Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

Tight Pants Disturb Peace in Sudan

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Reuters reports that: “more than 35 young women wearing tight trousers have been arrested for ‘disturbing the peace’ in south Sudan . . . The women were arrested on Sunday night, but released without charge on Monday after appearing in court. ‘They were wearing trousers that were too tight, disturbing the peace,’ said Deputy Police Commissioner of Juba County Raiman Lege.”

Does “disturbing the peace” because of tight pants mean getting harassed by men or “distracting” men because they can see what women’s legs look like? I’m not clear on that but I’m assuming so and thus adding it to this blog, which is full of street harassment-related news stories lately. Kudos to reporters for keeping these issues in the news, and boo to the people who harass and assault women and say stupid things like women should wear veils that reveal only one eye.

And in other news, almost 700 people have taken my full survey and almost 300 others answered the questions on the first page. If you haven’t taken this informal, anonymous survey yet, please do! I’ll be shutting it down soon.

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Survey Update and Thank You!

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It’s been a short two weeks since I started collecting informal, anonymous online surveys about people’s experiences with stranger interactions in public & specifically with street harassment.

I’ve had many more people take it than I expected at this point in time:

  • 679 people have answered at least one question on the 1st page (which only asks things like your age and sex)
  • 486 people have answered at least one substantive question on page 2 and beyond
  • 402 people have taken the full survey.
  • [also, across three days an additional 51 people took a runner-specific street harassment survey I posted on a runnersworld.com forum]

I’m very close to my original goal of collecting a minimum of 500 responses and I am surprised at how quickly I was able to achieve this. I thought it would take months. The downside is that soon I’ll have to go through all of the surveys and then actually write the book proposal (the scary part)!

I had a long list of people I wanted to thank who’ve helped make this happen by not only taking the survey but passing it along and posting it on listservs but this entry got eaten up once already (despite the fact that I clicked save) and I don’t  have the time… But quickly, here are a few people I want to thank because they told me they posted or forwarded the survey: Emily @ HollaBack NYC, Brittany @ HollaBack Boston, Jasmeen @ Blank Noise, Joseph @ Word Warrior, Cara Ellison on her blog, Emily @ Advocates for Youth, the Feministing Community, various friends & family & coworkers of mine, and especially my parents and sister. THANK YOU!

I’m brainstorming more conservative leaning listservs and blogs to send this to, any suggestions?

And if you haven’t taken it yet, please do!

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