Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

Police Harassment of Transgender Individuals

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Transgender individuals face some of the most vicious and persistent forms of street harassment, including from the police.

Via New York Times:

“Last week, Mitchyll Mora, a youth leader at a group called Streetwise and Safe told me about an experience he had last spring, on his way to a poetry reading on the Lower East Side. Dressed in a style he called non-gender-conforming — makeup, boots, long earrings — he was stopped and searched by the police for no reason he could understand. The police made him throw his hands up against the wall, invoked a gay slur and grabbed his buttocks, he said. “I should have tried to file a report, but it’s hard to feel empowered in this kind of situation,” he said.

Mr. Mora did recount this story in testimony to the City Council last October in support of the Community Safety Act, proposed legislation that would, among other things, require police officers to explain themselves to those they have stopped and provide them with a document, including the officer’s name and information on how to file a complaint, if necessary, at the conclusion of a police encounter…

Johanna Vasquez, who at age 16 came from El Salvador, where, born male, she always felt the instinct to be female and suffered terrible abuse and prejudice because of it, she told me. Two years ago, she said, she was stopped by police officers at 2 a.m. outside a nightclub on Roosevelt Avenue, waiting for a taxi. She pleaded guilty to charges that she was loitering with intent to sell herself, feeling that she had no other choice, she said, but she denies having any involvement in prostitution. She had been similarly accused in Texas, she told me, a matter that resulted in her deportation years earlier.

Last year, the Police Department responded positively to requests from advocates that it revise its Patrol Guide to ensure that transgender men and women receive more sensitive treatment. But Ms. Vasquez continues to feel constrained. She told me tearfully, “I don’t go out at night, and I fear that even if I go to the pharmacy I’ll get arrested.”

RightRides shared the story on their Facebook page along with this additional information:

“During our community forum in Jackson Heights last summer, we learned from community members that NYPD police have been profiling LGBTQ folks, especially Transgender folks, in the neighborhood for quite some time. Community members shared with us stories of being discriminated against by police, being harassed by police and being wrongly incarcerated for prostitution. The struggle continues to make our streets safer and that means calling out NYPD when they are the ones doing the harassing. #policeharassment”

Amen. The streets should be safe for EVERYONE. Police should be our allies, not our harassers and tormentors. It’s time for change.

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LGBQT street harassment: info, tweetchat today

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[Editor’s Note: This blog post is cross-posted with permission from Fem2Pt0.]

Tweet Chat: On Monday, April 8, from 1-2PM ET Fem.2.0 will host a Tweet Chat, as part of the International Anti-street Harassment Week  with special guests, Shawna Potter, Executive Site Leader & Melanie Keller, site leader of Hollaback! Baltimore  to discuss  the unique experience of street harassment that the LGBT individuals face. You can join the conversation at #EndSH.

I was talking to a friend on Facebook last week and, when he asked me what I was doing, I told him I was writing something for International Anti-Street Harassment Week.

He had no idea what I was talking about.

I sent him a link to the website and showed him some pieces I had written before on the topic of street harassment. And he was really surprised. He’d never seen public harassment framed this way and wasn’t familiar with the concept. He certainly understood that it happens, but not to the degree that I was describing.

My research in particular focuses on the street harassment of men who identify as gay or bisexual – research I undertook for my women’s studies MA thesis that attracted 331 responses from men around the world. What I found, and what should concern every one, is that about 90 percent of the men I surveyed said they are sometimes, often, or always harassed or made to feel unwelcome in public spaces because of their perceived sexual orientation.

I’m not sure that I was surprised by my friend’s response, though.

Of the 227 men who answered the question on my survey asking them to define street harassment, only 12 referenced sexual orientation, among other identity categories, as a reason for harassment. Since street harassment has been popularized as a largely gender-specific form of violence, it is possible that men do not conceptualize it as something by which they could possibly be affected – a thought process that is documented in gay and bisexual male domestic violence research. Many men view their experiences of victimization as inconsistent with their male identity – but this shouldn’t be so.

Men who are perceived to be anything other than heterosexual (and cisgendered) face harassment from straight (and other gay/bisexual) men who operate in homosocial spaces, distancing themselves from and adversely reacting to anyone whose masculinity falls short of comporting with what they view as appropriate. They face sexualized harassment from other gay/bisexual men (usually older men, according to my research participants, but certainly not exclusively). They face harassment from a lot of people and, like the street harassment of women across all identity categories, it’s not fair.

The men I conducted follow-up interviews with disclosed a lot to me, sometimes experiences (including rape) they hadn’t ever disclosed to anyone before. And after talking to them, that’s the biggest take-away: it really, really isn’t fair.

I don’t want to live in a world where my queer brothers and sisters feel compelled to hide physical evidence of their sexual orientation, to disguise any legibility of difference. Too many men involved in my research shared that they concealed particular parts of themselves in public to pass as heterosexual. This process is draining – emotionally, mentally, and physically. As is the perpetual fear of experiencing harassment.

Approximately 71 percent of the men who took my survey said they constantly assess their surroundings when navigating public spaces. In addition, 69 percent said they avoid specific neighborhoods/areas, 67 percent reported not making eye contact with others, and 59 percent said they cross streets or take alternate routes to avoid potential harassment.

I can’t say that I experience street harassment every day, as I know many women can. I don’t have to experience it to feel its affects, because I am always afraid. I’m afraid because it’s possible, because it’s happened before and will happen again, and because we live in a society where it’s unfortunately normal and expected.

And that’s why International Anti-Street Harassment Week is so important – because, like my friend, not everyone is familiar with how systemic this all-too-common phenomenon is and how many people it affects in very real ways. The more of us who speak out, the more attention it will get. It’s about collectively amplifying each other’s voices, about standing in solidarity and saying that this isn’t okay. It’s about human rights, and creating social spaces where all humans are free from this form of public harassment.

Patrick Ryne  McNeil is a feminist, a non-profit worker and an anti-street harrasment advcoate. Follow him @patrickryne

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New Anti-Harassment Transit Ads in Philadelphia

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After a lot of hard work and fundraising, Hollaback! Philly is proud to launch a series of anti-harassment ads on the public transportation system this week, timed to coincide with International Anti-Street Harassment Week! Congratulations to them.

Hollaback! Philly’s Rochelle Keyhan and Anna Kegleranswered a few questions for me about their great ad campaign. Learn more on their website and share your views about the issue and the ads.

1. Stop Street Harassment (SSH): Where did the inspiration for the subway ad campaign and the messaging on the ads come from?

Rochelle: Our tourist bureau here, VisitPhilly.com, has an “Love, Philadelphia, XOXO” series. One of the ads was this huge billboard that explicitly street harassed everyone who walked past it, commenting “I like the way you move it move it”. We asked them to take it down, and they refused while adamantly defending the advertisement as not offensive. That was the first push we needed to realize that if we want the conversation to reflect our reality, we need to get out there and force our voices to be heard.

Anna: One ad outlines various catch phrases men said to a group of high school students we did a workshop with for buildOn’s Alternative Spring Break in 2012 (in partnership with Nuala Cabral). They created a video PSA from their experiences, and the stories they recounted largely inspired that advertisement. The other ads we developed through many conversations within Hollaback Philly and through input with other activists. I did a lot of research on framing and messaging to create them as conversation starters that would encourage even the non-believers to think twice about street harassment. We tried to enter the conversation from various perspectives to engage the largest number of people, so there are three larger advertisements, and three smaller, simpler advertisements, all aiming to get people thinking about the issue.

2. SSH: What impact do you how the ads will have in Philadelphia?

Anna: All we’re really trying to do is start a conversation, and get people to start associating the term “street harassment” with “problem” and “solvable”, instead of “inevitable” and “acceptable”.

Rochelle: We hope people will use the ads to start conversations about their experiences with street harassment. I am most hopeful that men will use the ads to start conversations with women in their lives who may not share with them the harassment they experience every week.

Anna: Overall, if we can increase understanding and get a conversation going about ways we can work together to create a safer street culture, I will consider these successful!

3. SSH: What advice or strategies would you suggest to someone else who wants to get an ad campaign on their local public transportation system?

Rochelle: Don’t take no for an answer. There’s no money in the budget for PSAs? Raise your own money. Your cause isn’t important enough? Don’t talk to that person again until you’ve gotten the ads up, then invite them to reconsider that opinion. I’m not going to lie though, this was a LOT of work. From raising enough money, to designing the ads, to figuring out messaging and what they should say, to negotiating the contract – we only succeeded because it was something we really believed needed to be done, and no one else was doing it so it was our time to stand up and act.

Anna and Rochelle

4. SSH: Anything else?

Anna: In creating and designing the ads, we obviously could have done a Philly-specific set of ads. But, we are just one branch of a robust international organization, so we specifically designed these ads to be scalable so that we can share them with other Hollaback branches.

Rochelle: We don’t want the conversation to end here. This is only the beginning.

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