Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

Sex segregated in line, assaulted on the bus

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Bus in indiaLast month the government in Central Jakarta, India, segregated people by sex in the bus stop lines to curb crime, including sexual harassment. Today I read a news article about a case of sexual assault on the bus because, unsurprisingly, segregating people without addressing the real issue will not solve the problem!

Via Berita Jakarta:

“The criminal sat beside the victim. At a time, the criminal touched the victim’s breast. The victim screamed and slapped the criminal on his face.

“The incident took place in Tosari. Both of them were stopped in Dukuhatas and then taken to South Jakarta Police Precinct,” said Dano, Tuesday (7/6). In fact, besides separating passengers based on gender, the bus attendant always reminded the passengers to place themselves on empty spaces. To make the passengers comfortable, Transjakarta BLU will set stickers about safety way in the bus.”

I’m sure a reminder to sit in empty spaces is really useful…not. The harasser won’t listen and the harassee probably already did that. I think women instinctively know we’re in for trouble when it’s a largely empty bus or subway car and a man plops himself down right next to us. And sometime when we move, they do, too. Harassing behavior like that is scary and predatory.

What seems to be hard for these men to understand is that they do not have a right to our space and to our bodies just because we’re women living in patriarchal societies. That kind of assumption needs to change! Incidentally, the International Center for Research on Women has an initiative in India focused on changing those assumptions in boys and so far it’s been very successful. Hopefully in time it can spread across all of India!

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Street harassment is a trigger for rape survivors

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Street harassment from the perspective of a rape survivor:

Sometimes when I express my anger at street harassment, at my inability to move through public spaces freely, I feel as if I am dismissed. Other people, both men and women alike, tend to minimize it, saying, “Why let it bother you? It’s not that big of a deal.”

But I am a rape survivor, and for me, it is a big deal.

Every time I am harassed by men on the street, I am re-victimized. From leering, catcalls, and comments about my body, to stalking and groping — they all reduce me to an object. Not a person, but a thing. Something to have power over. All of these forms of harassment are triggers for me. They all induce the same sense of powerlessness, the feeling of invasion – they all take me back to when I was raped.

I know I am not the only one. There are so many other survivors, like me, who every day are forced to relive the experiences of their rapes by men on the street. Street harassment IS a big deal. It perpetuates the society which allows men to treat women as objects, to have power over them, to assault them, to rape them. Street harassment is sexual assault, it is sexual violence, and we must work to end it now.

I am not an object, and I will not be silent.

– AH

Location: Everywhere

Share your street harassment story today and help raise awareness about the problem. Include your location and it will be added to the Street Harassment Map.

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Asking for it? As if

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With funding from the Scottish Government, Rape Crisis Scotland has launched a television advertisement and online campaign called Not Ever, focused on ending the prevalent attitude that rape victims are to blame for their perpetrator’s crime because of what they were wearing.

In the ad, men at a pub look at a woman’s skirt and decide that she is “asking for it.” The ad then shows earlier in the day when the woman in shopping for the skirt and says she is looking for one that will make men want to rape her. Then she turns to the camera and says, “As if.”

From the campaign page:

“No woman asks to be raped – ever. It’s a simple as that. Women should not be held responsible for the behaviour of rapists or expected to base their decisions on dress around the possibility that these might lead to an attack.” …

The prevalence of these ideas and the prejudicial attitudes they underpin seriously damage the chances of women who have been raped of receiving justice. With the conviction rate in Scotland in 2010 having fallen to 3% – its lowest ever, the need to change attitudes which blame women is more urgent than ever.

We need to stop victim-blaming and assign responsibility to those whose decisions do lead to rape – perpetrators and the apologists whose woman-blaming views have assigned rape its current status as a low-risk crime. For as long the notion that women can “ask for it” or invite attack through their dress or behaviour are allowed to persist, rapists will continue to act with impunity, confident in the knowledge that their actions will receive far less scrutiny than those of the women they assault.”

I applaud the Scottish government and Rape Crisis Scotland for tackling this issue. The television ads are running during the World Cup, so they are definitely being seen by men (too often women are the focus of campaigns around gender violence when we men to be targeted, too). The website contains resources for survivors, information on the current rape law, quiz questions, and discussion threads.

A few weeks ago the government of Wales launched a television and online ad campaign called One Step Too Far showing how slippery the slope is between sexist and harassing behavior and sexual assault. Their television ads also are airing during the World Cup.

I applaud both governments for actually taking this issue seriously. Victim blaming in cases of gender violence is pervasive, from Egypt to Australia to India to Brazil to the UK and the US. Imagine if every government invested resources in combating these attitudes, thereby helping to prevent harassment and assault and making it easier for victims to come forward and charge the perpetrators! This is how change happens.

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Three men rape homeless woman in NYC

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Three male attackers. Image via New York Post

This story makes me sick (via New York Post):

“Three thugs grabbed a young woman waiting for a bus on the Upper East Side early yesterday and dragged her into Central Park, where she was sexually assaulted and robbed [by the men], cops said.

The 23-year-old victim told cops the attack took place about 300 feet inside the park near East 86th Street at around 3:20 a.m.

The woman, who lives in a Bronx homeless shelter, ran out of the park seminude. She was spotted by a cabdriver, who gave her a shirt and called 911.

She was treated at a hospital.

Sources said she appeared to be intoxicated.

Cops released video images of three suspects in a nearby drugstore around the time of the alleged attack.”

A few things jump to my mind when I read this.

1) I hope they catch these guys. I do not want them out and about attacking women.

2) I’m glad she got away.

3) Why the HELL did they include the sentence “Sources said she appeared to be intoxicated.”!? Why does that matter? She was waiting for a goddamn bus and three men attacked her. They are to blame whether she was sober or drunk. Please, reporters, stop engaging in this type of victim blaming!

4) Thank goodness for good people like the cab driver who gave her a shirt and called 911!!

5) Her experience highlights the increased vulnerability of homeless and low-to-middle income women to street harassment and sexual assault because they must rely on foot or public transportation to get everywhere. Public transportation should be safe! If you’re in NYC and care about this issue, look into RightRides, which gives free late night rides home to women and members of the LGBQT community for this reason and into New Yorkers for Safe Transit, a group working to make public transportation safe for everyone.

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(Wannabe?) Rapists on VIU Campus

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I was walking back to my car after a night class when a group of about five young men started following me. They were talking to each other, but intentionally kept the volume loud enough so I could hear clearly (they were several meters behind me). They spent several minutes commenting on my skirt, which they deemed slutty, before the conversation turned to how much they enjoyed “gang-raping sluts”. When I got back to my car, I locked it right away and drove home. This isn’t the first or last time I’ve been harassed on campus, but it’s definitely the scariest example.

In the end, I decided not to report because the response to sexual violence around here is worse than useless. A serial groper last year prompted an email telling women to “be careful”, an offer for a women’s self-defense class, and plenty of jokes around campus. RCMP believes that the same man was flashing and assaulting women as early as 2004, and his behavior was still escalating several months later. AFAIK he’s still not been caught. Doesn’t exactly make me feel safe, or give me much confidence in the authorities’ abilities to deal with sexual violence.

– anonymous

Location: Vancouver Island University, Vancouver, Canada

Share your street harassment story today and help raise awareness about the problem. Include your location and it will be added to the Street Harassment Map.

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