Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

The Black Girl Movement: A National Conference

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BlackGirlMovementVia Girls for Gender Equity:

“In 2014 Girls for Gender Equity joined a planning committee of activists, scholars, and artists to plan “Black Girl Movement: A National Conference” a free, three-day public gathering at Columbia University in New York City that will focus on Black girls, cis, queer, and trans girls in the United States. Bringing together artists, activists, educators, policymakers, and black girls who are leaders themselves, this first national conference on Black girls seeks to address the disadvantages that Black girls in the United States face, while creating the political will to publicly acknowledge their achievements, contributions, and leadership.

‘The Black Girl Movement is more than a conference,’ says Girls for Gender Equity founder Joanne N. Smith. ‘It is an uprising, a declaration, a demand, and an affirmation. Black girls and women have been leading racial and gender justice movements for centuries, so our conference is a space for us to connect our multiple movement building goals and strategies as we continue to lead the way.'”

Joanne will moderate two panels on Friday, April 8th, Best Practices, Policy and Philanthropy and Sisters in Strength youth organizers will lead a School Pushout workshop and curate strategies for a Black Girls Bill of Rights. Registration is full so if you haven’t registered, you can watch April 8th via Livestream  https://livestream.com/accounts/557662   

Join GGE for the opening reception on April 7th! It begins with PICTURING BLACK GIRLHOOD EXHIBIT –At 5:00pm – The EXHIBIT is FREE, open to ALL and will display until Saturday.  Check out the event page.“

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The UK’s First National Street Harassment Study

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EVAWstudy3.8.16End Violence Against Women Coalition, our allies in the UK, commissioned YouGov to conduct the first national poll on street harassment. The results were released today, for International Women’s Day.

Prevalence:

64% of women of all ages have experienced unwanted sexual harassment in public places. (This is almost the same as the USA, our 2014 study found that 65% of women had been harassed.) Additionally, 35% of women had experienced unwanted sexual touching.

Age:

When they looked at just young women ages 18-24, however, the percentages increased significantly: 85% had faced sexual harassment in public spaces and 45% had experienced unwanted sexual touching.

Related, across all ages of women, most said it began at a young age. More than 1 in 4 said it happened before age 16, and more than 3 in 4 said it happened by age 21.

Bystanders/Upstanders:

Sadly, only 11% of women said anyone had intervened when they were harassed though 81% said they wished someone had.

Changing Their Life:

When it comes to feeling safe, 63% of women (versus 45% of men) said they generally feel unsafe in public spaces and almost half do conscious “safety planning” when they go out in the evenings.

What Can We Do:

When asked what should be done, many said “they supported more police (53%), better street lighting (38%), more transport staff (38%) and public awareness campaigns encouraging others to intervene (35%). No women we asked believed this problem should be ignored and no measures taken.”

Racialized Sexual Harassment:

Because women of color may also face racialized sexual harassment, EVAW partnered with Imkaan to produce a five minute film featuring young women of color talking about their experiences.

In discussing what it feels like to experience racist sexual harassment one woman in the film says:

“My experiences are different as a Black woman than they are for my white friends. I should be ‘up for it’ or I am ‘fair game’, or I shouldn’t care if my body is touched in a specific way.

And another woman says:

“After me ignoring them, that’s when it turns racial, so that’s when it might be ‘you black this’ or ‘you black that…how dare you ignore me’.”

In a press release for the film and survey, Lia Latchford, Policy and Campaigns Coordinator at Imkaan said:

“Our film tells a powerful story of young black women’s everyday experience of racialised sexual harassment. For us, we cannot ‘leave race out of it’ because the way we are treated is based on how our whole identities are perceived as black women. This harassment and abuse often uses racist stereotypes and insults as an attempt to put black women in our place. Everyone, adults and young people alike, need to talk about it and it needs to stop.”

Sarah Green, Acting Director at the End Violence Against Women Coalition said:

“Sexual harassment is an everyday experience which women and girls learn to deal with, but it’s time to hold a mirror up to it and challenge it. We did this survey to find out about the scale of sexual harassment and the impact it has on the way women live. If women are planning their lives around not being harassed or assaulted, they are not free. Women should be free to live their lives without the threat of harassment and violence, not having to plan and limit their choices to make sure they’re safe.”

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Machismo

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There is a problem in the Hispanic Male community. I don’t want this to sound racist, and I apologize if it does. I moved recently from Lincoln Square (North side of Chicago) to Albany Park (2 miles west) and am now in a neighborhood that is a large percentage Hispanic. I want to point out that most of the people are very friendly and I like them. However, since it has gotten warm outside, I have been catcalled, harassed, and followed by men in cars at least once a week.

This has never happened to me before in my life and I am 32 years old and have lived on the North Side of Chicago for over 10 years. The men are always Latino. There is no other explanation other than culture for why this has started happening all of the sudden to me.

To those in the Hispanic/Latino community who care about this issue – PLEASE, teach your boys that it is NOT ok to harass women like they’re meat on the street? There is something wrong with a culture that teaches men that is acceptable.

-Laura

Location: Albany Park, Chicago, Illinois

(Submit your stories here)

[Editor’s note: While I have a policy against racism, I chose to post her submission as she sent it  because I did not feel her experiences or opinions were voiced in a malicious or hateful way. Race does play a role in much of gender-based public harassment, especially in the U.S. where race means many things to different people, and so I think it’s important to have dialogue on the issue if it’s done with the purpose of learning and addressing the problem and not being racist. Please see my related post on “piropos” for more about street harassment in Hispanic culture.

But I will note, men of all races harass women of all races and really, American culture teaches men this is acceptable just as much as any other. Just read comments from American men and some women when mainstream news or blogs cover catcalling or more benign forms of street harassment. Inevitably some of the commenters declare the behavior is flattering and men’s right and women ask for it by the way they dress and women overreact and blah blah blah.]

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Privilege and Street Harassment

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Yesterday I went for a run after work in downtown Washington, DC. As I left my office, I had a feeling that I was going to get street harassed and so as I ran, I thought up things I could say when it happened (despite all my work on street harassment, I have yet to do anything more revolutionary at the time of harassment than ignore or glare at them). And I was right, I got harassed.

As I ran down the dirt path of the mall, a man who was walking in the same direction I was running turned around, saw me, waited until I was next to him, and then went “mm-mm-mm” at me as I ran by. It wasn’t the worst harassment I’ve had by a long shot but it is humiliating to be treated like I’m not a person to respect but one to objectify and infuriating knowing that if I had been a man, I could have done my run in peace.

Instead of saying something though, my immediate thought was about how if this were a few decades ago, he could have been attacked, jailed, or lynched for just looking at me for a second too long because he is black and I am white. The high number of lynchings has particularly been on my mind after recently reading: Freedom’s Daughters: The Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights movement from 1830 to 1970.

So I didn’t say anything to him because I felt my race privilege – yes we will have a black president but racism isn’t over! – and the shameful history of race/gender/violence in American and I kept on running. (Though given my track record of not ever saying anything, I may have done that had he been a man of any race).

Similarly, sometimes I don’t feel it would be fair to call out a harasser who is clearly of a lower socioeconomic status than myself. I immediately think about my privilege of class (and race if both come into play) and I can’t bring myself to call them out for exerting their gender privilege. Does one privilege trump another? Should I just call out all men on their behavior?

What are your thoughts?

(Note: I don’t think one race harasses women more than another. In particular, given how often black men have been falsely portrayed as preying on white women to justify murdering, assaulting, and discriminating against them by white people, I don’t want to perpetuate that in any way… The most offensive street harassment comments I’ve received were from groups of white young men and the scariest experiences occurred when various white men followed me either on foot (2xs) or in their car (1x). Oh and yesterday I got leered at by an older white man on the metro on my ride home from work/running. He finally looked and turned away when I met his stare and I was determined to say something if he turned around to look at me again but he didn’t.)

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Black Woman Walking

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I just found this video clip today & I am glad that there is another place women have been able to share their street harassment stories and experiences. It reinforces that this is a real problem for soo many women! And this video clip brings in some of the complexities of race that intersect with so much of street harassment.

[blip.tv ?posts_id=295570&dest=-1]

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