Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

Rape Culture

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Check out this new youth-made documentary by Hard Cover, a television program in Chicago that is completely created and produced by teens, called “Our Hidden Culture” about “rape culture,” including how and why rape persists in American society, statistics about how many people are raped, and the impact rape has on survivors.

The video opens with a tie to street harassment, which I find timely as today for my book I’ve been writing about how the fear of rape complicates and informs the way many women feel in public spaces, particularly when they see or are harassed by a man in an isolated area.

While most rapists (73%) know their victim, the other 27% don’t, and this fact combined with the widespread socialization of women to fear stranger rape, causes a lot of fear among women.

In their study The Female Fear: The Social Cost of Rape, published in 1991, Margaret T. Gordon and Stephanie Riger found that one-third of the women they studied worry at least once a month about being raped. Many said they worry daily about that possibility. A third of the women said that their fear of rape is ‘part of the background’ of their lives and ‘one of those things that’s always there.’ Another third claimed they never worried about rape but still reported taking precautions, unconsciously or consciously, to try to avoid being raped.

In every street harassment study I’ve read, the majority of the women said the fear of rape greatly impacted their street harassment experiences. Does it impact yours?

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Pioneer Motors Street Harassers

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diennastreetharassersaug09I was in Arlington, VA, last Wednesday, and while walking down Lee Highway two men who were sitting across the street in front of Pioneer Motors wolf whistled at me. When I turned to look at them they started smiling and waving. I was furious.

“No! Do you see me smiling? That’s not cute, that’s tacky! Don’t do that to me or any other woman who walks by again!”

When I pulled out my camera (from a safe distance across the street) they got quieter than it’s kept and the grins were wiped off their faces. I didn’t have the energy to report them to their employers (I deal with this nonsense too often), but I feel my yelling at them was enough.

-Anonymous

Location: Across the street from Pioneer Motors, 2510 Lee Highway, Arlington, VA

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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Denied Peace of Mind

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I’m skipping work for a few days to write a few chapters of my street harassment book. Near the hotel where I’m staying (to flee distractions), there is a beautiful trail alongside the Potomac River and before buckling down to write yesterday and today I went for a run on it. Having never run there before though, I ran with my phone and kept alert and I ran in a different direction each day. I quickly found out that the trail was isolated, deserted, and mostly far from any roads, buildings, or even people. The beauty of the scenery was dimmed by my hyper awareness of every unusual sound and nervousness when I passed by a few lone men because of the isolation. No one harassed or attacked me but, as any woman who is out alone in a deserted area knows, there is rarely relief from the fear that one day you’ll be the wrong woman in the wrong place at the wrong time.

This afternoon, after more than six hours of writing and a self-imposed internet ban, I came online to do a bit more research for the chapter I’m writing. When I also checked e-mail, I saw a friend had sent me a relevant link to an article in the Phildalphia Daily News called “Staying safe on the run” about the harassment and risk of assault women runners, including the article author, regularly face. She shares a recent story about being harassed while on a run and then highlights some of the women who have been in the news recently because they were abducted or assualted while running.

Ugh. As a runner, I have had men honk and whistle and make kissing noises at me, some have said sexually explicit comments, and two men followed me on two separate occasions, one by car and another on foot. As precautions against assault, I rarely run with music, I mix up my routes and the time of day I run so I don’t become predictable, I don’t run in the dark, and if I am running somewhere new, I usually run with my phone. Sometimes I wish I was a man because that would make being a runner so much easier.

Aside from my own experiences and those detailed in the Philly article, in the last few months I’ve reported on a female runner being attacked in New York, followed in Delaware, and murdered in Vancouver. I plan to address the particular issues that face women runners – and walkers and cyclists – in my book in a chapter that details ways women alter their lives because of actual or feared harassment.

Wouldn’t it be nice if men never harassed or assaulted women? Then we could run in peace and with peace of mind.

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I am harassed every day

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I am harassed every day, no matter what route I take to walk to work. I have been followed to my home by a crawling car, jeered at, spit at, and pretty much made to feel uncomfortable in the public realm. Its been this way for a few years and now I am just as confrontational back. I have learned that telling them to eat shit usually shuts them up.

– MK

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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