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I Need Feminism Because My Sister Shouldn’t Have To Experience Street Harassment

December 11, 2012 By Contributor

This article is written by high school student Livia Brock who is taught by @FeministTeacher. It is cross-posted with permission from the class blog F to the Third Power.

I need feminism because my little sister should have the same amount of confidence in + respect for herself as I do for her! (photo credit: Ileana Jiménez)

The other day I was walking down the street with two of my friends.  I had fallen slightly behind them when an older man walking towards us suddenly locked eyes with me.  I looked away quickly, but he angled toward me, eyes full of something very creepy and unnerving, and asked, “Are you free for a date?”

Being polite, I said, “No thanks!” and ran to catch up to my friends.  I looked back once and caught him staring at me, eyes still full of that same disconcerting energy.

I began to notice men paying attention to me when I was twelve, near the beginning of seventh grade.  I still looked pretty young, but I was very tall, so maybe men thought I was older.  Or perhaps my actual age was not an issue.  I didn’t particularly mind being looked at.  It made me feel noticed. These men weren’t being vulgar, and they did not make comments or make me feel uncomfortable.  But it wasn’t until I got a little older, maybe around thirteen, that I started to receive a lot of attention.

Thirteen was really the year I started walking around and going on the subway by myself.  This was when the looks turned into much more. Men began saying passing remarks like, “So beautiful,” “Hey baby girl,” and once simply, “Nice tits.”  I wasn’t sure how to react to a lot of these.  Not all were rude, and sometimes I didn’t take much notice. Sometimes I enjoyed the comments.

Enjoying this kind of attention from men is often the case for girls without a strong support system at home, or for those girls who feel unwanted or undesired. As Rachel Lloyd, founder of the organization GEMS writes in her memoir, Girls Like Us, “She was uncomfortable with her body and her appearance . . . and she carried that knowledge with her like a weight that she desperately wanted to put down.  Attention from boys, or men, always helped ease that weight a little.”

Although Lloyd writes about girls who have been commercially exploited, even girls who have not been commercially exploited succumb to the attention of boys and men. These girls are often sucked into a relationship or a situation that is not healthy due to their desire for attention from men.  For example, sometimes I liked getting attention from these men because it made me feel like I was wanted and special.

Certain ones, though, made me extremely uncomfortable, and stick out in my mind.  There was one time when two obviously drunk men asked me if I wanted to come home with them.  Another time, an older man groped me on the subway, and I ended up being late to school because I was so uncomfortable, I got off the train for a while.  Then there was the time a homeless man at church tried to kiss me.  Another time, two men on the sidewalk called across the street at me, asking “how much” I was for an hour.

During all of these instances, I was dressed very much like a kid with bell-bottom jeans, a bright pink shirt, long thick coat, and sneakers.

Image

An Anti-Street Harassment Advertisement

Until I took this feminism course at my high school taught by my teacher Ileana Jiménez, I never realized how not ok all of this was and how much it was hurting me.  I had the attitude that no matter what we do, the way these men act will never change. At the same time, I had internalized the message that I was merely a sex object for these men and that it was somehow a good thing that they noticed me for my body.

I always assumed that in some way it was my fault for walking a certain way, looking men in the eyes, or wearing certain clothing.  After taking this course, I realize how fundamentally sexist this attention I was getting and my attitude towards it was.

The fact that these men felt they were allowed to make comments about my body is wrong.

The fact that these men felt it was all right to treat me as a sexual object, to touch me or ask me if I wanted to come home with them is wrong.

I never felt frightened to walk down the street, only resigned to what I expected to happen, which is perhaps the worst approach to street harassment. As Rebecca Walker writes in her essay, “Becoming the Third Wave,” “the ultimate rally of support for the male paradigm of harassment, sends a clear message to women: ‘Shut up! Even if you speak, we will not listen.’  I will not be silenced.  I acknowledge the fact that we live under siege. I intend to fight back. I have uncovered and unleashed more repressed anger than I thought possible. For the umpteenth time in my 22 years, I have been radicalized, politicized, shaken awake.”

My sister is fourteen years old.  She looks younger than I did at her age, but as I said before, I’m not sure how much age matters to these men.  I hope that she has never experienced anything along the lines of what I have experienced.  Even before I took this feminism class, I knew I wanted my sister to attend my high school.  I knew that she would be taught things she would not have been taught at any other school.

I know that my teacher, Ileana Jiménez, has been involved with the anti-street harassment movement including work with Hollaback! and with Holly Kearl’s Stop Street Harassment blog and activism. My teacher has also written about street harassment on her blog.  These are the sorts of things that should be taught to young men and women in all schools.

I hope my sister realizes that even the “positive” comments like “So beautiful,” are a way of putting women down.  They are a way of making women into sexual beings, with a complete disregard for personality and accomplishments. I am not telling her to engage in an argument with every man who says something to her on the street.  I just want her to understand, in a way that I didn’t at her age, that these comments are part of a systemic problem of sexism and misogyny.

It is not just some random uneducated man on the street, but a society that feels it is ok to hyper-sexualize women and make them feel less important by only focusing on their physical traits.  My sister is already much more sensible now than I have ever been, so I have faith that it will take her much less time than it did for me to realize how much there needs to be done to protect and empower ourselves and all other girls.

As Audre Lorde writes in her essay, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle The Master’s House,”: “Interdependency between women is the way to a freedom which allows the I to be, not in order to be used, but in order to be creative. This is a difference between the passive be and the active being.”

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Filed Under: street harassment Tagged With: feminist teacher, GEMS, girls like us, high school, Ileana Jiménez, New York City, rachel lloyd, sister, street harassment

Teachers: Address street harassment

March 27, 2012 By Contributor

Editor’s Note: This is cross-posted with permission from Feminist Teacher.

The success of last week’s International Anti-Street Harassment Week was astonishing. Organized by leading anti-street harassment activist Holly Kearl, founder of the well-known blog Stop Street Harassment, the week featured the work of the most cutting-edge activists in the field, including dance performances by Sydnie Mosley and her Window Sex Project and a viral video featuring Joe Samalin and other male allies telling men to just stop harassing women in both English and Spanish.

Grace, Ileana, and Emma

As part of the week’s events, two of my students, Grace and Emma, and I spoke at the Meet Us On the Street rally in New York. Grace shared a portion of the testimony that she read to last year’s New York City Council hearing on street harassment and Emma, who is also a SPARK blogger against the sexualization of girls and women in the media, shared her own vision for safer streets and communities not just for herself but also for her own sister.

I spoke about the importance of engaging teachers in the global movement against street harassment as an education and health issue for schools.

But the work doesn’t stop there. It’s important to show students that activism needs to be consistent, and not done in a flavor-of-the-month style. That’s why last fall, students in my high school feminism course partnered with other students at our school to create their own anti-street harassment public service announcement (PSA).  Their goal: to educate their peers about the gravity of street harassment in their daily lives.

As part of the background work to create the video, I invited activists from Girls for Gender Equity, Hollaback!, The Line Campaign, Men Can Stop Rape, and Right Rides to talk to my students. Activist Shelby Knox also visited to talk about her film, The Education of Shelby Knox. Each of them shared their expertise, provided students with materials, and ultimately inspired them to create their PSA.

You can create your own PSA with your students too. Start, as I did, with educating your students about the issue by inviting activists to your classroom. Then have students envision a PSA that would be relevant and engaging for your school community. Screen the PSA at an upcoming assembly. Then join the revolution.  See above for inspiration.

Ileana Jiménez has been a leader in the field of social justice education for 15 years. A 2010-11 recipient of the Distinguished Fulbright Award in Teaching, her research in Mexico City focused on creating safe schools for Mexican LGBT youth. Currently a teacher at the Little Red School House & Elisabeth Irwin High School (LREI) in New York, she offers courses on feminism, LGBT literature, Toni Morrison, and memoir writing. In addition to teaching at LREI, Ileana is also an associate faculty member at Bard College’s Institute for Writing and Thinking.

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Filed Under: anti-street harassment week, Stories, street harassment Tagged With: anti-street harassment week, Ileana Jiménez, NYC, spark summit, street harassment

You’re NOT Alone – Street Harassment PSA

December 1, 2011 By HKearl

“I could be wearing a potato sack and I’d still be harassed,” says Ileana Jiménez, a faculty member at the Little Red School House & Elisabeth Irwin High School (LREI) in New York City, in a video PSA recently created by her high school students.

The PSA was made as part of a minimester at LREI that was focused on fighting back against street harassment using activism and media. LREI’s tradition of offering mimimesters allows faculty to offer short three-day courses on topics of their choosing. Throughout their three-day mimimester, students were visited by various street harassment activists, including leaders from Girls for Gender Equity and Hollaback! to learn more about the issue.

Jiménez, who is also a blogger at feministteacher.com, partnered with her colleague and media teacher, Stephen MacGillivray, to help the minimester students create this PSA, which she told me, was entirely directed and produced by students.

It’s wonderful to see a teacher addressing this issue in the classroom and providing students with the space and tools to explore the issue themselves. We need more teachers like Jiménez!

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Filed Under: Activist Interviews, street harassment Tagged With: feminist teacher, Ileana Jiménez, Little Red School House and Elisabeth Irwin High School, PSA, street harassment, student leaders

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