Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

Six Ways My Dad is an Activist

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My book launch event in 2010. This is how supportive my dad is -- the event was on a weeknight in DC and my dad left work in NYC early, drove 4 hours down to DC, attended the event, and then drove all the way back home so he could go to work the next day. I had a book launch event in NYC the next week that he also attended...he wanted to be at the DC one too to support me at my very first book talk. My mom attended both too.

Happy Father’s Day to men working to make the world a better place!

Happy Father’s Day in particular to my dad who is a great ally and anti-street harassment activists. Here are six examples of his efforts.

1 – When I secured the Stop Street Harassment book contract in 2009, my dad, Alan Kearl, spent dozens of hours line-editing the entire manuscript by hand, twice.  It was truly a labor of love and his advice helped make the book stronger. Last fall, he helped me buy the rights to the paperback edition so I could make the book more affordable/accessible.

2 – Online, my dad has written several posts for the male ally series on this blog and he regularly writes encouraging comments on stories people around the world submit to the blog.

3 – During this past year, he’s represented Stop Street Harassment at several events in New York City, including the Shine the Light on Domestic Violence event at Times Square.

4 – In 2011, I organized International Anti-Street Harassment Day and my dad and mom decided to participate by handing out 100 fliers about street harassment near a subway stop.

5 – In 2012, when I decided to turn the day into International Anti-Street Harassment Week, my dad dreamed bigger organized a rally against street harassment in New York City. Despite a busy work and personal life schedule, he organized over a dozen speakers and performers, including City Council Member Julissa Ferraras, and a crowd of 100 joined in to chant, cheer, and get energized to do something about street harassment. Everyone at the rally was inspired and encouraged by seeing a male ally and a father take such an active role in addressing the issue.

6 – Yesterday, I was in New York City with my family to celebrate an early Father’s Day. In the morning, a friend sent me a photo of a pro-street harassment construction sign in Princeton, NJ. When I told my parents, my dad wanted to drive the 90 minutes (each way) to try to find it and take pictures in person and figure out what company put up the sign. When that proved impractical because of the rest of our schedule, he did online sleuthing and figured out the company and wrote an email to them sharing his disappointment in the content (I’m working on a petition you can sign soon).

While my dad has always been supportive of my efforts, I love how he’s turned into an activist in his own right. I’m excited that we can grow together as activists when we travels to Cairo, Egypt, in July to meet with anti-street harassment members of the group HarassMap (and also sight see).

I hope my dad can be an example to other fathers about the power and importance of working with their children collaboratively to make the world a better place.

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“We apologize for the whistling construction workers, but man you look good!”

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A real sign in Princeton, NJ. Image via Feminist Philosophers

“We apologize for the whistling construction workers, but man you look good!” — this statement is found on a real life construction sign in Princeton, NJ, sent to the blog Feminist Philosophers by one of their readers who saw it.

Has anyone else seen this? Do you know what company produced it? Once we know that, then the letter-writing, phone calls and petitions to get this sign removed can begin.

This tongue in cheek, joke-y sign is NOT funny because it makes light of street harassment (hahaha, we apologize, but not really), it construes it as a compliment (man, you look good, lady in a skirt and tight shirt and tall boots…don’t you know you’re asking to be whistled at?), and it helps perpetuate the stereotype that it’s construction worker-type men alone who engage in this and that they can’t help it, because man, you look good, instead of acknowledging the whole range of men who engage in this behavior.

It ignores rape-culture, the widespread sexualization of girls, the fact that by age 12, nearly 1 in 4 girls has experienced street harassment, that over 80 percent of women have been the target of a sexually explicit comment from a man on the street and over half of them have been groped by men on the streets, and that street harassment is a global problem.

Often when I give interviews or talks about street harassment, someone will ask me, what needs to happen to stop street harassment.

And I say, right now, the biggest thing we need to do is change the normalization of it and end its social acceptability. For example, get rid of things like THIS SIGN!!! This sign normalizes street harassment. It contributes to why it happens and why so many of our friends/family tell us it’s a compliment or laugh when we share our street harassment stories.

So how do we change the normalization of it? We can do this by sharing stories (even if people tell us we’re over reacting or it’s a compliment), talking about it, educating our friends/family, speaking out when we see it happening, etc.  We can organize community action. And, once we know what company produced this sign, contact them and ask them to take it down!

No country will achieve gender equality and no country ever will as long as men are allowed to freely harass women and girls on the streets.

(h/t to @kbster for telling me about this sign)

UPDATE: The sign is at MarketFair Mall. Still doing research to find out who we need to contact to get the sign down.
UPDATE: Here is the petition

UPDATE: MarketFair Mall took down the sign!! (Also, E A Reeves, a construction company in PA, was not the ones responsible for the sign as had originally been thought. Apologies to them for associating them with the sign.)

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“We won’t be broken”

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“Sexual harassment is a tool to keep women out of the public spaces (streets) and forcing them into the private spaces (homes),” wrote @jazkhalifa during the Egyptian-led #EndSH day of online activism this week. – via ABC News

That is why we must speak out against street harassment. It keeps women out of public spaces, and out of public life. There can never be gender equality as long as we’re relegated to the home.

It’s been one week since the attack on activists protesting against street harassment in Tahrir Square, Egypt. They’re still re-grouping, deciding on next steps and responses. In the meantime, where is a powerful video from the protest (before the attacks) you can watch and testimonies of people who were there that you can read.

“Women are at the heart of the revolution. We march, we lead chants, we sleep in sit-ins…We won’t be broken,” says one woman in the video.

Exactly. And so we’ve got to keep talking about this issue. We can’t let it fade away. Street harassment is real, it’s a problem, and it’s got to end.

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June 13 #EndSH Day

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Join the day of online action against street harassment and sexual harassment, organized by activists in Egypt. If you’re on twitter, follow and/or use the hashtag #EndSH to see the conversation and help bring attention to this issue. Blog, write Facebook updates.

Egypt Independent is tracking the online conversation live on their blog.

USA Today published a great article today about anti-street harassment activism in Egypt, Lebanon, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia. I even get a quote in there.

“In Yemen, where most women are fully covered from head to toe, harassment can be just as likely as in Lebanon, where it is not unusual to see women wearing skin-revealing clothing. This has prompted initiatives in both countries, such as the Safe Streets Campaign in Yemen, which maps reports of harassment.

“As a woman in Yemen, harassment is almost a given on the streets and on public transportation. It doesn’t matter how you dress or behave — simply being a woman is reason enough to be targeted,” said Sara Ishaq, a Yemeni filmmaker.

Nawal Saadawi, an Egyptian feminist author once jailed for writings that include criticisms of Islamic customs regarding women, said the Arab Spring has handed women an opportunity.

“Women are taking part in all the revolutions because they want to change patriarchy, to change history and to change the whole system,” she said.

In May, a woman in Saudi Arabia challenged police who tried to throw her out of a shopping mall for wearing nail polish. “It’s none of your business,” she yelled in a confrontation filmed by camera phone and posted on YouTube. The video was viewed 1 million times in a few days.

By fighting back, women in the region hope that they not only can walk free from harassment but that such a change will usher in more rights and opportunities.

“I get sexually harassed because it’s an issue of power,” said Hobeissi of Nasawiya in Lebanon, “but women in leadership positions will transform how society perceives women in general.”

And there’s a new bystander video about what men can say to men who harass women on the streets, via HarassMap in Egypt:

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Egyptian Women Refuse to be Silent

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I’m cross-posting an article I wrote for Ms. Magazine’s Blog.

Violence against women demonstrators in Egypt erupted again on Tuesday when a frenzied mob of 200 men sexually assaulted a female protester in Tahrir Square. Then, during a rally on Friday to protest the incident, about 50 women and their male allies were themselves brutalized and chased away by another mob.

Journalist Ghazala Irshad, who was on the scene Friday, says that just as the small anti-harassment protest was gathering steam, the atmosphere shifted. “A few guys were like, ‘Why are you talking about this, there are more important issues to talk about?’ [Then] some guys started saying the women protesting were whores.”

Next, a phalanx of outside men overwhelmed the protective circle of male allies and cornered and groped the women. Rally organizer Sally Zohney says, “[The violence] started with individual cases of assaults against women in the march [and] then turned into beating and chasing everyone involved. Even men were badly beaten and attacked. It was very brutal.”

Participants were forced to flee for their safety.

Sadly, the violent scene is just the latest of many. Since the military took power last February, countless women–including journalists Lara Logan, Mona Eltahawy and Caroline Sinz, Egyptian actor Sherihan and the “woman in the blue bra“–have been groped and sexually assaulted by men in Tahrir Square. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of other women have experienced verbal sexual harassment in a place that is supposed to symbolize freedom.

The lack of safety for women in the square symbolizes, instead, just how little women have benefited from the revolution they helped create. While pre-revolutionary Egypt was notorious for street harassment–a 2008 study by the Egyptian Centre for Women’s Rights (ECWR) found that over 80 percent of Egyptian women had experienced it–the 18-day uprising in January and February 2011 was an unprecedented moment in which women could move freely in public space. Women seized the chance to become key players in the protests. “In 3 weeks of revolution we experienced no sexual harassment by men,” one woman told the Israeli paper Haaretz. “What civilization emerged! What culture!”

But that swiftly changed. Marchers in an International International Women’s Day 2011 demonstration in Tahrir Square were violently attacked. Months of assaults on women protesters followed. Some of the perpetrators have worn civilian clothes; others have been uniformed military police. During the violent government crackdown on pro-democracy protests this fall, which claimed more than 80 lives, over 100 women report being subjected to invasive “virginity tests” by the military.

Zohney believes that the attacks are systematic and fueled by unknown organized groups–whether by the military regime or others, she isn’t certain. She sees them as an attempt to discourage protests by intimidating revolutionaries and painting them in a bad light. Many of her friends have been attacked. Yet, she says, no serious security measures have been taken to stop the assaults. As a result, many women have avoided Tahrir Square, losing the opportunity to be full participants in the political process.

On the other hand, some women have spoken out against the violence. Logan, Eltahawy and others told their stories to the media. Women regularly share their harassment stories online. But, unfortunately, as on Friday, they, too, experience backlash and harassment.

If broad attempts to curb harassment in Egypt succeed, Tahrir Square may become safer for women protesters. Rebecca Ciao, a co-founder of Egyptian safe-streets organization HarassMap, says her group plans to continue conducting community outreach, spotlighting stories of harassment and allowing people to easily report incidents on an online map. Groups such as HarassMap, ECWR and the United Nations’ Safe Cities Programme have long spearheaded anti-harassment actions such as online story sharing, community safety audits, meetings, rallies, radio ads and, last month, a human chain against street harassment.

The attacks on women are also sparking anger among regular citizens. The “woman in the blue bra” became a national martyr, drawing thousands to march in solidarity in December.

No matter how many attacks they face, these brave women and men plan to speak out. Zohney and others are planning a multipronged response to Friday’s attacks that will include a larger, more organized march, as well as online testimonials by Friday’s victims and calls for more security in Tahrir Square. Activist Leil Zahra Mortada wrote in a Facebook post accompanying a photo album from the Friday march:

No matter how deep the wounds are, no matter how many times we get attacked or will be attacked, this will not stop nor silence us. More actions are planned, more noise will be made, and more proactive steps will be taken. We will see the end of sexual harassment and assault, both state-organized and individual! We will take down patriarchy, sexism and every form of violence based on gender or sexuality!

Brava. It is clear Egypt’s revolution will be incomplete until women win the streets.

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