• About Us
    • What Is Street Harassment?
    • Why Stopping Street Harassment Matters
    • Meet the Team
      • Board of Directors
      • Past Board Members
    • In The Media
  • Our Work
    • National Street Harassment Hotline
    • International Anti-Street Harassment Week
    • Blog Correspondents
      • Past SSH Correspondents
    • Safe Public Spaces Mentoring Program
    • Publications
    • National Studies
    • Campaigns against Companies
    • Washington, D.C. Activism
  • Our Books
  • Donate
  • Store

Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Tumblr
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Home
  • Blog
    • Harassment Stories
    • Blog Correspondents
    • Street Respect Stories
  • Help & Advice
    • National Street Harassment Hotline
    • Dealing With Harassers
      • Assertive Responses
      • Reporting Harassers
      • Bystander Responses
      • Creative Responses
    • What to Do Before or After Harassment
    • Street Harassment and the Law
  • Resources
    • Definitions
    • Statistics
    • Articles & Books
    • Anti-Harassment Groups & Campaigns
    • Male Allies
      • Educating Boys & Men
      • How to Talk to Women
      • Bystander Tips
    • Video Clips
    • Images & Flyers
  • Take Community Action
  • Contact

Free op-ed writing conference call on Jan. 25

January 21, 2012 By HKearl

There are many ways to get involved with International Anti-Street Harassment Week, and one of them is by writing an article or opinion editorial (op-ed) about street harassment that gets published that week. If you’re not sure how to write one or do you want some advice, you’re in luck!

You are invited to participate in a free conference call about op-ed writing on Wednesday, January 25, 8:15 p.m. EST with journalist Elizabeth Mendez Berry, pictured on the right. Her 2010 op-ed partially led to the first-ever city council hearing on street harassment in New York City and she testified at the hearing. I will also offer advice on the call as I’ve authored several op-eds on street harassment.

RSVP to MeetUsontheStreet@gmail.com by Jan. 24 to receive the phone number.

And check out the fabulous resources on the Op-Ed Project’s website.

Here’s another great resource for people who want to get a group involved in the week. Request a free DVD copy of the award-winning four-minute film “Walking Home” as well as a Discussion Guide, created by the filmmaker Nuala Cabral. Use both to generate a conversation about the issue with a class or group. Ask attendees to create their own 1 minute video about their vision of a safe community and upload it to our YouTube Channel. Send requests for materials to Lauren Domino, lauren@artsengine.net

Share

Filed Under: anti-street harassment week, Resources, street harassment Tagged With: anti-street harassment week, elizabeth mendez berry, meet us on the steet, op-ed, street harassment

“We need to change the society that lets street harassment occur”

April 18, 2011 By HKearl

An op-ed I wrote about street harassment was published today by the Christian Science Monitor. Here is an excerpt, I hope you’ll read the full article!

While the prevalence of street harassment may be new to many men who read or hear about it, it’s not to women. For generations, grandmothers, mothers, aunts, and older sisters have shared tips and advice to girls to try to keep them safe from men: Don’t go out alone after dark. Memorize a fake phone number. Carry mace. Dress conservatively. Ignore them.

But it’s time to go beyond that well-intentioned advice which makes women feel less safe and often doesn’t work. Given how widespread street harassment is, those tips have the effect of limiting women’s access to public spaces. It keeps them on guard, off the streets, and dependent on men as escorts. No country has achieved equality and no country will until women can navigate public places without experiencing or fearing street harassment.

Four key steps

As a first step, everyone must acknowledge that street harassment is not a compliment, a minor annoyance, or a woman’s fault. It’s bullying behavior. The harassment is often directed at teenage girls and young women because it’s assumed they are too young to know what to do or how to respond, especially when the harasser is an older, larger man. And often the harassers are correct.

So, second, we need to give girls and women real help. We need to teach them empowering, assertive responses, self-defense, and how to report harassers. Ignoring and avoiding harassers changes nothing. It is disempowering and limiting.

Third – and perhaps most important – we must focus on potential and current harassers. We have to stop looking the other way or saying “boys will be boys” when we see harassment. Fathers, brothers, uncles, and friends need to stop trying to bond with other men through objectifying, harassing, and raping women. And just because men have the ability to access girls’ and women’s bodies through pornography, strip clubs, mail order brides, and brothels, doesn’t mean that they should.

Organizations like Men Can Stop Rape, the Coaching Boys into Men program at the Family Violence Prevention Fund, and the global Man Up Campaign all focus on healthy definitions of masculinity and teach boys and men how to respect themselves – and women. These initiatives are fantastic and need our support, and we need more organizations like them so we can reach every young man.

Finally, we need to change the society that lets street harassment occur. We must challenge comments, forms of media, and policies that disrespect and discriminate against women. We must challenge all gender-based violence and harassment; it’s all interrelated.

The problem may be massive, but each of us has the power to chip away at it right now. Learn more about street harassment, share a story, talk to someone about it, and find and share strategies for dealing with it and ideas for ending it.

If you care about the current and next generation of girls, if you support equality, if you believe in human decency, then don’t sit by. Do something.

In short, street harassment must end.

Share

Filed Under: street harassment Tagged With: christian science monitor, op-ed, street harassment

Free webinar about writing street harassment opinion pieces

December 6, 2010 By HKearl

Did you know that around 85 percent of the opinion pieces (op-eds) in American newspapers are written by men, most often by white men? The Op-Ed Project trains women to learn how to write op-eds and to feel comfortable having and sharing opinions. I went through their training last February and since then I have had a few op-eds published. It was an amazingly empowering experience to recognize and own what I know, write about it, and then see that writing published (though I also received many rejections!).

If you’re interested in learning about writing op-eds, particularly ones about street harassment, I invite you to participate in a free webinar this Saturday at noon EST that HollaBack is holding. I will be one of the panelists along with journalist Elizabeth Mendez Berry, whose op-ed in the largest Spanish language American newspaper El Diario led to the first-ever city council hearing on street harassment in NYC in October.

If you have the time on Saturday, I really encourage you to join us to find out what you can do to get your opinion published, raise awareness on a larger scale about the problems of street harassment, and – for women readers – help to make the national dialogue more balanced!

Details for the webinar.

(Thanks, KAZ for organizing what I’m sure will be an amazing webinar!)

Share

Filed Under: Events Tagged With: elizabeth mendez berry, hollaback, holly kearl, op-ed, street harassment op-ed

Tired of just writing about street harassment

May 10, 2010 By HKearl

Three weeks ago when I was in Oregon, a man harassed me from behind bushes during my run. He scared me and made me feel unsafe as a woman runner, a woman in public, and a woman traveling alone. I blogged about it and then fumed about what else I should have done. Should I have called the police? Yelled at him? Tried to reason with him about the inappropriateness of his behavior? Tee-peed his house? Written up a fake citation and left it in his mailbox?

The truth is, I felt too unsafe to do anything but leave and never go back and I didn’t think the police would care.

So what I did was draw on my strength as a writer and I wrote and submitted an op-ed to the Portland, Oregon, newspaper, the Oregonian. Today they published it.

I’m glad to have my story and the plight of other women runners featured in a prominent newspaper so that hopefully it will raise people’s awareness about  the crap we put up with and how we don’t like it. But I’m also getting tired of just writing about street harassment. (Especially when what I write for online publications only seems to incite ignorance and harassment in the comments section, where men try to justify why they should be allowed to harass women. Aarrgh!!)

So now I’m plotting what my action will be and brainstorming what I can do in addition to writing about street harassment. And I’m glad there are already wonderful anti-street harassment activists (featured in my book) whose projects I can look to for ideas.

Thoughts? What type of action would you like to see happen?

Share

Filed Under: Administrator, street harassment Tagged With: activism, op-ed, runners harassed, street harassment

In the Huffington Post

March 13, 2010 By HKearl

Check out my Huffington Post op-ed about how public sexual harassment/street harassment should be illegal.

Thanks Op-Ed Project and my mentor-editor for all the help!

Share

Filed Under: street harassment Tagged With: huffington post, op-ed, sexual harassment

Share Your Story

Share your street harassment story for the blog. Donate Now

From the Blog

  • #MeToo 2024 Study Released Today
  • Join International Anti-Street Harassment Week 2022
  • Giving Tuesday – Fund the Hotline
  • Thank You – International Anti-Street Harassment Week 2021
  • Share Your Story – Safecity and Catcalls Collaboration

Buy the Book

  • Contact
  • Events
  • Join Us
  • Donate
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Tumblr
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Copyright © 2025 Stop Street Harassment · Website Design by Sarah Marie Lacy