youth Archives | Stop Street Harassment

“The harassment by men hasn’t stopped since”

August 26, 2019 By Contributor

I was in a store, looking at a shelf when a man in his 40’s pressed himself up against my back and whispered in my ear that I was beautiful. He then rubbed past me as he went back to his wife who was his age. The same thing happened in the same place months after, despite me taking all those months in between to gain the confidence just to go back there at age 12. The harassment by men hasn’t stopped since.

– Anonymous

This post is part of a back-to-school series to highlight the young age that street harassment begins. The stories in this series were shared as part of our recent survey on street harassment and age and they entail people’s first experience of street harassment. The full list of stories is available here.

As you read the stories, note that among respondents, 70% said they were 13 years old or younger at the time of their first experience. 24% said they were 14 to 16 years old. The remaining 6% were older than 16.

Need support?
Call the toll-free National Street Harassment hotline: 855-897-5910

Let Us Walk! Stickers Against Street Harassment

May 25, 2016 By HKearl

This is an excerpt from the Art of Growing Leaders 2015-16 Highlights, shared with their permission:

“The Art of Growing Leaders [in Philadelphia, PA] introduces young people ages 10-14 to multi-cultural rites of passage traditions, and provides them with creative leadership skills to help them discover their strengths and bring them to their communities. In the culminating project, students embarked on one specific creative social action project to improve their school/community.

Young women from Camp Sojourner, Girls’ Leadership Camp participated in ArtWell’s The Art of Growing Leaders and created this public guerilla art project to speak out against street harassment. Students designed stickers and gave them out and spoke with hundreds of people on April 30 at the Sojourner Truth Walk in West Philly, sparking important conversations. One parent told us this topic was not appropriate for her child, as she was too young and had not experienced harassment, only to be corrected by her daughter who told her mother that she was no stranger to being harassed. This led to a dialog and new awareness between this mother and her daughter. We are proud of these young women in creating such a powerful,
straightforward, and important project.“

New Studies in the Philippines and Israel

March 8, 2016 By HKearl

The UK was not the only country to have a new study about street harassment released for International Women’s Day, statistics were released in the Philippines and Israel, too.

Philippines:

In February 2016, SWS surveyed people in barangays Payatas and Bagong Silangan in Quezon City regarding sexual harassment in public spaces.

Prevalence:

88% of women ages 18 to 24 experienced sexual harassment at least once.

1 in 7 of the surveyed women experienced sexual harassment at least once every week in the past year.

Types:

Across all ages, 12 to 55 and above, wolf whistling and catcalling were the most common forms. However, 34% of women experienced the “worst forms” of sexual harassment: flashing, public masturbation, and groping.

Perpetrators:

Seventy percent of women said they were harassed by a “complete stranger,” while others said it was by “someone they see around the neighborhood,” acquaintances, and “someone they are close to.”

3 out of 5 men surveyed confessed to committing a form of sexual harassment at least once in their lifetime, while 1 in 7 admitted to doing it at least daily over the past year.

When:

The majority of the incidents happen in broad daylight. Seventy percent of cases happen during the day, between 6 am and 6 pm, and only 4% of cases were reported occurring at night.

You can read more survey results and learn about the UN Women campaign underway in the city via this Rappler article.

Israel:

The organization NA’AMAT release a survey about youth and sexual harassment, the following is pulled from a Jerusalem Post article about it.

Prevalence:

68% of girls responded that they were harassed by a man they didn’t know on the street at least once, while 45% said this happened more than once.

Perpetrators:

47% of boys admitted that they had shouted out to a woman or girl that they didn’t know on the street and around 34% said they had done this more than once.

Attitudes:

“A little over a third of youth – both boys and girls – said that if a woman acts or dresses provocatively then she shares in the blame of sexual assault. Only 53% of youth felt that only the attacker was to blame in the case of sexual assault.”

#16Days of Activism: Creative Youth Projects (Day 14)

December 8, 2015 By HKearl

Nov. 25 – Dec. 10 are the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence. To commemorate the week, we are featuring 1 activism idea per day. This information is excerpted from my new book Stop Global Street Harassment: Growing Activism Around the World (Praeger 2015).

Whether it’s by making art or a video or organizing a march, youth from Azerbaijan to the United States are undertaking creative ways to address street harassment.

“What do you get when you annoy girls? They just think you are a bad person,” “You shouldn’t do it, bro,” and “Be a good man,” six teenage boys tell their peers in a mixture of Azerbaijani and English in a 2012 YouTube video. Jake Winn, an American youth development Peace Corps volunteer was in Azerbaijan, from 2010 to 2012 and had daily interaction with many young boys and men. He told me he noticed that “street harassment was a learned behavior and most were sincerely ignorant to the dangers and problems with street harassment.”

When he brought it up with them, there was little resistance to the idea that it needed to stop. It was just something they had never thought about. And for the boys and men who did think there was something wrong, he said, “they didn’t know how to bring it up, how to resist, how to convey a message to their peers that it wasn’t OK.”

After Winn showed the youth an American video of men telling other men to stop harassing women, the boys decided to make their own. “They wrote it, filmed it, edited it. … They loved making the video and were proud to show it,” Winn said. “Few had ever taken the time to think and reflect. It was great to see how inspired girls were to realize how many allies they had among the young men.”

To date, it has been viewed more than 6,000 times, and it received a standing ovation when it was shown at a youth film festival in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku. Winn also developed a lesson plan and discussion questions for other Peace Corps volunteers to use with their own students, and more than a dozen volunteers did so. The materials are available on the SSH website in both Azerbaijani and English.

2014 Hey Baby art in Tucson (Abril is two in from the left)

Hey Baby | Art Against Sexual Violence launched in Tucson, Arizona, through the Southern Arizona Center Against Sexual Assault in 2009. Inspired by an art-centric Hey Baby project in North Carolina, up to 50 students and 30 adults participate in the Tucson initiative each spring. Their artwork addresses themes of prevention and support for survivors of homophobia, street harassment, relationship abuse, rape, and child sexual abuse.

While the program is currently evolving, in the past, the art has been displayed in public libraries across Tucson during Sexual Assault Awareness Month and online. “I think it is important for youth to engage with troubling social issues in a context where they have control over the processes used to solve that problem,” the program’s manager (and SSH board member) Manuel Abril told me. “This means that instead of making youth [feel they] have to identify with social issues (social systems dispense blame for social problems affecting them onto marginalized communities) they are able to investigate it, to unravel it aesthetically, and to give it back to society.”

#16Days of Activism: Hosting Youth Workshops (Day 13)

December 7, 2015 By HKearl

Street harassment begins at a young age for many people. More adults are recognizing this and the importance of creating spaces, like workshops, for youth to talk about their experiences and brainstorm strategies of resistance. Youth workshops have taken place in countries like the United States, Cameroon, and Germany.

In March 2012 in the United States, female youth organizers at the Brooklyn, New York-based nonprofit Girls for Gender Equity (GGE) hosted “Bring Your Brother Day” to talk about street harassment. The young women of GGE “felt strongly about the importance of bringing the young men in their lives into their work to counteract sexual harassment and gender-based violence,” wrote community organizer Neferiti Martin and intern Katie Bowers for the SSH blog. “The workshop grew out of youth organizers’ concerns that the conversation around street harassment and gender-based violence is taking place primarily among women. By reaching out to the young men in their lives, youth organizers are working to build allies.”

The three-hour workshop explored gender stereotypes and how they impacted the lives of young people and included street harassment story sharing and a discussion about how young men can be allies to young women. “The young men were thoughtful, open, and engaged throughout the workshop,” wrote Martin and Bowers. “Their comments and opinions added new depth to the conversation and reflected the positive influence of the awesome young women in their lives.”

Wearing orange shirts that said “Stop Street Harassment,” 25 youth aged 15–19 attended a street harassment seminar in Buea, Cameroon, in December 2013 that was organized by Zoneziwoh M. Wondieh, the leader of Young Women for a Change, Cameroon (WFAC). In small groups, the youth shared their stories of harassment, ranging from whistling to grabbing and touching. “African baby,” “Fine ass,” “My size,” and “Pretty butts” were examples of verbal harassment the girls said they had faced. One boy shared how he had been sexually harassed by a man and how it made him understand better what his female peers experienced on a regular basis.

For six hours the youth listened to guest speakers, learned steps for dealing with harassers, and engaged in role-play and debates with the goal of being ready to mentor others and speak out against harassment in their community. As an outcome of the youth seminar, WFAC launched an SMS text campaign to send educational text messages about street harassment to anyone who wants to receive them on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. Wondieh posts tips and information over social media, too. She estimates that she has reached 1,000 youth through her various efforts, and she’s having an impact. For example, a young man recently told her that thanks to the information she shares, he has “reconsidered what he thinks is proper behavior toward women.”

In Germany, the women in the group ProChange recognize that the best place to start educating people about street harassment, sexual violence, and sexism is in schools, so in 2014, they created violence prevention and assertiveness workshop trainings for students ages 9–12 years old. So far, they have held one workshop and are working to secure more funding to be able to lead more. “We want to achieve a shift in their mindset so that the youth can be self-confident and free from role models and stereotypes,” they told me. “In our view it is important to start at an early age because they are already surrounded by stereotypes and influenced by sexist advertisements and media … [We want them] to be empowered to choose their own ways.”

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