Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

“No groping” on buses in Colombia

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Via Love Matters in the Netherlands:

“We don’t need that kind of support,” runs the slogan on a poster showing a man thrusting himself up against a woman.

“We don’t want that hand,” reads another ‘no groping’ poster. They’re part of a campaign against sexual harassment on the buses of Colombia’s capital Bogota, set up by a group of women who’ve had enough of wandering hands and offensive sexual comments.

“During rush hour, when the buses are packed, the male passengers take the opportunity to stand close to women and feel them up,” says Marisol Dalmazo of the Latin American Women and Habitat Network in Colombia. “It’s offensive and restrictive to women.”

Marisol has been running a programme since 2007 in Bogota to promote neighbourhood women’s centres and make the streets safer for women and girls. And she’s the driving force behind a campaign to put a stop to one of the harmful side-effects of Latin America’s macho culture: street sexual harassment.

“It’s something that’s always happened and not only in Latin America,” she stresses. “It’s now important that we draw attention to the issue and make men aware that what they’re doing is sexual harassment and mustn’t be tolerated under any circumstances.”

“We put up posters at every bus station and bus stop,” she says. “The bus company employees help us – they even wear t-shirts with slogans against sexual harassment.”

Marisol and her organisation also act out role plays about sexual harassment on the bus. Women dressed as men perform scenes about groping, and then ask passengers what they think about the behaviour.

“We generally get positive responses,” she says. “More and more, people think sexual harassment should be condemned, that this kind of behaviour mustn’t be tolerated.”

I love how Marisol and other women took the issue of groping on the buses and street harassment into their own hands and even have bus employee cooperation in their efforts to prevent it. Their initiatives should be inspirational to people everywhere who are fed up and have had enough of sexual harassment on the streets, in the parks, on the buses and subways.

Find ideas for what YOU can do at an individual and/or a community level. Every action makes a difference.

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Anti-street harassment film out of Cape Town, South Africa

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This important new anti-street harassment video was created by filmmaker Pascale Neuschäfer. She lives in Cape Town, South Africa, and she agreed to answer a few questions about herself and the film.

Stop Street Harassment (SSH): Please tell me a bit about yourself and why you decided to make this film.

Pascale Neuschäfer (PN): I am a filmmaker and an actress and I made the promo with the help of my partner and some friends who are interested in gender rights issues and who feel comfortable speaking up about it. I became frustrated not only at the frequency with which incidence of street harassment happen, but at the fact that women are mostly told to ignore it. This included many of my friends (both women and men) who couldn’t see the inherent harm in catcalling. I think this attitude stems largely from ignorance (South Africa having one of the highest rates of gender-based violence in the world, including rape, corrective rape and murder) and from fear: the fear of a public humiliation, as well as the fear of augmented violence when confronting a harasser.

SSH: How has street harassment impacted your own life and what’s inspired your decision to speak out against it?

PN: A defining moment for me was being harassed by a 15 year old boy, who responded very aggressively when I confronted him about his behaviour (I posted this story on your blog a few months ago). Making the 30 second fictional short was an outlet for me, a woman to make the statement: women hate it when men harass us! There is nothing polite, or politically correct about it, because there is nothing polite about being harassed and I feel very strongly that women should speak up. However, I also think there are many women in the world who often cannot speak up (particularly in patriarchal societies like South Africa, where women are brutally murdered and raped, simply for being openly gay) and I think it’s important to engage in open debate about these kind of issues. I also believe that street harassment is just the tip of the iceberg to other, violent gender-based crimes.

SSH: Do you have any future plans regarding street harassment and film?

PN: I  am hoping to get funding to make full-length documentary and to start a media campaign (including Public Service Announcements which highlight how violence escalates) , because I have found that even just speaking to my friends (men and women) has had a positive effect on the way we now either DO respond (if we didn’t previously), or in the way in which we CHOOSE to respond.

SSH: Wonderful. You’re doing amazing work with your film and I look forward to seeing what you do next!

For others who are interested in filmmaking and documentaries, check out more anti-street harassment documentaries and films and find tips for making your own!

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Street Harassment Snapshot: May 29, 2011

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Read stories, news articles, blog posts, and tweets about street harassment from the past week and find relevant announcements and upcoming street harassment events.

Street Harassment Stories:

I accept street harassment submissions from anywhere in the world. Share your story! You can read new street harassment stories on the Web from the past week at:

Stop Street Harassment Blog

Hollaback

Hollaback Baltimore

Hollaback Berlin

Hollaback Buenos Aires

Holla Back DC!

Hollaback France

Hollaback Israel

Hollaback London

Hollaback Mexico DF

Hollaback Mumbai

Hollaback NYC

Hollaback Philadelphia

Street Harassment in the News, on the Blogs:

La Nacion, “Ebanista irá a prisión 4 años y 6 meses por tocar a mujer“

The International News, “Exclusive transport for women urged“

Hurriyet Daily News, “Turkish mayor advises women to ‘stay home’ to avoid harassment“

Rebel With A Cause, “Sexually Harassing Egypt’s Revolution“

Carried Away, “A Message to Catcallers“

The Times of India, “CCTVs to keep eye on eve teasers, chain snatchers“

The Times of India, “Dalit youth shot dead for opposing eve-teasing“

Announcements:

New:

*View a new anti-street harassment video from South Africa

*View two new anti-street harassment videos from India. 1 | 2

On-going:

* Help fund the Hey, Shorty! on the road book tour to end gender-based violence in schools and on the streets.

* Needed: your feedback on international anti-street harassment day 2011 & your ideas for 2012 http://tinyurl.com/44f7bef

* Fight Street Harassment with Your Spare Change http://t.co/TKeve2e via @swipegood

* If you live in Atlanta, Georgia, take a MARTA survey so Hollaback Atlanta can better tackle harassment on public transportation

* College students, enter the Hollaback essay contest, entries due August 1.

* Are you in Egypt? Use HarassMap to report your street harassers

* Have an iPhone? Download the Hollaback iPhone app that lets you report street harassers

20 Tweets from the Week:

1. dys_morphia Which is the hidden or not so hidden message of all street harassment: women, stay at home.

2. FeministGriote Summertime means street harassment on steroids & if u r on south beach this weekend then you’re in the belly of the beast

3. Supreeka An idiot tried to get frndly wth my ass in the bus. Trnd arnd & rammed hm hard with laptop bag in his groin n wlkd off

4. MDeezie How do dudes find it funny to harass a random girl on the street? You aint 8 no more bruh, that aint cute.

5. bibliofeminista Night ruiner: an ass grab in Adams-Morgan. Gross. #streetharassment #dc

6. tkoed: A friend puts street harassment like this to the bros: You don’t want cops fucking w/ yall in the street, so don’t mess with me.

7. JustineMeiErn I feel so harassed. Street harassment pisses the hell outta me

8. TKOEd is street harassment. I think it’s rampant in many places b/c too many men & boys are taught that women are or should be ALWAYS available

9. JulieSLalonde If you care about #endrapeinwar, take a stand against ALL gender-based violence in ALL countries. #streetharassment, sexual assault, etc.

10. ChantigaloBEroc Now police officers are engaging in street harassment. Awesome. Not that I’m surprised, but I’m not less annoyed either.

11. Renegade_Blog: Got accosted by a 12 year old boy. Boy, does street harassment starts early

12. kaysteiger @jbouie I’m reluctant to say hello because of the street harassment.

13. KismetNunez @Mdotwrites @zero317 Burst into tears once on the WMATA bus from street harassment. Had another dude jump out his car at me. #violence #woc

14. emmamwoolley @nnkatherine Oh holy shit. Street harassment! Yet another reminder that simply being outside means we can be assaulted. #wouldhavelostit

15. chris_o_mahony I DESPISE street harassment. Why do some people feel ENTITLED to roar “Nice legs!” at a girl walking home from college? I saw this tonight.

16. sebhar Saturday night I walked home with my dad. Bros in car yelled “show us your tits!” …um, no, and please crash into a tree. #streetharassment

17. ShelbyGoodwin @saigrundy I want ppl 2kno those stereotypes fuel anti-Black woman street harassment, outright assault, rape, murder AND no justice

18. jennydevildoll La La Land comic -street harassment, Space Invaders, & The Ex: http://t.co/pIc0Y5q

19. chloemasongray iPhone and Mexico cell phone stolen on the metro yesterday. 5 minutes later someone grabbed my a** really hard. I hate street harassment.

20. kimhorne Ugh. Potentially innocent comments make me insecure. Actual #streetHarassment makes me a wreck. #notFitForOutsideLife

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Turkish Mayor tells women if they want to be safe, stay home

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I think that Turkish Mayor Necmittin Dede must hang out with the Toronto police officer who said that if women stopped dressing like sluts they wouldn’t face sexual assault (his comment led to the global SlutWalk movement, starting with SlutWalk Toronto in April).  They must sit around brainstorming flawed, offensive, and misogynistic public statements they can make to stir up trouble and keep women’s rights activists up at night.

From Hürriyet Daily News:

“Women complaining about sexual harassment on the streets of the eastern province of Muş should deal with the problem by simply staying at home, the province’s mayor has said.

Do not walk around, sit in your homes,” 71-year-old Justice and Development Party, or AKP, Mayor Necmittin Dede recently told Muş representatives of the Women’s Center, or KAMER, when they told authorities that high employment in the city had resulted in men spilling out of the overcrowded teahouses in the area to verbally harass female passersby.”

Not only is this statement truly ludicrous for its impracticality and pointless for placing the onus on women to try to stay safe from men on the streets instead of placing the onus on men on the streets to treat women with respect, but it’s also ironic. The women asking for help in addressing street harassment actually work at a domestic violence shelter! They of all people know that, thanks to domestic violence, homes can be as, if not more, dangerous for women than the streets.

From the domestic violence shelter workers:

“We have appealed to the authorities time and time again, yet they do not allow us into the schools to conduct training sessions about women. So we visit households instead. We conducted surveys in 700 households until now that show the rate of domestic violence stands around 70 percent,” said Necmiye Boz of KAMER.

Muş municipality does maintain a women’s shelter in the area – although the building is prominently identified by a large sign, allowing potential attackers to find women seeking refuge in the building.

A total of six honor killings have been committed in the province over the past two months although some of the deaths have been passed off as suicides, according to Boz and another KAMER representative, Ayşegül Söylemez.”

Outrageous. What will it take before the mayor and others care that domestic violence AND street harassment are prevalent (and inter-related)? A 100% rate instead of a 70% rate? Maybe not even then;  with those high statistics, the probability suggests the mayor could be one of those abusers so why would he care about stopping it?

The silver lining in the story is that the police seem to care.

“Among state authorities, local police have led the way in trying to combat domestic violence, releasing preparing a report titled “Survey Report on Cases of Domestic Violence.” Law enforcement officers have also rented billboards to create awareness about the problems facing women. One such billboard features the portrait of a happy family, with text underneath saying, “Not everything is what it seems.”

KAMER was officially founded in 1997 and continued to grow and strengthen itself in the following years. At the moment, the group is trying to expand its activities in 23 provinces of eastern and southeastern Anatolia to more districts, villages and remote areas.

Since 1984, thousands of women have joined the group, which advocates for and extends aid to victims who face attack, arrest, torture and even death around Turkey.

The group also aims to provide analysis on the people who are convicted of beating, stabbing or raping women.”

Police and women of KAMER, keep up your important work. Even though you face resistance at home, you’ve got a lot of support around the world.

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Harassment on Islamabad transportation is “rife”

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Let’s add another city to the list of places where a study shows harassment on public transportation is a big problem, shall we? It’s Islamabad, Pakistan.

The Social Research and Development Organisation (SRDO) surveyed 75 women commuters in Islamabad, aged 19 to 45, to find out more about women’s experiences with sexual harassment during their commute, particularly on “public transport wagons and buses.”

In the survey, the women “disclosed that inappropriate touching, making sexual comments and staring by male passengers is overwhelmingly rife. The respondents, however, made it clear that the incidents of harassment are far lesser in rickshaws and taxis.”

Via The International News:

“Farhana Hussain, a women rights activist, said, ‘We should not see the issue, harassment of women in public transport, in isolation as it is an open fact that harassment and violence against women inside four walls and on the streets is just one feature of our male dominated structure that always put blame on victims instead of helping them.’

She said successive governments have taken very positive steps and introduced specific legislation to curb violence and harassment against women in houses, at workplace and in public transport, but its implementation mechanism has made it difficult to provide any relief. A large majority of respondents, 59 per cent, informed that insufficient space for women passengers in buses and wagons is a major problem for them.

A nineteen-year girl student told the survey team that due to repeated incidents of harassment at the bus, she and her friend have started commuting in rickshaw. ‘Though travelling in rickshaw is quite expensive for us, we feel quite secure in it,’ she said, adding, ‘In my opinion the government should introduce women-only buses in big cities to tackle the issue of harassment of women passengers. ”

Women-only public transportation can provide much needed relief for women facing frequent harassment, but it doesn’t challenge or end the harassment! The harassment continues elsewhere. For example, in a recent study of more than 200 youth in Gujranwala, Pakistan, 96 percent of the girls experienced street harassment. So, do we need women-only streets, too?! No, we need comprehensive and multi-layered action to address and end the pervasiveness of public harassment.

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