Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming
An officer drove his police car up to me as I was walking home in broad daylight. He rolled down his window to say, “Can I ask you a question?” I stopped and nodded my head, never expecting that the question this on-duty police officer wanted to ask me was, “Are you single?”
I quickly walked away as he and his partner drove off laughing.
– Anonymous
Location: 74th street, 42nd ave, Elmhurst Queens 11373
Congratulations to Jennifer Harrison who recently received high marks for her graduate thesis entitled, “Gender segregation on public transport in South Asia: A critical evaluation of approaches for addressing harassment against women.”
This is her thesis abstract, and you can read her full dissertation here..
“Sexual harassment of women on public transport is a widespread problem within South Asia, which creates a variety of negative impacts, including physical and psychological harm, limitation of access to the wider public sphere, and entrenchment of gender differences within society. This dissertation reviews a range of literature, and interviews with several women’s rights experts, to assess the challenges women face when attempting to obtain justice. It also explores theories of women’s access to space in order to evaluate proposed strategies to address the issue. The debate is essentially one of segregation versus non-segregation, both on public transport and in wider public space, and how the former promotes women’s personal safety but engenders existing patriarchal norms, while the latter exposes women to greater risk but allows them increased opportunity to tackle entrenched gender inequality. In order to alter perceptions of women on public transport, a strategy that priorities women’s right to space must be pursued, but consequently there must also be an accessible support network in place to allow for suitable action when their right to space is questioned. Ultimately, no strategy will succeed without also tackling the wider cultural, political and religious gender inequalities that pervade South Asian societies.”
This article is written by high school student Livia Brock who is taught by @FeministTeacher. It is cross-posted with permission from the class blog F to the Third Power.
The other day I was walking down the street with two of my friends. I had fallen slightly behind them when an older man walking towards us suddenly locked eyes with me. I looked away quickly, but he angled toward me, eyes full of something very creepy and unnerving, and asked, “Are you free for a date?”
Being polite, I said, “No thanks!” and ran to catch up to my friends. I looked back once and caught him staring at me, eyes still full of that same disconcerting energy.
I began to notice men paying attention to me when I was twelve, near the beginning of seventh grade. I still looked pretty young, but I was very tall, so maybe men thought I was older. Or perhaps my actual age was not an issue. I didn’t particularly mind being looked at. It made me feel noticed. These men weren’t being vulgar, and they did not make comments or make me feel uncomfortable. But it wasn’t until I got a little older, maybe around thirteen, that I started to receive a lot of attention.
Thirteen was really the year I started walking around and going on the subway by myself. This was when the looks turned into much more. Men began saying passing remarks like, “So beautiful,” “Hey baby girl,” and once simply, “Nice tits.” I wasn’t sure how to react to a lot of these. Not all were rude, and sometimes I didn’t take much notice. Sometimes I enjoyed the comments.
Enjoying this kind of attention from men is often the case for girls without a strong support system at home, or for those girls who feel unwanted or undesired. As Rachel Lloyd, founder of the organization GEMS writes in her memoir, Girls Like Us, “She was uncomfortable with her body and her appearance . . . and she carried that knowledge with her like a weight that she desperately wanted to put down. Attention from boys, or men, always helped ease that weight a little.”
Although Lloyd writes about girls who have been commercially exploited, even girls who have not been commercially exploited succumb to the attention of boys and men. These girls are often sucked into a relationship or a situation that is not healthy due to their desire for attention from men. For example, sometimes I liked getting attention from these men because it made me feel like I was wanted and special.
Certain ones, though, made me extremely uncomfortable, and stick out in my mind. There was one time when two obviously drunk men asked me if I wanted to come home with them. Another time, an older man groped me on the subway, and I ended up being late to school because I was so uncomfortable, I got off the train for a while. Then there was the time a homeless man at church tried to kiss me. Another time, two men on the sidewalk called across the street at me, asking “how much” I was for an hour.
During all of these instances, I was dressed very much like a kid with bell-bottom jeans, a bright pink shirt, long thick coat, and sneakers.
An Anti-Street Harassment Advertisement
Until I took this feminism course at my high school taught by my teacher Ileana Jiménez, I never realized how not ok all of this was and how much it was hurting me. I had the attitude that no matter what we do, the way these men act will never change. At the same time, I had internalized the message that I was merely a sex object for these men and that it was somehow a good thing that they noticed me for my body.
I always assumed that in some way it was my fault for walking a certain way, looking men in the eyes, or wearing certain clothing. After taking this course, I realize how fundamentally sexist this attention I was getting and my attitude towards it was.
The fact that these men felt they were allowed to make comments about my body is wrong.
The fact that these men felt it was all right to treat me as a sexual object, to touch me or ask me if I wanted to come home with them is wrong.
I never felt frightened to walk down the street, only resigned to what I expected to happen, which is perhaps the worst approach to street harassment. As Rebecca Walker writes in her essay, “Becoming the Third Wave,” “the ultimate rally of support for the male paradigm of harassment, sends a clear message to women: ‘Shut up! Even if you speak, we will not listen.’ I will not be silenced. I acknowledge the fact that we live under siege. I intend to fight back. I have uncovered and unleashed more repressed anger than I thought possible. For the umpteenth time in my 22 years, I have been radicalized, politicized, shaken awake.”
My sister is fourteen years old. She looks younger than I did at her age, but as I said before, I’m not sure how much age matters to these men. I hope that she has never experienced anything along the lines of what I have experienced. Even before I took this feminism class, I knew I wanted my sister to attend my high school. I knew that she would be taught things she would not have been taught at any other school.
I know that my teacher, Ileana Jiménez, has been involved with the anti-street harassment movement including work with Hollaback! and with Holly Kearl’s Stop Street Harassment blog and activism. My teacher has also written about street harassment on her blog. These are the sorts of things that should be taught to young men and women in all schools.
I hope my sister realizes that even the “positive” comments like “So beautiful,” are a way of putting women down. They are a way of making women into sexual beings, with a complete disregard for personality and accomplishments. I am not telling her to engage in an argument with every man who says something to her on the street. I just want her to understand, in a way that I didn’t at her age, that these comments are part of a systemic problem of sexism and misogyny.
It is not just some random uneducated man on the street, but a society that feels it is ok to hyper-sexualize women and make them feel less important by only focusing on their physical traits. My sister is already much more sensible now than I have ever been, so I have faith that it will take her much less time than it did for me to realize how much there needs to be done to protect and empower ourselves and all other girls.
As Audre Lorde writes in her essay, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle The Master’s House,”: “Interdependency between women is the way to a freedom which allows the I to be, not in order to be used, but in order to be creative. This is a difference between the passive be and the active being.”
I was recently contacted by a woman who almost dropped out of her PhD program. Why did she consider doing this? Because of the trauma and stress she felt after a group of men harassed her several times and then retaliated against her when she told them to stop. With some support, she has decided to stay at her program.
But I am still MAD she even felt she had to consider switching programs just because of some jerks on the street.
Street harassment is too often dismissed as being a joke, a compliment or no big deal, but it’s actually a human rights violation precisely because it does make us feel unsafe and to be safe, we feel like we have no other choice but to move, change jobs, switch schools, pick different routes or routines, quit hobbies, and stop shopping at local stores.
No country has achieved gender equality and no country ever will as long as we are unsafe in public spaces simply because we are or present as or are mistaken for being female.
Today is Human Rights Day and it is time for street harassment to be recognized as a human rights issue! It’s time for our government leaders, educators, law enforcement officials, and regular citizens to work in tandem to prevent street harassment.
It’s also time for us to each do our part. Speak out. Take community action. And safe the date to participate in Meet Us on the Street: International Anti-Street Harassment Week during April 7-13, 2013!
These are our streets, too.