Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

USA: From Egypt to Baltimore — Meet Us on the Streets

By

Brittany Oliver, Baltimore, MD, USA, SSH Blog Correspondent

Photo from the event “The Egyptian Revolution: It’s Context, the Feminist Movement, and the 3 Years Since”

Last week, Egyptian feminist Nana Elhariry and DC-based Arab/Muslim writer Rami el-Amin shared their personal reflections at the event “The Egyptian Revolution: It’s Context, the Feminist Movement, and the 3 Years Since,” held at Red Emma’s Bookstore and Coffeehouse in Baltimore, MD.

Both women were distinctively able to recall instances of street harassment they witnessed during the movement. They mentioned that women were subjected to vulgar remarks, insults, indecent exposure, stalking and fondling despite advocating for the same issues among their male counterparts. I attended because I wanted to learn about the experiences women faced during the Egyptian Revolution and, aside from reading about it, I wanted to have a face-to-face discussion about it.  Their mentions of street harassment definitely hit home for me.

The reason why I connected with these instances so much is because I’ve experienced street harassment myself and I know others who have as well, but who are afraid to speak out about it. Because these acts are very likely to happen if you are a woman, walking along the streets of Baltimore at certain times can get very scary. And with the countless number of stories, reports and facts, you would have to wonder – what exactly is Baltimore doing about it?

According to Stop Street Harassment, studies around the world show that 80 to 100 percent of women experience street harassment. In a study of 811 women from 23 countries, almost one in four had experienced street harassment by age 12 (22%) and nearly 90% by age 19. So, there should never ever be an issue on whether or not street harassment is a current form of gender-based violence because the research and facts are there. It’s an issue that more people need to be educated on because not only is it rarely reported, but also the least legislated against.

So what IS being done? Aside from Stop Street Harassment, Hollaback! Baltimore is a local movement of activists who are making some serious moves to ending street harassment within the area. Just this week, Hollaback! Baltimore hosted a Street Harassment 101 workshop for the volunteers of Repair the World, which was intended to help them become better allies to the movement.

One of the best ways to stop street harassment is by educating as many people as we can on ways to better interact with women and LGBT individuals in our communities. As Baltimore ranks as the seventh most dangerous city in the country, I still believe there are a lot of actions we can take to make it a better place to live. We may not be able to change it all at once, but every bit of work towards making our streets safer will help make a difference for the future.

March 30th to April 5th will be the 3rd annual of International Anti-Street Harassment Week and I’m looking forward to seeing what activists in Baltimore will do in continuing the fight.

Brittany Oliver is a recent graduate of Towson University and works in the non-profit communications sector and supports local anti-street harassment advocacy through Hollaback! Baltimore. She blogs at brittuniverse.wordpress.com and publicly rants on Twitter, @btiara3.

Share

Survey: Harassment Common in Public Spaces in Bangladesh

By

Here’s another study showing just how common street harassment is — this time in Bangladesh.

Via The Daily Star:

“Women almost regularly face sexual harassment in public places, mostly on streets, in markets and on public transport, according to a government survey.

About 43 percent of the 12,600 women surveyed recently have said public places are the most common spot where they are sexually harassed.

The survey, jointly done by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics and United Nations Population Fund, covered all the seven divisions of the country. The women were randomly chosen from city, urban and rural areas.

“I hardly know a woman who has not been verbally harassed or groped in the streets,” said Umme Nahar, an official of a private firm in the capital.
She claimed she was first groped at the age of twelve and that she is sexually harassed every day on the streets….

Asked for her comments, Ayesha Khanam, president of Bangladesh Mahila Parishad, said women’s attire was not the issue here. “Women wearing all types of clothing face sexual violence. It cannot be generalised that women wearing a certain kind of clothing face more sexual harassment,” she said.”

Share

“I am so sick of old perverts ruining everything”

By

My friends and I have been stared at and such multiple times by older men whilst walking around downtown before, but there are a few times that stick out in my mind:

Once my cousin and I were walking around and taking some pictures on my camera with the pretty buildings in the background, (we’re both 16) and she wanted me to step up and sit on a ledge for one of the pictures. I attempted to climb up and sit, and right then a wind blew and my flowy skirt flew right up for a second. I panicked and grabbed my skirt, hoping no one saw, but a group of construction workers walking by saw it and one of them winked at me. I felt so violated.

A friend and I were also hanging around the same area another time when we realized that two older men we had seen taking pictures in the distance had snuck up to a bush 20 feet behind us and were pretending to take pictures of the scenery around us but were actually zooming the camera in on our butts. They ran as soon as we glared at them. I am so sick of old perverts ruining everything.

– Anonymous

Location: Downtown Atlanta, GA

Share your street harassment story for the blog.
Check out the new book 50 Stories about Stopping Street Harassers!

Share

USA: Harassment on Two Wheels

By

Katie Monroe, Philadelphia, PA, USA, SSH Blog Correspondent

Katie Monroe testifying at the City Council Hearing

On November 7th, Hollaback! Philly organized the second-ever City Council Hearing on Street Harassment. Stop Street Harassment’s Holly Kearl attended the event and documented it thoroughly.

I was invited to testify from my position as a feminist bicycle advocate in Philly. In 2013, I founded the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia’s Women Bike PHL program, which provides rides, workshops, and social events to help Philadelphia women get the skills and community support they need to start riding a bicycle. Last fall, I also started working for Gearing Up, a Philly nonprofit that gives women in transition from incarceration, addiction, and/or abuse the opportunity to ride a bicycle for exercise, transportation, and personal growth. If there are two topics in this world I care about, they are bicycles and gender equality. At the City Council hearing in November, my testimony (watch it here or read it here) focused on my personal experiences as a woman bicyclist in Philadelphia, and also drew from the experiences of some of the women bicyclists I’ve met through my work.

Conversations about street harassment often focus on the experiences of pedestrians. However, as more and more people start to use bicycles for transportation, especially in cities, I think it’s important to bring the experiences of bicyclists into conversations about street harassment as well. Similarly, perspectives from women — including their experiences being harassed while riding — tend not to be at the forefront of the bicycling advocacy movement. This also needs to change. (I’m working on it.)

In my testimony in November, I spoke about how riding a bicycle can feel like an escape from the gender-based street harassment that plagues me as a pedestrian. I ride my bike through neighborhoods where I wouldn’t feel safe walking. I’m moving too fast to be forced to respond to harassment — even if someone calls out to me from the sidewalk, I can often just ignore it and pedal on. Biking is door-to-door transportation that eliminates the periods of waiting at the bus stop, or walking to the subway, where street harassment is such a constant threat. Biking for transportation, to me and to many other women in Philadelphia, can be profoundly liberating.

But there’s a flipside — and I spoke about this in my testimony, too. In reality, biking isn’t actually a magical escape-button from harassment. The harassment doesn’t go away. It just changes. When I get on my bike, I might feel safer from men walking on the sidewalk — but men and women driving cars pose a whole new threat.

When I asked the Women Bike PHL Facebook forum for stories about being harassed while riding their bikes, the stories I got were mostly not gender-based. (Some were, of course — e.g. men calling out “I wish I were that bike seat”). More often, though, the stories were about harassment based on transportation mode — women were being harassed because they were riding a bike, not necessarily because they were women. Women frequently spoke about aggressive drivers honking, trying to run them off the road, and yelling at them for taking up lane space to which the motorists thought they had exclusive rights. (Guess what? They don’t. But it’s pretty hard to argue with someone commanding a two-ton piece of metal.)

These experiences certainly aren’t unique to female cyclists. Unfortunately, every biker I know has had terrifying experiences with aggressive drivers these while riding on city streets. For women, though, it can feel like a double bind: if you leave your house, there’s no escape from harassment of some kind — whether you’re on two feet or two wheels.

I find both bike-based harassment and gender-based harassment completely unacceptable, and I am actively working to fight both of them. However, while they can sometimes occur simultaneously, it’s important to maintain a distinction between them. Yes, both are fundamentally based in power imbalances, and it is tempting to draw a clean analogy between “car privilege” and “male privilege.” But as feminist bike advocate and writer Elly Blue thoughtfully explores in a recent piece, Is Bicycling A Civil Rights Issue?, they’re not the same. After all, I don’t choose to be a female-bodied person when I’m walking down the street. I do choose to get on my bicycle.

What’s the takeaway? I’m not sure yet. I am interested in whether anyone is doing more formal research on the distinctions between, and intersections among, different forms of street harassment. (My “data” is merely anecdotal, however powerful the anecdotes may be!) I certainly think that harassment of bicyclists by motorists is a form of street harassment. It makes people who are lawfully using public space feel unsafe, and efforts to fight it should be under the umbrella of the anti-street-harassment movement. At the same time, bike-based harassment is different from gender-based harassment (experienced, as we know, in all modes of transportation) in fundamental ways, and we can’t lose sight of that, either.

Katie Monroe founded the Women Bike PHL campaign at the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia and she works at the Philly nonprofit Gearing Up, which gives some of Philadelphia’s most marginalized women – those in transition from incarceration, addiction, and/or abuse – the opportunity to ride bicycles for exercise, transportation, and personal growth. Follow her on Twitter, @cmon_roe.

Share