Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

Tokyo subway gropers organize online

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I’m conducting research for a street harassment article and I’ve gotten totally sidetracked by a story that escaped my attention last September.

As I’ve noted before, men groping women on the Tokyo subway system is a huge problem. There are even women-only cars to try to combat it. Well, last September Tokyo stepped it up a notch to hold “Groping Prevention Week” because men were organizing online and plotting out the best places to grope women!

Via MSN:

“The growing problem of groping on public transit has been exacerbated by the internet, as Japanese authorities have reported there are over a hundred websites in Japan designed for gropers — to swap information on the best train lines and travel times to cop a feel, and exchange stories and images of sneaky squeezes.

Guilty gropers face a fine of $6,000 and up to six months in prison, but it is believed that thousands of women keep uninvited train touches quiet due to modesty.”

Via Newser:

“Some gropers, encouraged by the websites, have been organizing into gangs to surround a victim while accomplices block the view of fellow passengers. Police warn that convicted gropers face up to 6 months in prison and a $6,000 fine. The crackdown—described as “groping prevention week”—snared its first groper within minutes: a 30-year-old man charged with grabbing a 15-year-old girl.”

Via Japan Today. High school girls help raise awareness about groping on the subway.

Via Japan Today:

“The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department launched an anti-groping campaign on Monday, with some 200 people including high school girls handing out fliers and tissues at Ikebukuro station and plain-clothed officers being posted aboard trains on lines which run through Tokyo.

Police said that plain-clothed male and female officers trained in anti-pickpocketing and other crime-prevention measures would patrol carriages [and] they would beef up their uniformed presence at major stations nine lines…Police said the number of incidents is increasing, and there have already been nearly 1,000 reported cases of groping or photos being taken up skirts in the first half of this year.”

So gropers have figured out how to use the Internet and are using it to get organized? Hmm. It is a high tech country and look at Japanese games like RapeLay…I guess it was inevitable. Let’s hope the crackdown by police lasted longer than a week (can’t tell from my google searches) so more of these idiots are arrested and others are deterred.

And let’s hope that would-be-gropers in other countries don’t get any ideas about organizing. Although, maybe that would be better. If we found their sites and figured out their plots, it would make it easier to fight back and rally together protesters, police, and the media to shame and arrest them! Because that’s one of the worst things about street harassment (including groping), not knowing when or where it will happen and then being too shocked and paralyzed to do anything when it does. So please, harassers, if you’re going to grope, stalk, and harass us, at least let us know so we can be prepared to fight back.

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Take Action Against Subway Groping/Assault Video Game

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A few months ago I wrote about the Japanese video game RapeLay, which allows players to grope young women on subways and then allows players to escalate their actions to lots of raping. At that time, activists were successful in getting the game banned from the US Amazon.com and Ebay, but the game is still easily found elsewhere online, including, apparently, Japan’s Amazon.com.

Equality Now has a new call to action around this horrible video game.

“Japan has an obligation under Article 5(a) of CEDAW ‘to modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct of men and women, with a view to achieving the elimination of prejudices and customary and all other practices which are based on the idea of the inferiority or the superiority of either of the sexes or on stereotyped roles for men and women.’ In addition, Article 14 of the Japanese Constitution guarantees equality under the law and states that there shall be no ‘discrimination in political, economic or social relations because of race, creed, sex, social status or family origin.’ Computer games such as RapeLay condone gender-based discriminatory attitudes and stereotypes, which perpetuate violence against women. Rather than allowing them to flourish, the Japanese government should be taking effective measures to overcome these attitudes and practices, which hinder women’s equality.”

Visit Equality Now’s website for contact info and sample letters you can use:

“Please write to Illusion Software asking it to withdraw immediately from sale of all games, including RapeLay, which involve rape, stalking or other forms of sexual violence or which otherwise denigrate women. Suggest that corporations have a responsibility to consider, as good business practice, any negative impact their activities may have on society and the public interest. Please write a similar letter to Amazon Japan. Write also to the Japanese government officials below, calling on them to comply with Japan’s obligations under CEDAW and the Japanese Constitution to eliminate discrimination against women and particularly to ban the sale of computer games such as RapeLay, which normalize and promote sexual violence against women and girls.”

I’m going to write! I hate subway groping, I hate rape, I hate violence! And I hate video games that portray these horrible acts as something “fun” for players to do.

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Video Game Allows Subway Groping & Worse

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Perverts on public transportation get their way in a Japanese video game called RapeLay. Trigger warning… Leigh Alexander at Slate.com wrote the following about the game:

“The game begins with a man standing on a subway platform, stalking a girl in a blue sundress. On the platform, you can click “prayer” to summon a wind that lifts her skirt. She blushes. Once she’s on the train, the assault begins. Inside the subway car, you can use the mouse to grope your victim as you stand in a crowd of mute, translucent commuters. From here, your character corners his victim—in a station bathroom, or in a park with the help of male friends—and a series of interactive rape scenes begins.”

I see no point in making light of a crime most women fear and too many have experienced. I’m reminded of the real life rape of a young woman in New York at a subway station and the knowledge that much of the harassment girls and women experience is on public transportation (see various article on the Stop Street Harassment website), including in Japan.

A 2005 study in Tokyo found that 64 percent of young women in their 20s and 30s had been groped on trains, subways, or at transit stations, leading to the creation of more women-only cars. I don’t know if the high rate of groping in real life make the Japanese game more or less disturbing… 

The game has been banned from Amazon and Ebay and isn’t sold in any stores in the United States, but the Slate.com author found that it only took 30 seconds of Internet searching to find an illegal downloadable game.

[Note: During later research about harassment & assault on public transportation, I found out about Japan’s “Train Cafe” another gross form of entertainment that capitalizes on groping women.

“The cost to ride is 5,000 yen (~$42US). Once each hour, Train Cafe holds an ‘all aboard’ event, where the paying male members ‘board’ the train together with the girls and engage in simulated ‘chikan’ (groper) play. Each 20 minute ride allows gropers to grabs any girl’s behind or breasts. Upskirt grabs aren’t allowed and will result in a violation.”]

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Video Game Allows Subway Groping & Worse

By

Perverts on public transportation get their way in a Japanese video game called RapeLay. Trigger warning… Leigh Alexander at Slate.com wrote the following about the game:

“The game begins with a man standing on a subway platform, stalking a girl in a blue sundress. On the platform, you can click “prayer” to summon a wind that lifts her skirt. She blushes. Once she’s on the train, the assault begins. Inside the subway car, you can use the mouse to grope your victim as you stand in a crowd of mute, translucent commuters. From here, your character corners his victim—in a station bathroom, or in a park with the help of male friends—and a series of interactive rape scenes begins.”

I see no point in making light of a crime most women fear and too many have experienced. I’m reminded of the real life rape of a young woman in New York at a subway station and the knowledge that much of the harassment girls and women experience is on public transportation (see various article on the Stop Street Harassment website), including in Japan.

A 2005 study in Tokyo found that 64 percent of young women in their 20s and 30s had been groped on trains, subways, or at transit stations, leading to the creation of more women-only cars. I don’t know if the high rate of groping in real life make the Japanese game more or less disturbing… 

The game has been banned from Amazon and Ebay and isn’t sold in any stores in the United States, but the Slate.com author found that it only took 30 seconds of Internet searching to find an illegal downloadable game.

[Note: During later research about harassment & assault on public transportation, I found out about Japan’s “Train Cafe” another gross form of entertainment that capitalizes on groping women.

“The cost to ride is 5,000 yen (~$42US). Once each hour, Train Cafe holds an ‘all aboard’ event, where the paying male members ‘board’ the train together with the girls and engage in simulated ‘chikan’ (groper) play. Each 20 minute ride allows gropers to grabs any girl’s behind or breasts. Upskirt grabs aren’t allowed and will result in a violation.”]

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Anti-Groping Subway Campaign on Hold

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The wonderful ladies of HollaBackNYC wrote a great piece in the New York Daily News about the MTA’s anti-groping campaign going on hold apparently for fear of inadvertently encouraging more groping…

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

“Someone at the MTA seems worried about exposing the dirty underbelly of the city’s transportation network. They’d rather ignore it – and hope that it’ll go away. That’s a little like hoping the rats on the tracks will vanish if we avert our eyes every time they rear their beady little eyes.

Subway ads will work. First and most importantly, they will formalize the idea that subway groping is unacceptable. That will lead New York City women, like their Boston counterparts, to feel comfortable in calling out lewd pervs on their behavior. A likely rise in the number of incidents reported will be something to celebrate – because it’ll mean a rise in the number of men caught in the act.”

Definitely read the full article, it’s a good one and if you live in NYC, have ever visited NYC and taken the subway, or are just passionate about ending street harassment, write to the MTA and ask that they run the subway ad campaign.

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