Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

Egypt, Indonesia, and the United Kingdom

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What do these three countries have in common? Besides all starting with vowels, the commonality is that I’ve read a street harassment-related article from each country in the last 24 hours. Here’s the scoop:

Egypt: Justin D. Martin, a journalism professor at The American University in Cairo wrote a great opinion piece for the Christian Science Monitor about the widespread problem of men blaming women for sexual harassment and why.

He points to studies like one from 2008 which showed that 50 percent of men blamed women for the harassment they inflicted on them, and a new study from the Population Council which showed nearly 80 percent of Egyptian boys and men ages 15-29 agreed that a woman who is harassed deserves it if she had dressed provocatively.

And he explores how Egyptian men aren’t wired to blame victims of sexual harassment, instead they are taught to do it. Proposed legislation against sexual harassment would help, he says, but what’s really needed is an ideological shift. Definitely!

Indonesia: AFP reports today that Indonesia is joining many other countries in creating women-only public transportation to reduce the rates of sexual harassment. Right now these carriages are only found on the Jakarta to Bogor line. They are distinguished from the other cars by their pink seats and they are located at the front and back of the trains. “We want to improve our service and protect female passengers so they feel more safe,” rail official Makmur Syaheran said.

Sounds like another band aid fix to a serious problem…

United Kingdom: Earlier this month Dawn Foster began the blog 101 Wankers where she calls out the men who harasser her while she rides her bicycle around London. Yesterday she shared her experiences with harassers and with creating the blog in a Guardian article.

Let’s hope she doesn’t reach 101 incidents of harassers, but if she does, at least it will be cataloged for the world to see and have to acknowledge. Way to go, Dawn. Call out the wankers!

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“I give him my best death glare”

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I was on my way through a busy bus station on the way to my stop, lost in my own little world and minding my own business.

As I walked past a row of seats I heard a loud ‘all right, darling,’ which startled me and made me look round. An older man in grubby looking clothes, seated alone, is leering back at me, and repeats himself just in case I didn’t hear him the first time. As usual I’m too dumbfounded to retort, so I give him my best death glare and hurry on.

I sit down at my stop, and while waiting for my bus eye the man down the other side of the station warily. He chooses to stare lingeringly at young girls walking past him, but ignores the older women. I can’t remember whether he saw me watching him or not, but suddenly he is sat five or so people away from me on my row of seats. He switches places twice, and I get a bit nervous. I stand up to let someone else sit down, and turn back to see him watching me through the crowd in front of him. I am freaked out by this point, but am simultaneously preparing myself to make a fuss if he comes too close. I choose to sit somewhere different so he can’t see me, and he at last loses interest and gets on a bus. I wish I had thought to take his picture, for as far as I know he could have been a nuisance to women at the station before.

– Hannah

Location: Isle of Wight, 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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“You look like a 46 dollar whore, and 40 is for the bike.”

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I was sitting at a red light on my bike minding my own business when I realized a guy sitting on a nearby bench was talking to me. I didn’t acknowledge him because I was alone, but being aware gave me the displeasure of hearing what he was saying.

“You look like a 46 dollar whore, and 40 is for the bike.” Insulting to me and my bike. The whole time, a cop was standing about ten feet away. He didn’t even make a comment. The loser was still flapping his gums together as the light turned green and I rode away.

I was left feeling unsafe, with the unpleasant reminder that some men really do think of me a nothing more than an object. To top it off, men who don’t harass sometimes don’t understand how distressing it is, because they never see it. They don’t realize how scary it is and how powerless it makes you feel.

– MR

Location: Charles Street at North Avenue, Baltimore, MD

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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7-11 hideout

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I was walking home from a bar when a couple of guys in a car started propositioning me. They asked me for blow jobs and sex, insinuating that I was a hooker and they’d pay for it. (It was winter time, I was wearing a bulky coat and combat boots and was in no way soliciting). I had to hide in a 7-11 for fifteen minutes before they left.

– anonymous

Location: Edmonton, Alberta, 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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Women pedestrians are not “mayhem,” Allstate

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Have you seen the new Allstate Mayhem commercial? It opens with the Allstate Mayhem spokesman Dean Winters jogging, saying, “I’m a hot babe out jogging…” Then you see a man in a car ogling the “hot babe” and driving into a lamp post. The commerical ends with the Winters saying, if you go with Allstate, “you can be better protected from mayhem like me” [meaning, the woman running].

Excuse me? Women running = mayhem?

The men ogling women are the mayhem!!

Just last week I was driving my car and suddenly the car in front of me dropped about 15 miles per hour for no apparent reason. Then I saw the reason: a woman was walking her dog on the side of the road in a sports bra (in our recent 100-degree weather stint). When I passed him I saw that yes, he was staring out the window at her instead of focusing on driving.

Of course, this is not the first time I’ve witnessed such careless driving. Countless men have hung out the window of their car ogling or yelling at me while they are  supposed to be driving and all I have been doing is running, walking, or even waiting for a bus. More alarming, last year, two women were walking home from work, facing catcalls from men in a truck. The driver lost control of the vehicle and both women were hit and one was killed.

We women are going about our days, yet WE’RE the mayhem? YEAH RIGHT.

More on this commercial from Liz whose Community Feministing post alerted me to this vile commercial.

As I was watching tv the other night I saw AllState’s newest commercial in their ‘protect yourself from mayhem’ series…

Here are my 2 big issues: the implication that slobbering over a woman from your car is generally acceptable, and that the woman is in fact the bringer of the mayhem.  This commercial says any woman jogging, or walking, or simply existing on any sidewalk in America is fair game to be sexualized, and rarely does that sexualization remain silent, it is usually accompanied by street harassment yelled from a passing car.  I personally jog about 2miles every morning and there are streets I will not jog on because I know someone is going to honk or catcall and at 8 in the morning that’s not something I want to deal with.  But this commercial is saying go ahead young men(any men really) stare, stare at her until your basic motor functions are compromised.  And then blame her.

She is the mayhem, she is the reason you crashed your car into a lightpole.  She made you do it, she made you crazy.  Does that sound like abuser logic to anyone else?  Why do you make me hit you, sounds a lot like, why did you make me crash the car?  Presumably if the ‘woman’ had not been so carelessly jogging along the sidewalk this young man would never have been distracted and would have been able to competently drive his car.  But the message here is one we have heard before (in rape cases), men cannot biologically control their impulses when it comes to sexuality and women.

The solution is clear to me: women pose such a serious risk to male drivers that we can no longer be allowed to jog outdoors.  This is for the good of the nation, we simply cannot expect men to remain in control of their functions while we prance around the neighborhood.  America is counting on us.

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