Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

Harassers don’t care if you’re sad because you just broke up with your boyfriend

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Yesterday I had to ride the bus home after dropping my Jeep off at a car repair place in Santa Monica. I was with my son walking back home on Sunset Blvd when a truck drove by screaming and yelling yeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh Baby… It was disgusting not only because my 17 year old son was walking right in front of me, but I had just broken up with my boyfriend of 2 years and I was feeling so horrible at that moment.

I didn’t feel sexy, I didn’t want to be cat called at. It made me very upset because it doesn’t seem to matter what your day may be like men feel that they have the right to scream at you and upset you even more than you were already feeling! I don’t usually take the bus, but my son commented to me after the guys were screaming that, Mom, this sort of thing would happen to you all the time if you took the bus.

I believe that to be true and I feel so sorry for all the women who have to go through this! It is not right! We have the right to walk the streets without being harassed in this manner!

– Tanya Salcedo

Location: Sunset Blvd., Pacific Palisades, CA

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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Bus stop cameras in India, more on eve teasing in Bangladesh

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As of last month, all bus stops in Central Jakarta, India have sex segregated lines to curb sexual harassment and other crimes. To further curb and address the widespread problem of the sexual harassment of women waiting in line, the Transjakarta public service agency has installed closed-circuit tv’s at all bus stops. The agency is encouraging passengers to report any crime and the cameras can be monitored via the agency’s website. They’ve also started posting female officers at every bus stop. Soon there will be 54 officers at 27 stops.  It’s to see the the issue of harassment taken seriously and I hope these new measures will deter harassers.

In other news for that region of the world, AFP reports about eve teasing in Bangladesh, the spike in suicides among girls who’ve been eve teased by boys and men, why there are so many reports about eve teasing, and what needs to happen for it to end. Here’s an excerpt:

“Some girls even chose suicide as they feel so unsafe. The parents don’t listen to their daughters. Instead they accuse her of being responsible for the harassment,” she told AFP.

Even if parents do listen, they may not be able to help, with ASK evidence pointing to men who try to intervene and prevent bullying often being attacked themselves.

The father of one bullying victim committed suicide and another recently had a stroke — allegedly because he was terrified his daughter’s suicide would be reported in newspapers, ASK said.

Bangladesh, a Muslim-majority nation of 146 million, remains a deeply patriarchal society, and Women’s Minister Chaudhury said the balance of responsibility between the genders had to change.

“I think there is a gradual change in this, and girls are now coming out — they’re raising their voices against it and this is a good thing,” she said.

For Chaudhury, this year’s spike in reported instances of female sexual harassment or bullying is, to some extent, a sign of how successful Bangladesh has been at getting girls into schools and women into the workforce.

“Our females are in school and they are employed, so when they are facing this problem they are coming out with it. Eve-teasing has always happened, but it was not reported as much before,” she said.

But a fundamental transformation in how men treat women looks a distant dream.

At the moment, “perpetrators are being released too easily. If a perpetrator is arrested and the next day he gets bail, the girl is again unsafe and the family is also in danger,” said ASK’s Goswami….

“Bangladeshi girls get little respect in many families, and often boys grow up believing girls are not human beings but sexual objects,” said Dhaka-based psychology professor Mehtab Khanom.

“Traditional attitudes and new technology like mobile phones have combined to change how young people interact and leaving victims, parents and the authorities struggling to respond,” she said.

I hope the government, educators, policy makers, and regular people can work together to overcome this problem. Already the Bangladeshi government has taken action like prosecuting harassers and declaring an Eve Teasing Protection Day.

The US and other countries can learn from these tactics, by first of all acknowledging public harassment to be a problem. Let’s hope it doesn’t take suicides, as it did in Bangladesh, before more people pay attention to the damage street harassment causes.

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Taking action to stop harassers!

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I have been walking to work with a friend and she has been shouted at, verbally harassed, had drivers slow down whilst passing her and, when in my car, other drivers make rude gestures and shout at her…and I thought we were some way down the road to equality.

The worst behaviour has been from the contractors working on the roadworks outside our office. After reading some of this website last night, I went over to the workmen, whilst they were staring and letching at my friend and told them to stop as it was threatening and unwelcome. I then went back into the office, called the company involved and reported the complaint to the director and backed it up with an email. I have received an email response stating that they would investigate my complaint and proceed with disciplinary action where appropriate.

My friend was scared and didn’t feel able to say anything to the contractors; I asked her if it was OK for me to speak up for her and she said yes. We wait to see if their behaviour changes…

Thanks to this website I decided to do something and speak up, instead of just thinking about it.

– CJ

Location: Walsall, United Kingdom

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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Stop Commuter Harassment

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“Imagine you are heading to work on a Monday morning. Over the next 20 minutes you use your commuting time to catch up on e-mail and mentally run through a list of meetings and deadlines. You feel confident as you prepare for your day.

Suddenly a man interrupts you mid-thought to whisper, “Smile for me,” or “Hot bod.” Or gropes you on a crowded subway or follows you in his car. Now you feel angry, offended, possibly scared.

Worse than breaking your train of thought, however, is how you will carry those feelings with you to work. They affect your performance. And if this is the 20th or 100th time a man has harassed you during your commute, you might even consider changing your route, time of commute or even your job to avoid it.”

Read the rest of my article about commuter harassment at Forbes.com, complete with ideas for what employers can do to help keep their employees safe.

Are you harassed during your commute? If so, does it impact your work performance? Have you ever considered changing jobs because of it?

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Harasser makes woman distrustful of men

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I am an English as a foreign language teacher. For personal reasons I moved to Barcelona (I am from Argentina). As an immigrant it is very hard for me to get a job here, even having a legal residence. I’ve tried many jobs, I’ve been interviewed a few times but with no luck. I thought that a chance of getting some money was to work by myself, giving private classes, so I put an advert on the net. I started working with a family with three children, and some people even wrote emails to me to find out more about the classes.

Then I started receiving phone calls. These are some things that happened to me:

One of them was of a boy about my age who wanted me to give him (and his male friend) some private classes in his flat, and by the tone of his voice I noticed that he had been kidding, so I said that I only worked with children.

Another man phoned, and he said that they were four men who wanted to learn English in his house. I said that I only worked in public places (a café or something of the sort). He told me not to be afraid, that they were good people and that they were married with children and all that stuff. I didn’t take that job.

This is the worst that has happened to me up to now. A middle-aged man sent me an email, he said he wanted classes, I wrote him back and sent him my mobile phone. He phoned 5 minutes later, I was happy because he lived in the neighbourhood so I didn’t have to take the tube. We met next day at a café I proposed and we started the class. There was something strange, because as I lived in the same place, he wanted to know exactly my street, which, of course, I didn’t tell. At the end of the class, we arranged another class for the following week.

The problem started two days after, when I received this sms: “Hello darling, how are you? Kiss.” As I thought it was from a friend of mine whom I hadn’t seen from some time, I asked this person who she was (just to be sure it was her). This was the answer: “Hi! It’s a student who is very lucky to have such a beautiful and sexy teacher. I like you a lot and I’m happy to be your student. Kiss.”

I felt disgusted at those words and although the number didn’t match with the number this man had given me, I knew it was him for he was the only adult student I had at that moment. Some hours later he sent me another message inviting me to his house, because he was alone. This continued for a some days, until it stopped, but he made me feel scared of going out, because he lived three blocks from home and I didn’t want to meet him. Through some personal investigation on the net, I found some adverts in which he said he had spare rooms for rent at his house, that he was a good and honest man looking for a woman to live there, or he asked for some classes of whatever. What a jerk, probably he did this to many other women…

After this episode, I decided not to work with adult men, just with children, which is sad, because I lose jobs and money because of this. In fact I have rejected many possible students just because they were males, which is unfair since not all of them are like this idiots.

– A South American immigrant in Spain

Location: Barcelona, Spain

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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