Editor’s Note: Anna gave permission for her story to be shared here.
@anna_e_fisk [I’ve] written a letter to Chief Constable about yesterday’s experience of street harassment and #EverydaySexism
By Contributor
Editor’s Note: Anna gave permission for her story to be shared here.
@anna_e_fisk [I’ve] written a letter to Chief Constable about yesterday’s experience of street harassment and #EverydaySexism
Andrea Flores Hernández, Santa Cruz, Bolivia, SSH Blog Correspondent
Escuché ese dicho meses atrás, de parte de una compañera de universidad. Quisiera decir que le discutí esa afirmación, que le demostré argumentos que mostraran el craso error en el que ella se encontraba, pero no lo hice. La frase me dejó sorprendida. Esa frase me mostró cómo el acoso callejero está tan inmerso en nuestra vida cotidiana que ya lo encontramos usual. Algo “inevitable” de todos los días. Y quizá por encontrarlo tan común, es que en Bolivia poco se habla de este problema.
¿Desde cuándo el acoso callejero comenzó a formar parte de aquello que las personas consideran “común”? o peor aún, ¿desde cuándo las mujeres se han acostumbrado a esto?
Sé que no son todas las que consideran normal caminar por la calle y recibir silbidos o miradas lascivas. He presenciado con gran admiración a mujeres que no se quedaron calladas ante tal acoso. Aquellas mujeres son las que han dicho “basta” a esta situación y dejaron de sentirse culpables por algo que ellas no provocaban.
Escribir acerca de esto es fácil, pero vivirlo no lo es. Para decir “basta”, una mujer ha tenido que pasar por un largo proceso para entender que no es su culpa. Que no es culpa de la falda corta que usa, que no es culpa de su cuerpo, que no es culpa de su manera de caminar. Ha tenido que soportar durante años silbidos, frases sexuales, comentarios denigrantes e incluso manoseos de parte de hombres que no entendían que el cuerpo de esa mujer no era de su propiedad. Ha tenido que dejarse de ver como la causante del problema, para entender al fin que ella es la única víctima.
Todo esto no significa que una vez que la mujer se da cuenta de aquello, los hombres comenzarán a respetarla en la calle. Nunca sucede así. Es más, a veces, recién comienza a llegar lo peor. Porque cuando una mujer responde a un silbido, a un comentario, o hace algo al respecto; el hombre lo toma como un chiste, o se siente amenazado en su “derecho” de dirigirse de esa manera a una mujer, e intensifica su agresión.
Y lo admirable de todo esto, es que estas mujeres no se rinden. Ellas saben muy bien que no son las culpables. Ellas reclaman el derecho de circular libremente por las calles sin ningún tipo de comentario acerca de su cuerpo. Estas mujeres tienen fuego en los ojos y no permiten que nadie las denigre. Ellas entienden que aún falta mucho camino por recorrer para que hombres y mujeres comprendan el porqué de su lucha. Una lucha con una premisa tan simple pero demoledora: “El cuerpo que tengo, es mío”. Y yo, como mujer que ha sufrido este tipo de acoso durante bastante tiempo, me uno a la lucha. Porque, aunque parezca increíble, muchos hombres todavía no se dan cuenta de que cuando una mujer sale a las calles, no es para entretenerlo. No se dan cuenta de que ellos no tienen ningún derecho sobre nuestro cuerpo, no pueden denigrarlo, insultarlo, comentarlo ni tocarlo sin nuestro permiso. Nosotras tenemos el derecho de vestirnos como queramos, de sentirnos atractivas sin que eso sea motivo de acoso.
Y, con respecto a la frase “Si no te silba un albañil, quiere decir que eres fea”; en caso de que no me silbe, no me sentiré “fea”. Me sentiré libre; libre de circular por las calles sin miedo a nada. Porque en esa situación, podré ver que nuestra lucha, está dando resultado.
Andrea is in her second year of university, studying Social Communication. You can follow her on Twitter: @AndreaFlores116
Bolivia: “If a construction worker does not cat-call you, you are ugly”
I heard that expression months ago from a college classmate. I would like to say that I discussed her affirmation, I showed her some arguments that could let her know that she was mistaken, but I did not do anything. That phrase really surprised me. That expression demonstrates to me how greatly street harassment is immersed in our daily life. It was so “usual”, something almost “inevitable”. And maybe because of that thought, in Bolivia people do not talk too much of this issue.
Since when did street harassment form part of what we consider “normal”? Or worse, since when did women consider “normal” to be street harassment?
I know that not all women find it “usual” to walk down the street being cat-called. I have seen women that were not silent by street harassment. Those women are who have said “enough” to that situation and they stopped feeling guilty about something they did not provoke.
Writing about this issue is easy, but living it is not. To say “enough”, a woman has had to go through a long process to understand that is not her fault. That it is not the fault of the short skirt that she is wearing, that it is not the fault of her body, and that it is not the fault of the way she walks. A woman who has had to endure years of cat-calls, sexual phrases, and even degrading comments from men who did not understand that the body of the woman was not his property. She has had to leave, watching herself as the cause of the problem, to understand that she was only the victim.
This does not mean that once a woman realizes this that the man begins to respect her on the street. It never happens like that. Moreover, sometimes, it just gets worse. Because when a woman responds to cat-calls, comments, or does something about it; the man takes it as a joke, or he feels threatened in his “right” to treat a woman that way, and he intensifies his harassment.
And what is admirable in all of this, is that these women do not surrender. They know very well that they are not guilty of this situation. They claim the right to move freely in the streets without any comment about their body. These women have fire in their eyes and they do not let anybody denigrate them. They know that there is still a long way to go before men and women understand why they fight. A fight with a premise so simple but devastating: “The body that I have is mine”.
And I, as a woman who has suffered such harassment for quite some time, I join the fight. Because, incredibly, many men still do not realize that when a woman goes out to the streets, it is not to entertain them. They do not realize that they have no right on our bodies, and they cannot denigrate, cat-call, nor touch us without our permission. We have the right to dress like we want, to feel attractive without that causing street harassment.
And with regard to the phrase “If a construction worker does not cat-call you, you are ugly”, I say that if he does not cat-call me, I will not feel “ugly”. I will feel free. Free to walk on the streets without the fear of being harassed. And I will see, in that moment, that our fight, is working.
Andrea is in her second year of university, studying Social Communication. You can follow her on Twitter: @AndreaFlores116
Sarah Colomé , IL, USA, SSH Blog Correspondent
The Student Nonviolent (National) Coordinating Committee’s vital work during the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s, Chicago’s “We Charge Genocide” Delegation bringing issues of police violence before the United Nations in the 1950s, and the recent developments in attention to sexual assault on college campuses: Youth-led activism, advocacy, and community-building is deeply engrained in the success of several of the globe’s most well-recognized social movements, in addition to many of the less visible ones.
Globally, youth are taking active steps to challenge inequality, to create the preferred world that they will someday leave behind. In Cairo, Egypt, 26-year-old Tinne Van Loon and 22-year-old Colette Guhnim are doing just that, taking strides to bring sexual harassment to the forefront, not just as an issue among Arabs or within the boundaries of Egypt, but among all nations and communities. I was lucky enough to speak with Van Loon last week about the focus, standing, and long-term goals for the team, and their forthcoming project.
Titled The People’s Girls, Van Loon and Guhnim’s upcoming documentary focuses on the realities of street harassment, and society’s apprehensive in combatting it: “Two women battle the newest epidemic in Egypt, sexual harassment. Society stands in their way. Will they succeed?”
The recently released teaser for the film gives a glimpse of what these two filmmakers hope will be soon screened across film festivals after the documentary’s anticipated release in January 2015. Guhnim outlined the focus of the documentary, explaining how the film will document three different people with varying views of, and interactions with, street harassment: Esraa, a 25-year-old Egyptian woman and activist “who challenges social norms by performing in storytelling theater pieces about sexual harassment,” Abdullah, a 28-year-old tuk tuk driver from a working class neighborhood, and a to-be-determined third participant, who the filmmakers hope will be an Egyptian lawyer working at a women’s rights organization focusing on sexual harassment. “We really need to let the women speak for themselves,” Van Loon told me.
Highlighting the power of personal narratives, Van Loon explained, “Storytelling is important to bring issues to light, and makes people care and change their mind… statistics aren’t human.” The bravery of women who walk daily through threat of harassment and assault, is only mirrored by that of the filmmakers, shining light on such a devastatingly common global struggle.
According to the recent Study on Ways and Methods to Eliminate Sexual Harassment in Egypt, sponsored by the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, 99.3% of Egyptian women report having experienced sexual harassment, with 49.2% reporting they experience harassment on a daily basis. The People’s Girls, puts human faces on these statistics, capitalizing on Van Loon’s observation that since the 2011 revolution, “less people are denying [the frequency] of sexual harassment… activism around street harassment in Cairo is huge.”
Esraa, one of the film’s main characters, highlights her own experiences in one of her interviews, as recounted on The People’s Girls’ Facebook page:
“I got harassed since I was 6 years old. One of my relatives who was older than me by 10 years did it. He told me “let’s play a game”. I was shivering, and I refused to play. At this age I wasn’t aware of what the hell that was, but I discovered when I met him 10 years later, that while I thought that I had forgotten the story, time said no.”
While openly recognizing the problematic frequency in which women experience harassment in Egypt, the filmmakers firmly assert that the film is not meant to perpetuate a negative, or stereotypical framework of the country, or its people. “Everywhere we’ve been in the world, the United States, Latin America, Europe, South Asia, we’ve experienced various levels of sexual harassment,” said Guhnim. “This is a problem of a patriarchal society, which is unfortunately worldwide. We’ve gotten a lot of hateful comments towards Arabs and Egypt and we really want to point out that not all men are like this.”
Furthering this point, while speaking last week Vin Loon passionately stated, there is “no other place in the world I’d rather live even though Street Harassment is such an epidemic.”
Speaking specifically on what she views as the root cause of harassment, Vin Loon explained the need to shift the prevention narrative, taking issue with an approach focusing on “don’t harass this woman because there’s a man attached to her, rather than don’t harass this woman because she’s a human being.”
Breaking down concepts of patriarchy and possession, the film encapsulates the dangers of gender norms and gender roles. One interviewee in particular encroaches on this topic in the teaser stating, “I wish every father and every mother would stop saying ’you are a boy, you are a girl, you are a boy, you are a girl’ because the main problem in my opinion starts from these two sentences. “
The filmmakers hope to use the film as an advocacy tool, focusing on collaboration and highlighting the work already happening on the ground. Recognizing the global effectiveness of youth-led activism, I asked Van Loon if she noticed a similar leadership pattern in Egypt. “The activism around sexual harassment is huge in Cairo, especially since the revolution… It’s really more mainstream,” she explained, citing that while being “youth-led,” in Egypt, the term youth regularly includes people up to the age of 30 years old. “And it’s really something that we also want to show in our film, and that’s kind of the reason we wanted a global audience for the film. To show these active groups in other countries, the creative ways that Egyptians are dealing with this issue because I really think they are, very innovative…There’s over a dozen organizations working on this issue. We want to them a larger reach as well.”
The People’s Girls is anticipated to release in January 2015. If you would like to support the work of Vin Loone and Guhnim, please consider making a contribution to their Kickstarter campaign before October 4th. Solidarity starts with showing up, no matter what form that may take.
Sarah is a progress-focused educator and advocate dedicated to building strategic coalitions centered on creating social change who serves as an adjunct professor in DePaul University’s Peace, Justice and Conflict Studies department. You can follow her updates on Linkedin or hear her perspectives on Twitter.
Khiara Ortiz, NY, USA, SSH Blog Correspondent
Sexual harassment isn’t something that only happens on the streets of our dear planet Earth. In a recent article on Mashable, Heather Poole, a flight attendant “for a major U.S. carrier” wrote about her experience with an “unruly passenger” when, eighteen years ago, he pinched her “you-know-what” not once, but twice, while she was working.
“I didn’t know what to do,” she writes, “so I nervously laughed and ran to the galley where I would’ve cursed him out – if he hadn’t followed me there. That’s when he did it again. Right in front of my crew.”
Having just started her career as a flight attendant, she didn’t report the incident because she didn’t know who to complain to. This is one of the major issues with sexual harassment, even when it’s happening at an altitude of 35,000 miles. Women don’t know who to turn to, who will listen to them, or who will care.
“I figured it was the sort of thing that came with the job of being a flight attendant,” Poole continues. “I knew the airline wouldn’t want to be inconvenienced by a call to law enforcement over a nonviolent, though unruly, passenger. Especially since the only person offended was me, an employee.”
Poole also cites that though companies in the U.S. have laws that protect their employees against this type of treatment, sexual harassment is just one of those practices that seem to slide by, not unnoticed, but simply uncared for.
“These young girls [the ones most frequently hired by airlines] are just too afraid to say anything for fear of losing their job,” Poole says, quoting a flight attendant who reached out to her after Poole became vocal about her sexual harassment experience.
Perhaps that is the exact reason why sexual harassment in the workplace still happens. The men who exhibit inappropriate behavior are aware of the vulnerable position that women are in because they are only supposed to be doing their jobs and nothing else. If they are harassed, they cannot act out or fight back against the harasser because it would violate the guidelines of their jobs. The men see those women not as humans, but just as employees and therefore below them, the men, in the hierarchy of humanity (though something like that shouldn’t even exist in the first place).
Flight attendants, like other female-dominated service industries like retail and waitressing experience a lot of harassment from “customers.” Earlier this year in February, the Hong Kong-based Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) announced that in a survey of 392 flight attendants between November 2013 and January 2014, 27% reported being sexually harassed while on-duty in-flight in the last twelve months. Of the survey participants, 86% were female and 14% were male.
So what would it take to end this type of sexual harassment? Poole cites that some airlines, mostly foreign carriers, uphold practices that make it more difficult for women to receive equal treatment from their male customers while on the job. “There are Middle Eastern airlines that make flight attendants resign after they become pregnant or get married, an Asian carrier with only one size of uniform, and an Indian carrier who only hires females between the ages of 18 to 22. Males, on the other hand, can be older.”
Of course, harassment and groping on airplanes doesn’t just happen to flight attendants, it can also happen to passengers by flight attendants, other passengers, and even air marshalls. No matter the perpetrator or victim, each case of harassment should be taken seriously as an assault on a human’s right over his or her body.
Khiara is a recent graduate of New York University with a BAS in Journalism and Psychology who works as an assistant in the contracts department for Hachette Book Group. She is also the co-social media manager for Stop Street Harassment.
By HKearl
We’ve got lots of love and admiration for Emma Watson and the UN for working to bring more men into efforts underway worldwide to achieve gender equality. We can’t change the world without them, without YOU.
“‘Gender equality is your issue, too.’
That was the crux of UN Women Global Goodwill Ambassador and British actress Emma Watson’s speech at the UN Headquarters in New York this weekend as she delivered a strong message on gender roles and equality and helped launch the new ‘HeForShe” campaign.’…
The campaign’s website asks people to commit to the pledge that ‘[g]ender equality is not only a women’s issue, it is a human rights issue that requires my participation. I commit to take action against all forms of violence and discrimination faced by women and girls.’ Hopefully, by making people realize that this is not a two-sided issue, but one that truly effects everyone, men and boys around the world will step up to the plate and help the cause.”