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By Angela Della Porta, SSH Correspondent

I don’t get it – why do men want me to smile so damn much?

I have two states of being: laughing at something hilarious, and Bitch Face, which is really just a neutral face that means nothing hilarious happened. I, personally, don’t use the word “bitch,” but it is the most common description of this phenomenon. Now, I always thought that Bitch Face was something I had to do intentionally, like when I don’t want someone to sit next to me on the bus or I want to show someone who was rude that I don’t appreciate their comments. But, I’ve learned that Bitch Face is what I look like neutrally, and I’ve accepted it. Not everyone has gotten to that same level of acceptance.

Men of every age seem to be so bothered that I don’t constantly look ecstatic. Their obvious grievance with my face is enough to intensify Bitch Face, but often they take it one step further – they tell me to smile. For all you dudes who can’t stop telling women to smile, you should probably know:

1. Women are not dogs. They don’t sit and lay and smile on command. They don’t want your treats, so please stop with the commands.

2. Women, just like everyone else, have a wide range of emotions. Perhaps a woman is angry and upset. Perhaps she is not. It’s none of your business which emotions women have, feel, or display, and nobody asked your permission to feel their feelings because nobody wasn’t seeking it.

3. Women don’t smile at every moment of neutral feelings. A woman may not be upset at all; she may be feeling nothing particular. However, women are not constantly wowed and amazed with the world around them, broadly smiling at streets, traffic lights, and each and every person who crosses their paths. The world is not pure, bewildering bliss to all women. If it’s a normal day, the average woman won’t be spending all 24 hours smiling.

4. If you see a woman looking less than pleased, it’s likely that someone just harassed her on the street. If not, she may be considering the alternate route she took to her destination to avoid some asshole who usually harasses  her on the street. Nether make most women too smiley.

Plus, can you imagine the reverse? Can you imagine a world where women approach men they don’t know and demand they feel and act a certain way? Doesn’t it just sound silly? And that’s what leads me to my initial question – why do men want me to smile so damn much? Does my smiling face brighten their day? (I’m not here to brighten anyone’s day.) Maybe. My theory is that is has less to do with my facial expression and more to do with a need to assert one’s power and dominance that male privilege affords them.

So the next time I hear, “Come on, why don’t you just smile?” I’ll continue on my way, making whatever face I want, and that might just make me smile… a little.

Angela Della Porta is a recent graduate of Clark University in Worcester, MA. She will join with Teach for America in Detroit in the fall. Until then, she’s spending her time in rural Maine. Follow her on Twitter: @angelassoapbox

By: Taylor Kuether, Minnesota, USA, SSH Blog Correspondent

My experience with street harassment has happened almost exclusively during my college years. I go to a mid-size state school in northwestern Wisconsin, and the harassment seems to follow a pattern: The number of catcalls rises and falls with the temperatures. Every spring, the first day I deem it warm enough to wear shorts, I can count on someone making a loud comment about it, usually from across the campus mall. If I decide to go on my first bike ride of the season, I know I’m going to hear men shouting at me from passing cars. And once the height of summer hits, if a friend and I want to go floating (tubing down the Chippewa River, which runs right through our campus), we should expect to hear lewd comments aimed at us as we carry our inner tubes to the riverfront.

Being yelled at as I try to live my life doesn’t make me feel comfortable or safe. It isn’t something anyone should leave the house expecting or calculate into their day. But in my experience, at least before this summer, the comments were just that – comments.

This summer, I’m living in Minneapolis – a much larger city than my college town – for an internship. Minneapolis is home to the University of Minnesota, a Big 10 school with an enrollment of about 50,000. And on any given weekend night, you can find many of those students in “Dinkytown,” the city’s college bar district.

A few weeks ago, a friend and I went out for a drink in Dinkytown. Just 20 minutes into our outing, a college-aged man came up to us on the sidewalk and tried to put his arm around me, asking us where we were headed. I was surprised, but I shrugged it off as my friend and I kept walking, wordlessly, heading to the next bar.

Once inside, we tried to go upstairs, only to find a second college-aged male who took it upon himself to drunkenly block us from doing so. He stood squarely in front of me, slurring pickup lines at me and making it impossible to ascend the stairs. Annoyed, I grabbed his shoulder and moved him out of our way.

At our last stop of the night, a burrito place where we were hoping to grab some food before heading home, a third college-aged man came up behind my friend, pressed himself against her, and asked her what she was up to. It was the third time in a span of maybe two hours that someone had come up to us and physically entered our space. This wasn’t the street harassment I was used to – words thrown from afar with the space between  my harasser and me acting as a buffer, a safety net.  This was much more aggressive, much more invasive.

I’ve speculated as to why there is such a difference: Is it the size of the school? Is it the presence of Greek life (my school doesn’t have it; at U of M it’s huge)? Is it the size of the city the school is in?

I’ve always assumed college-aged men think they can get away with harassment for three reasons: one, their new found freedom and lack of supervision, two, their age and lack of maturity, and three, the anonymity afforded by the sheer size of a college campus.

At a big school, your own stupid actions can disappear into the much larger sea of stupid actions. At a big school, you can “get away” with more – after all, if you’re not the only one doing it, it must not be wrong, right?

What have your own experiences been with street harassment on college campuses? Did the size or location of the school impact the harassment you experienced or witnessed?  Leave a response on the blog or tweet at me at @taylorkuether.

Taylor Kuether is a senior journalism student at University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire in northwestern Wisconsin. She has previously written for The Washington Post and Minneapolis’ Star Tribune, worked as a reporter at her city’s daily newspaper, The Leader-Telegram, and its arts and culture publication, VolumeOne, hosted a local-music centered radio show on Wisconsin Public Radio, and worked as Editor-in-Chief at her student newspaper, where she enjoyed writing biting, slightly rant-y columns about feminist issues.

By: Delia Harrington, Massachusetts, USA, SSH Correspondent

Recently I read an article on xoJane about street harassment while studying abroad.  It saddened me to hear how isolated the author felt, and how quick she was to cover her treatment  with a joke.  But I also recognized myself and my students in her.

I have been the girl who downplays street harassment abroad, even though I’m a vocal opponent of the same behavior when I am home.  So I started thinking about why we stay silent or laugh at off, and what makes street harassment different when studying or traveling abroad.

While there are some similarities, there are a few dimensions added to the reactions when a person is harassed outside of their own community.  Among these are ethnocentrism, racism, and a belief that women should not be traveling, especially not alone or somewhere dangerous.  The foreign nature of the location, culture, and perhaps language of the harasser can add a level of fear and doubt for the harassed person.  Some people who are not harassed at home will be harassed more frequently or for the first time abroad, because of how they are perceived in this new location.

We don’t speak up because we don’t want to hear from the naysayers back home.

If you’re traveling, you likely heard a bunch of horror stories about it before you left from everyone from your mom to casual acquaintances you meet at parties.  If you are female and going alone, you probably heard it more often and more stridently.  That goes double if you were going to a developing country, a Latin country, an Arab country, a Muslim country, or any place deemed otherwise “dangerous” or “culturally backwards.”

If we speak up about anything that is even remotely negative, these naysayers come back out of the woodwork.  See, it’s dangerous.  See, those people are terrible to women.  See, that’s why women shouldn’t travel alone.  See, you should have just stayed home.

We don’t speak up because we are given terrible advice.

As someone who has worked abroad, participated in five different study abroad programs, helped to lead three more study abroad programs, and worked as a study abroad administrator, I have heard it all when it comes to advising women on their safety abroad.  Some of the advice is incredibly helpful, but some of the advice is straight up apologist, victim-blaming crap.  Over the years I have heard faculty, staff, and administrators say things including:

* They should wear less revealing clothing
* That’s just the culture here so they should get used to it
* The men here just can’t help it
* That’s their problem and they need to handle it on their own
* They need to let it go–they shouldn’t react angry or cause a scene.

We don’t speak up because we aren’t taken seriously.

Perhaps worse than terrible advice is when someone laughs off your very real concerns.  I’ve seen this happen most egregiously when the bystander does not speak the language and therefore doesn’t actually have any idea what is being yelled.   It can also occur when bystanders so strongly identify with the host country that they are unable to speak critically about its shortcomings.  And finally if a bystander is never harassed themselves, they may give it little thought.  It is incredibly easy to say something is not a big deal or does not happen if it does not happen to you, and that makes it harder for someone to speak up the next time harassment happens.

I have stayed quiet for these reasons in the past. But I’m trying to speak up now, and I hope you will too. Chances are, others have experienced this type of behavior too.

In study abroad and international travel, we all think everyone else is having this perfect, fabulous time because that’s all anyone puts on Facebook.   We feel obligated to have a perfect time because of the effort and money we (and perhaps others) put into getting abroad.  Feeling like the only one who gets harassed can be isolating, shaming, or make a person believe they are overreacting.  Feeling like we can’t speak up because it will taint how people see our host country or it will seem ungrateful can make silence seem like the best option.

But remember: talking about street harassment is one of the only ways to diminish its power over us.

I don’t plan to ever stop traveling, and I cannot recommend enough that everyone study, live, work or volunteer abroad at some point if they are able to.  I won’t stop going to countries that are politically tumultuous, economically underdeveloped or culturally conservative compared to my home in the United States.  But I think it’s time that we are honest with ourselves and each other about what traveling abroad is really like for women, the good and the bad.  I believe that the only way to fully reclaim our right to explore this great big, wondrous world is to speak up and support each other, as loud and as often as we can.

Delia Harrington is a recent graduate of Northeastern University and calls Boston home. In recent years, she has found herself studying, working, and volunteering in Egypt, Cuba, France, Benin, the Dominican Republic, Turkey, Germany, and Greece.  You can read more of her writing on her blog, or follow her on Facebook and Twitter, @deliamary.