Anti-Street Harassment Day wrap-up and what’s next

March 20th, the first annual International Anti-Street Harassment Day, was a success! Holly Kearl blogged with a wrap-up containing events and feedback. Check it out!

Kearl also shared some suggestions about what can be done DAILY to fight street harassment, even after March 20th.

In the moment:

1. Respond: If you feel safe enough to do so, assertively respond to the harassers calmly, firmly, and without insults or personal attacks to let them know that their actions are unwelcome, unacceptable, and wrong. Here is advice from Martha Langelan on dealing with drive-by harassers.
   1. If speaking feels too scary, you can also hand the harasser information about harassment. Here are some examples from Appetite for Equal Rights, Street Harassment Project, graduate student Sarah VanDenbergh, and Stop Street Harassment (Show Respect 1 | 2, Wait a Minute 1 | 2, Picking up Women 1 | 2).
2. Step In: Intervene when someone else is being harassed to help them out of the situation and let the harasser know that their actions are not condoned by others. Men engaging in this tactic can be particularly powerful since men (majority of street harassers) look to other men for approval. Check out this great bystander campaign from the University of New Hampshire.
3. Report to Employer: If the harassers work for an identifiable company, call or write the company to let them know that their employees are harassing people on the job and why that is unacceptable. (Here are three examples submitted to this blog about how women successfully did this. Even threatening to report harassers to their company can make a difference.)
4. Report to Police or Transit Workers: Take actions that will create real consequences for the harasser, such as reporting the person to a police officer or other person of authority, like a bus driver or subway employee. [Here is a statute in New York against serial acts of public lewdness and in Independence, MO, it's illegal for drivers to harass pedestrians or cyclists]
5. Report with your Phone: If you have a smart phone and are in the U.S., download the HollaBack phone app and report your street harasser and if you are in Egypt, use HarassMap to report harassers via SMS texting.

Before or after being harassed:

1. Share your Stories in Person: Talk about your street harassment experiences with family, friends, coworkers, and acquaintances. A lot of people don’t realize how often it happens and how upsetting it is. Maybe if more people knew, it would happen less.
2. Share your Stories Online: Post your street harassment story or tactic suggestions on a website or blog to raise awareness about the problem and/or to offer advice to others. Start your own regional anti-street harassment website.
3. Tweet your Stories: Tweet street harassment stories on Twitter. Add @catcalled #hbnyc or #streetharassment to your post and it will be added to @Catcalled, @ihollaback, or @StopStHarassmnt’s respective thread of harassment stories. Keep your own log of harassment experiences the way @streetharassmnt does.
4. Post Information Offline: Put up anti-street harassment fliers, posters or signs (click on link for street signs) or hand out anti-street harassment fliers. Here’s another example of a street harassment poster.
5. Write about It: Write and submit an article or op-ed about street harassment to a magazine or newspaper. An op-ed that journalist Elizabeth Mendez Berry wrote in the fall of 2010 led to the first ever city council hearing on street harassment in New York City!
6. Map It: Start mapping where you are harassed (google earth offers a free tool to do so with a tutorial) or contribute your story to someone who has a map to help visually show its volume. If there are patterns about where it occurs, then you can ask the police or a local business to help intervene in that area.
7. Mentor Boys and Girls: If you are in a position of mentoring (as a family member, teacher, or friend) educate boys not to speak with disrespect to women and empower girls to stand up for themselves and challenge disrespectful behavior.
8. Be a Male Ally: Men, we need you as allies! Read about how men can help stop street harassment. I also recommend reading Brian Martin’s “Men: Help stop public harassment,” Jackson Katz’s The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help, and Todd Denny’s Unexpected Allies: Men Who Stop Rape.
9. Support Orgs & Initiatives: Volunteer time or donate money to fund anti-street harassment organizations, workshops, or community projects.
10. Take Self Defense: Take and/or encourage others to take self defense classes so they feel more empowered to safely confront their harasser(s). [Where I live there a great organization called Defend Yourself holds an annual workshop about dealing with street harassers]
11. Read about It: Learn more about street harassment by reading books like Stop Street Harassment and Back Off! Here is a list of other books, articles, and reports. Share them with your friends and family members.
12. Creatively Raise Awareness: Use your talents to raise awareness about street harassment. Examples:

• Lucé Tomlin-Brenner’s stand-up comedy routine
• Liza Donnelly‘s, Barry Deutsch‘s, and Jerrod Koon‘s cartoons
• The Astronomical Kid‘s and Emily Swash‘s songs
• Suyin Looui’s video game (she created it for her master’s program and NYTimes reviewed it!)
• Fiona Lowenstein‘s and Bif Naked‘s poems
• Leah King’s one woman show “Can I get a smile?“
• Jagori’s art exhibition
• Atozinco’s slideshow
• à la garconnière – street harassment invoice
• Scary Godmother’s Bingo sheet

Read more of this blog, which also contains ideas about how to get involved on a grassroots level, here.

One Response

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