Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

Harassment in India begins at the airport

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There is no respect for women in India, especially if they Indian women who were born and raised in the U.S or another country. The excuse of these men is that us women born and raised in another country are exotic and must be sluts. As soon as you get to the airport in India, you will be slapped on the butt and groped. Men will automatically start with the gawking and grinning and surrounding you no matter where you go. Even the driver you have, will turn and stare at you when he thinks you are asleep instead of watching the road in front of him, I caught him doing this three times, I did not want a repeat of being groped, so I stayed awake until everyone else woke up.

The men there will keep oggling you and grinning at you and surround you and then look at how they take off when they see someone coming back that should not have told you to stay put in the first place and left you alone. They will oggle you nonstop, in the buses they will sit in front of you, keep their face turned towards you for the whole three hour ride. It is like they are violating you. Relatives will excuses for their so called oggling, and deny all the other things being done. Plus these men have a way of not getting caught and only making it obvious that they victim will be affected. It is hard to ignore this when there are seven or more men harassing you and then they take off when they see someone coming towards you.

These men will come up to you and keep oggling you like you are a piece of meat the whole time you are there. They will grope you, their hands will reach your breasts, they will slap you on the butt, get on the bus you get in even if they are not even getting off at any of the stops, try to break into the bathroom when you are on a train, rub up against you on streets, stalk you in the streets, shops, sit in groups in front of you in restaurants and oggle you for twenty minutes.

They laugh when you yell, get loud and if you ignore them, they will grope- actually they will grope you either way. They will stalk you, even at places of religious worship. I was there for two and a half months and my family did nto really care about what was happening. Their response was: you are just a kid, why would anyone do anything to you? We didn’t see anything. What do you think you are, some kind of a queen? They kept making me sit in random spots while they took off somewhere whether to buy a ticket or buy food.

I tried to get away from the men, they just followed. They will get in front of you and surround you at busstands, on the train, train stations and they will get in your face and keep gawking and grinning. They will know a woman from another country is there even if she is 5 miles away, it is like they all report to each other that a woman from another country is here. Look at they run when they see a person you were with coming in your direction. They will know the exact spot you are in, who is with you and when they have left. Disgusting.

I took this for two months and my brother recently tried to force me to go to India even though it is know what I went through and how they don’t spare you. I also don’t see a reason for one guy to grab the back of my shirt when I was on the bus when he thought I was asleep, he was grabbing the would be bra strap area. A person comes back from there horribly tramautized, constant nightmares, it is like a woman is not able to talk to or feel comfortable around men. It is especially worse when the family does not care because they don’t want their country to look bad. It feels horrible to suffer constant sexual harassment and have your own family dismiss your feelings or outright yell at you in front of the men even though you didn’t do anything. When I was there, my relatives with me didn’t care, when I tried to report a guy to them, this relative outright pushed my arm away from them and the guy just grinned and took off. I can’t tell you about the trauma.

The men most of the times make a run for it before anyone with you can come back to you and yes my family made me sit by myself and would take off to go get something, I was alone in a restaurant for twenty minutes or more and the men there came out of nowhere and started the harassment and then ran when they saw my family coming. They drive you crazy and make others think you are crazy.

These men don’t spare you. It is disgusting. And yes, I am always covered from head to toe- always. Yes, I was wearing the Indian garb. (I am also always covered from head to toe in the U.S)

– SS

Location: India

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.

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Sex segregated bus lines

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Many times when I talk about my dissatisfaction with women-only public transportation initiatives in countries like Japan, Brazil, India, and Mexico, created as a response to sexual harassment on public transportation, I cite the fact that it doesn’t stop men from harassing women at the bus or subway stop. Consequently, I believe that governments should focus on why sexual harassment is occurring and address those issues, otherwise people will still find places and ways to harass each other, regardless of segregated transportation.

Now in Central Jakarta, India, instead of addressing why harassment is occurring, the government is segregating people by creating two lines for women and men to stand in when they wait for a bus! This is the first time I’ve heard about a city initiating segregation in this way and for the purpose of helping to minimize crime and sexual harassment.

Interestingly, their bus system is not one where there is sex segregation on board. So men can still harass women on the bus. Men passing by the bus stop can easily harass women in the line and probably men in the male line can harass across the way to the women in line too, if they wanted. So I don’t see this as helping curb the issue of harassment.

What do you think?

Woman stands at the women-only bus line. Image via Jakarta Post
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Police harassers lead to teens’ suicides

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How terrible! Two teenage sisters in Madhya Pradesh (India) committed suicide after two police officers harassed and assaulted them in public and then at the girls’ house.

“The girls say they complained against the two men, following which the constables were suspended, but then the two constables started to go to the girl’s home and harassing them.”

Apparently they didn’t feel they could count on the law enforcement system and took matters into their own hands to stop the harassment 🙁

Not too long ago, a teenager in Bangladesh committed suicide after experiencing ceaseless harassment for a year in public places. Her suicide helped lead to stricter enforcement of an anti-street harassment law. Will India follow suit? That could be a silver lining in this tragic story.

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What has eve-teasing got to do with clothes?

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The Indian Express has a good article featuring Blank Noise‘s efforts to raise awareness in India about the problem of street harassment by collecting clothing women were wearing while being harassed. Here’s an excerpt:

“We are told that the onus lies on us to prevent its occurrence. We are told to dress appropriately, to come back home on time, to not attract attention to ourselves. And the worst of all, we are expected to accept sexual harassment or forms of eve-teasing as a part and parcel of our societal culture,” says Mariya Salim, a Calcutta University student of human rights who is participating in the drive.

Besides acting as testimonies of eve-teasing all voluntarily donated garments exhibited at public places in Kolkata since last month, also serve as a sort of an outlet for the victims to purge their pent-up feelings.

Jasmeen Patheja, founder member of ‘Blank Noise’, a Bangalore-based volunteer led community arts collective, says it is a violation of a girl’s liberty when she has to think twice before going out of her house alone.

“Isn’t the perpetrator responsible for his own action irrespective of what time we go out on the roads wearing the kind of attire we want to,” she said.

Very true. Women who are harassed are not to blame, the men who harass them are! Learn more about the work Blank Noise is doing.

Via Blank Noise
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More Women-Only Cars in India

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from NYTimes
from NYTimes

The NYTimes reports that in India, gender-based street harassment (or eve teasing) is so bad that the government has instituted a pilot program for eight new commuter trains exclusively for female passengers in India’s four largest cities: New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Calcutta. They are called “Ladies Specials” and offer women relief from harassing men. (view a slideshow from NYTimes)

Gender-based harassment of women on public transportation is widespread. There are many countries that have instituted women-only subway or train cars, buses, or taxi cab services because so many girls and women are groped and harassed by men.

For example, some cities in Thailand, Mexico, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, and UAE have women-only buses.

Japan, Brazil, Egypt, Iran, Mexico, and South Korea are examples of countries with women-only subway cars in their major cities.

In some places in England, Russia, Australia, Lebanon, Iran, India, and the UAE, there are women-only taxi cabs with women drivers.

In the U.S., transit systems in NYC, Boston and Chicago are all struggling to deal with high rates of harassment. Both NYC and Boston have anti-harassment PSAs on some of their subway cars.

Women-only cars are only a band aid fix that does not fix the overall problem of men harassing women.  Men will still harass them on the platform, in mixed car trains, on streets, in parks, etc.  Separate cars can make women who can’t access women-only cars seem like fair game for harassing men.  In Tokyo, which has women-only subway cars, there were 2,000 groping cases reported last year, 30% were of teenage girls. The crime is underreported, so imagine how much higher the figure may be.  Again, Tokyo HAS women-only cars.  This is not a solution.

Men must be taught to respect women and not see them as available for comment, touching, following, and assault when they are in public simply because they are female. Check out what Blank Noise is doing to address eve teasing in India (they aren’t advocating for separate train cars for women and men).

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