Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

Support anti-street harassment efforts this holiday season

By

Lately, I’ve been inundated with e-mails and letters from every organization I donated to during their year + their best friend organizations, asking me to donate again. As much as I obviously care about most of those organizations if I’ve already donated to them, my end of year giving is going to two organizations that do anti-street harassment-related work, RightRides and RAINN. You may be interested in donating to them, too.

  • Right Rides for Women’s Safety: For more than six years RightRides has been giving free rides home to women and male members of the LGBQT community on Friday and Saturday nights in New York City. This free service is particularly helpful to people who cannot afford a cab and are reliant on buses and subways and feel unsafe waiting for or taking these late at night. RightRides has a page about the many ways you can become involved. A new feature is recurring gifts. $10/month can cover rides home for 12 people that year and $25/month covers about 30 people’s rides home. Any amount helps.
  • RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network): Individuals across the United States can seek immediate assistance and advice if they or someone they know are survivors of rape and sexual violence via RAINN’s national phone hotline and online chat feature. While most people know their attacker, about 25 percent do not, and many of those cases are strangers in public places who harass and attack them. When too often survivors of sexual violence are blamed for it and thus are silenced and don’t know what to do, RAINN’s services are very important. RAINN also works on prevention legislation and programming. If you donate by Dec. 31, your donation will be matched dollar for dollar, so you can make double the impact.

Here are additional suggestions for organizations whose work makes public places – and the world in general – safer for women and girls. Not only could you do end-of-year giving to them, but you could make a gift out of donating in honor of family members and friends who care about ending and/or are impacted by street harassment.

  • Blank Noise – Support work in India to raise awareness about and end eve teasing/street harassment through performance art and online activism
  • Defend Yourself – Support the work of a Washington, DC organization that holds community workshops and classes that teach skills to stop harassment, abuse and assault. They particularly focus on girls, women, and LGBQT folks.
  • Girls for Gender Equity – Support a NYC organization that empowers teenage girls and has tackled street harassment through surveys, documentaries, conferences, and books
  • Helping Our Teen Girls – Help fund the programs of an Atlanta, GA, organization that empowers teenage girls and has tackled street harassment through workshops and music.
  • Hollaback – Support the NYC-based organization so they can  fund new Hollaback websites around the world
  • The Line – Help fund programs to raise awareness of healthy sexual boundaries, important work that can help prevent street harassment and sexual assault.
  • Men Can Stop Rape – Support rape prevention programming in middle and high schools and colleges that focuses on providing boys with a safe place to talk about masculinity issues and learn healthy definitions of manhood.
  • The White Ribbon Campaign – Support an international organization that works to educate young men and boys about gender equity, respect and healthy relationships.
  • Women for Women International – Help fund programming that helps women in war-torn areas gain skills and resources necessary to rebuild their lives and increase their safety in their community. You can also sponsor an individual woman as a sister.

And are you looking for other last-minute gift ideas? I can suggest a few:

Share

Weekly Round Up: June 13, 2010

By

Weekly Round Up is back by popular demand.

Story Submissions Recap:

I accept street harassment submissions from anywhere in the world. Share your story!

In the News:

Announcements:

Resource of the Week:

The Welsh Government’s excellent video “One Step Too Far” and the companion website.

Share

“It’s payback time, boys” – street harassment game

By

Last fall, a New York City graduate student* contacted me because she was creating a first person shooter game about street harassment. We chatted about street harassment and I hoped to include her work in my forthcoming book, but alas I could not include every activist I came across due to space constraints. I will include a profile of her in a new activists section of my website this summer.

Anyway, after a particularly annoying harassment experience, she was talking with a friend about street harassment and out of the conversation came the idea to use her programming strength to create a product she calls “definitely controversial but designed to be playful and silly and totally over the top!” In the game she uses real comments harassers have said to her and her friends and family. This week she let me know that her first person shooter game is done. Here’s her description:

” Ladies, are you sick and tired of catcalling, hollering, obnoxious one-liners and creepy street encounters? Tired of changing your route home to avoid uncomfortable situations?

IT’S PAYBACK TIME, BOYS…..

Tell your friends, co-workers, sisters, mothers and grandmothers.  This is the game you’ve all been waiting for…”

Hey Baby is a playful and provocative video game about street harassment. Through a 3D game and website, Hey Baby is designed to spark discussion about women’s experiences of public space. Play the game at www.heybabygame.com.

The Player encounters a series of creepy men who confront her with real comments as she navigates through the game world.  The Player can choose to shoot or to shower them with love.  Hey Baby is based on hundreds of real stories, collected from women throughout the world. Using an ironic mix of humor, violence and over-the-top graphics, this unsettling game encourages open access to public space.

My pal Brittany interviewed she and featured her game at Change.org’s site and in the latest issue of Bitch magazine, and here is a review of it on Sexy Videogameland and Salon.com, so I refer you to those articles for more info.

Thoughts?

*the game creator has asked me to delete her name because of the controversy the game is creating and how directly it is attached to her name

Share

“Have a nice day…you crazy bitch!”

By

Harassers get in their car

The usual comment to anyone who complains about dealing with stuff in the city is to “move to the suburbs.” Well I’ve moved to the suburbs and still deal with street harassment! What infuriates me even more is that I, a Black woman, was once again harassed by Black men who want to keep me in my place.

I have walked down this path numerous times without problems so for this to happen to me just shocked me back into reality. I was walking to the bus stop this morning, and I walked past Key Elementary School. Normally the school’s in session, cars and buses are in the lot and parents are walking their kids to school. Today the parking lot was empty and the school seemed to be closed, which I assume is in preparation for this so-called “Snowpocalypse.”

I noticed a group of four Black men who I’ve never seen in the neighborhood, and I was getting close to passing by them. My instinct told me that they were going to say something to me and that I should cross to the other side of the street to avoid them, but I thought “Let me not stereotype these men.” I continued to walk and looked them in the eye. I didn’t want to look down at the ground. I wanted to go about my day as normal.

But my instinct was right, they did say something to me.

“Smile, Baby,” the leader of their group said in a voice so harsh it sounded like he was barking at me. “You ain’t got to look so mean.” The other guys laughed. I felt so low and humiliated. All I wanted to do was get to the bus stop. Having to smile for men I didn’t know was not on my agenda this morning!

Had Key Elementary been open, this incident wouldn’t have happened because there are too many parents and concerned citizens around for that to have happened. Had I crossed the street like my gut told me to this wouldn’t have happened. Had I been any other race than Black this wouldn’t have happened, because guys like this are only concerned about what us “sisters” do. We have to smile and please “our” Black men. I was upset.

I told this guy “Can you please not call me ‘Baby’? I don’t know you like that for you to call me ‘Baby’. Call me ‘Miss’ or ‘Ma’am’.”
“Okay, I won’t call you ‘Baby’,” the guy said. I thought, “Cool, he gets it,” but then he responds with “I’ll call you ASSHOLE instead!” he snapped. His buddies laughed.

Nothing I did or said warranted that response. I didn’t curse, I didn’t yell or anything. I simply requested to be respected.

“You are strangers to me, and you don’t have the right to call me ‘Baby’,” I said.
“Sorry Ma’am, I won’t do it again,” the guy said. “Have a nice day.”
“Thanks, you too,” I said. But then the guy had to make a smart-aleck comment again.
“Have a nice day…you crazy bitch!” he yelled. Once again, his peanut gallery of friends laughed.

I tried to take photos of this guy with my phone camera, but he was too fast for my slow camera. He realized I was taking photos and jumped into his car with his friends.

“That was so unnecessary,” I said to myself. This car got to drive off and these guys got to share a laugh amongst each other, and I had to feel the rage, humiliation and anger of being a Black woman being put in her place by Black men. I hate that certain Black men feel that they can refer to me as whatever they want because they see me as their property, not as an individual who lives for herself.

I got a clear shot of the car’s license plate in one photo and I could’ve called the police, but with as many stories I’ve reported to the police about harassment, I know they would’ve dismissed me and said “So they called you names? So?” The police don’t care. And also, since we’re both Black, the police probably would’ve assume the harassing group and I knew each other, and that that’s how Black people act around another. That’s not true and that’s not fair.

Even as I type this I’m still shaking and tense with anger. I hate that these men got to me like that, and I hate that they ruined my morning.

– Anonymous

Location: On the Adams St. side of Key Elementary, Arlington, VA

Share your street harassment story today and help raise awareness about the problem. Include your location and it will be added to the Street Harassment Map.

Share

“I’m a person. Not a blow-up doll”

By

I live in Los Angeles, California, so I often get harassed when I walk on the street, but I’ll share one that really stuck out to me.

I was crossing a street (at a crosswalk) and a guy was sitting there in his car and asked if I needed a ride someplace, and proceeded to tell me what a “fine ass” I had. I ignored him and kept walking. He started making kissing noises at me and yelled “hey baby!” as I walked away.

It made me feel very angry and disgusted. I know I have a nice body, and I don’t need or want him to tell me that, especially in such a degrading way. It was as if he thought I existed solely to be something for him and other men to look at.

Whether he liked my body or not, he should have kept his opinion to himself. Why do men feel they are allowed to comment on our appearances this way? Why don’t they care that it makes us feel used and dirty? I resented that guy because he had no respect for me as a HUMAN BEING and instead saw me as “pussy.”

I’m a daughter, a sister, a friend. I’m intelligent, loyal, caring, and short-tempered. I am passionate and emotional…I could go on. Basically, I’m a person. Not a blow-up doll.

-Erin Selzano

Location: Los Angeles, CA

Share your street harassment story today and help raise awareness about the problem. Include your location and it will be added to the Street Harassment Map.

Share