Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming
Lyft connects people who need a ride with trained community drivers. Along with Collective Action for Safe Spaces and Hollaback!, next month SSH will be collaborating with Lyft on creating sexual harassment training videos for their drivers. They are also joining the White House It’s On Us campaign to address sexual violence. We are thrilled that Lyft is prioritizing this issue and committing to creating safer vehicles for passengers and drivers alike.
This week, SSH board member Manuel Abril distributed SSH materials in Tucson at an important conference. From Manuel:
“The Annual Youth and Peace Conference (YPC) is a unique Tucson event empowering youth to become courageous leaders and creative peace builders in our community. Youth violence is still considered by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to be an epidemic problem in America. Arizona’s youth violence and homicide rates are higher than the national average. I am an organizer of the Peace Conference but used my presence at the event to promote Stop Street Harassment’s mission as street harassment is often a young person’s introduction to the violence of public space. Public space is also the stage in which youth are called upon to internalize and enact their own marginalization when they curb or constrain their own movement to be safe.”
In mid-February, I spoke to a packed room at Centennial College in Toronto. Afterward, students could write pro-respect, anti-harassment messages on a poster for their campus.
Tyler Bradley, Michigan, USA Blog Correspondent
YouTube star Melissa Hunter is an online sensation, with 186,000 subscribers, and her biggest hit video reached the digital viewing screens of more than 2.25 million, just last week. This video hits the point home on catcalling by examining what an adult Wednesday Addams would do.
This series features many comedic videos, several hinting at women’s issues, tackling reproductive rights, one night stands, and internet dating, but nothing has been so direct in terms of activism as the street harassment video.
This sketch demonstrates how Hunter visualizes Addams Family character Wednesday would respond to street harassment.
In this video, two stereotypical dudebros call at her, “You’d look a lot prettier if you smile,” and obscene phrases.
Then Wednesday Addams appears at the home of the two catcallers to confront them. At first, the two are convinced she has come to repay the compliment in a consensual way, but she has something else up her black Victorian-age sleeves.
Wednesday brings in three of her most masculine and muscular friends — not to physically harm them, but to compliment the harassers all day long.
The men engage in ironic conversation, twisting their actions against them. “They’re not welcome in our house,” they rant, expressing their concern that the compliments are unwanted and a form of harassment.
After the harassers threaten to call the cops, Wednesday tells them, “Most forms of verbal assault on public property are perfectly legal – isn’t that just twisted?”
She nails the coffin with her last quote, “Cheer up. You’d be prettier if you smiled.”
Similar to social experiments like “When did you choose to be straight?”, Adult Wednesday Addams reverses their argument by using their excuses against them.
Fighting fire with fire against sexual harassment by gender role reversion usually results in reinforcing gender stereotypes, like Buzzfeed’s “If Women Catcalled Men” or Funface’s “Women Catcalling Guys.” Hunter avoids this by not showing the different unwanted compliments her three friends would have said, with the exception of the heavy breathing by Bob.
It may alienate the male audience by depicting such a stereotypical hyper-masculine duo, making them less relatable to those participating in the institutional harassing culture. But, I don’t think Hunter should be too concerned. Creating parodies of fictional characters with strong cult followings can push the extremes of how viral a message can go, and this is just what Hunter has done.
Buzzfeed Video recently proved this is successful after releasing a strong feminist piece by creating a social justice parody of Harry Potter from Hermione’s perspective. They also address catcalling in this video, by the way. This video, much like Hunter’s, increases the viral state of a video, just by incorporating fictional figures with cult followings.
The lesson we’ve learned from Hunter is that popular culture is an excellent venue of advocacy and activism. They offer relatability in terms of massive followings, they’re comedic, and they help advance under-recognized causes.
Thank you, Melissa Hunter, and let’s hope you bring more of your third wave feminism to your future uploads!
Tyler is a senior majoring in graphic design at Saginaw Valley State University and plans to undertake a graduate program in higher education in the fall. Follow Tyler on Twitter, @MysteriousLuigi.
I was walking from Brixton Market to Brixton Road on a busy Friday at 8 p.m. I didn’t feel at risk because there were a lot of people around and I was walking along a well-lit street with shops.
As I was walking through the scaffolding which is currently lining part of Coldharbour Lane (which has the bad effect of cutting the path off from the rest of the street and giving it an alleyway-like effect) I noticed a man coming towards me. As I say, I had no suspicion or fear as, fortunately, I am accustomed to walking past men without adverse consequences. However as we walked past each other this squat man in his forties or fifties stuck his hand out and gave my ass a good squeeze. Unlike me, he had noticed that for a few seconds we were the only people in the street, and had taken advantage of the fact. I was so shocked and scared by his action and by how vulnerable I suddenly felt that I carried on walking (towards the main road) and only shouted some insults back at him.
A big group of people came round the corner straight after, and I considered telling them, because the man was still just walking casually along the road ahead. But I was afraid that they might laugh or refuse to do anything, and so add further to my humiliation.
I think it could be helpful to have posters in the street, encouraging people to take action against this kind of event – perhaps saying something like ‘GROPING AND VERBAL HARASSMENT ARE A CRIME AND ARE PUNISHABLE BY A FINE OF £— OR JAIL. PLEASE REPORT THIS CRIME TO THE POLICE AND HELP US CATCH THE CRIMINALS WHO DO THIS.’ If I had been sure that this is universally considered to be unacceptable and illegal, then I would have said something and perhaps they could have helped me to punish, shame or take the man to the police. Instead, I was afraid of being ignored or laughed at.
It is absolutely disgusting that some people feel like they can walk around taking whatever they want. Someone whose morals are so low as to enable them to touch a woman and take advantage of her vulnerability are surely not above rape. They should be dealt with as seriously as criminals, to clearly put out the message that ANY TYPE of unwanted sexual act is absolutely unacceptable.
– Anonymous
Location: Coldharbour Lane, Brixton, London, United Kingdom
Share your street harassment story for the blog.
See the book 50 Stories about Stopping Street Harassers for more idea
Gurgaon Administration Mulling “Women-Only” Cabs– “With the aim to curb incidents of eve-teasing and crime against women, the Gurgaon district administration is planning to run ‘women only’ cabs in the industrial city that will be driven by women drivers. The administration will help interested women to buy and run such cabs. The Gurgaon district administration has asked the RUDSET (Rural Development and Self-Employment Training Institute) to identify such women or girls who are willing to run such cabs.”
Podcast: Reality Cast – Street Harassment in Mexico City, and MRAs take on “Frozen”– “On this episode of Reality Cast, I’ll cover a street art protest against sexual harassment, the return of the Republican rape philosophers, and ask the question: Is the movie Frozen oppressing men? During the interview section of this podcast, I’ll dig more into the “Stop Telling Women to Smile” project.”
Video: The Inconvenienced Cat-Caller – “My sketch, “Inconvenienced Catcaller” was inspired by a time I heard someone catcalling me. When I turned around, I saw that the catcaller was behind the counter at a bodega more than two blocks away. He was literally screaming over a two-block radius, inside his own store, just to harass me. I couldn’t believe he was going through that great of an effort simply to be an ass. I made this sketch about a catcaller that will push through anything to get in that sweet, sweet catcall.”
Women in Turkey Share Devastating Stories of Sexual Harassment in #Sendeanlat Twitter Campaign– “In thousands of devastating tweets, women in Turkey are sharing their experiences of sexual harassment and abuse in the wake of the brutal killing of a young Turkish woman…The 20-year-old psychology student’s murder prompted huge rallies across Turkey this weekend to protest violence against women, The Guardian reported, and the public outcry over her death also played out on social media.”
Sexist Remarks, Stalking, and Rape Threats: How Women are Punished For Speaking Online – “Online violence can be distinguished by the swiftness with which abuse is republished, replicated and stored, but it is a continuation of what women face offline. Imagine the experience of a woman walking down the road. Stares. Lewd remarks. Gropes. Assault. These expressions of violence together send her a clear message: the street is not hers, and if she enters it, this is the punishment she must bear.”
Iowa State University Student Seriously Injured After Intervening in Street Harassment – “At the end of the day, why do men harass women, and why do men assault other men who challenge those sexist or disrespectful behaviors? We have to have a conversation with our young men about this. I had three of my daughters go to Iowa State. I would have hoped if something like this had happened to one of them that someone like him would have stepped in.”
When Street Harassers Are the Only Ones Calling You Beautiful– “The truth is that women of color are disproportionally affected by street harassment – often, we’re victimized not just for being women, but for being Black.I’ve had men of all races ask me to ignore harassment from Black men for the sake of Black male lives, while Black women are abused and even killed for being Black and woman. But I’ll never understand why anyone believes I could possibly choose between my gender and my race. For me, there is no separating Black from woman. It is intrinsic to our identity and everything we’ve ever known about street harassment.”
USA: Dear Men of New York – “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.”