Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

“Not Your Baby” App

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If you’re like me and tend to freeze up or draw a blank when you experience harassment, here’s a great resource to help you out, from our partner in Canada, METRAC. (They’re also the organization that also founded community safety audits).

Via their press release:

“On September 10, 2012, METRAC released a free iPhone app, “Not Your Baby”, to help users deal with sexual harassment. Once installed, the app will allow users to input where they are – such as work, school or on the street – and who’s harassing them – such as a boss, coworker or fellow student. A response will be generated “in the moment”, based on the input of 238 people who shared what they’ve done to deal with similar instances of harassment. “Not Your Baby” also includes their stories and tips and allows users to submit their own….

“Not Your Baby” stands as an example of the power of technology to help people take action, including women, young women, LGBTTIQQ2S and other groups most at risk of sexual and gender-based harassment. It is available on iTunes and by visiting METRAC’s website, www.metrac.org.”

What a great idea!

The Torontoist has more:

“METRAC communications director Andrea Gunraj described the app as “another tool that people can use to feel empowered,” rather than a cure-all for sexual harassment. She pointed to work by groups including the White Ribbon Campaign, for encouraging men, who are overwhelmingly the perpetrators of sexual harassment, to talk about the behaviour and its impact. She sees a need for more resources for men, including those “who want to diffuse harassment, who want to say something and don’t know how.”

According to Gunraj, it’s up to communities to initiate the uncomfortable social conversations that can lead to reflection and change. She noted that “the biggest barrier is speaking about it and seeing it as a problem. Too often we accept harassment as a fact of life.””

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Metro Anti-Harassment Skit

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Sadly, sexual harassment on the subway is not that unusual, yet few people (outside feminist circles) talk about it. For that reason, Collective Action for Safe Spaces & Voices of Men rode the Washington, DC, Metro and collaborated to perform a skit about harassment to bring attention to the issue. I played the role of the harassee.

The metro riders were pretty surprised because theater/performance is very rare on the DC system, but there were a lot of supportive comments each time we finished the skit. We did the skit about 10 times on several different subway cars.

Taking collective action like this is an important way to show that street harassment is not okay in your community. It’s also a great way to include new people in the work. One of the bystanders in our skit, John, was brand new to feminist activism and was an enthusiastic participant in speaking out against street harassment.

This skit can easily be replicated on other subways, metros, and buses. Reach out to either group for information:

Collective Action for Safe Spaces (CASS)
www.collectiveactiondc.org

Voices of Men
www.voicesofmen.org

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Native Americans Speak Out About Street Harassment

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Kristina and Sunny Clifford

““Hey baby girl,” a group of ten and twelve-year-old Native American boys yelled over and over as they jumped on a trampoline. Then they lifted up their shirts and said, “You want some of this?” as they pounded on their chests. Their targets: Sunny and Kristina Clifford, two Native American sisters in their 20s, sitting outside their mother’s home on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. The boys wouldn’t stop and the young women felt so uncomfortable they went inside the house.

The Clifford sisters shared this story during a focus group I recently held at Oglala Lakota College on Pine Ridge Reservation about Native Americans’ experiences with street harassment. They said this incident had happened to them just the day before.

I quickly learned from the focus group participants that, like the rest of the country and the rest of the world, sexual harassment in public spaces is not unusual on the Pine Ridge Reservation, an area the size of the state of Connecticut with a population of 18,834 and an unemployment rate of 89 percent.

Most people on the reservation do not have regular access to a car, and the only public transportation available is a relatively new shuttle bus. As a result, walking is a primary way for people to travel from place to place. The women said that’s when they experience the most street harassment, at the hands of Native and non-Native men driving by in their cars. Kristina Clifford remarked, “There’s always somebody honking, or saying things, yelling, or whatever. It just makes me uncomfortable.”

Sometimes, another woman said, the men drive by once, turn around, and drive by again and again, just to harass them. Consequently, there are places the young women will not walk, and Sunny Clifford, a runner, said she won’t run along the roads anymore.” (Read More)

This is an excerpt from an article I wrote for the Women’s Media Center.

Five years after I turned in my master’s thesis on street harassment, I never thought I’d spend my weekends, most of my vacation days, and lunch hours researching, writing, and bringing attention to the issue. But street harassment has become so important to me that I do, and I feel lucky that I can. In particular, my passion is making sure as many stories and voices as possible are heard so that we can better understand the scope of the problem and its impact.

One population whose street harassment stories I had never seen shared anywhere before were Native Americans’ stories. Because they face higher rates of gender violence than any other racial group in the U.S., I felt it was especially important to learn about their experiences.

Two weeks ago today, I took four vacation days from my day job, caught a cheap flight to Denver and paid for a rental car to drive 6 hours to South Dakota. Through the help of Holly Sortland, the founder of an amazing initiative called ProjectRespect.org, I had the opportunity to hear from Native Americans living on Pine Ridge Reservation and in Rapid City. Their stories touched me, angered me, and made more determined than ever to do this work. I am grateful they were brave enough to share their deeply personal stories and I’m glad that the Associated Press and South Dakota PBS radio recognized the importance of their stories and shared some of them through their media channels.

The stories from these and other upcoming focus groups will supplement a first-of-its-kind national study of 2000 people I am trying to make happen. Please donate $10 (or more if you can) to ensure it happens; I have a great group of PhD-level experts ready to advise me on the surveying instrument and a very reputable survey firm ready to conduct it once we have enough funds.

Public policy and public attitudes about street harassment will change only once we have the right combination of stories and data. So many of you have shared your stories (thank you), now I need your help so we can have data. Thank you.

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Y Chromosome Sense of Entitlement

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After becoming frustrated, angered and upset at yet another piece I read about the abuse and harassment women have to put up with on a daily basis, I got to thinking.

All of the great groups there are out there working to combat this sort of disgusting behavior are headed by women, run by women and spoken about and promoted mostly by women.  Of course there are some wonderful men out there who are also vocally against this sort of treatment of women. But overall, it seems that it is just the same good people who are speaking out about street harassment and sexual assault over and over again.

The abusers and harassers never seem to write about their experiences, try to make us understand what it’s all about or even offer some sort of explanation or justification for their behavior. Why is this, I wonder?

My conclusion is, it has to be because the men that do this sort of thing don’t see anything wrong with it at all.  I call it a Y Chromosome Sense of Entitlement.

They think because they are men, they are the stronger, the more dominant and important sex, thus, they have a sense of ownership and claim over women so they can treat us in any fashion they please. The street harassers and abusers think that women are objects put on this earth just for their pleasure.

What they don’t understand is for someone to be entitled to something,  they have to earn it.  For example; you go out for a few drinks over the weekend after a weeks’ work because you deserve it; it is your reward for your hard work.  People who feel a sense of entitlement when they ultimately have done nothing to deserve it come across as nothing but childish.

Sadly, a lot of men are afflicted by the Y Chromosome Sense of Entitlement. Here are five types:

1 – The guy who thinks it’s funny and feels he has the right to play the ‘big dog’ or alpha male in front of his friends and show his dominance over a woman walking alone.  Oh how manly you are, sir to call me baby and comment on how much you like my boobs, please catch me as I swoon into your big strong arms.  Well I have news for you dawg you’re not the pimp you think you are.  You are an ass, a nuisance, a street harasser and no woman would find you in any way attractive or touch you with a bargepole covered in antiseptic cream.

No decent men will ever have respect for you for behaving like a cave man in public.  You make women feel deeply uncomfortable, you scare and upset us.  When you do this we have no idea how to react because if we ignore you or call you out things could escalate either way, so we just try to look confident while quickening our pace until you and your homies are out of sight and earshot and we breath a sigh of relief that we haven’t just been raped or sexually assaulted.

2 – There is the creepy loner guy who just seems to hang around. He makes you nervous at the sight of him and your gut is screaming at you to keep your distance from him.  But of course you don’t want to cause a scene, he hasn’t done anything yet, so you subtly keep your back away from him and are on high alert with your most defensive posture all the while trying to look nonchalant and really into your book or music player.  However, in reality you haven’t read a thing since you spotted him and your music is down so low you can’t even hear what song is on.  You stay on guard until he walks passed you or gets off the train/bus but even when he is out of sight your mind is filled with thoughts that he might come back.

3 – There is the guy who is in a position of power which he will happily use to his advantage (and he’s usually a little smarter and a little more subtle, often married).  The boss man, the friendly and charming guy, who sometimes gets a little too close for comfort but he does it to everyone so you take no notice at first.  Then he will make the odd comment about how you look but you can’t really do much because he is your superior and once he knows he can get away with it he will start to brush past you when you are in a tight space.  You want to keep your job so you have to put up with it.

You don’t, it is sexual harassment and it is illegal.  I know people need to earn a living but at the end of the day your personal safety and well being should be more important than a wage packet.  To those creepy bosses that abuse their positions of power and trust I say, a lot of you have daughters well just think one day your daughter could have a boss just like you or worse marry a guy just like you.

4 – There is the opportunist guy who will quickly try and grope or touch you either in a subtle or obvious way. Mostly it’s on nights out in crowded areas so you can’t see exactly who did it or as they fly past on a bike or in a car.  Some of them actually don’t care if you can see their faces, they wanted to touch an intimate part of you so they come right up to you and do it and they will not apologize for it.  They think they did nothing wrong.  Meanwhile you are feeling a mixture of tears and venom bubbling up inside of you, but you know there is nothing you can do, they are gone and you will probably (hopefully) never see them again.

5 – There is the good guy and secret misogynist who will sit down or come up beside you and try to make conversation with you while it is obvious to everyone but him that you want to be left alone. But why wouldn’t you want to talk to such a wonderful man?  After all you are lucky he choose you to converse with.  You nod and smile while trying to get away or maybe you politely say you’re not interested/have a boyfriend/are waiting for someone. This is when you see the good guys true colours and he erupts shouting at you calling you a bitch saying HE JUST WANTED TO TALK TO YOU!  What’s your fucking problem, whore?  And to think you actually felt bad for turning him down in the first place and tried to be nice about it!

It is not right that women are in constant fear for their safety day or night, whether outside, traveling, or in a work environment.  The abusers and harassers have never been leered at or groped so many times they can’t count.  Men are not entitled to treat women in this way, we do not deserve it. It has got to stop.

There is also another type of guy I want to mention, this is the most important type.

There is a man who sees women as his equal and talks to them as such, who treats them with respect and who doesn’t have a sense of entitlement. Without these men, the world’s population would have severely depleted!  They are real men.  Decent men, who don’t hurt or mistreat women and don’t stand for other men doing it either, in fact they call them out on it.  So I want to say thank you to them for helping to restore my faith in the male gender.

Which kind of guy are you?

This guest blog post was written by Yvonne Ní Mhurchú.

Are you interested in guest writing for Stop Street Harassment? Contact stopstreetharasment AT yahoo DOT com.

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Chal Hatt Tharki

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Editor’s Note: This guest blog post was written by Janvi Mankani.

Eve teasing is a highly concern worthy issue in all of India and consequently in Mumbai today. Cat calling and snide comments against women have become such an inevitable part of the society and that calls for attention.

All the men who think they can get away with this kind of behaviour need to be addressed. “Chal Hatt Tharki” as a campaign is not directed towards men, asking them to stop cat calling and eve teasing. Instead, as the name itself suggests, is directed towards women; asking them to raise their voices against inappropriate behaviour. The very words, “Chal Hatt Tharki” here, encourage and support women to take a stance against eve teasing.

Chal Hatt Tharki is about empowering women, making them aware and letting them know that if they stand up for their rights, no one will be able to take them for granted. For when the women speak up, the men will learn their lesson with respect to eve teasing by default. It’s high time all the Eves got their due, and fearlessly stood up for their safety, their existence, and for themselves.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ChalHattTharki

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