Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

“Never stop resisting”

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I’m 14. My mother and I were taking the metro, as we do all the time. I’m used to being stared at- not only for being a girl but also for being a ‘foreigner’ in another country. My mom stepped away for less than 5 minutes to get our tokens, when a man walked up to me and started pointing at me and singing the word “Sweetiee..” in my face. I tried to brush him off and walk over to my mom, but he grabbed my wrist. I felt REALLY scared, because I have never been approached physically like that before. I pulled my arm away and ran. I haven’t gone on the metro since.

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

Never stop resisting. Whether the harassment is verbal or physical, never let somebody continue to make you feel uncomfortable. If they make uncomfortable remarks, yell back. If they make physical advances that may be threatening, do not hesitate to push people off, fight back or run. NEVER give in to advances that make you feel threatened.

– FS

Location: New Delhi, India

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See the book 50 Stories about Stopping Street Harassers for more idea

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“Machismo, it’s normal here”

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Today I took a taxi in order to got to my house. The driver was saying weird things, trying to talk with me, but I just answered like nothing was happening. Then I paid him and when I was leaving the taxi he slapped my butt. I tried to hit him but he ran away.

I feel so bad because I couldn’t do anything. The security man where I live took some notes about the taxi so he gave them to me.. But I still can feel pain in my butt. I have been crying. I told my parents and they supported me but I feel so bad, I feel abused and the worst thing is that in my country this is a common problem. Machismo it’s normal here..

– VV

Location: Nicaragua

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“What the hell is that?”

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As a person who is trans feminine I am no stranger to street harassment. More often than not, a lot of harassment comes in the form of dirty looks, whispers, finger pointing, giggles, rude comments, invasive questions about my gender and genitalia, and the daily occurrence of just generally people eying up every part of my body.

At least the direct verbal assaults haven’t been too bad. In the past year I have only been yelled at on 3 occasions by somebody in a passing vehicle. The first time was in a Walmart parking lot as two young men yelled a homophobic slur at me. The second incident occurred on my way to giving a presentation on sexual and gender diversity at the public library, when a few teenagers in a passing vehicle yelled “what the hell is that?” then called me a variety of names (such as “freak”) as they drove off. Most recently, just today (a couple of hours prior to me writing this), I was walking down main street when a gentleman peeked his head out his truck window and told me to “eat **** and die” (as far as I could make it out over other sounds).

It’s awful. It makes me feel vulnerable, scared, hyper vigilant of my surroundings, extremely anxious, depressed, violated, and just generally disrespected.

I really wish people would stand up for me and speak out when these things happened. Instead, people just stand by, watching, staring, sometimes even laughing and/or smiling along with everyone else (which makes it all the more hurtful). Every morning I have to talk myself into even leaving the house.

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

I wouldn’t even know where to begin. Like with bullying behaviors, I believe the motivations behind street harassment are influenced by such major, ingrained social issues and belief systems that we really need to be discussing the root causes to enact change. Sexism, homophobia, transphobia, racism, ableism, etc. Those are the core issues behind harassment, bullying, intimidation, and imbalanced power dynamics; and they need to be a part of dialogue on the behavioral problems.

– Anonymous

Location: Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan

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“I experience an immense amount of street harassment”

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Every single day of my life I experience intense street harassment. It makes me question why, when I am with a group of just as feminine friends, most of the comments or entitlements to a body are targeted at me. Is it something about me that screams ‘harass me?’ I live every single day wondering, ‘when am I going to get raped?’ Not if. When am I going to get raped. I have had disgusting encounters with men, saying and doing repulsive things to express to me that they want me or are entitled to my body.

Beyond this, I am also a queer woman. I am a very feminine presenting queer woman, and that anomaly brings even more attention my way. Wherever I turn and wherever I go, I experience an immense amount of street harassment. Here is a glimpse:

One night my girlfriend and I were walking through NYC. As we were walking, a man grabbed my hand and stopped us. He wouldn’t let my hand go, and then he proceeded to make a motion with his other hand up and down my body, turn to my girlfriend and say, “Nice work.”

Last week, I was at a social justice forum. I was waiting in the hall for a meeting to finish. A man came up to me and started talking to me, soon enough he was telling me how he can’t stop staring at my body and how incredible my body is. He proceeded to comment on my looks. I removed myself from the situation. He then came up to me later, again, and continued to stare at my body and comment on how ‘fine’ and incredible it is and how he can’t stop thinking about it.

A few days ago I was at a street parade. A man spotted me from somewhat far away and came towards me. He grabbed my hand and said I had to be his girlfriend cause I am so damn fine. I asked him to let go of my hand, and instead he decided it was okay to lay a disgusting, wet kiss on my hand. I immediately walked away. Every time I saw him after, he continued to say nasty things to me.

I’ll leave you with this story, because it is one of the few in which I have gotten an answer to my question: why do you think it is okay to do this to me? Once someone came up behind me and started slowly kissing my neck. I turned around and pushed him off of me and said what the f*ck are you doing? He told me not to be such a bitch. I asked him, “Why do you think it is okay to do this to me?” And he said, “Because you are a f*cking woman.”

I don’t even know what to do anymore.

– Anonymous

Location: Everywhere

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USA: “It is an incredibly brave act to speak up”

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Michelle Marie Ryder, USA, SSH Blog Correspondent

Like the French poet and playwright, Jean Genet, I have “never been able to find out which way the wind’s blowing by wetting my finger and holding it up” in the air. I can, however, sense a man staring at me from a mile away, his gaze penetrating me like a heat-seeking missile. I can see eyes that see me but don’t know I see them. It’s a kind of extra-sensory perception, both a blessing and a curse, helping me to localize specific threats.

Public spaces should be safe. As safe for women and members of any marginalized group – like visibly trans or queer people – as they are for men. One would think a trip to the market or a coffee break could occur without the risk of humiliation or exposure to violence.

One would think it would be absurd for my good friend to pull over on the side of the road and relieve herself in the bushes to avoid stopping at a gas station. But it’s not and she did and I completely understood why, laughing into the phone, “The gas station, where real men go to buy their groceries and harass women!”

In the 21st century we live in a complex, rapidly changing, technologically advanced world. But still not a safe one. A woman is beaten every nine seconds in the US and sexually assaulted every two minutes. Intimate partner homicide kills three women daily. And male strangers on the street (including those tasked with the duty to “serve and protect”) have the power to call into question our basic safety and humanity. Disturbingly, our culture furnishes us with a long list of instances where the evasion or rejection of a harasser’s advances was met with violence. The Economist reported last year:

“Most women don’t stand up to verbal harassment in the street for fear of exacerbating the situation. This is no idle concern: last month a 27-year-old woman in Detroit was shot and killed after refusing to give a stranger her phone number. More recently, in Queens, a man slashed a woman’s throat with a blade when she rejected his request for a date. Then there’s Elliott Rodger’s shooting rampage last May, famously directed at “every single blonde slut” who rejected him.”

Because it can rob us of the ability to act, street harassment reduces the harassed person to a thing that is human in name only.  The underlying logic driving street harassment – sexual objectification – equates our entire personhood to isolated regions of the body. “Nice tits!” “Dang, THAT ass!!” “Damn girl, you’s a whole chicken! Breasts… legs… thighs… MM MM MMM!”

No wonder cultural critic Susan Sontag was so on point when she argued: “Women are taught to see their bodies in parts and to evaluate each part separately. Breasts, feet, hips, waistline, neck, eyes, nose, complexion, hair, and so on—each in turn is submitted to an anxious, fretful almost despairing scrutiny.”

A society that refuses to see us as whole human beings, in body and mind, will never be a safe one or enlightened one.

But until we can get to the promised land of gender equality – where the weather is perfect, the streets safe and the pay equal! – we are left prioritizing our personal safety above all else, which often means assenting to silence in order to disengage from potential danger. In a world that already questions a woman’s natural right to assert herself, this silencing is deeply disempowering and can overwhelm our capacity for language itself.

In this context, it is an incredibly brave act to speak up. One way to make our voices heard is through the liberatory power of poetry. My own experience has shown me that a poem often starts with a lump in the throat and the determination to say the unsayable, not divine inspiration or lofty ideas.

A poem that shakes me to the core every time I hear it is Calayah Heron’s, “CornerStoreCandy.” In this poem, Heron – who first experienced street harassment at the tender age eight – details in haunting, evocative language the terror of being sexually objectified and preyed upon. Heron’s voice cracks with pain beneath a beautifully measured eloquence. Her words illuminate the deep, unnamed feelings that are routinely suppressed when we bottle up our rage, grief and disbelief.

By putting pen to paper, poets like Heron remind us that even if we can’t speak up in the moment, we can later. It’s never too late to reject the ritual humiliations of living in a world where men have been taught to feel entitled to our time, our bodies, and our lives.

Michelle is a freelance writer and community activist. She has written for Infita7.com, Bluestockings Magazine, and The New Verse News on a range of social justice issues, and shares her poetry regularly at poetrywho.blogspot.com.

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