Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

VOTE!

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L to R: Holly Kearl, Chai Shenoy, Council Member Muriel Bowser, Ben Merrion

If you’re in the USA, I hope you’re voting today (if you didn’t already by an absentee ballot or early voting)!!!! People have fought hard, starved, and died to ensure that more than just white men can have this right, so use it!

Here’s just one reason why I think it’s important to vote — because we need people in office who understand our issues and care about them and will act. A perfect example of this was when I joined a group of people organized by Collective Action for Safe Spaces to testify about sexual harassment on the Metro system in Washington, DC, earlier this year. The all male Metro leaders said sexual harassment wasn’t a problem. But the DC City Council chair was a woman, Muriel Bowser, and she said, “As a woman, I feel differently” and told them to do something!! And they did. Without her, the fight would have been much harder.

VOTE!!

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UCSB Student Groups Say, “Catcalling is not cute”

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Editor’s Note: Halloween in Isla Vista, the college town where UC Santa Barbara is located, is a huge party every year. Unfortunately, some people use this as an excuse to street harass and assault people. So this year, two student groups teamed up to organize a campaign against street harassment.

Students Stopping Rape and Men Against Rape teamed up together to start a conversation within our campus community; our topic was street harassment in our college town of Isla Vista (IV), specifically during Halloween. Our motivation began as we discussed IV culture and how often times street harassment is shrugged off as typical Isla Vista behavior. We all agreed there was something seriously wrong with that, and in spite of how often it happens, people should not make others feel sexually objectified, unsafe, and humiliated.

We set out to question our culture and prepared a campaign that showed students that sexual harassment is socially unacceptable. In our attempt to challenge our community, we decided to create a flyer campaign surrounding the Halloween season. The campaign used a simple design by putting an image of one or more women in costumes and short quotes such as “Catcalling is not cute,” “Sexual assault is a crime,” and “Consent is super.”

Our campaign focused on different aspects of sexual violence, but our flyers about street harassment and catcalling caught the most attention, as well as some criticism by the student population. Some people think that catcalling is not serious, adopting a sticks-and-stones mentality. We wanted to address more than one form of violence and show people that street harassment is sexual violence and part of rape culture. We are glad that our campus took notice and that the campaign began a conversation about an issue that is often unaddressed.

We believe that this is an important issue to address because this objectification only serves as a precursor to sexual assault, such as rape. To be clear, catcalling does not cause rape, and not everyone who harasses another person is likely to commit sexual assaults.  However, research shows that the small percentages of men who do commit sexual assaults believe that all men act the way they do and hold the same attitudes towards women. When men who do not rape participate in harassment behaviors, the few men who do rape are validated in their beliefs.  By creating this mentality culture of individuals being equated to only sexual objects, the likelihood of rape is greatly increased because of this dehumanization. Catcalling allows the severity and consequences of such terrible acts like rape, sexual assault, and lack of consent, to be lessened in the public eye.

This was our first campaign and we hope that we can continue to spark conversations and be proactive in challenging unsafe social norms and ultimately changing them. Our goal is to educate our campus community in effect changing mentalities and culture surrounding sexual violence.

This guest post was co-written by Liliana Salazar, a fourth year student at UCSB and coordinator for the Students Stopping Rape organization. While majoring in Sociology and Psychology she also works at the Women’s Center and the UCSB library.

It was also co-written by RJ Thomsen, a fourth year student at UCSB majoring in Sociology and Feminist Studies and coordinator for Men Against Rape. While not working in the Women’s Center this student is an active leader in UCSB’s queer community.

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“You’re a Dude, Talk to your Dudes”

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Yay, I love it when I can end the week on a positive note — watch Kamau tackle street harassment in a very funny way on his show “Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell”!

“The women of NYC are sick of being harassed on the street so Kamau tries something different—treating them with respect. Afterwards, Kamau provides tips for men who want to make a change.

Watch “Totally Biased” all new Thursdays at11:30 p.m. only on FX!”

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Five Suggestions for a Better SNL Skit about Street Harassment

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SNL street harassment skit“Yeah, that’s one clock I’d like to punch all night long.”

“She’s got my privates standing at attention.”

“Call Amtrak because I need two tickets to Booty City.”

During a skit on Saturday Night Live (SNL) this weekend, four constructions workers stood around their construction site, making offensive comments as women walked by, often equating them to food, such as an Arby’s sandwich or a Christmas dinner, or reducing them to body parts.

One of the “humorous” parts of the skit was when SNL guest host Daniel Craig’s character, who was new to the crew, said “weird” lines, like how the woman had “two big breasty squish rags” and that another woman was like a “bowl of butt soup with nipples.” The other men stared at him in disbelief each time he uttered his “catcall.”

Then the foreman enters the scene and says, “I’ve been getting complaints that you’re heckling women and that some of you are really bad at it.”

The men deny that’s what’s happening and the foreman starts harassing women too. When Craig says he bets the woman has a “big ol’ penis,” the foreman tells him he’s fired for being bad at street harassing women. Craig gets to explain himself however, and keep his job.

A flashback shows us his 8-year-old self visiting his dad, who was a construction worker. The dad harasses a woman and she turns around and shoots and kills him. So that is supposedly why Craig says weird things and everyone forgives him, welcomes him, and the skit ends.

It’s not a very good skit. Can you get more stereotypical than construction workers harassing women or the cliché harassment lines? And the ending makes no sense. Why does his experience explain his weird utterances? Wouldn’t he want to NOT harass women?

But the skit does do one thing well, even though I’m sure that wasn’t the intent of the writers. It illustrates how some men feel pressured into being harassers when they’re with their buddies; how it’s an activity they do together to bond, to impress each other, and to one-up each other. It illustrates how the activity was not about the women or what they wore, but about what the men said.

Why this skit is harmful:

I know it’s just a comedy skit, but comedy skits matter. They impact our culture, language, and even our views. As an advocate for street harassment, I’m concerned about the messages people probably took away after viewing this one, including:

* For men: If you want to fit in, you’ve got to do what other men do, including sexually harassing women. It’s okay to harass women as long as you don’t say “weird” things. Remember: you’re just supposed to say things that equate them to food and reduce them to body parts.

* For women: Walk swiftly past construction sites (if you have to walk past them at all) because you’re going to get harassed and there’s nothing you can do about it short of shooting them dead.

* For women and men: Don’t bother reporting offensive harassment to the construction company because the men in charge think it’s okay to harass women too.

I doubt very many people saw it and thought the men’s behavior was inappropriate and decided to become advocates to stop street harassment. I get that SNL isn’t about advocacy, but there are plenty of ways they could have had a FUNNY skit about street harassment that also wouldn’t contribute to its social acceptability.

Suggestion for SNL:
If you’re going to do a skit about street harassment, here are a few suggestions:

1. The construction worker harasser is over-used. Try using business executives. They harass while they walk to or from business meetings, lunches, and happy hours.

2. Let the women talk back! It’d be way funnier if ALL of the men looked foolish for what they said, so let the women verbally outsmart them in their response. Or let them take photos of the harassers and post them all over town and everywhere the harasser goes, they get laughed at and harassed.

3. Related, what if a group of men and women gathered nearby and started harassing the harassers back?

4. Have the mother or grandmother of one of the harassers walk by and start scolding the men for harassing women!

5. Have them harass an undercover female cop and then let her arrest them.

What are your ideas for a funny SNL skit about street harassment?

Share them in the comments and with SNL:

@nbcsnl | SNL on Facebook | Contact Form (select SNL in the drop-down menu)

 

[Note – ironically enough, the same day SNL decided to do a skit contributing to a culture in which street harassment impacts at least 80 percent of women, CNN.com, published a very good article about why street harassment is problematic and featured it on their homepage.]

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“Slow down, baby. What’s the rush? I’m just trying to get to know ya”

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Humor + anti-street harassment messaging = “Meat,” a creative video by SlamPow! Production:

“Cat calls and wolf whistles shouldn’t be a city girl’s soundtrack. “Meat” is a role reversing comedic short video that parodies raunchy and obscene street harassment experiences felt by women. Although this 3 minute skit is clearly an exaggeration, it speaks to the absurdity of vocalized objectification. Join the cause and share this video on your website or blog.”

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