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India: The Challenges Reporting Sexual Harassment

May 14, 2016 By Correspondent

Tharunya Balan, Bangalore, India, SSH Blog Correspondent

Trigger Warning

The 2012 case of the young woman who was fatally raped and assaulted on a bus in the Indian city of Delhi led to a number of decisions made at the State and Central levels to address violence against women, including several new laws against rape and sexual assault. The new laws include specific mentions of sexual harassment, voyeurism and stalking as punishable offences.

The publicity and international attention around the issue has led to more open conversation on the subject and encouraged more (mostly educated) women to report sexual assault and harassment. Unfortunately, passing laws to criminalize behaviour does little to change the prevalent rape culture and attitudes towards women held by much of the population. Even judges in other countries seem to assume that Indian culture means men simply do not understand boundaries and so cannot be held accountable for their actions.

In May of 2015, Amnesty International India approached the feminist magazine The Ladies Finger about their upcoming Ready to Report initiative, aimed at making it easier for victims of sexual harassment and assault to report incidents to the police. The online magazine then threw their doors open to people who had experienced sexual assault or harassment, and asked if they had tales to tell.

The stories published (a woman assaulted in a car, a woman molested by a friend she was visiting, a woman stalked by an old classmate, a woman molested on the street by a stranger, a team of journalists stalked and harassed by a stranger) include examples of the victims being interviewed in front of their attackers, of them being forced to recount the most intimate details of their assaults in front of a station full of curious policemen, of being browbeaten into recanting or rewriting their stories, and of their being treated as overreactions to minor annoyances, and the police taking it upon themselves to mete out justice as they saw fit.

The campaign also included a twitter hashtag that paints a depressing picture of the narratives that surround victims and stories of sexual assault in the country. Women are hesitant to speak up for a number of reasons, ranging from the fear of reprisals, the social stigma around sexual assault, the fear of being slut shamed for their choices, the stress of filing and following reports while fearing more harassment at the hands of the police force, the fear of negative media attention, and the fear of not being supported by friends and family, and the horror that surrounds medical examinations.

The founder of The Ladies Finger, Nisha Susan writes:

“The variables that affect whether an Indian woman’s claim is taken seriously by the police range considerably, from class, caste, the site of the assault, to the time of day. The more familiar the complainant was with the assaulter/ rapist/ stalker the less likely she was to successfully register a case. Our findings backed up results from the more rigorous studies undertaken by activists: in the legal system, you are likely to fare better if you have been violently assaulted by a working-class stranger in a public place.” (emphasis mine)

This only underscores the fact that marital rape is not a punishable offence, or indeed, a term recognized by the law at all, and it explains why so many reports of stalking are ignored or not taken seriously.

There is a lack of genuine discussion around the way women and women’s bodies are perceived in this country. The original text of the law (section 354 of the Indian Penal Code) defines as criminal the “assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty”, and it is this idea of “modesty” in the India context that is still such a sticking point. It is this idea that lies at the heart of the victim blaming, the slut shaming, and the dehumanizing treatment of rape and assault victims when they do come forward.

It is not just female victims who suffer under our archaic ideas of modesty and bodily autonomy. The sections of the Indian Penal Code that refer to rape are not gender neutral, and they do not acknowledge male victims of rape. There is something deeply embarrassing about a country whose leaders and whose laws are the equivalent of an ostrich sticking its head in the sand and pretending that what it sees does not exist. Treating sex as a taboo, refusing to understand the spectrums of gender and sexuality, ignoring the contradictions between what is portrayed in our media and what is taught to our children in schools and homes, and

What we are in dire need of in our country is real sex education: real conversations on consent and real understandings of the ways in which someone’s body and person can be violated by another’s actions.

Tharunya is an urban planner and architect with a passion for issues of social, environmental and spatial justice, including the gendered ways in which urban spaces are designed and function. She has a bachelor’s degree in architecture and a master’s degree in City and Regional Planning from the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she will be returning to obtain a degree in Geographic Infomations Systems Technology later this year.

USA: Five Reasons Why I didn’t Report Street Harassment

January 27, 2016 By Correspondent

Julia Tofan, Connecticut, USA, SSH Blog Correspondent

I’ve experienced street harassment. The first time I did, I was 12 years old on a Girl Scout trip to New York. The most recent time, I was 16 years old hiking at a park with my mother and my sister. Both times, and every time in between, it felt wrong and it made me angry. Worst of all, however, it made me feel powerless. There have been so many incidents, and I have not reported a single one. I believe in being empowered, practicing self-confidence, standing up for my rights, and fighting for equality and justice, so I have to ask myself why I haven’t reported street harassment. These are five answers that began to explain it.

Victim blaming: That’s the typical response to street harassment, even sometimes by police. Discussions on street harassment frequently involve a discussion of the victim’s modesty, clothing choices, and the time and location of the incident. Less frequently do these discussions involve the conscious decision a street harasser made. The truth is, street harassment is experienced by individuals in all types of clothing, all types of locations, and all types of times. The only factor consistent in every single case is that someone infringed on their right to safety. The last thing any victim wants to hear is “you were asking for it,” and that’s all too common a response.
Street harassment can be dangerous, yet society doesn’t acknowledge this. A man in Queens, NY, slashed a woman’s throat for declining a date and walking away. In the news, he was referred to as a “ruthless Romeo,” equating his murder with a fictional romance of young teenage lovers. That same month, a woman on her way home from a funeral was shot after refusing to give her number to a male and explaining that she had a fiance. In the news, the criminal was described as “not fighting fair” when he fought with the woman’s fiance and pulled out a gun. The problem with this statement is that it implies fighting without a gun for a woman who did not want his advances was somehow acceptable. These situations are not unique. Victims of street harassment live in constant fear of retribution. It’s not just the cases that are featured on the news though. More than that, it’s the daily occurrences.
Police officers don’t always help. The very people victims should be able to go to for help are engaged in blaming victims, and that doesn’t give victims access to the caring and understanding support that they deserve. Finding examples isn’t difficult. Just look at the 2011 incident in which Brooklyn NY police officers stopped women in short shorts and skirts and warned them that they could become victims of street harassment and sexual harassment. An alarming number of police officers — like Daniel Holtzclaw in Oklahoma — even are harassers and sexual abusers.
Street harassment is not taken seriously. “Boys will be boys,” “it’s just a compliment,” and “lighten up” are embedded in our culture. Reporting an issue that is not taken seriously is infinitely more difficult than one that is labeled as a certain crime. To equate stalking, assaulting, catcalling, and objectifying females with the nature of boys and the nature of relationships is to erase a victim’s right to feel pain and dehumanization in a situation that is in every way painful and dehumanizing.
Women grow up with street harassment and become groomed to accept it. Studies show that 65% of women have experienced street harassment with half reporting it starting by age 17. In a survey of students in grades 7-12, 48% reported sexual harassment. Forty-four percent of individuals in the same survey who admitted to sexually harassing another individual did it because they believed it was not a big deal, and 39% were trying to be funny. These are the viewpoints children are raised with, and changing that understanding of sexual harassment, a form of which may be street harassment, does not happen overnight.

These five answers helped me come to terms with the fact that I stayed silent. I hope to feel safe and supported next time I experience street harassment, and to feel comfortable enough to speak up and make myself heard, but I am not blaming myself for not reporting what happened. I am not displacing the blame from an adult to a minor, someone powerful to someone intimidated, and most importantly, a criminal to a victim.

Julia is a student in a rural town in Connecticut. She writes for Givology, a nonprofit dedicated to improving access to education, and Dreams That Could Be, an organization telling the stories of students facing great challenges but persevering in their education. Read her blog posts on Givology and Dreams That Could Be and follow her on Twitter @Julia_Tofan!

How To Deal With Street Harassment On Campus?

April 15, 2015 By BPurdy

I’ve been experiencing street harassment since the age of twelve, but when I started college it suddenly became something that happened to me several times a week – even though my college was nearly 75% female. I was harassed both on-campus and in neighboring residential areas. I was harassed walking to and from class, the library, friends apartments, downtown on a Friday night…while it became a “normal” thing that I learned to more or less deal with, it never stopped making me feel uncomfortable.

One incident stands out in particular. It was a warm night, still early in the fall semester of my senior year. It was 10pm on a Monday night, and I was walking back from an on-campus club meeting to my off-campus apartment.

“Hey! Hey you!”

I ignored the calls, assuming they weren’t for me. Though there were few people around, I was on a well-lit main path on campus where I had always felt safe.

“Girl with the ponytail!”

Ok, that was definitely meant for me. Someone was yelling at me. Someone I didn’t know. I started to walk a little faster.

“Hey! Girls shouldn’t be walking out here alone. Where are you going? Let me walk you to your apartment. Where you live? I could walk you right up to your door, you know.”

He was following me. I was walking straight back to my empty apartment, and this stranger was following me. My thoughts started racing, and I pulled out my cell phone.

“Why you grabbing your phone?” my harasser yelled, now angry. “Who you calling? Girl, this is a private party!”

My heart immediately started pounding, my vision went blurry with fear. I made a split-second decision to run into the nearest academic building, where I hide in furthest stall of the women’s bathroom, feet up on the toilet seat, praying he wouldn’t follow me in.

I called my boyfriend. Luckily he was nearby and able to run over and get me. I went back to his apartment rather than mine, and once my hands and voice stopped shaking I decided to call campus police.

“I’m fine now,” I told the dispatcher when she picked up, giving the best description of the event that I could. “But I wanted to let you know that a strange man just tried to follow me back from my apartment, and I’m worried he might do the same thing to someone else tonight.”

“Well, you should have called while it was happening,” she replied curtly. “There’s nothing we can do now.”

I thanked her, for some reason, and numbly hung up, feeling a dull anger inside of me. Call while it was happening? I tried. It had only made the situation worse.

While the police dispatcher’s reply made sense, logically, it also displayed a basic misunderstanding of how to deal with victims of sexual harassment. I had been followed and threatened. I had been forced to hide in a bathroom out of fear. And when, out of concern for my fellow classmates, I reported it to the police, I was basically scolded for not acting sooner. I felt like I had done something wrong, rather than having been wronged. And for the rest of the year I refused to walk back from nighttime club meetings without my boyfriend accompanying me.

Colleges, we need a little help here. What do we, as students, do when we are threatened on campus? When our activities and movements are restricted due to gender-based harassment? When we begin to fear walking on our own campuses? When we are made to feel ashamed for having been harassed in the first place?

College is a time when we learn to embrace our own mobility and freedom. Harassment and the threat of sexual assault more than puts a damper on that, but there doesn’t seem to be much we can do. So colleges, I’m imploring you: help us learn what to report and how to report. Show us you’ll listen, and show us you’ll care. Remember back to the time when you were first learning to be free, yet constantly being told by society to be scared, and choose compassion rather than curtness. Teach us to be safe; but more importantly, teach us all not to put others in danger.

Britnae Purdy, Anti-Street Harassment Week Online Manager