Yemen Archives | Stop Street Harassment

Day 5: International Anti-Street Harassment Week

April 14, 2016 By HKearl

Hello Day 5!

Here are photos from the week | Here are the media hits

Watch the Google+ Hangout Panel with activists from Kenya, Romania and USA.

There was a #CASSchats twitter chat with Collective Action for Safe Spaces and Me=You: Sexual Violence Awareness (MYSVA).

Here are examples of the events that took place today:

Bahamas: Hollaback Bahamas held a “Chalk ‘n’ Chat”

Canada: Women in Cities International and Interviewer Noémie Bourbonnais and Sound Recorder Lucie Pagès did on-the-street interviews about street harassment and sidewalk chalking in Montreal.

4.14.16 WICI Montreal -Interviewee (left), Interviewer Noémie Bourbonnais (centre left), Sound Recorder Lucie Pagès (centre right), and Camerawoman Kathleen Ellis (right))

4.14.16 WICI Montreal - Interviewer Noémie Bourbonnais (right) discussing street harassment with an interviewee (left)

France: Chalking in Lyon, flyering in Toulouse

Nepal: Youth Advocacy Nepal (YAN) – in partnership with various like-minded social organizations – organized an interaction on “Harassment and violence towards women in public spaces and legal issues” at National women commission hall, Bhdardrakali.

4.14.16 -2Youth Advocacy Nepal (YAN) in partnership with others organized 'Harassment and violence towards women in public spaces and legal issues' 2

4.14.16 -3Youth Advocacy Nepal (YAN) in partnership with others organized 'Harassment and violence towards women in public spaces and legal issues'

4.14.16 Youth Advocacy Nepal (YAN) in partnership with others organized 'Harassment and violence towards women in public spaces and legal issues'

Yemen: To Be for Rights and Freedom will host an event in connection with an anti-street harassment campaign. At the event, NGOs will display relevant survey results, films, and share stories. [RESCHEDULED DUE TO FLOODING]

Iowa: End Street Harassment – Iowa City will host a support group for individuals who have experienced street harassment to share their experiences in a safe environment. Participants can create posters and other art projects for display to raise awareness and protest street harassment. Meet in Room E on the second floor of the downtown public library, 123 S. Linn Street. [6:30 – 8 p.m.]

New York: Brooklyn Movement Center will host an event at which participants will use improv and storytelling techniques to reimagine ways they would have responded to harassment, with time travel and community support on their side [6:30 – 8:30 p.m., Friends and Lovers, 641 Classon Ave, Brooklyn, NY]

Pennsylvania: Students at Temple University in Philadelphia put up posters around campus.

Virtual Efforts:

Afghanistan:

Street harassment prevents women and girls and their families from getting an education

“Harassing women is not entertainment. It is a crime.

4.10.16 Afghanistan - i have the right to go shopping without being harassed

Belgium:

Ecuador:

South Africa:

Showing cleavage without putting out equals cruelty to men?

February 16, 2012 By HKearl

Women should cover up their cleavage or else put out because otherwise, they’re being confusing and cruel to men. It’s their fault they make men lash out with leers and gropes if they don’t allow the men to “get with” them.

I wish I could report this idea was straight out of The Onion (fake news) but it’s not. It’s from a woman’s opinion-editorial.

Via Jezebel:

“Bettina Arndt argued in the Sydney Morning Herald that “everywhere you look, women are stepping out dressed provocatively, but bristling if the wrong man shows he enjoys the display.” (Remember, it’s summer down under.) Arndt writes:

[Men] are in a total state of confusion… Sensitive males are wary, not knowing where to look. Afraid of causing offense. And there are angry men, the beta males who lack the looks, the trappings of success to tick these women’s boxes. They know the goodies on display are not for them. These are the men most likely to behave badly, blatantly leering, grabbing and sneering. For them, the whole thing is a tease. They know it and resent it.

There’s nothing new about arguing that scantily-clad women drive helpless men to distraction — or worse. SlutWalkers and Talmudic scholars (among others) have made the case over and over that nothing a woman wears (or doesn’t wear) can cause a man to rape her, but their voices are often drowned out by those who ridiculously insist on outsourcing all male sexual self-control to women.

In Arndt’s case, she goes beyond merely holding women responsible for their own rapes. Her op-ed implies that women who don’t cover up are committing an act of cruelty against most men, most of the time. Arndt claims that a conventionally attractive woman who shows off her cleavage “is advertising her wares to the world, not just her target audience, and somehow men are expected to know when they are not on her page… But as we all know, many men are lousy at that stuff — the language totally escapes them.”

Wow, her op-ed is very insulting to men and makes them sound like full grown, spoiled brats who will lash out if they can’t have their way (and apparently their way is being with any woman who shows cleavage). She also assumes all men are heterosexual.

She also places fault for leering and groping with women! I’m so over victim-blaming.

People need to look at cultural norms and the manufacturing of sexy and whether or not a society has respect for women instead of blaming women.

In some indigenous cultures where women are topless or in places like Hawaii where women walk into grocery stores in bikinis, they do not face high rates of rape or oogling as a result, because that’s the norm. People are used to it.

Too often, the media sexualizes breasts and actively encourages people to oogle them as a way to get them (heterosexual men) to buy products. The media and a general disrespect for women also fosters the notion that men are entitled to look at women and are even entitled to touch them, and if women don’t like it, they’re the problem!

Meanwhile, there are countries where women are considered teases because of the cultural norm that they shouldn’t show their wrists or ankles in public. One cleric in Saudi Arabia even advocated for a hijab that only allowed women to show one eye because, he claimed, two eyes were too seductive.

Women wearing hijabs and long, modest dress are still groped and harassed in many countries – in Yemen, over 90 percent of women had been the target of street harassment, including groping. This doesn’t happen because they are showing skin but because women are so devalued and discriminated against that men think it’s okay to treat them that way.

So to reiterate – showing breasts is not a problem by itself. Especially when you consider how women with large breasts can wear tshirts and their breasts are still visible and they can wear tops that may give less busty women no cleavage but will give them cleavage. What are they supposed to wear? Burlap sacks? No. Breasts aren’t the problem, instead the problem is the way our society fosters the notion that men are entitled to look and touch and disrespect women’s wishes for being looked at or touched.

Interview with Yemen Safe Streets Campaign Founder

February 7, 2012 By HKearl

Ghaidaa al-Absi is an anti-street harassment activist from Yemen and she founded the Safe Streets Campaign. She identifies as a feminist and gender activist, and her passion is helping women. One of her projects has been to empower Yemeni women in new media. She also authored a booklet about stories of women revolutionaries who participated in the Current revolution.

Via e-mail she answered several questions about street harassment in Yemen and her campaign.

Stop Street Harassment (SSH): What inspired you to start the Safe Streets campaign?

Ghaidaa al-Absi (GA): Every day I walk in the streets, and every day I face sexual harassment. Unfortunately, it becomes daily life, and we women are forced to adapt to it either by being silent or yelling at the harassers. One day, something happened to me, and that made me found Safe Streets campaign. I am always facing harassment, but what happened in that day affected me.

After visiting my friend, I went back to my home. While I was walking in the street a man came to me from behind, and tried to touch me. I hit him with my bag, but I felt very depressed at that moment because he deserved more.

My friends and I talked about what happens to us in the street. I told myself to stop complaining, and to do something instead. So I proposed the campaign to Tacticaltech, and they funded it.

SSH: What does the campaign entail?

GA: There’s an electronic map where women have space to report what happened to them in the streets, and where happened. Through this map we aim to detect the hot spot streets, and to have some data, because this information will help us in the future for two main reasons. First, we are planning to extend the campaign and start cooperating with police officers to distribute more moral patrols in these hot spot areas. Second, this kind of information will show how this problem is serious, and then we can put a pressure on the decision makers to form a law to punish the harassers.

The campaign also hosted an exhibition of local artists work on the subject of street harassment and produced a video to bring attention to the issue.

SSH: What is your goal/s for the campaign? What do you think it can achieve?

GA: Actually we have two goals. First, we want women to speak out about what is happening to them in the streets instead of keeping this behind closed doors. Second, we want to mobilize people, decision makers, and police officers to form a law so the harasser can be punished.

SSH: How is the campaign being received by the general public?

GA: So far we are getting many interactions from people. Of course some people still deny that there is sexual harassment in the streets in Yemen and keep telling us there many important issues in Yemen we should care about instead. As you know this campaign was born during the Yemeni revolution, so all people are concerned about the political, economical issues in Yemen more than anything else. Thus, women’s rights issues are not a priority for some men and women. However, in the middle of this, there are many people interacting with the campaign. As you can see on the Facebook page there are more than 1600 likes, and the viewers of the movie of the campaign more than 3,000.

SSH: I know ATHAR Foundation undertook a street harassment survey and campaign in Yemen a few years ago, do you think it paved the way for people to be more willing to discuss street harassment?

GA: Athar foundation was the first NGO to talk about sexual harassment in the streets in Yemen. We appreciate the survey they have done, because they gave us a rate of sexual harassment, which is 90 percent of women are suffering from this serious problem. Because of their survey, we can bring people’s attention to this issue.

SSH: Do you have any advice you have for people who want to start their own campaign in their community?

GA: The first step is the hardest, and it takes a long time before you can go to the next step. Second, you might not find support or a response at the start of your campaign, especially if it is touching sensitive issues. Just Be Patient.

SSH: Anything else you would like to add?

GA: This campaign would never come to life without the help and the support of my husband Fathi Al-Dhafri. Personally I thank every one who worked for this campaign because they believed in the cause, and never waited to be paid. They are heroes and heroines.

SSH: Thank you!

Video: Street harassment in Yemen

January 9, 2012 By HKearl

One of the most common “arguments” I hear when it comes to street harassment is that it wouldn’t happen if women didn’t dress “a certain way.” When I give talks, I specifically point out studies that refute this, such as how in Yemen more than 90 percent of women experience street harassment, yet women are very modestly dressed, if not completely covered, when they are in public places.

Last year Ghaidaa Al Absi launched The Safe Streets campaign to address the problem of street harassment in Yemen and they just released a video about the issue.

It’s in Arabic and even if you don’t know the language, the opening powerfully shows how street harassment is not about what women wear. The video also brings up the complicated contexts for street harassment: sometimes a street harasser is a harassment victim too, but he is harassed for different reasons. Can pointing out the parallels of harassment to harassers help stop the cycle?

Al Absi sent me the following via email about the campaign and video:

“Safe Streets Campaign for anti-sexual harassment in the streets launches the opening ceremony of broadcasting a short movie called “Safe Streets” that is done as an activity for the campaign aims to reduce the rate of sexual harassment in the Yemeni streets.

The campaign aims to monitor cases of harassment and encourage community and women in particular to break the silence, and talk about what is happening to them on the streets in order to put pressure on decision makers to declare solutions of this serious social problem.

This short movie aims to present the problem of sexual harassment, that many Yemeni women are facing it in their daily life in the streets, and how the harasser of the woman can be a victim of harassment in the street too, so then he can understand how women feel.”

“Street harassment teaches women that they are prey and that it’s safer to stick with the herd.”

December 28, 2011 By HKearl

In Yemen more than 90 percent of women experience street harassment. Last year Ghaidaa Al Absi launched The Safe Streets campaign to address the problem. She created a website, using Ushahidi, to track street harassment in Yemen and recently she hosted an exhibition of local artists’ work on the topic. I’ll post an interview with her soon, in the meantime, view images from the exhibition. Here’s one of them. This image reminds me of something an attendee said during the Q&A at my talk last February at James Madison University. She said, “Street harassment teaches women that they are prey and that it’s safer to stick with the herd.” It’s sad but true how, because of street harassment and sexual violence, women often feel unsafe in public unless they are in a group. Even in Yemen, where women are very modestly dressed and veiled, they still face street harassment and are the prey with street harassers as the predators. Street harassment is not about what we wear or how we look, it’s about disrespect for women.