father's day Archives | Stop Street Harassment

9-2-10 GWU book talk DC 155 — My book launch event in 2010. This is how supportive my dad is -- the event was on a weeknight in DC and my dad left work in NYC early, drove 4 hours down to DC, attended the event, and then drove all the way back home so he could go to work the next day. I had a book launch event in NYC the next week that he also attended...he wanted to be at the DC one too to support me at my very first book talk. My mom attended both too.

Happy Father’s Day to men working to make the world a better place!

Happy Father’s Day in particular to my dad who is a great ally and anti-street harassment activists. Here are six examples of his efforts.

1 – When I secured the Stop Street Harassment book contract in 2009, my dad, Alan Kearl, spent dozens of hours line-editing the entire manuscript by hand, twice. It was truly a labor of love and his advice helped make the book stronger. Last fall, he helped me buy the rights to the paperback edition so I could make the book more affordable/accessible.

2 – Online, my dad has written several posts for the male ally series on this blog and he regularly writes encouraging comments on stories people around the world submit to the blog.

3 – During this past year, he’s represented Stop Street Harassment at several events in New York City, including the Shine the Light on Domestic Violence event at Times Square.

4 – In 2011, I organized International Anti-Street Harassment Day and my dad and mom decided to participate by handing out 100 fliers about street harassment near a subway stop.

5 – In 2012, when I decided to turn the day into International Anti-Street Harassment Week, my dad dreamed bigger organized a rally against street harassment in New York City. Despite a busy work and personal life schedule, he organized over a dozen speakers and performers, including City Council Member Julissa Ferraras, and a crowd of 100 joined in to chant, cheer, and get energized to do something about street harassment. Everyone at the rally was inspired and encouraged by seeing a male ally and a father take such an active role in addressing the issue.

6 – Yesterday, I was in New York City with my family to celebrate an early Father’s Day. In the morning, a friend sent me a photo of a pro-street harassment construction sign in Princeton, NJ. When I told my parents, my dad wanted to drive the 90 minutes (each way) to try to find it and take pictures in person and figure out what company put up the sign. When that proved impractical because of the rest of our schedule, he did online sleuthing and figured out the company and wrote an email to them sharing his disappointment in the content (I’m working on a petition you can sign soon).

While my dad has always been supportive of my efforts, I love how he’s turned into an activist in his own right. I’m excited that we can grow together as activists when we travels to Cairo, Egypt, in July to meet with anti-street harassment members of the group HarassMap (and also sight see).

I hope my dad can be an example to other fathers about the power and importance of working with their children collaboratively to make the world a better place.

Since the day I told my dad that the topic of my master’s thesis would be gender-based street harassment, he has been incredibly supportive of my work. He read and gave feedback on numerous versions of my thesis. Then he and my mom encouraged me to write a book. When I got sidetracked at times on other street harassment projects, he kept pushing me to focus on the goal of getting a book published. When I got a book contract and wrote the book, my dad read numerous drafts of chapters and gave feedback as I wrote and revised. In the days leading up to my due date, he hand wrote edits on nearly every single page of my manuscript, then scanned and emailed them back to me. The morning my manuscript was due, he was still editing, scanning, and sending me pages to help make it as strong as possible. He continues to offer encouragement as I blog and write articles about street harassment. In fact, earlier this evening, I sent out the draft of a new article to a few people for feedback. My dad was the first one to respond.

I am incredibly lucky to have two parents who encourage me, push me, and are proud of me. Given the subject matter of the work I do, I feel particularly lucky to have such a great male ally in my dad – many men do not care or understand why street harassment upsets women, but he gets it and wants to see the problem end.

So thanks, dad, for everything you’ve done and continue to do to support my street harassment work. Happy Father’s Day!

Six Ways My Dad is an Activist

Thanks, Dad