rape culture Archives | Stop Street Harassment

USA: “Like a Girl” and “Street Compliments” – Building Blocks to Sexual Violence

August 18, 2016 By Correspondent

Mariel DiDato, NJ, USA, SSH Blog Correspondent

“Hold on” You may have thought to yourself after reading the title of this article, “I’ve told my sisters that they throw like ‘girls.’ It was just a joke. It has nothing to do with sexual violence.”

Directly speaking, no, it doesn’t have to do with sexual violence. However, telling a kid that they “(insert verb here) like a girl” is saying to that kid, boys are better at that thing than girls, and that they should emulate boys if they want to be good enough.

Or quite possibly, you thought, “Woah! I’ll tell a woman she’s sexy if I see her on the street, but I wouldn’t rape her.”

Fair enough. A street harasser may not ever think to rape someone, but somewhere along the line, they were taught that it is normal and acceptable to disregard a woman’s comfort so that they could tell her how sexy she is. Maybe someone else takes it a step further and follows a woman, demanding her attention. The next person might take it one step further and grab a woman inappropriately on a crowded street or bus. The next might become violent upon rejection, because his right to her body is more important than her right to say no. The line between any of these acts is a fine one, especially if they take place on a regular basis.

Ever ask for a woman’s number and then threaten to call it before she leaves to make sure she put in the correct number? Ever think that maybe she doesn’t want you to have her number?

Ever pressure a woman to have sex after multiple “No’s” or “I don’t want to’s,” for her to finally give in? Ever think that maybe she doesn’t want to have sex and that she’s either tired of saying “no,” or afraid of what you’ll do if she doesn’t eventually say “yes”?

Rape culture isn’t a myth that the progressive left came up with to place blame on men who have never committed sexual violence. It’s a term studied and used by professionals in this field to describe the aspects of society that condone and encourage violence against women.

“Woah, hold it!” You might be thinking, “Rape is one of the worst crimes someone can commit! Our society doesn’t condone rape!”

Stay with me, and just hear me out. It’s a more complicated idea than that.

The violence pyramid is the concept that sexual violence wouldn’t be so prevalent if sexual harassment wasn’t condoned. In addition, sexual harassment wouldn’t be condoned if sexist attitudes weren’t taught from childhood. From “You throw like a girl!” to “Nice tits, sweetheart!” to “She shouldn’t have gotten drunk if she didn’t want to be raped,” these themes are connected. Victim-blaming, refusal to believe survivors of sexual assault, and physical manifestations of sexual violence cannot proliferate without first building the primary bases of sexism. If boys are just naturally better and more valuable than girls, boys’ desires must be more valuable than girls’ comfort. If young boys see men harassing women in public, maybe it’s okay to harass girls at school in the hallways. If the people around boys make jokes about sexual assault, and blame victims of rape more than abusers, maybe committing rape isn’t even such a big deal to begin with. And if all of this is something that “only happens to girls,” what happens when a male becomes a survivor of sexual assault?

If sexual assault is the victim’s fault because “Some people are just psychopaths. You can’t prevent it. You can only take measures to protect yourself,” why are rape and molestation far more common than murder? If society truly believed that sexual violence is truly only committed by “psychopaths,” why are we quick to ignore the acts of Nate Parker, R. Kelly, and so many more abusers in favor of their careers? Is it any wonder that convicted rapists such as the infamous Brock Turner, and more recently Austin James Wilkerson, received laughable sentences for committing a serious felony? Society is quick to decry the effects of rape culture, but quick to deny its existence. We need to acknowledge the ugly parts of our society that allow for these occurrences to be so commonplace and unpunished.

Throw out the ideas that men should be sexually dominant and promiscuous, and women should be sexually inexperienced and submissive, that it’s okay for boys and men to shout sexually charged “compliments” to women in public, and that men are entitled to women’s time, attention, and sexuality. Replace these with the concept that rejection is okay, and shouldn’t be met with persistence. Reinforce the fact that people on the receiving end of harassment and assault are never at fault. Stress to young children that doing anything “like a girl” is just as good as doing it “like a boy.” We can only work towards long-term solutions if we acknowledge the root of the problem. It’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks, but it’s easier to teach young children that all people, regardless of demographic, are worthy of respect.

Mariel is a recent college graduate, feminist, and women’s rights activist. Currently, she volunteers for a number of different organizations, including the Planned Parenthood Action Fund of New Jersey and the New Jersey Coalition Against Sexual Assault. You can follow her on Twitter at @marieldidato or check out her personal blog, Fully Concentrated Feminism.

UK: This Doesn’t Mean a Yes Campaign

April 21, 2015 By HKearl

“A short skirt is not a yes.
A red lip is not a yes.
A wink is not a yes.
A slow dance is not a yes.
A walk home is not a yes.
A drink back at mine is not a yes.
A kiss on the sofa is not a yes.
The only ‘yes’ is a ‘yes’.”

On the eve of International Anti-Street Harassment Week, our friends Rape Crisis UK teamed up with fashion photographer PEROU on new campaign #ThisDoesntMeanYes to dispel the myths around what constitutes consent. They photographed nearly 200 women and officially launched the campaign at www.thisdoesntmeanyes.com on April 15.

In their press release they wrote: “PEROU photographed women who were chosen at random in a pop-up street studio, capturing and empowering each individual in a composition that each felt natural to them. Our aim: to show through our collection of images, that no matter what a woman is wearing, she is never ‘asking for it’ and the mentality ‘she wants it’ is fundamentally wrong.”

Rape Crisis UK explained: ‘No one should be able to blame rape on a short skirt. A short skirt can’t talk – a short skirt can’t say yes’.

Join the campaign by posting your image on social media using #thisdoesntmeanayes.

The four women behind the campaign are: Nathalie Gordon is an Advertising Creative, Lydia Pang is a Creative Art Commissioner, Abigail Bergstrom is a Commissioning Book Editor and Karlie McCulloch is an Illustration Agent.

Rape Culture is Global: Help Me Prove That, No—It Is Never What You Wear

January 13, 2013 By Contributor

By @MsEntropy

Lauren Wolfe, founder of the project Women Under Siege, issued a recent call to declare 2013 as the year to end rape. The comments to her CNN post prove revealing—more than a decade into the twenty-first century, the discourse that facilitates rape culture is alive and well. Wolfe’s activism predates the horrific gang rape of Indian university student Jyoti Singh Pandey, but press coverage of the atrocity, and the debates it stimulated demonstrate that we—globally—have a long way to go.

Spiritual leader Asaram Bapu posthumously chastised the gang rape victim, Jyoti Singh Pandey, arguing that she should have grasped the hands of her attackers, called them “brother,” and begged them to salvage her “dignity.” A defense attorney for those accused in the Delhi attack, which resulted in the death of the young woman, recently declared that the victim was “wholly responsible” for her actions, as “respectable ladies” allegedly don’t get raped. In the wake of protests against this vicious assault, debates began spreading like wildfire about appropriate punishment, rape prevention and—stunningly—“culture” as an explanation. The recent decision (to many, including myself, questionable) of Egyptian activist Alia al-Mahdy to ally herself with FEMEN has similarly provoked debates on “culture,” sexual mores, and additionally thrown back into the mix assumptions about an alleged linkage between clothing and harassment. Al-Mahdy first came to fame over a nude self-portrait posted on her blog; she later stood naked outside an Egyptian Embassy in Sweden to protest the Islamist nature of the proposed Constitution. Egyptians debated whether or not al-Mahdi’s action merited stripping her of citizenship.

The horrific gang rape in Delhi, and the debates over Alia al-Mahdy’s alliance with FEMEN are not the only arenas in which rape culture, feminism and violence against women merit our attention. For many Americans, we need to look at our own backyard just as much. Remember Senate candidate Richard Murdock’s idea that pregnancy as a result of rape is a “gift from God?” What about Todd Akin’s inflammatory comments about “legitimate rape,” and his claim that women have a mysterious defense mechanism to “shut the whole thing down?” Georgia Representative (and obgyn) Phil Gingrey has appeared in a surreal, belated defense of Akin’s statements.

As a woman who has lived in the United States, France, Morocco, Algeria, Egypt and Tunisia—I am here to tell you: harassment is ubiquitous. No—it does not matter what we wear. Manifestations of discrimination and sexual harassment may take a variety of forms, but the all-too often unacknowledged abuse of power dynamics does not.

In light of all of these news stories, I decided to tackle one aspect to the discourse around rape culture, namely, the idea that what one wears matters in terms of drawing or repelling sexual assault and or harassment. Although I usually use Twitter as a mechanism for commentary on Middle Eastern and North African political affairs, I was prompted to take on this aspect of rape apologism when I came across the following series of Tweets:

Twitter user @slyombby does not appear to be cognizant of the manner in which the “clothing” debate feeds into rape culture; in his mind, he is not passing “judgment,” but rather—discussing what he feels is a fact: that more clothes somehow means more protection from assault. This is, frankly, simply not the case.

In response, I posted a series of Tweets to my own account with the caption, “I was sexually harassed/assaulted wearing this. Was it my clothing? #EndSH.” The five pictures included a spectrum of clothing, worn in different countries, at different ages in my life—ranging from a baby photograph to a recently taken image:

To be fair, I received several heartening responses from both women and men. Some eagerly took the idea that “clothing matters” to task; others seemed shocked at the question—and failed to detect the irony and sarcasm behind it. However, responses such as the following firmly convinced me that we—women and men—urgently need to debunk the myths that sexual violence can be correlated with clothing, and that it is a phenomenon uniquely facing women:

Twitter user @BeingDalit attacked me as a “stupid looser” [sic] for discussing my personal history, rather than going to the police (an assumption entirely of his own making). He went on in a later exchange to accuse me of seeking attention, although how a mention of childhood sexual abuse fits into that, I’m not entirely clear. This accusation, however, does merit a brief analysis.

For both men and women who have encountered sexual violence and harassment, speaking out is a difficult action. This is particularly the case for male victims, who are often far more reticent to relate their own experience of trauma.

I would like to call on others—critically, men and women—to post similar photos using the tagline, “I was sexually harassed/assaulted wearing this. Was it my clothing? #EndSH.” If you feel more comfortable blurring your face, do so. I do, however, think contributions from both genders, in a variety of cultures and spanning the range of clothing choices can make a difference. Refuse to take the shame of others as your own, and no—it is never, ever what you wear.

Cat-Calling and Rape Culture Go Hand-in-Hand

November 1, 2010 By Contributor

Cross-posted from Tales of the Pack

The other night I got into a debate with a well-meaning straight guy about why cat-calling sucks. He seemed to agree that cat-calling isn’t nice, but he also suggested that it wasn’t a problem that had anything to do with men and power.

I disagree. Catcalling is a way men inflict their will on women. In this way, it goes hand in hand with rape culture.

Catcalling is a daily occurrence for me. It doesn’t matter what I’m wearing (most often I leave the house in baggy jeans and a t-shirt), if I’ve got makeup on, if I’m sick or whatever. I can tell you, every single time, it’s unwanted attention. Days that I go without getting elevator eyes with smooching sounds, or a ‘hey baby, hey baby’ are really awesome days in my book.

As Ndidi Oriji at the always-splendid Racialicious wrote:

I didn’t need you to turn my morning into one long defense of my humanity. I didn’t need you to add to the “gauntlet” that I already had to walk to get to the train station.

There are men who insist that catcalls are “flattering.” No doubt there are women who are complicit in this too. Men often use this as an excuse that because some women enjoy it, that I, a completely different woman with a different set of tastes and standards, should appreciate it too. This is, of course, a warped and idiotic logic that is based on the understanding that I, in my possession of XX chromosomes, must be a part of the hivemind of womanhood that kowtows to male standards of behavior. Because. . .

Rape culture demands that women are sexually subservient. We must behave in a pre-programmed way to any and all attention we get on the street from greasy strangers. Hence the perennial street-harasser’s favorite: “Smile, honey! You have such a pretty smile.”

There are variations on the catcalls, too. Sometimes they do try to express genuine interest, as when I was leaving my office at the Gay & Lesbian Center and a particularly filthy man, along with two friends who were sitting on the curb drinking 40s out of paper bags, suggested that “Girl, you are the kind of woman I go for.” When I retorted that “That’s a problem, cause I don’t go for men at all,” all three men got angry and one snarked something about an ex-girlfriend. Unfortunately, I had walked too far by that point to hear what, exactly, she and I had in common. From the outset, it was a relative innocuous statement. The problem is that when I dared open my mouth in response, he and his buddies got defensive.

Catcalling is a way of removing a woman’s voice. How many times have you witnessed/experienced/heard about a woman responding to a catcall with a loud “fuck off” which only encouraged the man to follow/harass/chase her? In my world “fuck off” means “no.” But in the world of cat-calling, “fuck off” means intimidate, harass, or yell louder.

As Starling wrote in the now-internet-famous essay Schrodinger’s Rapist:

A man who ignores a woman’s NO in a non-sexual setting is more likely to ignore NO in a sexual setting, as well.

If you pursue a conversation when she’s tried to cut it off, you send a message. It is that your desire to speak trumps her right to be left alone. And each of those messages indicates that you believe your desires are a legitimate reason to override her rights.

Catcalling is part of rape culture. It declares that the catcaller has more rights than recipient of said harassment. It tells her that her voice is irrelevant and that she should just grin and bear it. It tells her that she should take it as a compliment and if she doesn’t, it’s her that’s broken. Pardon me, well-meaning straight guy who doesn’t see catcalling as part of rape culture, but doesn’t this sound familiar?

– Allison Moon

Three teens are dead

March 11, 2010 By HKearl

Warning, what you’ll read in this post is very upsetting and disturbing. I know many posts on here are, but this one may be more so because it focuses on the recent deaths/murders of three teenage girls.

Shayla Raymond, Screenshot from ABC News clip

In Chicago this week a 15-year-old-girl has died from injuries related to being hit by three cars. ABC News reports that last Saturday night she was waiting for a bus, talking on her cell phone to her boyfriend when a group of men began street harassing her. Her boyfriend heard her yell, “don’t touch me. Get away from me,” before the line went dead. She ran into the street to get away from the men and was hit by not one, but three vehicles.

Most street harassment incidents don’t end in the death of the individual being targeted, but as this story shows, some do. And that’s serious. Had these men left her alone, she wouldn’t have run in the street to escape. Street harassment is not just a trivial annoyance or a compliment, it is bullying, threatening behavior and it must end.

In the second story, in late February, a 17-year-old girl went missing after she had gone for a run in a nearby park in San Diego. Six days later investigators found her body, she had been raped and murdered. A local sex offender matched the DNA found on her clothing and now is being tried for the crimes. He’s pleading not guilty. He’s also being accused of attacking a 22-year-old woman in the same park in December. He previously served five years in prison for molesting a 13-year-old neighbor girl.

Somewhat similarly, last weekend a 13-year-old girl went running near her Cincinnati home and never returned. The next morning investigators found her body, she had been raped, strangled, and her body burned.

A registered sex offender just confessed to the killing and now he is under investigation for three unsolved murders because the women’s bodies were found similarly violated. He previously served 16 years in prison for beating and setting on fire a woman who later died from the injuries.

There is no indication that the latter two stories began with harassment, but they are important to mention in the context of street harassment because hearing about rape/murders by strangers in public often make girls and women more wary of being in public alone and remind them that there is always an underlying threat of sexual violence. It can make girls and women leery of any man that approaches them, making “innocent” harassment become threatening. And overall it makes public places less safe for women, causing women to be in public less often than men, impeding their equality with men.

I learned about these three stories in a 24-hour time period. While I would be mad reading about any single one, combined they make me furious. So furious. Three teenage girls’ lives are over and their families are devastated because of harassing and predatory men. Women who read their stories likely will feel less safe in public and/or worry about the teenage girls in their lives. I felt less safe going for a run by myself at 6:30 a.m. today. I had to remind myself that statistically, chances are low that I will be attacked, but still, I am a woman and that is a real concern.

I don’t highlight these stories to try to scare women into staying home or taking more precautions than they already do. I want the opposite – I want us to be able to live fearless lives and to go where we please.

Instead I want to place these tragic stories in the context of the harassment and risk of assault women face every day in public, especially when they are alone, especially when they are young. We need to talk about the context of these stories – they are not isolated. They occur in a context of misogyny, disrespect for women, and a rape culture. Consequently, most women are harassed in the street at least sometimes and one in six women are sexually assaulted or raped. These stories are on the extreme end, so we hear about them. But lesser forms of harassment and assault occur every day to women, keeping public places largely male-dominated.

We can tell our stories and make the extent of the “lesser” forms of harassment and assault known. Maybe one day the larger public will notice and listen and take action so that we can be safe in public and we can be there without having our gender be a liability.