protest, and there’s nothing wrong with that, showcasing female protesters for their looks alone is nothing short of misogynistic.

The protests raised in the blogosphere are perhaps the best possible antidote to the sexism in Greenstreet’s video. At the time of the interviews, it is unlikely that the interview subjects knew how the video would be put together or would have been able to change the outcome. Women cannot stop men like Greenstreet from making sexist videos. However, women (and men, too) can use actions like his as opportunities to raise consciousness about the objectification of women that goes on every day, and combat it in the public eye.

This post is by guest contributor Brittany Lyons. You can read a related post on the “Hot Chicks of the OWS” and street harassment at Fem2.0.

Brittany Lyons aspires to be a psychology professor, but decided to take some time off from grad school to help people learn to navigate the academic lifestyle. She currently lives in Spokane, Washington, where she spends her time reading science fiction and walking her dog.

“… And I don’t like pedophiles.”

October 25, 2011 By Contributor

I’m almost 20 now, and I’ve been harassed all of my life.

But before I was 16, either a cute boy was flirting with me, or it was an older man in which I would calmly declare my age followed by “… And I don’t like pedophiles.”

Now I’m older, and the “I’m 15” excuse has lost most of it’s believability. And honestly, that scares me. (I’m SUPER happy I found this site, however!)

I have a boyfriend, and even if I didn’t I’m not interested in hooking up with strangers. I’ve been interrogated, followed, “hit on” by men ranging from an 11 year old on a skateboard to a drunk man old enough to be my grandpa, and harassed helplessly in front of others. While I have MANY stories to share with you, I have one particularly disturbing tale to tell.

I was 14, walking home from my friend’s house in sweats and a long sweater in the afternoon. On the opposite side of the road, two men in their 40’s were stopped at a stop light. The driver cat called at me. I kept on walking. His buddy beside him leaned over and said, “Hey, wanna have sex?”

Shocked and slightly frightened I shouted back, “No thanks!” And kept walking.

The sad thing is that my mom thinks this behavior, when done by men my own age, is “harmless.”

My boyfriend often blames ME for it, although he says, “I know it’s not YOUR fault,” there’s always a BUT added onto that (“but I just get upset that you let it happen,” or sometimes he even says I provoke it).

The extra bad part is when it happens with someone you know or have already started talking to. For example, you meet a man on the bus, and he seems nice. He starts an innocent conversation with you, respectfully. And perhaps you even agree to let him walk with you to your next destination. Then out of nowhere he compliments your looks or asks if you have a boyfriend. Then, that’s when the panic sets in. You don’t want to be rude, but you also don’t want to let him think this is OK.

What do you do?

I still haven’t figured it out.

Sometimes, I just avoid all men, which is it’s own form of sexism. And others I just give them the wrong number then say I need to be somewhere. I know it’s wrong, but what am I supposed to do?

– Stephanie

Location: Vancouver, WA

Share your street harassment story today and help raise awareness about the problem.
Find suggestions for what YOU can do about this human rights issue.

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