Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming
Holla Back Savannah just launched this month to fight and document street harassment in the Savannah, Georgia, area and they’re looking for submissions. If you live in that area, send your street harassment stories and pictures of perps their way (hollabacksavannah@gmail.com).
Welcome, Holla Back Savannah to the online anti-street harassment community! 🙂
I am deeply disturbed by some of the referring terms my blog statistics say people are using when they happen upon my blog. Some recent ones include:
Literally every day several people come to my blog via search terms that are some variation of “dirty school girl” and “groping girls video” because of posts like these ones which talk about men groping women in public and this story about a man asking to take a picture of a young woman in a “dirty schoolgirl outfit”. I take it they are disappointed when they get here since I speak out against these problems.
I try to block out how many predators there are who are making money off child porn and misogynistic, racist, homophobic, size-ist adult porn and how many more people are spending their time and money consuming it. But each time I check my stats I’m reminded that they’re out there.
Not that the messed up predators are probably still reading this post (which some of them will find when I tag it with “groping” and “dirty school girl outfit”), but I still want to say to them:
Looking at pictures and videos of girls being groped and sexualized in school outfits is disgusting and you are a predator who clearly has no respect for girls or women. Shame on you for contributing to a culture that thinks it’s okay to make money from girls’/women’s humiliation and a culture that says it’s entertainment when boys/men assault girls/women and harass them at home, school, work, and on the street.
That is all.
I’m a street artist. I went to my spot to show my art around 8 am last Sunday 10-11-09 at West Broadway and Spring St in SOHO.
This man was waiting for me, and he comes and sits next to my spot and starts to kick my handtrack, and i say don’t touch my stuff, and he says, “YOU DONT UNDERSTAIND I DONT WANT YOU HERE!!! PROSTITUTE, PUTA, UGLY, OLDER, LOSER YOU ARE 40 YEARS OLD AND COME HERE TO SELL YOUR CHEAP ART, I WANTS TO DELETE YOUR TEETH, I’M NOT PLAYING!!! AND WE WILL SEE WHO IS MORE STRONG!!!”
I asked what is his problem and he says, “I JUST DONT LIKE YOU!!!”
And I say, “The world has plenty of things that we like and we dont like and you need to learn to live with that.”
After that he pushed me and punched on my face and ran. I said to stop and people heard and so he ran. I called the police and they come. People talked to the police about what they saw, but nobody saw when he was punched me. I dont have marks or blood.
So he was back 2 hours later to his spot like nothing had happened, and many people called the police, including me, and 5 cars come. Nobody asked him for ID, they just removed him to the next block….he cam back agan to his spot to intimidate me and said “i will be here next weekend”….
I don’t know what i can do, just leave there? I don’t go out because he is around, or he knows I’m alone, maybe he will wait for me again? i dont know…
– anonymous
Location: New York City
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.
Several years ago, when I was a student in Salzburg, Austria, I was on a long walk at night with a female friend. We walked past a stretch of several bars, with tons of people hanging around on the sidewalk. As we passed, a guy called after us, asking if we had a cigarette. I ignored him, but he kept asking and was soon following us, along with another guy. Finally I turned and said no firmly, and we sped up a little, trying to get back to the hotel where my friend was staying.
We reached a parking lot near an open plaza, by which point they’d caught up to us. One of them reached under my coat and grabbed my ass, then pulled on my hair. I had a scarf knotted around my neck, and he yanked hard on the end so that it was pulled tight against my throat. They were circling us, shouting things. I can’t recall what they were saying because I panicked and was incoherent. I yelled no several times, in german and in english. I was crying. I saw some people in a parked car nearby, so I ran to the car and knocked on the window. The people ignored me and drove away.
Fortunately, the guys were somewhat deterred by my attempt to get help, and we had a second to escape. We started running. I could still feel them following us, and by the time we got to the front door of the hotel where my friend was staying, they had caught up again. Breathing hard, we frantically unlocked the door and slammed it shut in their faces. I feel lucky that I escaped unharmed (much worse things have happened to women in similar situations), but I’ve never felt so scared in my life.
I also felt guilty. When I panicked, the harassment became more intense. I can only assume they found my reaction humorous. For a long time, I constantly questioned myself–did I do something stupid? Was I overreacting? Did I bring it upon myself? Was it because I was a foreigner?
The worst thing is, the next day, we told the hotel concierge (who was, alarmingly, a female) what had happened, hoping my friend could cancel her reservation since she no longer felt safe at the hotel (they knew our location and could easily come back and find us if they wanted). We were summarily dismissed and told that it was “safe here.”
I shouldn’t make assumptions like this, and it may sound overly defensive, but I can’t help but think that her response stems partially from the wider belief that Americans are obtuse and unnecessarily obsessed with “political correctness.” After such a frightening experience, it was really insulting and discouraging for our warranted caution to be so callously disregarded. More than that, it speaks to an extreme lack of awareness regarding the severity of street harassment and how quickly even the most harmless-seeming “attention” can escalate into a seriously dangerous situation.
– anonymous
Location: Salzburg, Austria
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.
I’m a 20 year old South Asian woman living in Berkeley, CA, USA. I was riding the 18 bus to Macarthur BART station in Oakland around 8.45 at night. I was sitting near the front of the bus reading a book and listening to music. There was a black man in his 30s sitting in front of me, who turned all the way around in his seat and staring at me. I managed to ignore him for a while, but when I took one earbud out of my ear to adjust it, he took that as an invitation to tell me I had beautiful hair. I smiled very slightly but didn’t say anything and went back to my music and book.
He kept talking to me, in a raised voice so as to be heard even above my music. Finally I took my earbud out again and said very quietly, “If you don’t mind I would just like to read, thanks”.
He proceeded to get very angry and began calling me an “uppity bitch”, a “fat ho”, and a “racist Indian cunt” who thought I was “too good to talk to a black man”.
I kept my eyes down because I really didn’t want to give him any more reason to follow me off the bus and he eventually stopped cursing at me and walked to the back of the bus.
I’ve lived in Berkeley for three years now and I’ve been catcalled, whistled at, had my appearance remarked upon multiple times but this was the first time I was actually worried I was in danger. Sometimes I hate living in this area.
– anonymous
Location: Berkeley, California
[editor’s note: see this blog post for how common this man’s reaction is.]
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.
