Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

“Other people must think I’m a slut”

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I was waiting to cross the road. Builders who were on a scaffold repeatedly whistled at me (like did not take a break, just continuous wolf whistling). I was stuck there and couldn’t walk away because I couldn’t cross the road. I felt so scared and ashamed. It made me feel like I was dressed inappropriately and that other people must think I’m a slut.

– Anonymous

This post is part of a back-to-school series to highlight the young age that street harassment begins. The stories in this series were shared as part of our recent survey on street harassment and age and they entail people’s first experience of street harassment. The full list of stories is available here.

As you read the stories, note that among respondents, 70% said they were 13 years old or younger at the time of their first experience. 24% said they were 14 to 16 years old. The remaining 6% were older than 16.

Need support?
Call the toll-free National Street Harassment hotline: 855-897-5910

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“Please pull that dress down!”

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I was walking down the street with my mom, and I was wearing a pretty dress because I was going to the theater. A man drove by in a car and hollered, “Please pull that dress down!”

I was 15 at the time.

– Anonymous

This post is part of a back-to-school series to highlight the young age that street harassment begins. The stories in this series were shared as part of our recent survey on street harassment and age and they entail people’s first experience of street harassment. The full list of stories is available here.

As you read the stories, note that among respondents, 70% said they were 13 years old or younger at the time of their first experience. 24% said they were 14 to 16 years old. The remaining 6% were older than 16.

Need support?
Call the toll-free National Street Harassment hotline: 855-897-5910

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“The harassment by men hasn’t stopped since”

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I was in a store, looking at a shelf when a man in his 40’s pressed himself up against my back and whispered in my ear that I was beautiful. He then rubbed past me as he went back to his wife who was his age. The same thing happened in the same place months after, despite me taking all those months in between to gain the confidence just to go back there at age 12. The harassment by men hasn’t stopped since.

– Anonymous

This post is part of a back-to-school series to highlight the young age that street harassment begins. The stories in this series were shared as part of our recent survey on street harassment and age and they entail people’s first experience of street harassment. The full list of stories is available here.

As you read the stories, note that among respondents, 70% said they were 13 years old or younger at the time of their first experience. 24% said they were 14 to 16 years old. The remaining 6% were older than 16.

Need support?
Call the toll-free National Street Harassment hotline: 855-897-5910

 

 

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Adult Men, Stop Harassing Girls!

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Street harassment is a big problem in our country, especially for young women and girls. According to our nationally representative surveys, 71% of women have faced sexual harassment in public spaces, and most harassed women say their first incident of sexual harassment took place when they were a teenager or younger.

Twitter user @heterochromance asked women about their first street harassment experience a few days ago, and quickly her thread drew more than 6,000 comments. She specifically asked women about adult men catcalling them in light of multimillionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein being arrested on sex trafficking charges. His victims were as young as 14 years old.

Men like Epstein and singer R. Kelly, who was recently arrested for various charges of abusing women and girls, are not an anomaly for preying on girls. They may just be an anomaly for the extent to which they did so – and for how long they got away with it.

In the nearly 13 years that I have been researching, writing and speaking out about street harassment, I have noticed that this is a common theme when women recall their early experiences with street harassment. The perpetrators were not usually boys their own age, but instead, men. A few weeks ago, I created an online survey to investigate this. Here are the results, with a few points highlighted below.

Around 250 people took the online survey, and 94% identified as female. When asked about their age at the time of their first experience of street harassment, they were quite young. Almost 70% said they were 13 years old or younger. Another 24% percent said they were 14 to 16 years old.

When asked about the age of their harassers (nearly all of whom were identified as male), the age difference was alarming; 55% said the men were in their 30s or older. Specifically:

  • 8% said the men were in their 50s
  • 20% said the men were in their 40s
  • 27% said the men were in their 30s
  • 22% said the men were in their 20s
  • 12% said the boys were in their teens, but older than them
  • 7% said the boys were their same age

The remaining 4% of respondents said the harassers were either younger than them or older than 50s. Again, most girls were elementary or middle school age and nearly all of them were high school age or younger at the time.

Around 80% of respondents said this first incident of street harassment caused them to feel less safe in the world afterward, and 54% said it caused them to change their life in some way.

This is truly horrible and should be unacceptable in our society. We must end our culture of male privilege that allows adult men to prey on girls, often with impunity!!

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Take Our Survey on Street Harassment and Age

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Recently, I’ve read a few street harassment stories in which women recount their first experiences of street harassment at ages as young as 11. Their harassers? Older teenagers or adult men. Based on the hundreds of stories I’ve read and heard over the years, I know this is pretty typical and pretty alarming.

I hope that if more people realized the predatory nature of so much street harassment — adult men preying on teenagers (and younger) — there would be much more outcry and efforts to try to stop it.

To that end, since our latest national studies (2018, 2019) show that a public space is the most frequent site for sexual harassment, I have created an informal survey for YOU to take about your first street harassment experience. How old were you? How old was your harasser? How did it affect you?

I anticipate using the results in blog posts, articles, factsheets and talks going forward. Anyone, anywhere is welcome to complete this short survey. Your answers will be anonymous, but you can choose to leave your email address at the end if you’d like to be contacted with the results.

THANK YOU!

Related, check out this op-ed at Essence penned by Girls For Gender Equity‘s CEO and our ally Joanne N. Smith, “#MeToo Isn’t Just for Adults.”

And if you missed it, be sure to check out (and share) our latest national study from April 30! Full Report | Two-Page Executive Summary | Press Release | Survey Questions | Street Harassment Factsheet

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