Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

You’re NOT Alone – Street Harassment PSA

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“I could be wearing a potato sack and I’d still be harassed,” says Ileana Jiménez, a faculty member at the Little Red School House & Elisabeth Irwin High School (LREI) in New York City, in a video PSA recently created by her high school students.

The PSA was made as part of a minimester at LREI that was focused on fighting back against street harassment using activism and media. LREI’s tradition of offering mimimesters allows faculty to offer short three-day courses on topics of their choosing. Throughout their three-day mimimester, students were visited by various street harassment activists, including leaders from Girls for Gender Equity and Hollaback! to learn more about the issue.

Jiménez, who is also a blogger at feministteacher.com, partnered with her colleague and media teacher, Stephen MacGillivray, to help the minimester students create this PSA, which she told me, was entirely directed and produced by students.

It’s wonderful to see a teacher addressing this issue in the classroom and providing students with the space and tools to explore the issue themselves. We need more teachers like Jiménez!

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16 Days of Activism: My name is NOT Light-Skinned

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Welcome to the third day of 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence. Here is the third name that women do NOT want to be called by men they do not know when they’re in public places. (All 16 names were submitted via Twitter or Facebook.)

Ending the social acceptability of men calling women these names takes us one step closer to creating a culture where gender violence doesn’t happen. Read more about the connection between gender violence and the inappropriate and demeaning names that men call women they don’t know.

Don’t let harassers off the hook: respond | report | share your story.

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Sexual Harassment in Tahrir: “Let’s keep the square safe for the women of the revolution”

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Street harassment and sexual assault are in full force at Tahrir Square in Egypt as tens of thousands of Egyptians rally and call for military rule to end before parliamentary elections are held. Here is a disturbing account of it, via Storyful.

“An increasing number of women have become victims of sexual harassment and assault at protests in Egypt over recent weeks. While some claim the attacks have been organised by the military and police to intimidate female protesters, others blame it on supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood. International female reporters have also been among those targeted, with French correspondent Caroline Sinz assaulted for 45 minutes in Tahrir Square by youths on November 24. One website has started mapping reports of sexual harassment around Cairo and is calling for women to step forward and tell their story.

The events of recent days, in which both activist and journalist Mona El-Tahawy and Sinz were sexually assaulted, have prompted women to speak out about endemic sexual harassment in Egypt….

On Thursday Sinz and her cameraman were reportedly mobbed by youths, as they walked down Mohammed Mahmoud street. They were dragged to Tahrir Square, where they were separated, and she was assaulted. Afterwards Sinz recalled: “Some people tried to help me but failed. I was lynched. It lasted three quarters of an hour before I was taken out. I thought I was going to die.”…

The feminist activist, journalist and blogger El-Tahawy claimed she was beaten and sexually assaulted by police officers on Thursday, after she was arrested on Tahrir Square. After her release she tweeted details of her assault on Twitter: @monaeltahawy 5 or 6 surrounded me, groped and prodded my breasts, grabbed my genital area and I lost count how many hands tried to get into my trousers.”

If you’re in Tahrir, this is for you:

@sallyzohney All females in #tahrir, pls share with me ANY harassment or assault, I am doing a report on this! very important!!

No matter where you are, here is an important article by @Rouelshimi about the current state of street harassment/sexual harassment in Tahrir Square and why this is NOT okay.  An excerpt:

“In Egypt, sexual harassment has been an issue for quite sometime. Women can’t walk down the street without being harassed whether verbally, physically or just by inappropriate looks….

So yes it has been a problem. Today though, was out of the ordinary; even for a huge Friday protest. More than one girl I’ve spoken to personally today has had horrible (and multiple) sexual harassment experiences. Not to mention the amount of complaints on twitter just from today. Personally, I had a very negative experience with harassment today with much groping and verbal abuse.

So this got me thinking; why today? The square is different this time around. There is much more tension in the air. Sadness over the lost and injured. Giving food and supplies became more of a business; even if there is still a big dependence on donations and sharing. Anger from SCAF’s brutality. All of this with hope and faith in a bright future.

So why today? Today, there was also a pro-scaf rally in Abbasiya square reported at about 15,000 people participating. There was also a ceasefire with the police, after the army built a concrete wall (oh the irony!) between the protesters and the police following 5 days of fighting and breaking of ceasefires from both sides. Today was also the day that had the most sexual harassment. It got so far that Media rights group Reporters Without Borders advised media outlets to stop sending female reporters to Tahrir Square, in light of continued reports of sexual violence against female reporters covering unrest in the square.

And why are there so many cases with this intensity today? Is it because of the amount of people there? Or maybe even army or police insiders in the square trying to make women uncomfortable? Is it because it was full of people who were not there for the protests, but are just going to Tahrir because its cool? I’m not sure. But something definitely was up and we need to fight it.

If women are being chased away from the square after terrible experiences, and if fathers and husbands start making their daughters and wives stop going, it weakens us. It weakens our revolution and our cause. Stand up for sexual harassment, whether you are male or female. Don’t let it go unnoticed. Whether you are male or female. Speak up to it, make a scene. Lets deal with this whether through street justice or organised awareness and policing. Let’s keep the square safe for the women of the revolution.”

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16 Days of Activism: My name is NOT Bitch

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It’s the second day of 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence and here is the second name that women do NOT want to be called by men they do not know when they’re in public places. (All 16 names were submitted via Twitter or Facebook.)

Ending the social acceptability of men calling women these names takes us one step closer to creating a culture where gender violence doesn’t happen. Read more about the connection between gender violence and the inappropriate and demeaning names that men call women they don’t know.

Don’t let harassers off the hook: respond | report | share your story.

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16 Days of Activism: My Name is NOT Sexy Lady

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It’s the first day of the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence and on this blog you can read one name a day that women do NOT want to be called by men they do not know when they’re in public places. All 16 names were submitted via Twitter or Facebook.

What’s the connection between a name and gender violence?

Well, men calling women they don’t know “legs,” “baby,” or “pussy,” is behavior at one end of the spectrum of gender violence, with rape and murder at the other end.

Gender violence occurs because women are disrespected, seen as less than men, and are dehumanized and sexually objectified. A sad consequence of this gender imbalance is that countless men harass, beat, rape, assault, and murder girls and women around the world: inside homes and huts, at schools and workplaces, and in war zones and public places.

One way to create and perpetuate disrespect for women is for men to call women they do not know inappropriate, sexualized, degrading, and humiliating names in public places. Instead of respectful titles like, “Ma’am,’ or “Miss,” or instead of simply not addressing strange women on the streets, period, women are called names that mark them as less than.

If we speak out and say, “Calling us these names is NOT okay,” then that takes us one step closer to changing a culture where gender violence happens.

Don’t let harassers off the hook: respond | report | share your story.

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