Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

It read: “There is a man following you. White shoes, blue jeans, grey t-shirt.”

By

When I was about 21-years-old, I was at the mall down the street from my college looking for a new pair of pants. I had spent probably a good half hour in the same store humming and hawing about what to buy when suddenly an older women runs up to me and sticks a piece of paper in my hand. She whispers, “Read this” before walking off.

Feeling like I was in a spy movie I opened the paper. It read:

“There is a man following you. White shoes, blue jeans, grey t-shirt.”

In shock I looked up immediately and frantically begin looking for the man. Sure enough, there was someone about 20 feet behind me…and when I made eye contact he hid behind a pillar.

I immediately grabbed my things and ran over to the area to confront the person but he was gone. Shaken up, I went to the security desk at the Mall, and told the two men working there what had happened.

They responded, “Yeah. It happens all the time/”

The complete apathy of the ‘security’ appalls me even to this day. And if it happens all the time…maybe something needs to be done about it?

Either way…I went home as quickly as I could, taking as many turns as possible to make sure I wasn’t being followed.

– JaguarGrin

Location: Oakville Place. Oakville Ontario, Canada

Share your street harassment story today and help raise awareness about the problem.
Find suggestions for what YOU can do about this human rights issue.

Share

Two new brochures and fliers you can use

By

Activists hand out fliers in San Francisco, CA

Need a handy brochure or flier to pass out or post about street harassment? Here are two!

1 – Gaz Black, a paramedic and self defense instructor who runs The Best Defense Program in Winnipeg, Canada, created a brochure about street harassment. He says he and his son hand it out to men while his daughters hand it out to women. You can download and print it and hand it out too!

2 – During International Anti-Street Harassment Week 2012, activists in San Francisco, California, organized by Sarah Harper, founder of VoiceTool Productions, handed out fliers during evening rush hour. The fliers detail what street harassment is and how to resist it so that people can learn more about identifying harassment behaviors and how to stop harassment in the moment. The flier is in English and Spanish – download and print copies and then you can pass them out too!

Sarah just let me know that the University of Georgia’s Women’s Studies Student Organization is addressing street harassment in Athens, Georgia, by handing out copies of the flier and will do so during the campus Take Back the Night on April 12 in Athens.

Share

International Day Against Victim-Blaming

By

Study after study shows that over 80 percent of women and girls have experienced street harassment, including 99 percent of women in Yemen, where women are usually covered in public places. Girls and women face street harassment while wearing all kinds of clothes: from school uniforms to business suits, from exercise clothes to winter coats, from swimming suits to party clothes.

It is clear that street harassment is not about what women/girls wear or where they go. Instead, street harassment is about disrespect, power and control, and bad manners.

Blaming people – asking what they were wearing or saying it’s because they’re “pretty” or “provocative” takes attention away from what’s really going on. It gives harassers a free pass.

Street harassment will never end until the victim-blaming ends. I am against victim-blaming.

Share

Teachers: Address street harassment

By

Editor’s Note: This is cross-posted with permission from Feminist Teacher.

The success of last week’s International Anti-Street Harassment Week was astonishing. Organized by leading anti-street harassment activist Holly Kearl, founder of the well-known blog Stop Street Harassment, the week featured the work of the most cutting-edge activists in the field, including dance performances by Sydnie Mosley and her Window Sex Project and a viral video featuring Joe Samalin and other male allies telling men to just stop harassing women in both English and Spanish.

Grace, Ileana, and Emma

As part of the week’s events, two of my students, Grace and Emma, and I spoke at the Meet Us On the Street rally in New York. Grace shared a portion of the testimony that she read to last year’s New York City Council hearing on street harassment and Emma, who is also a SPARK blogger against the sexualization of girls and women in the media, shared her own vision for safer streets and communities not just for herself but also for her own sister.

I spoke about the importance of engaging teachers in the global movement against street harassment as an education and health issue for schools.

But the work doesn’t stop there. It’s important to show students that activism needs to be consistent, and not done in a flavor-of-the-month style. That’s why last fall, students in my high school feminism course partnered with other students at our school to create their own anti-street harassment public service announcement (PSA).  Their goal: to educate their peers about the gravity of street harassment in their daily lives.

As part of the background work to create the video, I invited activists from Girls for Gender Equity, Hollaback!, The Line Campaign, Men Can Stop Rape, and Right Rides to talk to my students. Activist Shelby Knox also visited to talk about her film, The Education of Shelby Knox. Each of them shared their expertise, provided students with materials, and ultimately inspired them to create their PSA.

You can create your own PSA with your students too. Start, as I did, with educating your students about the issue by inviting activists to your classroom. Then have students envision a PSA that would be relevant and engaging for your school community. Screen the PSA at an upcoming assembly. Then join the revolution.  See above for inspiration.

Ileana Jiménez has been a leader in the field of social justice education for 15 years. A 2010-11 recipient of the Distinguished Fulbright Award in Teaching, her research in Mexico City focused on creating safe schools for Mexican LGBT youth. Currently a teacher at the Little Red School House & Elisabeth Irwin High School (LREI) in New York, she offers courses on feminism, LGBT literature, Toni Morrison, and memoir writing. In addition to teaching at LREI, Ileana is also an associate faculty member at Bard College’s Institute for Writing and Thinking.

Share