Street Harassment

Shit Men Say to Men Who Say Shit to Women on the Street

I think this video confirms my understanding of the concept "Street harassment" Problems without names tend to stay hidden and inadequately addressed. "Stop Street Harassment" uses street harassment to describe gender-based harassment in public spaces because it is the term most commonly used by academics and activists, but there is no universally used name or term for it like there is for “sexual assault” or “sexual harassment” at work or school. "Stop Street Harassment’s" definition of street harassment is:

Unwelcome words and actions by unknown persons in public places which are motivated by gender and invade a person’s physical and emotional space in a disrespectful, creepy, startling, scary, or insulting way. Street harassment occurs when one or more unfamiliar men accost one or more women in a public place, on one or more occasion, and intrude or attempt to intrude upon the woman’s attention in a manner that is unwelcome to the woman, with language or action that is explicitly or implicitly sexual. Such language includes, but is not limited to, references to male or female genitalia or to female body parts or to sexual activities, solicitation of sex, or reference by word or action to the target of the harassment as the object of sexual desire, or similar words that by their very utterance inflict injury or naturally tend to provoke violent resentment, even if the woman did not herself react with violence. 

Three categories of street harassment: 1) sexually explicit reference to a woman’s body or to sexual activities, 2) references to a woman’s gender or body that are not sexually explicit, or 3) staring, whistling. It some what proofs that street harassment happens a lot, rather its a good neighborhood or not, it will happen and people will see it and do something about it than again some people will try to be cool and go along with it.

 Street Harassment

From Yemen to California, more than 90 percent of women have faced public harassment. It's not a compliment, a minor annoyance, or a woman’s fault. It’s bullying behavior. And we can't just ignore it. Street harassment impacts most women at some point in their life. More than 80 percent of women in Egypt and Canada report street harassment. In Yemen, the figure is over 90 percent, even though most women are modestly dressed or veiled. In two of the only studies conducted in the United States, 100 percent of women in both Indianapolis and the California Bay Area said they had faced street harassment. While the prevalence of street harassment may be new to many men who read or hear about it, it’s not to women. For generations, grandmothers, mothers, aunts, and older sisters have shared tips and advice to girls to try to keep them safe from men: Don’t go out alone after dark. Memorize a fake phone number. Carry mace. Dress conservatively. Ignore them. But it’s time to go beyond that well-intention advice which makes women feel less safe and often doesn't work. Given how widespread street harassment is, those tips have the effect of limiting women’s access to public spaces. It keeps them on guard, off the streets, and dependent on men as escorts. No country has achieved equality and no country will until women can navigate public places without experiencing or fearing street harassment. In short, street harassment must end. The law has historically failed to take seriously numerous issues affecting women’s lives, and street harassment is no exception. Although several legal remedies could potentially be employed to combat street harassment, the current state of the legal system makes success highly unlikely. Judges, legislators, and other decision-makers—mostly male—have generally understood street harassment as a trivial occurrence and thus not within the proper scope of the law. In turn, even laws already on the books that prohibit intimidation and harassment are rarely interpreted to address the harms of street harassment experienced by women. We should stop this now, and take action.