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Happy New Year 2021!

January 1, 2021 By HKearl

Dear SSH Community,

I am so grateful to everyone who stayed with us during this difficult year of 2020 when so much of our lives changed and when many of us had to prioritize our families/caretaking (me included…even now I can’t write this whole post without being interrupted).

Stop Street Harassment is still here you though, and we will continue to advocate for safe public spaces in 2021!! One big event will be our 11th annual International Anti-Street Harassment Week, in collaboration with Safecity, held virtually from 11 to 17 April. Save the date!

And in the U.S., we have this good news, a women’s history museum was approved and street harassment is a topic they’d consider.

And in the planning process, the key will be an “expansive view” of women’s history, Gross said, including women of different abilities, trans and queer communities, and the experiences of women from all walks of life: “women who were performers, women who were writers, women who were seamstresses, women who were farmers, women who were domestics,” she explained. “I want it all.”

Such an expansive view could also extend to more experiential ways of teaching history, Gross said, including the history of street harassment in the US. “From the first women starting to work and having to navigate public streets, there were all kinds of perils,” she explained, especially for Black women. “They carried hatpins; they learned how to use their purses and bags defensively to protect themselves.”

It will be interesting to see if the museum could find a way to recreate or use “that embodied experience” to teach about the misogyny that has been a major part of American history, Gross said.”

It’s hard for me to imagine that our country now takes this issue so seriously it’d be part of our national museum, but street harassment is a huge issue in women’s lives, dictating many aspects of our life, so it should be! I can’t wait to see what happens.

Happy New Year to you and your loved ones. May 2021 be a year of peace, productivity and joy.

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Filed Under: street harassment Tagged With: history

USA: ‘Hamilton’ and Reflections on Stop Street Harassment

August 8, 2016 By Correspondent

Deborah D’Orazi, LMSW, NY, USA, SSH Blog Correspondent

Image via BuzzFeed
Image via BuzzFeed

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton is one of the most popular musicals on Broadway and is continuously gaining accolades the world over for its music and multi-racial and gender inclusive casting. In creating an alternative to the typically white male narrative American history often presents as the norm, Miranda constructs a piece of theater that creates a nuanced critique of who and what is deemed most important in American history and society. Women and people of color not only tell the story of Alexander Hamilton, the American Revolution, and the early American Republic, they tell the story of the very men who often ordered their subordination and inferiority through philosophy, politics, and violence.

More importantly, they represent the stories of the very people and experiences purposefully erased and forgotten in order to create American society. This is a narrative demonstrating the United States’ founding ideals and oppressions on full display through expert storytelling and representation that not only represents a critique of the Founding Fathers and ideals, but of the progress made and still needed for those still experiencing oppression in our society.

One of the ways in which oppression is explored in Hamilton is through the presence and absence of women in public life due to racial and gender norms. While women of all races are featured in the ensemble, the only prominent female characters are the Schuyler Sisters (Angelica, Eliza, and Peggy—prominent, upper class white women played by women of color). Most of the songs in the play demonstrate the women’s influence in Alexander Hamilton’s life and the frustration that they have such little influence on their own. Father’s must approve marriages and the only political influence they have is through corresponding and talking to men. And, what is most telling, is that the only song where the women are by themselves, and in a public place, is when they are subjected to street harassment.

The Schuyler Sisters is a song introducing the three women exploring Manhattan on the eve of the American Revolution, despite their father’s warnings. While Peggy worries about the inevitable oncoming violence, Eliza and Angelica express enthusiasm for the revolutionary ideals being expressed throughout the city and colonies. The women state they are “looking for a mind at work” and while the male narrator and ensemble seem to suggest they are looking for a suitable male partner, there is a lack of acknowledgement from the men of the times (and in the play) that women and people of color may actually be looking for a say within the narrative of revolutionary politics. This willful ignorance and prejudice comes into full force when Aaron Burr interjects his harassment into the women’s narrative:

[BURR]
Wooh! There’s nothin’ like summer in the city
Someone in a rush next to someone lookin’ pretty
Excuse me, miss, I know it’s not funny
But your perfume smells like your daddy’s got money
Why you slummin’ in the city in your fancy heels
You searchin for an urchin who can give you ideals?

[ANGELICA]
Burr, you disgust me

[BURR]
Ah, so you’ve discussed me
I’m a trust fund, baby, you can trust me!

[ANGELICA]
I’ve been reading Common Sense by Thomas Paine
So men say that I’m intense or I’m insane
You want a revolution? I want a revelation
So listen to my declaration:

[ELIZA/ANGELICA/PEGGY]
“We hold these truths to be self-evident
That all men are created equal”

[ANGELICA]
And when I meet Thomas Jefferson
I’m ‘a compel him to include women in the sequel!

[WOMEN]
Work!

This dialogue represents many things. On one hand, it demonstrates the underrepresented historical narrative that street harassment existed for many centuries before it became noticeable in popular culture and within the Stop Street Harassment movement. As a form of racial, homophobic, and gender violence, street harassment has been used to discourage and harm people fighting for civil rights, suffrage, or any personal or human rights issue. As a woman, LGBTQ individual, or racial minority, etc. even existing in a public place or taking part in a public activity or using a public space becomes an act of resistance when people use harassment to question your right to live and exist within a space near or with them. Thinking of events like the Orlando Club Shooting, the death of Sandra Bland, and the shooting of Malala Yousafzai by the Taliban only highlight even more strongly how existing and living and/or advocating in public for yourself and others can lead to harassment, violence, and death.

The question then becomes, how do we deter attitudes like Aaron Burr’s? How do we change the default where people are willfully ignorant and prejudiced about the many people and voices that exist in this world? That would be willing to use street harassment to quiet those using and existing in public spaces that they wish to use for their own gain or harm?

And I ask the Stop Street Harassment community,

  • How do we create a more inclusive world and environment in our movement to make sure we are advocating for all people and to have a more inclusive discourse?
  • Do you think more historical introspection and education on harassment would be useful to help combat harassment?
  • How does art become an useful tool in combatting harassment and other forms of oppression?

Deborah is a recent MSW graduate who also received certification from American University’s Women and Politics Institute and Rutgers’ Center on Violence Against Women and Children. In addition to social work, Deborah is looking to pursue an MPP/MPA and she is also extremely passionate about the arts (theater, writing, film, television, fine art, poetry, performance art), history, and Hamilton.

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Filed Under: correspondents, street harassment Tagged With: broadway, Hamilton, history, normalizing street harassment, play

Seattle street harassers used to face this punishment…

October 15, 2014 By HKearl

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, street harassers were called “mashers” across the USA. In Seattle, if you were convicted of being a masher, you may have to put in time on the chain gang! Wow.

Via CrossCut.com —

“Even though Seattle was awash in prostitution, behavior toward ‘proper’ ladies had to be protected at all costs, especially as the city’s middle class expanded. Two young men in Ballard were sentenced to the gang for getting a 16-year-old Ballard girl drunk on beer.

The Seattle Times defended a chain gang sentence for another young man who was arrested for “annoying a young woman on a Seattle street.” The paper editorialized, “That penalty, too, may seem severe to some, but it does not to any man with a wife or daughter who is occasionally compelled to be upon the streets of this city alone. The offense of the ‘masher’ is akin to that of the rapist. There is only a difference in the quality of the nerve displayed. The penalty under the law is, unfortunately, too light.”

In 1907, police chief Charles “Wappy” Wappenstein decided to crack down on men and boys who harassed proper ladies on the street — a bit ironic for a policeman who was later prosecuted and jailed for taking bribes from prostitution interests in the city. Wappy threatened to start a “second chain gang to be made up of dudes and brainless individuals who have the mashing habit.” He said, “It would be a joy to me to see a finely dressed young man…working alongside a hobo, chained together with irons….”

 

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Filed Under: SH History, street harassment Tagged With: history, mashers, seattle

Part 2: Redefining Rape and Street Harassment: 1880-1920s

October 3, 2013 By HKearl

“Want to take a ride, little girl?” ~ Street harasser from the early 1900s.

As more and more scholars are uncovering, street harassment is not a new social problem. Stanford University Professor Estelle Freedman is one of the latest people to explore this in a chapter of her new book Redefining Rape: Sexual Violence in the Era of Suffrage and Segregation (the major themes of the book and two lessons for today are covered in Part 1).

Street harassment predates this time period and poor women who have always been in public places for work have likely always faced street harassment (and worse), but once middle-class women began experiencing it in large numbers in the late 1800s and early 1900s, they made it a visible problem.

By the late 1800s and early 1900s, a growing number of people lived in cities instead of farms or small villages and many white men used the new anonymity a city afforded them to harass women without facing consequences. Around this time period, more middle-class women of all races were in public spaces unaccompanied by men as they went to work, shops, and the theater, and as “unescorted women,” some men saw them as “fair game.” Phrases used by street harassers sound the same as today: “Hey, baby,” “Hey, honey,” “How much for you?”

Upset by this unwanted attention, many middle class women — both white and black — spoke out and took action, making it visible in newspapers and other publications.

Via Stanford University

Dr. Freedman graciously spoke with me by phone to answer a few questions for this article and sent me a complimentary copy of the book to raffle off!

1. HK: While the chapter focuses mostly on street harassment in the early 1900s, you found references to it in the 1770s when women expressed their concerns about “sexual dangers” in public spaces and spoke about their desire to have the “liberty to travel freely.” Did you find it surprising that very similar language to what anti-street harassment activists use today to talk about equality in public spaces was used hundreds of years ago by women? Why or why not?

EF: I’m not entirely surprised. Women began to use the language of rights in different historical periods in different cultures. In England and the United States, at the time when women were moving into the public sphere in larger numbers it was also a time of democratic revolutions and women said, “We deserve our rights, too.”

While street harassment was probably going on consistently through the centuries, the condemnation of harassment strongly correlates with the height of the suffrage movement in the early 1900s — and in more recent decades, with the feminist movement — and other claims to space and rights.

2. HK: Throughout your chapter, you cite newspaper articles featuring women who verbally and physically fought back against street harassers and even reported them to the police using laws like disorderly conduct so that the harasser faced a fine or a night in jail. Do you have a favorite story among the many you read?

EF: Two stories come to mind right away. One is from 1924 in New York City when a black woman was riding the subway and a white man from a southern state is trying to pick her up as a prostitute. When she refused his attention, he told her that if they had been in Georgia, “I would have you strung up.” A white woman who witnessed this joined her and detained him until the police arrived and arrested him. This is a really rare example of a black and a white woman cooperating together and bringing in the authorities. It was very striking and atypical.

Another story I like is in Chicago around 1906-1908 when women held self defense classes in parks for other women. The idea was to help them feel less fearful in the streets, to walk with confidence, and to give them a sense of their physical power while in public spaces.

3. HK: After World War I, there was a shift in how street harassment was viewed by the public. For a few decades leading up to the war, street harassment was largely seen as inappropriate and women who fought back were applauded, but then there was a shift to where it was seen as flirting and something women asked for by being unaccompanied in public spaces. There was also a heightened concern for the men accused of being harassers. Can you talk a little bit more about why this shift happened and its legacy?

EF: The new sexual values at that time that acknowledged women’s sexual agency and that encouraged women to not accept that they were passive objects of men’s desires was double edged: in some ways it empowered young women to feel able to be active sexual agents but it also meant that the line between wanted and unwanted sexual attention could be blurred. Once flirting became seen as acceptable public behavior between young people in public places, it became easier for street harassers to say, “I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I was just flirting,” and that was taken as an acceptable response.

In the early 1900s, there were police women (mostly white) who went undercover and arrested men who harassed them. One of the reactions to this was the concern that men were being victimized by women who didn’t like men or by women who didn’t understand the new sexual mores. There was a growing belief that female police officers were arresting men for behaviors that should no longer be criminalized.

In short, the new morality just after WWI made it harder to always know when the line has been crossed between wanted and unwanted attention.

In the white press, there were still some stories about women who fight back and they were applauded for doing so, but after the 1910s, there were fewer stories supporting women’s self defense and more sympathetic stories about men fearing being false accused.

Many African Americans migrated north during this time period and in the black press, however, there was actually an increase in articles focused on white men harassing black women and girls, treating them like prostitutes. The black presses called out white men for this behavior and fought to establish black women’s respectability.

4. HK: Today, sometimes men of color are disproportionately blamed for street harassment and depicted as street harassers. I found it interesting, then, to learn that in the time period you examined, the majority of news stories and reports featured white men as harassers – of both white and African American women.  Can you share why this was, and how it ties into the larger issues of race in your book?

EF: In the newspapers, early nineteenth century mashers were all white and for good reason. For a black man to even chance looking at white woman on the street could lead to lynching. They had much less opportunity to be harassers. It would have been highly dangerous. [The newspapers typically only depicted white men as harassers of black women, too. While black women faced street harassment by black men, they largely kept quiet for fear of fueling the myth that black men were sexual predators.]

By type casting white men as a masher, it reinforced the idea that white men are harassers and black men are rapists. Keeping white men in the role of minor offenders masked white men’s more sever offenses against white and black women.

5. HK: Right now, there is a huge resurgence in attention to the issue of street harassment and what we can do about it. What is one lesson you think we can learn today from how the issue was treated and addressed in the late 1800s to early 1900s?

EF: One lesson is that you can’t separate the issue of street harassment from the larger issue of inequality. Women are underrepresented in legislatures, leadership, and are underpaid, and as long as women occupy a subordinate position economically and politically, they’re going to remain more sexually vulnerable.

Whenever women are mobilizing politically to get more rights, they also seem to have more of a vocal voice opposing sexual violence and street harassment. We need to keep the vulnerability of sexual assault and street harassment within the larger grid of women needing more economic and political leadership. We can’t treat it as separate.

Just passing laws doesn’t make a difference; we have to have a cultural shift, too. It’s really those deeper cultural values that can undermine the legal changes. Keeping an eye on what’s happening in the larger culture around sexuality is important and the more that women gain economically and politically, the more they can gain sexually.

You can find other scholarly articles, books, and theses about street harassment in the Stop Street Harassment resources section.

DRAWING:

Dr. Freedman donated a copy of her book (value $35) for me to give away in a drawing! Because of the cost of shipping the heavy book internationally, I am limiting this to people with U.S. addresses.

There are two ways to enter your name into the random drawing, you can:

1. Tweet out an article or resource from the SSH blog and add @stopstharassmnt #Mashers to it.
2. Submit a street harassment story or street respect story to the blog (include an email address and note in the “other” field you want to be included in the drawing).

I will hold the drawing on October 18.

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Filed Under: Activist Interviews, SH History, street harassment Tagged With: Estelle Freedman, history, mashers, Redefining Rape

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