Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

Gender violence at epidemic levels in the USA

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1 in 5 women in the U.S. is a survivor of rape or attempted rape, according to the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, a 2010 study released yesterday by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The first of its kind, the CDC study reveals the US to be a country where violence is rampant, especially against women, and especially against young women.

Via NPR News:

“As many as 29 million women say they have suffered severe and frightening physical violence from a boyfriend, spouse or other intimate partner. That includes being choked, beaten, stabbed, shot, punched, slammed against something or hurt by hair-pulling.

That number grows to 36 million if slapping, pushing and shoving are counted.

Almost half of the women who reported rape or attempted rape said it happened when they were 17 or younger.

As many as 1 in 3 women have experienced rape, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetimes, compared to about 1 in 10 men.

Both men and women who had been menaced or attacked in these ways reported more health problems. Female victims, in particular, had significantly higher rates of irritable bowel syndrome, asthma, frequent headaches and difficulty sleeping.

Certain states seemed to have higher reports of sexual violence than others. Alaska, Oregon and Nevada were among the highest in rapes and attempted rapes of women, and Virginia and Tennessee were among the lowest.”

The findings are not very shocking when you work on issues of gender violence every day. What I want to know is if issues of rape, domestic violence, and stalking will stop being treated as jokes and stop being viewed as non-priorities compared to “real problems,” private matters, and the fault of the victim/survivor. I want to see these issues treated as a national crisis. Because that’s what they are.

Prevention must become mandatory in homes and schools nationwide.

Also, while this didn’t come out in the published study, thanks to input from Shannon Lynberg, co-founder of Holla Back DC!, the survey included questions about street harassment as a form of violence. Holla Back DC! will be interviewing some of the study’s authors to get the data on the prevalence of street harassment. This will be the first time we have national data on street harassment so stay tuned.

About 9,000 women and 7,400 men selected at random took the CDC survey. The CDC plans to conduct this same study annually.

If you are a survivor of sexual assault (woman or man), you can find help at the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network‘s online hotline or phone hotline. It’s never too late to seek help, even if the abuse happened decades ago. There’s always time to start or continue your healing process.

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16 Days of Activism: My name is NOT Bitch

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It’s the second day of 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence and here is the second name that women do NOT want to be called by men they do not know when they’re in public places. (All 16 names were submitted via Twitter or Facebook.)

Ending the social acceptability of men calling women these names takes us one step closer to creating a culture where gender violence doesn’t happen. Read more about the connection between gender violence and the inappropriate and demeaning names that men call women they don’t know.

Don’t let harassers off the hook: respond | report | share your story.

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16 Days of Activism: My Name is NOT Sexy Lady

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It’s the first day of the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence and on this blog you can read one name a day that women do NOT want to be called by men they do not know when they’re in public places. All 16 names were submitted via Twitter or Facebook.

What’s the connection between a name and gender violence?

Well, men calling women they don’t know “legs,” “baby,” or “pussy,” is behavior at one end of the spectrum of gender violence, with rape and murder at the other end.

Gender violence occurs because women are disrespected, seen as less than men, and are dehumanized and sexually objectified. A sad consequence of this gender imbalance is that countless men harass, beat, rape, assault, and murder girls and women around the world: inside homes and huts, at schools and workplaces, and in war zones and public places.

One way to create and perpetuate disrespect for women is for men to call women they do not know inappropriate, sexualized, degrading, and humiliating names in public places. Instead of respectful titles like, “Ma’am,’ or “Miss,” or instead of simply not addressing strange women on the streets, period, women are called names that mark them as less than.

If we speak out and say, “Calling us these names is NOT okay,” then that takes us one step closer to changing a culture where gender violence happens.

Don’t let harassers off the hook: respond | report | share your story.

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New UN initiative focuses on creating safe cities

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Last fall in Delhi, India, I attended the launch of UNIFEM’s Safe Cities Programme, a five-year program aimed at addressing safety issues particularly faced by women in five major cities. It appears that program, under the new UN Women, has now melded with similar programs run by UNICEF and UN-HABITAT into a program called Safe and Friendly Cities for All. [Update: I just heard from someone at the UN and the two programs are separate, though related]

The following information about it is from the UN Women website. It sounds like the initiatives will take street harassment into serious consideration, which is great. Afterall, we can have all the street lamps and graffiti-less walls we want, but until (primarily) men stop sexually harassing women in the streets, cities will never be safe for half of the population.

UNICEF, UN-HABITAT and UN Women launch “Safe and Friendly Cities for All,” a five-year programme that aims at making women and children feel safer in their local neighbourhoods, while improving their quality of life.

This partnership initiative builds on prior experience that all three organizations have accumulated on preventing gender-based violence, using innovative tools for child and youth engagement in urban settings, and promoting integrated crime prevention strategies in cities.

By working with local municipalities, women’s groups, child and youth advocates, the joint initiative will focus on increasing safety among women, youth and children, and preventing and reducing violence, including sexual harassment and violence against women and girls in public spaces.

More than half of the world’s population — approximately 3.4 billion people — live in cities today. This number is projected to increase to 69 percent by 2050. With this rapid urbanization come increased risks for the citizens of urban areas, especially women and children. Currently, one billion people are living in urban slums and are denied basic human rights, such as access to safe housing and reliable health services.

Global crime rates jumped by about 30 percent between 1980 and 2000, and between 2002 and 2007, approximately 60 percent of urban residents in developing countries reported that they had been the victims of crime. Many of these are women and young girls, facing sexual assault or harassment on streets, public transport or in their own neighbourhoods.

The new partnership will address these challenges by supporting a variety of initiatives in the participating cities. By working with local authorities and organizations on the ground, women and young people will be able to identify those areas in their neighbourhood where they feel most at risk, and find solutions together.

Potential interventions may include:

* Enabling women and young people to have a voice in decisions that affect their lives such as decisions on budgets and local infrastructure

* Establishing female councillor-led committees for effective response to sexual violence and crimes in communities

* Increasing street lights in high-risk areas, including the use of solar lights which are cost-effective and more resilient to damage and vandalism

* Training of community police units to prevent gender-based violence

The five-year initiative will be piloted with municipal leaders. Dushanbe, Greater Beirut, Metro Manila, Marrakesh, Nairobi, Rio de Janeiro, San José and Tegucigalpa are among the cities currently being considered.

See also:

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Guyland and the culture of street harassment

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http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/26317942/ns/today-books/

Michael Kimmel’s 2008 book Guyland is a great manual for male allies. It explores what he refers to as “Guyland,” an aggressive and toxic environment that young men of my generation are growing up in. It’s an environment influenced by fraternities that have misogynistic practices, sports, and conservative talk radio that broadcast constantly this message: the women’s movement, immigrants, and rich liberals are undermining long held white male privilege. It simply follows by logic that in such an atmosphere women are perceived as obstacles to be “won over” and, in turn, degraded. Kimmel offers a powerful study that sheds light on the possible attitudes that create the problems of street harassment. Stop Street Harassment offers numerous resources for men to counteract these cultural forces and bring an end to degradation in our lifetime.

Kimmel explains that in a society where the women’s movement has made significant inroads, the traditional ways of “proving” masculinity have been discredited. They are devolving into infantile acts such as encouraging their friends to “score” and employing politically incorrect speech. Stop Street Harassment offers a powerful charge to male allies to fight against such displays of masculinity and how we can work to counterbalance this disturbing cultural trend.

The cultural norms under which “Guyland” operates are becoming so ubiquitous that they can be difficult to fight. Kimmel explains that many men are afraid to question the actions of fellow guys because it may lead to their exclusion. This fear of social isolation among men is one of the reasons street harassment and other acts of violence go unchallenged. Stop Street Harassment provides techniques for men to intervene in these situations and to not be afraid due to peer pressure.

Another important issue that Kimmel addresses is the gray area that men feel in their relationships with women. What men consider to be a friendly gesture may be interpreted as predatory and the line is often vague. The Stop Street Harassment website offers men guidelines on how to interact with women to make them feel safe and unthreatened.

Kimmel’s book also hits home for me in a more personal way. As I participated in the Anti-Street Harassment Day on March 20, I kept thinking about these issues as I realized there was something wrong. Of all the members of my group I was the only male. The lack of male participation in challenging those attitudes that create street harassment is something that our generation is going to have to address. We have the opportunity to be the first generation with widespread male involvement in these issues. Kimmel’s book should be our warning shot.

– Sean Crosbie
Male Ally

This post is part of the weekly blog series by male allies. We need men involved in the work to end the social acceptability of street harassment and to stop the practice, period. If you’d like to contribute to this weekly series, please contact me.

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