Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

NYC Street Harassment Hearing is a Success!

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Today I had the honor of testifying with 17 other women and men at a city council hearing about the problem of street harassment in New York City. Those who testified included representatives of groups like HollaBack, Girls for Gender Equity, RightRides, NYC-NOW, and Center for Anti-Violence Education, journalist Elizabeth Mendez Berry, the amazing 14-year-old performer/singer The Astronomical Kid, and many community members (including my mother). Every single testimony was powerful, heartfelt, and important.

Each person had about 5 minutes to speak, and I was asked to talk about the global problem and offer policy suggestions. I’m working to collect the testimonies of everyone who spoke to post here so people who couldn’t attend can read them. The official testimonies won’t be available for weeks. To start, here is my testimony and here is the testimony of high school student Grace.

[Update: View or read 10 testimonies from the hearing on my Stop Street Harassment website page for the hearing]

I was able to record all or part of several testimonies and I uploaded them to the Stop Street Harassment YouTube Channel:

Watch testimonies from the hearing

This is historic because it is the first time a major U.S. city has held a hearing on this topic and NYC is one of the largest and most influential cities in the world!!

Julissa Ferreras chaired the meeting and she truly understood and heard us on this issue, as did the other council members. I am grateful to her for organizing the hearing. By the end, she said they would like to pursue the first city-wide study of street harassment and launch an awareness campaign. This is huge. This is social change.

Here’s the HollaBack recap.

Many members of the press were in attendance, including someone from the AP. AP journalist Sara Kugler Frazier wrote an article and already the following media outlets have picked up the story: Washington Post, MSNBC, Boston Globe, NY Post, Salon, Yahoo, Huffington Post, Canadian Press, AJC, USA News, and Kansas City Star. The NY Metro, AM New York, the NYC CBS News, TampaBay.com,  Fox News, and Gothamist also wrote stories. I spoke with a blogger for Ms. so I know it will be covered there, too.

This is amazing coverage for this important issue. I hope every city takes notice and considers holding their own street harassment hearing and working on community solutions for making their city safer and more welcoming for women!

Fox News NYC City Council Street Harassment Hearing Clip
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Goodbye, miniskirt?

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In a push to “restore urban decorum and facilitate better civil co-existence,” Luigi Bobbio, the mayor of the Italian seaside town Castellammare di Stabia, wants to ban “anti-social behavior.” Okay, so probably sexual harassment, racial harassment, bullying, and so forth, right?

No.

The mayor claims he wants to target people who are “rowdy, unruly or simply badly behaved,” and to him, this entails people who are sunbathing, playing football in public places, engaging in “blasphemy,” and…. wearing miniskirts and low cut jeans.

What?

There’s a lot one could say about this, but I’m going to focus on what is street harassment-related.

First, I want to say that I’m pretty tired of people (including other women) blaming women’s clothes for causing the harassment and violence men perpetrated against them. I heard that a lot in the past two weeks when I was traveling through California, Alaska, and Iowa, talking about street harassment. (“…Well, the way girls dress these days…”) This is flawed logic because women experience harassment and assault no matter what they wear (men have harassed me the most and the most explicitly when I’m wearing bagging running clothes, sweaty and red faced) and the idea that some clothes are provocative and others are not are cultural constructs that vary by culture! The problem is not women or their clothes.

I am certain that banning types of clothing alone will not cut down on “unruly” behavior. Most women in Yemen and Egypt, most of whom are veiled and otherwise modestly dressed, experience harassment in public spaces. That makes it crystal clear the problem isn’t women’s clothes but societies which encourage and allow men to harass women without consequence. Until that changes in Italy, they can ban miniskirts all they want and the harassment will continue.

The people who harass the sunbathers or women wearing miniskirts and low cut jeans are the ones whose behavior needs to change. Perhaps the mayor and the town should spend their time launching awareness campaigns about treating people with respect, no matter what they are wearing, and making sure that is taught in schools.

I’m glad that the NYC Council is holding a hearing on Thursday to discuss street harassment and what we can do about it in a logical, thoughtful way, instead of trying to ban certain clothes. Or segregate women from men like some countries have resorted to doing on public transportation because the harassment is so bad there. If you’re in the NYC area, come out at 1 p.m. on Thursday to share your street harassment experiences and ideas for making the city safer for women and girls!

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