Holla Back TALK

Black Woman Walking

2008-09-24T16:49:00.007-04:00

We don't have a lot to say these days as we continue to balance our feelings about the importance of fighting street harassment - what we believe is a part of the spectrum of sexual violence - and dealing with the racism and classism so apparent in the work being done to combat unsolicited advances, particularly the homogeneity of the dialogue as it exists online.

Nevertheless, we wanted to post two items of note: a new street harassment survey is out, compiling information for a forthcoming book on the topic - go check it out! And take eight minutes for this amazing video by Tracey Rose. Hat tip to WhatAboutOurDaughters for the link.

source file here

Intentional silence

2008-08-27T07:56:00.000-04:00

We usually like it loud. People should be loud to be heard. These days, you have to smack someone over the head before they hear you. There is so much noise.

We're being intentionally silent right now. There are screaming thoughts in our minds that we can't quiet yet, but before we share them, we have to understand them ourselves. This includes understanding privilege, activism, and the union of the two. This includes understanding hierarchy and the way it, and related systems, impact the intersection of technology and activism as well.

It used to be that in times of despair, we would all honor a moment of silence. We don't despair, but we do think it's time for a period of quiet reflection. We may not have a lot of thoughts here in the near future, but stay tuned: some thoughts from one of us will soon show up in print elsewhere, and it may help folks in the anti-street harassment movement think more critically about their practice, action, and activism as they know it. We hope to push forward, even if it means scaling back here and at HollaBackBoston.

You Are What You Wear

2008-07-23T01:48:00.000-04:00

Sadly, Elle Magazine - which usually errs on the side of intelligent (well, despite its advertising revenue, but let's be real) - has crossed the line into contrived and offensive Glamour-dom.

A new feature with the magazine’s creative director, Joe Zee, features women lined up on the street accepting his critique on their clothing choices.

Thanks to Wendy at Glossed Over for her apt explanation that it is exactly this sort of media that reinforces street harassment. It also, no doubt, perpetuates the women-to-women "hating" that keeps us mired in decision-making about what we will wear walking out our doors rather than how we can help each other be more free.

And Elle, your shareholders might be telling you differently, but from those of us who actually read your magazine... Stick to the great journalism. Leave the misogyny for the others.

Nearing extinction?

2008-07-09T03:17:00.000-04:00

This week, we heard the news: catcalls nearing extinction. While we suspect our allies in DC (sites like DBS and Stop Street Harassment!) would disagree, we appreciate this type of media coverage.

In the article, it is stated the supervisors on construction sites have been battling the stereotypes against their workers - often by taking action if women complain. Women's social capital is also credited - both women who increasingly hold construction jobs, and women in general, who have gained more rights as the years have gone by. Now, their complaints are taken seriously, have more weight.

So it seems to go. Only once we've gained "credible" social status, our legitimate complaints are taken seriously by men in power. Only when one of their own is harassed - in this case, a construction worker's wife mentioned at the end of the article - do they pay attention. How often have you told a man about being harassed to be met with incredulous stares and disbelief? We'd love to believe street harassment is on the decline, but evidence from our walks of life tells us another story.

And, always a good place to find humorous (if not particularly PC) ways to holla back, via Overheard in NYC:

Black dude following girl: Hey man, check out that ass! Look at that ass! That's some fine ass. Look at that ass.
Black chick being followed: (into her phone) Hold on. (turns to man) Nigga, go away!

We object

2008-07-02T00:36:00.001-04:00

This week, a video about street harassment on New York cable channel news.
We'd have embedded it for you here, but their embed code is atrocious and breaks in Blogger.

Also, better late than never, we found this article about anti-rape arm bracelets.

Photo: 3arabawy/Flickr

Overheard

2008-06-25T08:00:00.000-04:00

(Guy sits next to perfect stranger {on the subway})
Guy: Are you dating someone?
Girl: No.
Guy: Can I have your number?
Girl: No.
Guy: Is it because I'm black?
Girl: Of course not.
Guy: Is it because you're a lesbian?

[source]

Also this week, Boston Rantida got holla'd at by some lewd ass cab driver. Please, folks. Warm weather ain't no excuse for your behavior, 'cause we sure as hell don't ask for it by existing.

And, this wildly offensive commercial suggests that any man who keeps his eyes on his wife and doesn't ogle unknown women deserves a treat. Thanks, asshat advertising execs at Klondike.

Notebook: Sexual harassment and an index

2008-06-18T08:16:00.002-04:00

Get it done, Ms. Couric. She has little ones too, you know.

We also dig this cartoon from indexed, via HollaBack CHICAGO.

Guys at the gym, a gat, and the North End

2008-06-13T16:15:00.000-04:00

We're late this week, though not for lack of news...for lack of words. Sometimes it can be hard to know what to say in face of all this madness in our world.

We either visit ladies-only gyms or not at all (just a personal choice), but we've heard stories about this before. Check out this video from Slate.com about being harassed at the gym. We're relieved the advice isn't "ignore it," at least not in total. Ignoring - nee ignorance - has never gotten us anywhere.

In our own city this week, police have learned more about the string of assaults in the North End. These sketches, released by the BPD, depict the potential attacker. Women are being encouraged not to walk alone, and the police are also offering free self-defense courses. We don't want to hate on efforts to keep us safe, but wouldn't the money be better spent on more fuzz out there working the streets so that we don't have to take this on ourselves? If we're going to live in a police state, it should at least work to our advantage once in a while.

And in what is also the most disturbing incident of street harassment to date, a woman was shot and killed after refusing to hand over her phone number to an unknown man. We see guys get aggressive about digits on the subway here in Boston, but murder? She didn't write for that.

Like we said, hard to find the words. But we keep having hope.

Hands up

2008-06-04T09:30:00.001-04:00

All kinds of cool is the newly launched Stop Street Harassment! resource website and companion blog. Submit your stories or practical solutions for fighting harassment.

Also out this week is another Guardian Comment Is Free article about street harassment. The lovely ladies at The F Word followed up with an excellent short piece that once again had women confessing their experiences in droves.

Is it just us or do people want to talk about their experiences and get a little validation?

Serials on and off the television

2008-05-28T20:40:00.001-04:00

Weird but happy news from Seattle this week: police may have finally apprehended the man connected with some twenty-plus gropings in the area over the past two years. Even if there is a second perp involved, all targeted women have been Asian (leading the fuzz to suspect a copycat perp is still at large). Despite how horrific we acknowledge these attacks to be, we are relieved that no one was sexually assaulted and that justice may be served for all of these women.

In HollaBackBoston news, we found this HBB-like art for sale this week. It isn't any of us - is it you?

Also, is it just us or is this T Mobile commercial oddly reminiscent of the lines we get for existing in public? "Maybe if you weren't so cute, you wouldn't get harassed." "Only the ugly girls think it's an insult." "You should be thankful for the attention."

We're glad our daddies had a better grasp on respect than this one.

The annals of catcalling

2008-05-21T11:00:00.001-04:00

Where to begin this week?

We were so pleased by the CNN article covering Holly Kearl's thesis research last week...and where did it go? Perhaps not surprisingly, Kearl had to go on the defensive as a sick amount of blogging men and women somehow found it difficult to believe that women don't like or want to be harassed. I guess we don't walk the same streets or live in the same imbalanced world as these hostile folks.

Whole lotta links, almost not worth visiting except to admire and add to Kearl's continuous defense of her work, and to view the occassional apologies that follow people's wack judgments of her:

a tricky link from the Word Warrior - but a good follow-up

WTF is MTV on?

hates street harassment/doesn't love HollaBackNYC

Texas hater who also appears to be a woman

the standard "but you'd like harassment from hot men" response

Holly calls out some wack assumptions

someone who's on it

run-of-the-mill angry male privilege

hating on the research (somehow forgetting Kearl's work was approved by her MA advisors)

a reasonable post

obligatory Feministing thread

a real idiot

a rad commentary (if a less enlightened comment section).

Ugh. All in all, we continue to applaud Holly for standing up for herself and her work. We shy away from large forums because the trolls make us tired and unhappy, so we have much respect for anyone who faces it head on.

Today's Miss Conduct's blog in the Boston Globe is one of the more insightful, balanced pieces that has shown up in the wake of CNN's report. At least someone in our city knows what's up. NPR also covered Boston's MBTA anti-harassment campaign, though with some curious omissions and a focus on the "grope patrol," plainclothes cops who ride dem trains and try to mitigate dangerous situations. But, they awkwardly note, "We're not looking to discourage guys from talking to women." Um, okay.

And last but not least, Salon.com Broadsheet writer Tracy Clark-Flory talks high tech street harassment in Saudi Arabia.

Keeping Boston safe

2008-05-14T18:40:00.001-04:00

It's pretty important to connect with our young folk when this kind of wack shit is happening in our world. That's why this past weekend, HollaBackBoston showed up to listen to the ladies at the Boston Public Schools' Anti-Violence Girls Conference. We have pics up on Flickr from the event and always love talking to young people about their strategies for staying safe.

We were also pleased to find, via the Boston Photo Mob on Flickr, a newly updated official policy from the MBTA regarding snapping photos in public (download the MBTA pdf here). We've previously mentioned the problems Boston transit has had getting their policies straight, even amongst themselves. This time, the MBTA has specified that non-commercial photography is perfectly acceptable, which pleases us greatly. But just in case the grossly underpaid MBTA employees didn't get the memo, the Photo Mob folks suggest keeping a copy of the policy with you at all times, just in case T officials get cranky in defense of what they've long been told. We do have to wonder: are we really supposed to tote more crap around in our overstuffed bags and satchels, just in case we get harassed? And didn't the MBTA just start encouraging us to take pictures of harassers? Regardless, we think this is a step in the right direction.

And, always excited about street harassment coverage on a national or international scale, we were thrilled to receive news that our ally Holly Kearl was interviewed for a CNN story, Catcalling: creepy or a compliment? For the article, Kearl stated, "For me, anyone who interrupts my personal space to objectify me or make me feel uncomfortable or threatened is harassing me." Echo, echo, echo, right over here.

This week in harassment

2008-05-07T00:00:00.000-04:00

Stuff we like this week:

The Speakout, which launched on International Women's Day (March 8), collects stories of street harassment from around the globe, as well as reports news about rape culture. We don't like street harassment; we do like allies and blogs that collect and spread important information.

We also dig this write-up from Restructure, which points to a recent UC Davis study about how men and women interpret direct and indirect messages about sexual intimacy. According to the study, men's faulty introspection is to blame, many of them assuming that women's indirect refusals ("I have to get up early" or "I'm seeing someone else") are just ways of conveying messages like "Let's speed this up" or "Don't tell my boyfriend."* These responses, what are often thought to be "polite" and "ladylike" in our culture, should instead be replaced with more direct messages, according to the research findings. But as the Restructure critique points out, "These studies that show men accept direct resistance messages 'easily and without negative reactions' should be investigated for more details." No joke. Even though we know and love some excellent men, we'd love to know a few more guys who hear us, whether we speak indirectly or otherwise.

Last but not least, we'll be hanging with some smart young ladies this weekend at the Boston Public Schools' Girls Conference. Looking forward to it!

*The study does not include research or data about men who hear/understand "no" and ignore it.

Ladies and the urban landscape

2008-04-30T01:21:00.000-04:00

Why the summertime misogyny, NY Times?

Last week, our friends in white people's big media ran a real gem inappropriately titled, "Pants May be Touted as the Coming Thing, but Women Seem to Prefer Dresses." What women? We wear skirts to stay cool in the summery breeze, but the unwanted attention we get often makes us chafe. But not according to this man's "fashion diary" (and of all the things to keep a diary about, can't we think of at least a few more deserving than fashion?).

That is because... I am not eager for women to become “a little more hard-core, a little more androgynous, a little more butch.” Yes, gender play is fun, and trousers are a useful wardrobe default for the woman in business. But unless you are Thomas McGuane and find nothing sexier than a woman with crow’s feet, tight Wranglers and suede chaps, you will have to concede that, for flattering a woman’s body, nothing is quite like a dress.

Gee, really? We were thinking confidence was the most flattering feature women could possess. Silly us. But wait, it gets worse.

Irwin Shaw covered all this is in his classic story “The Girls in Their Summer Dresses,” the tale that secured him a permanent place in anthologies if not exactly a perch on literary Olympus. And for all the creakiness of this warhorse about the fragile dynamics of love and desire, there remains in Shaw’s descriptions of the women on the streets of Manhattan, in their ripe young multitudes, something unexpectedly fresh and also recognizable.
Shaw wrote the story decades ago, in the era that directly preceded the feminist one that first killed off the dress, a time when women wore them all the time and not with irony. When, as Shaw wrote, “the warm weather comes” and the streets of the city were filled with women in shifts and shirtwaists and tunics and baby-dolls and sheaths, arms and legs bared, the effect they had on the urban landscape was a glorious thing.

We can't decide which is worse: that this passes for actual news, or that it doesn't seem to occur to the male writer how blatantly offensive his assumptions are to a wide variety of people, far beyond women alone. Who the fuck cares about anthologized Irwin Shaw? That old white people high-brow lit shit doesn't apply to us. Feminism had an era?? That killed fashion?? And really, women in shifts had a glorious effect on the urban landscape? We were pretty sure graffiti and architecture were first in line for those honors. Holy hell.

Interviewed for the story, some shopping lady in NYC was quoted as saying that a dress is her "anti-mommy-blob outfit.” Now a mama is a blob by default? Dear lord, ours sure ain't.

This whole depressing piece ends with some man reminiscing about a woman he saw weeks ago in a white dress (the archetypal virginal uniform). Funny - we can't get the creeps who leer at us out of our minds either!

I guess next time you consider wearing pants, maybe you should first consider, "Shit, the urban landscape needs my legs!" Or you'll remember Guy Trebay reminding us what clothing we apparently belong in.

For a more enlightened take on summertime in public space, go read Adventures in Street Harassment from this week's Shameless Magazine blog.

Rubbed the Wrong Way

2008-04-23T01:17:00.000-04:00

“This campaign is groundbreaking. The MBTA is taking bold steps to address this problem,” said Gina Scaramella, Executive Director, Boston Area Rape Crisis Center, who joined MBTA General Manager Daniel Grabauskas and Acting Transit Police Chief Paul MacMillan in launching a public service campaign designed to increase awareness of sexual harassment on trains and buses, and encourage victims to report such incidents.

[link to full story]

What's groundbreaking? Authorities - as opposed to pissed off, fed up women who take to blogs - doing something after much too long and validating the existence of these gross public actions we know so well? Because it's surely not groundbreaking that it takes multi-faceted approaches to increase awareness of harassment in public space.

Let's back up. We're trying not to hate. But the truth is we were a bit taken aback by the latest efforts of the T, and more importantly, BARCC for that matter.

Infighting and competition amongst allied groups (or at least those working in the same general interest) is divisive and we agree, generally rather annoying. But it's also fracturing to not give credit or promote inclusiveness where they are due. If we seek to provide coalitional approaches to widespread systemic problems, then shouldn't we be acting as a unified coalition? And perhaps even more complex to understand, do we fail each other if we point out schismatic power plays within activist and progressive circles? Or have we all already failed by reaching a point where these conversations are necessary?

Maybe we're caught in - or in this case, ignored and left out of - a disease we call "femelebrity." It includes women who work as a sort of "professional feminist." They often are: white (much like we are), hold a collegiate degree or two (like we do), and get paid to speak and write about their representation of a feminist agenda. Don't misunderstand. We too have done these things - showing up at conferences or writing articles in response to our sought out "expertise" - but it isn't our sole means of income, and we don't aim to make bank from fighting social injustice.

Everyone has to pay the bills, and we know and respect this as much as anyone. Yet what we fear is a feminist critique that lacks a capitalist critique. Ultimately, when our livelihoods are at stake, we might employ methods not normally in line with our values. And that's the benefit of the doubt we are giving BARCC. But we couldn't let the occasion pass without wondering if HollaBackBoston, and more generally the HollaBack movement, were left out of Boston's most recent anti-harassment efforts by way of being perceived as fringe, radical, or too grassroots. We struggled to overlook the numerous historical instances in which the mainstream has co-opted efforts of those unattractive "perpetrators" without giving credit.

Yet we know critique is best offered when coupled with alternatives, so we'd like to contribute some imaginings for how things could have gone differently. Perhaps the MBTA design shop could have checked with HollaBackNYC - the grandmother - about whether the language "use your camera to snap a picture" is trademarked. Maybe BARCC could have worked in some statements about the grassroots and largely anonymous work women of this city - including young people from Hyde Square Task Force - have had to do in the absence of movement from the T. Or by chance somebody could have just sent an email to us with a heads up that this was going down. You know, making a seat at the table for those who have gone before you.

Basically, we just hope that as individuals who will no doubt make mistakes in our movement, we can be more generous in honoring those who have come and struggled before us. That we will share what is given to us - the good and the bad - knowing that the successes are more beautiful and the pitfalls more easy to bear when shared among many. That we will disavow a culture that tells us to only go for ourselves and instead build one that builds community - across issues and organizations and in the face of fame and fortune.

We know we're going to try to remember this next time somebody comes knocking on our door.

Good news is...seems the campaign is already working.

From a male view

2008-04-16T00:01:00.001-04:00

Big shout-out to men getting it done. This week, Robert at Larvatus Prodeo wrote an excellent, concise piece about being in public with his girlfriend.

My girlfriend startles quite easily in some contexts. But she’s had far too much practice at this - she expertly feigns nonchalance and stares laser beams directly down the footpath. I, less trained in such encounters, turn around to identify the source of the noise; a human voice, though the actual words are impossible to make out. The tone is unmistakable, though; it’s the tone of contempt, mixed in with a not insubstantial level of implied threat. And it’s coming from the open window of a car driving past, with the three other burly young blokes smiling as their hero yells at us.

We wonder if he knows the good ladies of Hollaback Australia, who sure know how to get it done with feisty style. Regardless of similar country of origin or otherwise, we love to hear men's take on street harassment. We prioritize the voices and experiences of women and marginalized groups, but because we firmly believe educated, informed, conscientious men are a key component to ending violence against women, we send Robert (and anyone else doing similar work) some love this week. Keep it coming from far and wide, allies.

Also worth watching for the first minute is this Current.com clip about a Dutch student in trouble for flashing the Taj Mahal on a school trip. We get the cultural and social significance, but why can't a guy flashing us the subway get this kind of coverage? That's pretty fucking violating, too.

Everyday feminism

2008-04-09T11:30:00.000-04:00

In increasingly warm weather, it never surprises us when harassment narratives loom large. Two worth noting from the last two weeks:

One, from The London Projects, half joking but somewhat serious, asks: how should I be responding to harassment? What's the most grammatically correct, appropriate response?

And, perhaps predictably, another long thread started up on Feministing about men masturbating in public. We believe harassment and sexual violation live on the same spectrum, so while we always enjoy conversations that validate women's experiences and simultaneously raise awareness for an issue, we grow quickly tired of debates about how to define the difference between catcalls and assault. We hope these kinds of spaces will inspire more women to speak out, but we're wary of arguing online about legal definitions and the like. That sort of "discussion" has never done us any good...yet not surprisingly, standing up for ourselves in real time has.

Short skirt, long jacket

2008-03-26T22:15:00.001-04:00

Lots of holla action in the news this week. No introductions, we're jumping right in with highlights.

First off, we're big fans of Female and Breathing, who documents her every unfortunate run-in with unwanted male attention. We hope blogging brings her solace and doesn't make her ultimately head the way of Don't Be Silent DC, who found this kind of work too overwhelming to regularly blog about. That sentiment resonates with us, which is why we limit ourselves to posting once a week here (though we post on HollaBackBoston as we receive submissions).

Always excited about radical feminist art, we're thrilled by 52 Acts, created by one of HollaBack Australia's two moderators. One cyberfeminist project per week, the site this week (Act 12) features a project of reverse gaze using famous art. She says, "I love that these women, whose sole purpose in existence has been to be viewed, have now become the viewers," and we love it too.

In the news a few weeks back, we were ridiculously disturbed to read about an off-duty Northwest Airlines employee who assaulted a woman on a commercial flight. But despite ejaculating on a sleeping female passenger mid-flight, the suspended equipment service employee may only serve six months in jail or pay a fine. The appalled airline officials who were interviewed for the article said they'd never heard of such a thing. Funny - we hear about it all the time. Guess when the threat isn't directed at you, it's easier to ignore.

In more positive news, South African women recently marched for their right to wear short skirts without being preyed upon or assaulted. Take to the streets to keep them safe, we say.

Last but not least, we enjoyed several personal musings on harassment this week, ranging from safety while walking to race and harassment politics to cultural norms and catcalls while living abroad.

Busy weeks as springtime approaches. Stay hot and safe as springtime weather brings skirts, whistles, and more of the same. Let's hope for a future where less of the same exists.

Jack in public

2008-03-19T20:30:00.001-04:00

While the always unfortunate but sadly predictable usual crap has been going down on local college campuses here in Boston, we want to also draw attention to a story from about a month back.

Over at Tufts University in our neighboring town of Somerville,
complains have been made about a man who has been habitually masturbating in the school's library. The Tufts Daily quotes a reference librarian, who said: "The Tufts police talked to the man and determined that he did not know that his behavior was offensive. They thought that he might have a medical condition. They asked him to leave the building and find another place because there had been a complaint."

While some local media think this kind of thing is funny, we wonder what's going on in Boston libraries. Aren't rooms full of free books safe for anyone? And is a "medical condition" - what we'll assume is the traditional, ridiculously biased assumption that unkempt masturbating men are all schizophrenic and homeless - an excuse for jerking it in public? Since when does anyone not know that's improper? And we let him leave with a "there's been a complaint?" Maybe if the police handling the situation were better educated about how scary that situation can be for women, we'd have a different world where things were handled with respect for all. But we digress for this week.

Advertising harassment

2008-03-12T14:00:00.001-04:00

To follow up our distaste of Arby's new set of ads from last week, NOLA radfem commented that she too was fed up with gross sexual innuendo commercials (though she posted her analysis way before ours - we're just following up on our own oversight, in other words). Holiday Inn Express has a whole new set of strange, awkward commercials depicting men harassing women at "the new hot bar in town" - known as the continental breakfast bar. Not only do we find this deeply offensive - it's fucking stupid. We've shown this distasteful crap before - and we'll keep right on doing it - but we aren't going to pretend we know how to solve the pervasiveness of our culture's acceptance of sexual harassment and assault. Read NOLA radfem's post - she throughly and effectively echoes all of our thoughts.

The social stratification of harassment

2008-03-05T14:15:00.000-05:00

Even celebrities gotta deal with hollas, as seen in this video via sorta nasty celeb site TMZ.

And now, courtesy of Playboy (surprise), any woman can be harassed without a male ever having to "actively" bother her. Just walk over this mirrored ground ad in a skirt and voila!

We find the CockShadows blog to be particularly disturbing, a form of strangely subversive online harassment, in our opinion. While we're all for subversive tactics, this just seems lewd and in incredibly poor taste. Public space is phallic enough as it is. We need to further highlight this aspect of patriarchy? Most of know this already.

And last but not least, we HATE the latest Arby's commercial. Whoever made this missed the memo: there is nothing amusing or clever about harassment.

You Are Not Alone

2008-02-27T09:30:00.000-05:00

Unfortunately, Don't Be Silent announced last Friday that she will no longer be posting to her blog. We wanted to be among the bunch who wish her well and say thanks for her combined efforts to use the blogosphere to call attention to the disturbing and rampant life of street harassment in our cities.

She writes,

I'm going to step back into the background. Like someone told me, there are
quieter and less dangerous ways of trying to change the world, and that's what I
want to do.

DBS, we hope you find the background actually the foreground. It's been a pleasure sharing this space with you and your analysis for while.

Be safe. All the best -

HollaBackBoston

Safe (public) spaces

2008-02-20T16:18:00.000-05:00

A couple of weeks ago on the Nation blog, Feministing.com founder Jessica Valenti tackled the issue of women-only spaces (as she did previously for The Guardian), wondering about the effectiveness of the recently-instituted segregated public transit in Mexico City. Unfortunately, Valenti doesn't say anything particularly insightful or new as she directly quotes paragraphs from her Guardian article and states:

I'm pro-breathing space, but I have larger concerns as well. What happens when a woman is groped - or worse - in a train car that isn't women-only? Will she be blamed for not taking advantage of the "safe" space provided? (After all, women are all too used to being blamed when it comes to assault, questioned as to why they were out on their own/wearing a short skirt/drinking.)

We applaud Valenti's attempt to shine light on this issue, but isn't this all a little redundant by now? We're pretty sure Nation readers know about the most obvious forms of victim-blaming, and this blog post does nothing to move debate forward. Even though women can sound like they're victim-blaming by advocating for self-defense tactics as a primary weapon against unwanted harassment (or worse) in public, we like this post by Taking Care of Ourselves, who advocates for learning to fight off attackers in addition to "good lighting, regular police patrols, and a societal decision to take such attacks more seriously." At least alternatives to rhetoric can provoke discussion.

However, towns in Massachusetts are considering their own type of segregation after a the rape of a six year old in a public library in New Bedford last month. Trying to find ways to enforce laws that keep everyone safe in public spaces, New Bedford mayor (and a former prosecutor) Scott Lang suggested that everyone present ID before entering the library. "If it means the inconvenience of swiping an ID or using a guest pass to let people in," he said, "it’s a small price to pay to let people know they’re completely safe."

We're not sure penalizing those without picture ID or library cards is a solution in the fight against sexual predators, so we like the counter argument made by the New England School of Law professor, David M. Siegel:

"Excluding people from so many places and certain places could violate their fundamental rights. The idea of identifying some public spaces as off-limits to people who are registered sex offenders because there are children in them, like libraries, is potentially unlimited."

It's the same problem we face when trying to find solutions to street harassment. While we obviously realize the important and glaring differences between catcalls and the violent sexual assault of a minor, we do believe these incidents live on the same spectrum, that violence exists in relation to its own variants and that harassment is part of sometimes-violent oppression. But how far do we have to go legally to keep ourselves - all of us - safe? Enforced limits on shared space have never made a difference - "separate but equal" has never been equalizing - and yet we don't wish to live our lives in fear. Addressing the underlying social diseases that make these symptoms visible often seems like our only choice to effectively move forward.

The fight to speak the truth

2008-02-06T13:37:00.000-05:00

The Gotham Gazette has a really nice long article about street harassment in this month's issue. Aubrey Fox does a solid job of tackling the issue from all sides, interviewing street harassment scholar Laura Beth Nielsen, whose study on the issue was explained well:

"In a rare attempt to quantify the frequency of street harassment, Nielsen interviewed 100 subjects (including some men) in the Bay Area. Fully 62 percent of the women reported experiencing offensive or sexually suggestive comments 'every day' or 'often.' An additional 28 percent said they heard comments 'sometimes.' Only 10 percent of the women she interviewed said that they 'never' heard comments."

Nielsen's research also shines an interesting light on how different social groups respond to street harassment and the idea of implementing laws to change the current climate of public space.

"Nielsen herself has a nuanced view of government intervention of sexist speech. In her interviews, she found little support for an expanded government role, even among men and women who believed strongly that sexist speech is offensive and morally wrong. White men tended to cite the First Amendment to support their position, but white women and people of color used a much more pragmatic calculus. In essence, they believed that policing sexist speech would either not work or would backfire on its intended beneficiaries. In other words, women doubt that government is the answer to the problem of sexist speech. Nielsen, though, believes that changes in law would have an 'important symbolic effect.' New laws, she said, would help women make the case that harassment 'doesn't just suck, but is illegal.'"

And as a totally unrelated aside, we also recommend two posts this week that totally break it down, this one on The Burning Times about a personal history of street harassment. The author's well-stated point is that men forget about the harassment they have initiated, carried out, and thought was simply a joke. Women never forget. It continues to haunt us daily. How inconvenient.

NOLA radfem follows it up nicely:

Living while female means being in a state of constant alertness that burns up lots of emotional, spiritual, and physical energy before you even begin to gather your strength to compete with men at school and at work. It also means that the men around you are oddly oblivious to the fact that you live and function inside a war zone, while they function in the mythological great American meritocracy.

Beautiful testaments, ladies. Speak the truth. Get it done.

Global safety

2008-01-30T13:08:00.000-05:00

This week, Mexico City rolled out women's-only buses, responding to complaints of harassment and groping from women's groups, which now compliment the city's already-in-place segregated subway cars. The new buses have pink cards in the windshield to ward off the men, and more routes will be added over the coming months. The city reports letters of gratitude from women all over town, despite some grumbling from male riders. Other countries have had separate public transit for years, including India and Japan.
Thanks for the tip, Luke.

Also this week, travel website Brave New Traveler had an informative story about women's safety abroad, prompted by this story about mob groping in the Hindustan Times. Writer Emily Hansen discusses how women have to gauge whether strange men are harmless or potential threats, and she distinguishes between fight or flight responses to harassment and violence, naming both as personally and situationally appropriate. Traveling isn't necessarily more dangerous than anything else women do alone, but being in unknown areas can change the dynamics of how we handle threat. Hansen states:

Women everywhere are victims and at the same time catalysts for change. Men can also be helpful in eradicating the violence, by supporting women in their struggle to be free.

She also recommends that female travelers use their cameras to fight back, to document harassers, because silence isn't a weapon.

When we put a lens in front of someone’s face and call harassment a crime, we are putting a name to the problem of female abuse everywhere, and bringing it out in the open where it can be mediated.

On all of these points, we couldn't agree more.

Public displays

2008-01-23T09:35:00.000-05:00

Meet ladycoy - a female decoy - who hangs out at night in Cambridge with a secret camera in her glasses. Just because she's standing there, this paper mache mannequin is defiled in numerous gendered ways, including being groped and simultaneously photographed by men (though women stand by and laugh at the chauvinist "fun") and being called a "slut." Informative local project by a feminist male.

{via}

Men who stare

2008-01-17T13:30:00.000-05:00

We really like it when attention in the media is given to the pervasiveness of street harassment. And while we don't discourage public conversation about the issue, we wonder about the true effectiveness our message.

Consider the article, Men who stare, that appeared Friday in the Guardian. While we applaud Abby O'Reilly for writing the piece and starting her own new blog on the topic (don't look don't touch), we're a little miffed about how these stories keep being rewritten, asking the same questions again and again, providing no solution and inadvertently encouraging further cyclical flaming in comment sections (which is not necessarily the fault of the authors). While explaining her own background with gendered harassment, O'Reilly asks the standard questions: is this a symptom of patriarchal culture? is it threatening if it's funny? how do you fight back and remain safe? are men victims too? And while O'Reilly is a clear writer who highlights very important points, I wish every article on the topic didn't end so similarly:

But will public humiliation and shaming help to eradicate this problem? Or do we need to take a grassroots approach, providing greater education at school level to permanently remove the need to grab, grope and leer from the male psyche? Can we help initiate change, or is that something confined to the male realm? Whatever the case, all I can say with certainty is that the next time I'm followed on the tube or accosted in the street by a random man I'll make sure my distaste is well and truly registered.

It can be hard to list action steps without seeming to blame the victim or recommend what may be inappropriate in some situations. Women are often accused of attacking one another, and offering suggestions to some may offend others. But I wish by now, with street harassment being covered in the news now for quite some time, we could speak more proactively about how to protect ourselves, as well as educate men and equalize public space.

The problem is that no matter what women write, they will be criticized for explaining their experiences, often with the mocking responses of "that's your issue, not mine." O'Reilly followed up on her blog, and her post is refreshingly honest. She discusses how unsettling the comments on her article made her feel, and she lays out her points in more detail in with more clarity than is sometimes forced by a news article or opinion piece.

Ultimately, one of the things to be appreciated about the article is O'Reilly's distinction between harassment and pitiful men everywhere. While we're not ones to let folks off the hook simply because "they don't know better," we also encourage women to talk about what feels legitimately threatening and what doesn't, and then be ready to respond accordingly, including action steps to holla back and keep themselves safe in threatening situations. And while some of her writing frustrates us, that doesn't mean we don't agree with or fully support O'Reilly's aim. Every woman who speaks her truth is one less silent victim.

Allies everywhere

2008-01-09T02:23:00.000-05:00

A lot of folks - us included - work towards similar missions, sometimes without knowing it. MobileActive.org encourages the tracking and reporting of human rights violations with cell phones. We're either supporting their message or they're supporting ours, and either way, we'll take allies however they come.

Outside the pseudo-official HollaBack web, Don't Be Silent has taken up the cause in Washington D.C. after HollaBackDC became a splog (spam blog - in other words, save yourself time by not looking for it). Adding a personal touch, DBS has also started a group for women and allies to meet in person to talk about how to best handle street harassment in their city.

In London, another anti-street harassment blog was just established out of a personal desire for such a forum. Abby O'Reilly, who is also a blogger for The F-Word, started writing at don't look don't touch after a disturbing incident on the London Underground left her shaken long after the fact. After writing about the incident on The F-Word and hearing from other women all over the country and world, Abby realized that these incidents are part of a pattern of regular threat and violence against women - a real moment of clarity more and more women have as these conversations develop and grow.

We even started a tiny Flickr group where people can link to photos taken in public of harassers - and we even have one contributor from Michigan so far! Who says there aren't various allied ways to holla back?

Roaches should die. You should shut up.

2008-01-02T17:50:00.000-05:00

Dear Moron at Duane Reade,

Earlier this evening, I spotted a roach in my apartment. The brazen bastard walked around like he owned the place, ignoring me even as I picked up my shoe and prepared to crush him. Well, he's gone, but of course roaches have friends, so it was on. My wife hates bugs, and her problems become my problems. She's out of town, allowing me to take swift action without her needing to know about the roach I hunted and killed. I headed out to Duane Reade to purchase roach poison, the kind the bastards carry back to their nests, thereby serving as my tools of destruction.

Poison in hand, I saw with disappointment a long line facing the register, at which a manager was helping a cashier with some sort of problem. Good news for the roaches, whose death was briefly delayed. Moments later, you too discovered the long line. Unlike the rest of us, who suffered our disappointment silently, you loudly asked (of whom I cannot say) for permission to cut the line. It turns out this isn't Mayberry, and a woman near the front of the line replied.

"No," she said.

You then tried to hit on her in a ham-fisted fashion, asking if that was her "real hair." Eventually you moseyed to the back of the line, which had lengthened during your pathetic attempt at courtship. (By the way, your focus on hair was especially amusing considering your long blond hair, two-day beard, and blazer. You were sporting the "Kid Rock at the country club" look.)

Then our troubles began. You commenced a barrage of annoying comments directed at the "No" woman, suggesting at one point that you would gladly be "a piece of trash crushed by [her] boot." This is America, and you're entitled to your fantasies, even of a "crushing" nature. But keep it together, son! You were in public, speaking loudly to a stranger seven-or-so people ahead of you in a Duane Reade line. Muttering to yourself "This isn't working; she doesn't like me at all," while perhaps meant to be endearing in a cute, self-deprecating way, did not make up for the awkwardness you created. People in line winced as you continued to embarrass yourself.

Eventually, the manager solved the cashier's problem and opened a second register. Things started moving, albeit slowly. Your comments continued unchecked. "Can we get married? I love you." Really, have some self-respect. You went on at such length that I recalled those experiments showing that the larger the crowd, the less likely anyone is to help during a crisis. After all, surely that other guy will confront the loudmouthed Kid Rock clone at Duane Reade---why should I get involved? Was I in a psych experiment? If you turn out to be a graduate student of human behavior, please accept my apologies for this rant.

I could stand it no more. The manager's slowness had allowed you to subject the woman to one too many obnoxious utterances, and I turned to you and said, "I know this is New York, and people generally mind their own business, but could you give it a rest?"

"No," you said. "Are you gonna punch me and make me stop?"

"Probably not," I replied.

I think we all would have bet good sums that I wasn't going to punch you. I certainly it wasn't worth a night in jail and risk to my law license just to teach you some manners that Joe C neglected to share with you before shuffling off this mortal coil. What would I tell my cellmates in the Tombs, "I'm here 'cause I punched some pantywaist at Duane Reade?" I don't think so.

I would have needed to cook up some more exciting story, which some jailhouse snitch would have repeated in hopes of a reduced sentence. And it would have been just my luck that whatever nonsense I made up ("I killed a clown in Union Square for looking funny at my cilantro.") would have actually happened last weekend, leading to my arraignment and unemployment. Yes, yes, I'd have gotten the indictment dismissed eventually when the real clown killer came to light, but that wouldn't get me my job back, would it? And my picture in the New York Post below the screaming headline "FANCYPANT$ LAWYER BRAINS MIME WITH BRIEFCASE" would have linked me with clown murder indelibly in the public mind, which isn't easy to live with.

Regardless, you don't even know I have a law license, and for all you know I like fighting people at Duane Reade. You couldn't be sure, could you? So you quieted down for a while.

Then, as the woman headed for the door, her purchases in hand, you muttered all-too-loudly, "She's hot, and I have a right to say so."

Finally, something we can agree on. She is hot, or at least cute; I didn't get a good look at the front of her, what with her working so hard to avoid making eye contact with some idiot behind me in line. Your legal reasoning skills, however, leave much to be desired. Before you mail your application for a faculty post in First Amendment law at Columbia, consider this: Her being attractive does not provide you with a license to harass and humiliate her. Every time a woman hesitates before walking outside wearing something flattering, people like you are the cause. I wonder if she considered whether her Duane Reade trip was all that urgent, if maybe she shouldn't walk out after midnight but should wait until tomorrow instead. If she did, you and your ilk were part of her concern.

I for one enjoy seeing women walking the streets in attractive garb. My personal taste aside, women---like everyone else---should be free to walk around without being bugged by morons.

So pull yourself together. Leave the nice women alone, find your dignity, and stop making problems for the rest of us.

Sincerely Yours,

A Man More Annoyed with You than with Roaches, Which Is Saying Something

[via]

Half time report

2007-12-19T16:39:00.000-05:00

We live in a violent athletic culture that encourages inappropriate behavior in public. Sports events are notorious for sexual harassment. And so, not surprisingly, this this sort of thing happens all the time: grossly mocking, misogynistic swarms of men, doing their own version of teaming up on others off the courts and playing fields. And if a woman chooses to flash her goods - assuming thoughtful choice can be invoked in such a repressive, hostile atmosphere - security will kindly explain public indecency laws to her, not the crowd.

Finally, vigilant law enforcement comes to Boston

2007-12-12T14:19:00.000-05:00

We've heard some feedback that some of the posts on HollaBackBoston have sounded suspicious in previous months, specifically those sent in by young women assaulted or brutally harassed on the Green Line. We chose to support the women who wrote in because we like to err on the side of believing female survivors, and unfortunately, it appears we may have been right to stand as allies. Thanks to a young woman with her cell phone cam, Boston's MBTA police tracked down a man accused of four sexual assaults on the Green Line. Nice work from the fuzz and the ladies brave enough to holla back!

A legacy of fear

2007-12-05T15:08:00.000-05:00

Street harassment is nothing new, though to talk to many folks, you wouldn't know it. Student publications about harassment can date back to the 1980s, and one from Brian Martin in 1997 offers a great guide (much like our own) about how men can stop harassment.

Three main types of public harassment are comments, touching and trailing. These may not seem to be a big problem, but they can be quite upsetting. Few men realise how big the problem is, because they are seldom the target of harassment themselves. Even men who are opposed to harassment may not think there's anything to get concerned about. But there is.

We also like this Salon.com article from 1999 (via Feminist Law Professors), detailing historical problems with street harassment, public space, assumptions about gender, and clothing as unintentional communication.

Why do they do it? We're not talking about gallantry, or playful flirting or simple, unfrightened compliments. Why the abuse, the privacy invasion, the intimidation? Why do the construction workers on my block, for instance, make sudden loud noises with their machinery as I pass so they can laugh when I jump? I don't ask them. I'm afraid of escalation.

We don't know, and we don't often ask because we're afraid, too.

Asking for it

2007-11-28T14:23:00.000-05:00

If women get raped [and harassed*] because they ask for it, why don't they ever get the equal pay, equal opportunities, and other things they ask for?

- Adele Lang and Susi Rajah, I'm Not a Feminist, But...

*editor's addition

What She Said

2007-11-14T15:46:00.000-05:00

Here are two ladies doing what we like to call getting it done:

And while we don't get nostalgic for harassment, we do like this somewhat visually dated but still applicable television PSAs from the 1980s about workplace sexual harassment. If only we had these about violations of public space...

Word on the beat

2007-11-07T10:08:00.000-05:00

"She wants it, so I gotta give it to her."

"Your hips, your thighs, they got me hypnotized."

"I ain't got to move, I can sit and watch."

"She always ready, when you want it, she want it, like a nympho."

"I like the way you move. Girl you got me thinkin' 'bout, all the things I'll do to you."

What's that you ask? Are the these latest hollas from the street? No, just the lyrics to 50 Cent's newest jam.

If you're so inclined, check out the obscene voyeurism in the video.

However, we'd rather watch videos like this one:

And Other Life Stories

2007-10-31T02:24:00.000-04:00

When I was twenty a man trailed me for blocks in Paris, and when I shook my head no at his offer of a stick of butter to sleep with him he narrowed his eyes with real hatred and muttered Salope! Slut.

- Katha Pollitt, Learning To Drive

One of these things just doesn't belong here

2007-10-17T07:52:00.000-04:00

[via Leslie and GirlSpeak]

[source]

Outstanding and Warranted

2007-10-09T09:37:00.001-04:00

Last spring, Holly Kearl did some research for her Master's thesis about street harassment. Her results are online and an interesting read for anyone wanting a spectrum of thoughts about safety in public space.

Not only is harassment a pain, but seems that if you do it, it might come back and bite you in the ass. We're not always a fan of their work, but this time: nicely done po-po.

{image via Conflux}

On the off chance

2007-10-03T01:04:00.000-04:00

Things have been a little light over at HollaBackBoston these days but that doesn't mean street harassment dispatches aren't blogging in from far and wide. Check out this one from the "totally brilliant" M. LeBlanc over at Rock, Paper, Swords: Great, start 'em young.

This lawyer goes to town on the pre-pubescent socialization. Right on. But as per usual, the comments section is chock full of unaware men and "anonymous" posters try to beat her right back into place.

Unfortunately that it seems to always need to be done, she then posits a righteous rebuttal, trying to spell it out for those who still don't get it.

This is what we like to call getting it done. Too bad it takes so much damn energy and time to just be heard.

What goes around, comes around

2007-09-26T09:15:00.000-04:00

More than ten years after its making, yet too much the same:

[source]

Behind the pay wall

2007-09-19T10:34:00.000-04:00

Last week, the Wall Street Journal ran an article about street harassment. Folks who don't subscribe or didn't find a free copy had the same problem we did - you simply couldn't read it. Good thing we found the full text article online elsewhere. Enjoy.

Educating, Offending at the Same Time

Egyptian Campaign Against Harassment Raises Awareness, Ire

By Mariam Fam

September 13, 2007

CAIRO — Earlier this year, ad-agency co-owner Mohamed El Sawy launched a public-awareness campaign against sexual harassment on the streets of Egypt, a problem that is drawing increasing attention here.Through a cultural center he founded, Mr. El Sawy put up signs along the streets of Cairo and nearby Giza. The ads warned men that if they didn’t take action to prevent harassment, their mother, sister or daughter could be the next victim.

Mobile-phone operator Mobinil provided funding, and in June, the ads began running in about 100 lighted boxes. Such boxes, essentially small-scale billboards, are used frequently by advertisers here.

The ads, in bright red-and-black lettering on a yellow background, played with four variations on a theme: If men don’t put an end to street harassment, women in their own families could be next. The phrasing, in Arabic, was the same in all four versions, except for one change: “your mother,” “your sister,” “your daughter” or “your wife.”

But the warning that one’s female relatives might be targeted was deemed too provocative by some. One version in particular pushed the envelope. It translated: “Your mother — refrain and stop others before it’s her turn.”
In Egypt, as in the U.S., “your mother” can have different connotations — some seen as inappropriate for public advertising, particularly in much of the Middle East, where a man’s honor can be tied to the reputation of his mother and other women in his family. The words can be said in more than one way in Arabic, and the particular phrase used in the signs — omak — can also be associated with an insult, as it can be in English.

A columnist for daily newspaper Al Akhbar blasted the campaign, saying the reference was offensive and warning that the signs might give tourists the impression that Cairo’s streets were unsafe.Cairo officials ordered the ads removed. An employee of the governorate of Cairo says the city received complaints from ordinary Egyptians offended by the phrasing of the ads. Mr. El Sawy pulled all the ads. He says officials in Giza didn’t order the ads removed, but he took those down, too.

The controversy over the campaign underscores the challenges involved in navigating sometimes-competing cultural sensitivities in a place like Egypt. The Arab world’s most populous country, it is a pop culture and media hub for the rest of the region. But it remains socially conservative and religious.

Harassment — from catcalls and lewd remarks to indecent exposure and groping — is a troubling urban social ill here. A few recent high-profile cases have drawn more attention to the problem. Activists have accused the government of not doing enough to crack down on offenders.

“The message has to be provocative,” Mr. El Sawy says. “It is a serious issue.” He says some women came up to him to thank him for the campaign.But antiharassment campaigners need to tread lightly, says Nehad Abolkomsan, who heads the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights, a nonprofit group based in Cairo. Many Egyptians feel issues like sexual harassment aren’t pressing enough to warrant much attention in a country that suffers from poverty and unemployment, she says.

Elham Abu El Fateh, the Al Akhbar columnist who wrote about the El Sawy campaign, says that while the campaign’s creators meant well, it failed to accommodate the sensitivities of the audience. “We’re a religious society and we hold the mother in high esteem,” she says.”You feel a stab in the heart” when reading the “mother” sign, Ms. Abu El Fateh wrote in a column.

The campaign could scare women away from public places and give tourists a bad impression about the country, she wrote. “Have the streets of Cairo been transformed into a jungle of sick people harassing women?” she wrote. “Of course not.”Hala El Khatib, a spokeswoman for Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism, says it is the harassment — not campaigns against it — that could hurt tourism. But she is no fan of the wording of Mr. El Sawy’s “mother” ads either. “It’s a bit shocking,” she says.

Mobinil, the sponsor whose name appeared on the ads, didn’t return calls for comment. Mr. El Sawy’s center has spearheaded other public-interest campaigns against smoking, wasting water and honking horns unnecessarily. But he wasn’t expecting the reaction he got with the antiharassment messages.Still, he says, he is determined to carry on. He wants to produce antiharassment TV spots to air on Egyptian and Arab satellite channels. He worries that the black eye the campaign suffered may scare away potential sponsors but says that won’t deter him.

“It is not smart to hide our problems,” he says. “They won’t be solved unless they’re exposed.”

{source}

Believing the Women

2007-09-11T10:44:00.000-04:00

I believe the women. Not for one moment do I believe this man. Which of us, as women, has not had the experience of being accosted late at night, crudely propositioned, harrassed with sexist hate speech? How many of us have been knifed, beaten, shot, raped and murdered at the hands of a man in an incident which began just like this one? How is it a crime for us to be ready to defend ourselves? How is it criminal for us, as women, to be ready for the absolute worst, to expect the worst, given what we know men to be capable of, given the slaughter of women which goes on all around us every day?
And what other persons could be described repeatedly in mainstream media, in headlines, as animals, as a "wolf pack," "a howling pack," "killers" without any consequence to the reporters or the publication? This is sick, disgusting, racist, sexist, lesbophobic, classist, it is hatred of vulnerable young women so deep and grievous that for any supposedly civil society to tolerate it is unconscionable. And yet ours does.

{source}

Or some variation therein

2007-09-05T15:45:00.000-04:00

{source}

We like when major news sources cover street harassment like The Guardian story this Tuesday. It's just too bad women have to label themselves as "average" in order to speak about street harassment happening to a broad spectrum of women everywhere. Extraordinary women get harassed too, and studies show it might even be happening to them more than any other group. It also strikes us that the more people write about street harassment, the more we continue to ignore solutions aside from "I'm going to tell them to stop it!", and many times, details of harassment accounts end up sensationalized in a pretty offensive manner. While we believe in taking back our stories of harassment and assault, why is it continually necessary to exploit the details of others' accounts with sexual detailing and baiting? We're more of a fan of analysis like that found in this Esquivalience post, where class and bullying factor into the discussion. Whether or not we agree, at least we have some enjoyable food for thought on a topic that is anything but.

Just Let Me Ride

2007-08-22T15:47:00.000-04:00

This won't be the last time we say it: the MBTA doesn't take sexual harassment in public space very seriously. In an interview this week, T spokesman Joe Pesaturo said, "The [sexual harassment] statistics are virtually identical to those for the same period last year." While that may be the case, Joe, we'd love a statement from your office that offers full compliance with investigations of these crimes and hey, maybe you could even be more open to the fact that this is a real problem that creates widespread distrust and involves real threat in public spaces?

Since bitter rivalry tends to get New Englanders hyped up, you'd think we'd be doing a better job keep up with what New York is doing?

2007-08-15T11:03:00.001-04:00

This week we've got another gem from the "anonymous gripes and grouses" section in the Letters to the Editor of the esteemed Weekly Dig:

Dear guy in the red hat JERKING OFF in Target
Yes, I saw you. WTF is wrong with you? I'm all for sexual freedom and the rights of people to do what they want with consenting adults and/or themselves. But come on. Time and place for things, huh?

PS: You could have chosen something sexier than that lilac-colored granny-looking bathrobe for your partner, receptacle, object d'amore.

We definitely don't need any reminders that there are all kinds in this city, but this one is just over the top.

MBT hey!

2007-08-08T09:05:00.000-04:00

"Once I took photos of a guy who looked like he was about to punch another guy, and that [the photo] prevented him [from doing so]," Desjardins said. "I think having cameras there is going to dissuade terrorism, not facilitate it."

Ever tried to take a photo on the T or on the platform while waiting for a train, only to be approached by an MBTA employee telling you that you can't? Ever been ousted from the station in the name of terrorism - like we were at Park Street - for attempting to snap some pics of a quintessential part of your city? Luckily, a host of concerned citizens - along with the ACLU - have succeeded in taking down the red tape around the MBTA's "no photography" policy.

According to the new draft policy, when photographing on the T, you must provide ID upon request, the subject of the picture cannot pose a security risk, your activity of shooting does not disrupt MBTA operations and the pictures are for non-commercial use only.

Which is good news for us cause as you know a whole hell of a lot of street harassment happens on dem trains.

What's ironic about this success in reclaiming our civil liberties is that it brings to light the reality that it's not an issue of having cameras, but in fact, WHO has the camera. In other words, it's not as if the MBTA, Boston Police Dept, and more don't already photograph us everywhere we go. Count the cameras next time you find yourself in the under-construction Arlington T stop. Can you find more than the eleven we do in a casual stroll down the corridor?

We understand as much as the next person that this type of constant surveillance may simply be a truth in our current existence. We just want to make sure it can work for us and that perhaps someday harassment and holla'ing back will be equated with the terrorism the MBTA seems to think it is protecting itself against. Perhaps they will even hand over those surveillance tapes if someone steps to us while I'm waiting for the trolley. Until we can be sure, we're liberating our cameras and cell phones while riding.

{source}

In the hands of the law

2007-08-01T16:44:00.000-04:00

"I think this goes to a public education campaign. This is not NYPD's fault, this is a culture that has been allowed to fester for generations." [source]

Whether or not you agree with that assessment, we know that large cities aren't the only areas effected by the street harassment epidemic. But because of size and resources, thankfully, slowly, metropolitan areas and their governing officials are starting to discuss invasions of indecency in public space in a serious manner.

This week, Manhattan Borough president Scott Stringer issued a report, "Hidden in Plain Sight, Sexual Harassment and Assault in the New York City Subway System". The reports findings include some important statistics about street harassment in public transit, including:

63 percent of respondents reported having been sexually harassed in the New York City subway system.

10 percent of respondents reported having been sexually assaulted in the New York City subway system.

69 percent of respondents reported having felt the threat of sexual assault or harassment in the New York City subway system.

Of those respondents, 51 percent reported “sometimes” or “frequently” feeling the threat of sexual harassment or assault in the New York City subway system.

96 percent of respondents who indicated that they were sexually harassed did not contact the NYPD and/or the MTA to file a report or seek assistance.

86 percent of respondents who indicated that they were sexually assaulted did not contact the NYPD and/or the MTA to file a report or seek assistance.

Also included in Stringer's press release were guidelines to work against street harassment:

Ensuring that NYPD tracks subway sexual harassment and assault crimes as stand-alone offenses; tracks the prevalence of these crimes across time, borough, individual subway lines, and stations; and makes all of these statistics publicly available and easily accessible.

Increasing NYPD presence on subway trains & in subway stations.

Introducing and upgrading needed safety amenities throughout the transit network.

Launching an ongoing public awareness campaign to educate riders about the risk of sexual harassment and assault in the subway system, preventive measures that riders can take, steps that victims of sexual harassment and assault can take to seek support, and the overall importance of reporting sexual harassment and assault incidents to authorities.

As street harassment falls on the spectrum of sexual violence, it's also important to remember that most sex crimes are underreported because of the sometimes unfortunate lack of resources and recourse for survivors.

Unfortunately, some high-ranking public officials a little closer to home - like the Boston Police Department's Superintendent-in-Chief - have gotten tripped up on their misogyny. Let's hope Boston steps up to the example set by the NYPD and solidifies the role of law enforcement in helping making our streets more safe.

Little rapes

2007-07-25T00:01:00.000-04:00

You've heard us talk about the spectrum of sexual violence before. Check out the following two references for even more about where street harassment is on this continuum:

"Categories of male violence against women and children are not distinct: beating a wife or girlfriend is not distinct from raping or murdering strangers, not distinct from molesting a niece or nephew. A guy who slaps his wife around is along the same continuum as rape and incest and murder, which are merely situations farther along this spectrum. Street harassment is on this same continuum. Pioneering feminists in the early seventies had a name for such hectoring as wolf whistles and animals noises. They called them 'little rapes'. My body knew this all along, the primal fear I felt in my early twenties when I heard hissing on the street--like a rattlesnake in the grass."

- Strange Piece of Paradise by Terri Jentz

And listen in to last week's Brian Lehrer show on WNYC to hear War Zone creator Maggie Hadleigh-West and Brooklyn teens Latosha Belton and Ashley Lewis talk about Taking Back the Streets.

Team Update

2007-07-20T15:22:00.000-04:00

Dear supporters, allies, and skeptics of the HollaBack communities,

It has been a privilege to work with you for well over a year in order to launch a safe and public forum for diverse women to document and reclaim their own experiences of street harassment. I have also enjoyed the weekly challenge of contributing to the growing academic scholarship which seeks to deconstruct critical issues and social norms pertaining to street harassment.

I regretfully inform you that I am resigning from my position as one of the editorial writers for HollaBackTalk, and as one of the editors, web administrators, and community organizers for HollaBackBoston in order to pursue other professional opportunities for social justice.

From this point forward, I will not be responsible for the inclusion or exclusion of certain content, intention, and editing choices made by other members of Team HollaBackBoston.

I am thoroughly indebted to all of you who have worked with me so diligently to create a safer world for all of us.

Thank you very much,
Michelle Riblett
Co-Founder HollaBackBoston

Is it ever just about SEX?

2007-07-11T10:47:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, we explored the notion that sexual harassment isn't merely about sexuality or gender; it is about power. The important qualifier here is "merely" - since it is perhaps more common to come down on one side or the other, to argue it is EITHER sexuality/gender OR it is power. For all sorts of reasons. As for the former, we hear this oft-cited example: rape is not about sex, it is about power. As for the latter, we've definitely heard the defense that a "Hey hot stuff!" comment is seriously benign, that it's just a guy's way of flirting, of expressing his sexual desire - that for him, regardless of how pathetic his social skills may be, it IS just about sex, this time.

I contend that we still have to pay just as much attention to the sex and gender issues, because they can be the very ground from which power is mobilized. Specifically, dismissing sexual harassment as simply inappropriate or flattery or equating it to just being "hit on" reveals on obvious blind spot of forgetting about all the creepy ways women can be subordinated. Sexual desire and women's sexuality (and the ways gender defines and is defined through desire and sex) are incredibly fertile grounds for power play and abuse. Can we even imagine an instance of power abuse of women that exists without sexuality and/or gender identity intersections...?

Here's where this gets depressing....I, at least, became thoroughly depressed upon wracking my brain for examples, on the other hand, of how violence against women has been made "sexy" - how sex constructs power, just as much as power constructs sex. I remembered an article I read a while back about how Serbian militia posted pictures of pornography on the walls of "rape camps" during the war to encourage and effectively train soldiers to rape Bosnian women (See Karen Engle, 2005). I then remembered the U.S. Defense Department's Tailhook scandal in 1993. In the Tailhook report, American Defense investigators concluded that the men at fault for sexually harassing female naval officers had come to believe that they "needed to drink in excess and chase after women if they were going to perform sucessfully as fighter pilots" (See Cynthia Enloe 1998, p. 8). Ironically, in both these examples, the military was involved - but this is interesting not so much for the fact that militaries are prime examples of hot-wired patriarchal institutions, but for the way making violence "sexy" is so readily attainable and socially accepted that it can be institutionalized for the state.

But really, it's not just happening on an institutional level. It's happening on a very interpersonal level. If and when feminists argue that rape (and, arguably, any form of sexual harassment or assault) is solely about power, not sex, that leaves a whole lot of other albeit depressing questions unanswered and obscured. How do we account for the guys who do enjoy it? Does the gender dominance boost their self-esteem? How is forcing a woman to have sex, or forcing a woman to sexually engage through street harassment, implicated in being "successfully" masculine? How do we account for men's sexual arousal being so inevitably tied to abusive coercion in both institutionalized and personal cases? Why does "Hey hot stuff!" guy get off by holla'ing at a young girl that he knows he has no chance of ever "getting" unless he takes it by force? Maybe because in these cases, harassment and violence isn't about sex, unless it is practiced as sex.

Here, I'm recalling Katherine MacKinnon's "Sexuality, Pornography, and Method" (1989) in which she describes an epistemological shift between just changing the labels of something from "sex" to "rape." She notes, "Rape becomes something a rapist does, as if he is a separate species. But no personality disorder distinguishes most rapists from normal men (See R. Rada's Clinical Aspects of Rape, 1978). Psychopaths do rape, but only about 5 percent of all known rapists are diagnosed psychopathic. In spite of the number of victims, the normalcy of rapists, and the fact that most women are raped by men that they know (making it most unlikely that a few lunatics know around half of all women in the United States), rape remains considered psychopathological and therefore not about sexuality" (p. 336).

Given these facts, it's kind of strange that feminists, myself included, often downplay the sexual components of sexual assault in our attempts to discourage the correlation, even if it is to somehow save or preserve an idealistic, consenting, agential version of "sex itself" away from violence, considering that at the same time it's pretty damn hard to find other representations of sex these days that are "just sex" - whatever that is. (Is sex ever "just sex"?)

And, if “Hey hot stuff!” guy has no clue whatsoever about sexual power dynamics, this still doesn’t render him immune from unintentionally privileging when he seizes the sexy opportunity to holla at women. While it could be his own virginal trek into the sexual wilderness, he is still treading on a well-worn and treacherous path. No one gets to live in a historical vacuum, since historical vacuums don’t exist! This doesn’t mean there aren’t tons of guys who stalwartly behave as if they do exist, and even, as if their own path or holla is an exempt original. These days, with divide-and-conquer mentalities of so-called democracy still running amok all over the map, it’s appropriate (but just as publicly delusional) for harassers to still be playing the hoary card of self-entitled male individualism: I can say whatever I want because when I say those words, I don’t mean that. I’m just flirting… because after all, I don't get off that way. I’m not like them.

Come on, guys: it’s not as if blatant sexual comments, “compliments”, suggestions, and intimidation tactics are never, or only arbitrarily sometimes, linked to violence against women. Rather, this is the kind of violent sex that is most allowed.

Speaking of public delusions….social theorist Bourdieu explains that people don’t protest certain “inevitable” or “minor” social infractions that reproduce social power hierarchies when they happen on a super regular basis because it readily becomes the “objective consensus” that this is just the way things are (Bourdieu 1977). He says, “Because the subjective necessity and self-evidence of the commonsense world are validated by the objective consensus on the sense of the world, what is essential goes without saying because it comes without saying” (p. 167).

So, basically, miscognizing and misusing the fertile grounds of sexual desire and gender to violate women has been coming at us for a long, LONG time, on levels ranging from the seemingly innocuous and mundane to the professionally institutionalized. Just because we may be personally numb to it, or oblivious to the subtle, daily infractions that continue to literally construct women, doesn’t negate its effects. We might have to seriously consider the scary thought that harassment and violence is so normalized as a sexual practice, that for many, it has become none other than sex itself. Our seemingly normal forms of sexual interaction are not acted out in a historical vacuum or an ivory feminist tower, far and away from the pervasive reality of sexualized violence against women.

I understand why some might be frustrated by the posing of this explanation, and the increasingly problematic questions that spring from it. There is a difference, though, in seeking to explore and root out a social phenomenon, and seeking to justify, perpetuate, or accept it. What use we make of this explanation is separate from the explanation itself. If we want to interrupt the chain of causes of sexual violence, we have to first examine all the links.

For example, the question I raised earlier that I would really like an answer to is: How do we reconcile agential, sex-positive sex within (as opposed to seemingly outside of) an ever pervasive violence-made-sexy dialectic? Is it just a representation issue? Does "consent" really make all the difference, if what one is consenting to is functioning as sexual violence for others? And if so, does it all just dissolve into a meaningless (or excessively meaningful) mess of relativity and difference? If sexual violence IS none other than sex itself, for countless people, then by protesting against that, aren't we basically asking others to change their definition and lifestyle, by virtue of asking them to change how they interract with us? Even as I type these last questions, I feel like I'm asking something I'm not supposed to ask.

But then, being feminists, we've got to wonder why we're not supposed to ask.

I leave it up to you: What exactly do we do with this explanation of sexual violence? What do we do with violence-made-sexy?

Written by Michelle Riblett Creative Commons 2.5.

SOURCES:
Pierre Bourdieau, Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1977. As cited in Laura Beth Nielsen, License to Harass. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2004, pp. 33-34.

Karen Engle, "Feminism and It's (Dis)Contents: Criminalizing Wartime Rape in Bosnia and Herzegovina" The American Journal of International Law. Vol. 99, No. 4. (Oct. 2005), pp. 778-816.

Cynthia Enloe, "All Men Are in the Militias, All Women are Victims." In Lorentzen and Turpin, eds. The Women and War Reader. New York: NYU Press. 1998.

Catherine A. MacKinnon, "Sexuality, Pornography, and Method: 'Pleasure Under Patriarchy" Ethics, Vol. 99, No. 2. (Jan. 1989), pp. 314-346.

R. Rada, Clinical Aspects of Rape. New York: Grune & Sratton. 1978.

On the fourth day

2007-07-04T10:47:00.000-04:00

We're taking the week off for an Independence Day break.

Here's to a truly free nation - especially free of violence against women.

Cheers and Holla Back!

Public enemies

2007-06-27T11:12:00.000-04:00

We'd be remiss to not comment on the Washington (D.C.) City Paper's series (one, two) published this week in which one woman unveils her year-long diary of street harassment, accompanied by a male reporter's take on her experiences (complete with a YouTube video). The City Paper doesn't have a particularly pro-feminist history (quite the opposite), and Feministing already dissected this week's stories, but since we only publish here on Wednesdays, we're gonna dive in even further after the fact, which seems fitting.

What we find first appalling about the entire Feministing conversation is the idea that we're somehow self-labeled "humorless feminists" because we don't want to be touched, followed, and yelled at in public. Ladies, there's no reason for us to be down on ourselves. Those of us that write for HollaBackTALK have remarkable senses of humor in everyday life, but our existence also comes with legitimate fear in the streets and difficult harassment, which is never a laughing matter. Using humor to deflect how hard life can be is one of many useful strategic coping methods, but we draw the line at talking about harassment in any way other than as part of the spectrum of sexual violence, an issue that effects us all. We know we're not alone in this, either.

In response to the City Paper articles, perhaps most troubling in the Feministing comments section, were the race and class assumptions made about men who harass and the women they bother - not to mention the explicitly stated areas of various cities and communities they seem to inhabit. Let us be clear: we continue to see class and socioeconomic status ignored as part of the deconstruction of this problem, despite our own statements on the subject. Unfortunately, street harassment lies at the intersection of a variety of social identities, and simply speaking about race - especially in generalized terms - is overlooking the real issue. By then generalizing who is harassing and who is harassed more, we totally ignore the real problem: that this is happening in the first place. In most cases of street harassment, race and class do not and should not matter. Unless these traits specifically pertain to your harassment account, calling out publicly offensive folks based on innate or circumstantial (and many times mistaken) characteristics fuels racism, classism, and hatred in counterproductive, hurtful ways. It divides communities and stereotypes predators the same way we wish to not be. Harassment is about power and domination, and if we want to end those models for oppression, we must also stop oppressing those who subordinate us. To additionally try to call harassment a cultural problem is to deny that any of these things - gender, race, ethnicity, culture, socioeconomic status - are related, which they inherently are. To call harassment "cultural" is also to assume that women in any culture enjoy being harassed, which is inconsiderately false speculation.

In the same way, we also found people's ranking of personal street harassment encounters to be a fascinating exercise. While I for one could probably name some of the "worst" encounters I've experienced - from being followed by an unknown man in a car while I was on foot on a deserted road, to having a male acquaintance reach up my dress in public - I've not only experienced far too many to fully rank at this point; I don't feel any of them were particularly benign. For me, street harassment is about what makes me feel unsafe, not what is so silly that it becomes humorous - thankfully, there are the occasional yells from passersby I am able to shrug off. But more often than not, I am reminded that any of these encounters could escalate to physical violence, so I don't want to spend even more emotional and psychological energy on deciding who bothered or offended me the most this month, let alone in this lifetime. While it is a sure sign of the degree to which we internalize these accounts if we are able to name them years later, and I also believe in the solidarity found in knowing you are not alone in your harassment experiences; I want to move forward by discussing this issue as a widespread societal problem that is more than my own.

There are a couple of ways to prevent racist and classist behavior surrounding public discussion of street harassment, which seems like an important piece of dialogue considering prospective actions are typically left undiscussed unless there to blame the victim. We do not advocate any particular action, nor do we believe that it is ultimately a woman's responsibility to defend and keep herself safe in the world beyond normal expectations. Even we, the ladies of HollaBackBoston, are constantly renegotiating our personal stances on the best way to combat harassment that we regularly face. Rather than advice, we can only offer some strategies that may be of potential success.

If a harassment situation arises in public, if you are in a crowded area, identify your harasser. Speak loudly and firmly and describe the action.

If you see others being harassed, say something - even if you are the only one. Don't let the power of numbers take away the power of the few.

Talk to the men in your life. Many times, men don't know that they hold a lot of power to end street harassment. By helping them understand the power dynamics implicit in any type of harassment, they may be able to also call out bad behavior in public in addition to monitoring their own.

Listen to women and other marginalized folks when they share their experiences. For many, street harassment is a constant problem, yet one that is not taken seriously. Be sensitive when stories are shared, and believe and support those who are trying to find solutions to this multifacted problem.
Most importantly, know yourself and listen to your inner voice. Don't invalidate yourself for feeling unsafe or listen to those who tell you to "just ignore it" or "not let it bother you." It's fine if it bothers you. It's fine to maintain an expectation that you can live in a world where you feel safe and respected.

What ultimately concerns us - beyond our personal accounts, anecdotes, and what neighborhoods some deem tolerable - is safety. Sure, sometimes harassment is just annoying, but for us, experiences of threat and verbal abuse in public are frightening because of the unknown actions a perpetrator could take. At the end of the day, we don't think safely walking while female is too much to ask.

By Brittany Shoot, Creative Commons 2.5.

Ya Dig?

2007-06-20T11:45:00.000-04:00

One of our more favorite local weeklies, the Weekly Dig, reserves a special space in their Letters to the Editor section for "anonymous gripes and grouses". We found this week's especially familiar.

And not ones to ever be shy about carrying around necessary objects, we also thought this tampon stun gun was a particularly fun find this week (if you can make fighting street harassment enjoyable, that is). We might be offended by the floral scent and pink packaging if we didn't find it so comically appropriate. We'd be lying if we said that our trusty cotton keeping us safe from the "central nervous system disruption, possible urination and certain humiliation" that these little prongs deliver didn't make us smile, and particularly nice is the disclaimer that one "need not be female or menstruating to use effectively". Hollific indeed.

It is said. Period.

2007-06-13T18:22:00.000-04:00

We have probably all caught ourselves doing this - apologizing for things that have been done to us; no doubt caught ourselves more than once saying, "EXCUSE me" after getting harassed. While it takes a surprising amount of effort to change the ingrained, self-destructive, self-blaming mentality, we can change it. We can change how we react. "Above and beyond" everything else, that's something we do have control over. Rather than try and say it, we want to give a shout out to A Cat and Twenty for saying all the right words:

we've learned that "sorry" helps us survive. but i wish we could start fighting back, just a little, in little ways.

Read the entirety of her request here: "above and beyond all this"

(Then read her update.)

Art not apathy

2007-06-06T14:52:00.000-04:00

We know that public space can be rough for lots of folks and that more than harassment can intrude on people's enjoyment in transit, but by now, anyone who's reading this knows that our hatred for all things under the "street harassment" category tops the list of undesirables.

But we love art, and what we love even more is when the acknowledgment of one intersects with the other.

We know our allies at Hollaback Canada (whose analysis we also happen to love) have it covered up north, but I smiled when Toronto's Spacing Wire included street harassment as part of their review of a public video art installation.

From one of my personal favorite design blogs, I love the idea of clothing with memory. The next time some dude touches you on the train? You'll have more than a disgusting mental impression. In addition to tracking invasions of personal space, this type of product could soothe its wearer by providing artificial (good) touch therapy and a personal "sensory cocoon". Yes, please.

And while we do our best to remain committed to nonviolence, despite knowing it's a jungle and a forest out there, I really love this switched up version of a holla back - a camera inside a toy gun. Hot, safe, and fun.

By Brittany Shoot, Creative Commons 2.5.

The Ladder Has No Rungs

2007-05-30T17:14:00.001-04:00

Miss the latest in the blame game that you just can't win? It's that if you don't want to be harassed, stop acting like a man. As University of Toronto's Jennifer Berdahl's latest research reveals, women who defy traditional gender stereotypes at their places of employment experience more sexual harassment than their more deferent colleagues.

Berdahl does a nice job highlighting (and then debunking) the public's perception that women who exhibit typically feminine appearance and behavior (think Dolly Parton a la Nine to Five) are the more frequent victims of sexual harassment. But we'll say it again, and for definitely not the last time...harassment is not always about sex. It's not always about gender. It is about POWER.

Not saying your breasts, hair, dress, makeup, legs, and other body parts don't get an inordinate amount of attention at the water cooler and conference table, but your decision to pursue occupations historically reserved for men and your ability to exhibit behavior traits traditionally attributed to masculinity are far more provocative.

The harassment Berdahl describes is not just a by-product of our attempts to transgress gender essentialist behavior and performance, but in fact is a reaction to our very existence as thinking, performing, accomplishing beings - which is in direct opposition to the misogynist culture which upholds men as the sole achievers. Our ability to have an identity threatens theirs. Berdahl offers, "Women threaten male identity when they blur distinctions between men and women and thereby challenge the legitimacy of these distinctions and the status they confer men."

This is no surprise to us at HollaBackBoston.com since there is a well-documented body of experience among women which cites spikes in street harassment when wearing business suits. It is well known that this type of harassment is about putting women "back in their place." Berdahl simply proves that this activity is alive and well in the workplace.

Luckily, she also makes it clear that her findings are not to be interpreted as putting the responsibility for preventing harassment on the women themselves - this time, gender deviants. She argues, "the onus should not be on victims to avoid a wrong but on those in charge to create structures and incentives to prevent it." She continues, "women are already navigating these social conflicts to the best of their ability. But ultimately, it's not their responsibility, nor is it in their control."

Thanks Jennifer. Now, we've just got to convince our male bosses.

Written by Hilary Allen. Creative Commons 2.5.

Finnishing harassment

2007-05-23T12:58:00.000-04:00

Street harassment happens all over the world, all the time. Without getting into the online anonymity breeds hate speech conversation, it's (sort of) worth checking out the comments section of this video. If anyone has ever questioned why women don't speak out more, these comments serve as a perfect example of the continued blame, threat, and abuse that can result for merely voicing your experience.

It's certainly not an accident that the woman in the video compares herself with Pitkasilta (Long Bridge), a Helsinki landmark and reminder of century-old wars. It's also interesting that the bridge used to once separate the city's working and upper classes. Harassment knows no such boundaries; why do we think anything else will?

As recently as last week, we were told we didn't have a sense of humor about these things. Really? Seems we aren't the only ones not laughing:

You can get more information about the fantastic song used in the first video, Ursula Rucker's What A Woman Must Do, here. As always, we encourage you to do whatever you need to do to have a hot and safe week.

It isn't a joke, Mr. Therapist

2007-05-16T00:05:00.000-04:00

In last Tuesday's Boston Metro, we had the misfortune of reading Jonathan Alpert's "advice column" No More Drama, in which he responds to a female reader's concern about being approached by men in public. Where do we even begin?! We can't decide which part is more distressing - Alpert's joking tone about the serious nature of unwanted public advances or the idea that women should just have to put up with being sexually harassed in public based on their appearance. Here's the counsel Alpert provides (or download the original page):

"It must be tough to be so drop-dead gorgeous that guys hit on you like vultures. Jokes aside, here are possible solutions for dodging them: 1. Avoid all social settings. 2. Wear a "Don't Talk To Me" sign. 3. Learn to distinguish between those who are truly offensive and those who are well-intended.

The problem with No. 1 and 2, apart from the risk of becoming a loner or being perceived as a social outcast, is you'll miss out on opportunities to meet the good guys. Clearly, a guy asking you for a lap dance between the book stacks at Borders is much different than someone taking an interest in the same travel books as you. Rather than lumping all guys into the vulture category, be open to those who may be respectful and capable of good conversation and who could potentially lead to a friendship.

Although you want to relax by yourself, is it possible you unknowingly draw attention by how you dress, walk or present yourself? Though how you dress does not warrant harassment, consider how others may perceive you and make any necessary changes if this really bothers you. If you truly don't want to be approached, then try a polite response: Simply smile and let the guy know it's nothing about him and that you're taking some time to relax by yourself."

Alpert's "column" is what is known as victim-blaming. In addition to not being able to get past his male privilege and the childish idea that we must protect and placate the fragile male ego by making sure they know not to take a rejection personally, Alpert is trying to make a decision for the reader: whom she should trust in public space. It's hard to imagine a more hurtful analysis of such a simple question - "How do I get strange men to leave me alone?" - "You can't, and you shouldn't because you're clearly the one missing out."

As Alpert is a licensed therapist, it's scary to imagine what he might tell female clients who are having these types of problems in public, let alone victims and survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, or emotional partner abuse. A woman complains that her husband abuses her, and she wants to know how to get him to leave her alone. So, in hypothetical Alpert-speak, that would translate to: "Learn to distinguish between when he playfully slaps you around with good intention, and when he sexually assaults you. You wouldn't want to miss out on the OPPORTUNITY of being married to a guy who has the potential to be nice to you, and who may, after all, be good at conversation! But most importantly, you're his wife; you married the guy. Therefore, it's definitely your fault on those rare occasions that he sexually assaults you because you're the one wearing that dress that he interprets as: 'Please rape me.' And, remember, next time he comes after you, be sure to smile politely as you try to refuse him."

Like we said, we can only imagine...

The way Alpert assumes his reader must be "asking for it" is a blatant example of perpetrator language. What Alpert fails to realize is that, over time, after being approached one too many times in public, it is NOT that simple for women to distinguish a friendly conversation from potential threat. Many perpetrators initially disguise harassment as a supposed compliment or act in subtle ways that make it difficult to interpret intent. These "compliments" often lead to violent assault, once the perpetrator tests the water, to see whether the woman will respond submissively. The official and disturbing term for this is rape-testing. According to Martha Langelan's discussion in Back Off! How to Confront and Stop Sexual Harassment, "Rapists are not looking for a fair fight. They have learned that sexual harassment is a good way to gauge the likelihood that a woman will fight back in an assault; if she is passive and timid when harassed, they assume she will be passive and terrified when attacked. So, this kind of rapist moves in on his potential victims, standing too close to one at a bus stop...if she is a classmate, customer, or other acquaintance, he may test her with inappropriate sexual touching or personal comments that are out of line, to see whether she will defend herself or call him on his remarks" (1993, p. 45). Hm. Perhaps Alpert should have done his homework?

Alpert ends his cringe-worthy "analysis" of this problem with the classic street harassment line, "Smile!" After being harassed? Not a chance!! Not here to smile for anyone, sir. In this case, Alpert is also sadly advocating that women use what we call victim language: indirect, self-denigrating language, making excuses for the offensive behavior, apologizing for him, adding all kinds of padding, and basically, letting the guy off the hook and disempowering the woman even more. Here's an example of what victim language looks like, employing Alpert's suggestion: "I'm sorry, excuse me, it's nothing about you, it's actually me. I'm sure you don't really mean anything offensive, but, you know, well, I guess I'm just trying to take some time for myself."

There's such a HUGE difference in effectiveness between that kind of response and the more empowering tactics to holla back that clearly name the intrusive behavior, in plain and direct language, with no passive modifiers whatsoever: "Move away, you're standing too close" or "STOP IT. Leave me alone. That's harassment. I don't like it. Stop harassing women." Ironically, Alpert also makes fun of another tactic we support and recommend: handing out signs telling people to not harass. These alternative strategies work because they actually hold the harasser accountable for his unwanted behavior; they validate the woman's experience without apologies or excuses; and they directly disrupt the imbalanced power scenario that the harasser has created by infringing upon your space, body, and sense of safety.

If you're just as appalled at Alpert's lack of insight and integrity as we are, send him a letter at jonathan.alpert@metro.us and let him know public spaces should remain safe for all. It isn't a joke. It's real.

Written by Michelle Riblett and Brittany Shoot. Creative Commons 2.5.

To holla back or not

2007-05-09T04:29:00.000-04:00

Whenever we talk about street harassment, we make it clear that all potential victims in public should use their best judgment when it comes to holla'ing back. If the situation in any way feels threatening, we believe in safety first. We think victim blaming is bullshit, and we aren't interested in accusations (like the one you can watch below) that we in any way ask to be harassed, stalked, or assaulted - especially if we happen to blog.

This video, while supposedly cautionary, is also sadly accurate in conveying how women are constantly forced and encouraged to live in fear. While hollaback's goal is to create a more open, public discourse about the spectrum of sexual violence, we are well aware that fighting back is not always the easiest or safest solution.

Sometimes fighting back can work, like in this case of a girl who escaped from being kidnapped by screaming her head off.

But sadly, that simply isn't always the case. Feminists are all too familiar with the equally sexist and aggressive backlash to each of our efforts at creating a just society. It can be a case of two steps forward, one step back. And it is beyond tragic when that one step back is lethal.

Perhaps you've heard about the film that was released last week; Waitress, directed by Adrienne Shelley, also stars the late filmmaker, who was murdered after complaining about construction noise. Her killer, a 19-year-old who'd been working at the site, confessed to her murder, saying he was "having a bad day".

In a similarly bizarre and sad story, former Bostonian, artist Nicole DuFresne holla'd back, albeit unconventionally, when confronted by muggers in Brooklyn in 2005. After she and her friends gave up their possessions to their assailants, DuFrense, drunk and perturbed, is said to have yelled, "What are you still doing here? You got what you wanted. What are you going to do now, shoot us?" Moments later, in retaliation, the thieves did just that.

And two weeks ago, a group of seven lesbian women who attacked a street harasser were convicted and many will serve jail time. Apparently self defense against unwanted public harassment and violent attacks isn't necessarily a defense in court.

I'm not trying to be negative or spread further fear on this issue. But it's disconcerting and incredibly frustrating when harassment situations only escalate and claim more victims, as we all try to stand up against verbal abuse and invasion of personal space in public. Locally, concerns about public safety are starting to be taken more seriously as MBTA safety statistics will soon be publicly available (and we sure do love that kind of transparency) - although since street harassment isn't a "crime", it isn't tracked by the police or local public transit authority. If they're allowed to air their perception of crime in transit, we think our right to do the same is justly protected.

It certainly takes guts, perseverance, and commitment to hollaback, in spite of the personal risk involved. Again, we cannot emphasize this enough: Safety First. Hollaback Second. When all else fails, in Massachusetts, if you don't want to pay the state for the right to carry chemical sprays, at least you can still buy bear mace, which, ironically, I've been recently contemplating. Nothing like turning your harasser orange - literally.

Written by Brittany Shoot. Creative Commons 2.5.

Private Eyes

2007-05-02T00:16:00.000-04:00

More than a few times now, people have compared the HollaBack movement to websites like I Saw Your Nanny or youparklikeanasshole. An article in the Wall Street Journal even had the nerve to state, "The most trivial missteps by ordinary folks are increasingly ripe for exposure... There is a proliferation of new sites dedicated to condemning offenses ranging from bad parking (Caughtya.org) and leering (HollaBackNYC.com) to littering (LitterButt.com) and general bad behavior (RudePeople.com)." In addition to being completely unaffiliated with these other sites, our intentions and work are radically different and, inasmuch as we hit the target for which we aim, we think that addressing the spectrum of sexual violence against women is unmistakably a larger social problem than people who park badly. It furthermore makes NO sense to lump HollaBack in with the type of Internet vigilantism that, for example, documents people who steal newspapers or don't pick up after their dogs.

We do recognize that sites like ours contribute to the erosion of privacy, and are aware of the issues of default public space, shame versus (or as) education, and technology without limits. But we don't share Michael Zimmer's concern that, "If I start ranting at someone and someone posts it to show how much of an idiot I am, now there’s 10 million people who know I’m a jerk." We like Zimmer's analysis and work, but if you're a jerk, maybe there should be some accountability for that. And if you harass others in public - invading their privacy and space without legal or societal accountability, how is that creating a more equitable world?

The Village Voice raised similar concerns a while ago as well. And again, although the Village Voice article is critical of "sousveillance" or ground up attempts of public watchfulness, it misses the point entirely: women are repeatedly threatened, assaulted, and made to feel unsafe everyday by incidents that violate their privacy. Taking pictures of people in public is perfectly legal. Posting on the public space of a blog is perfectly legal. Yet, harassers are repeately defended when they violate our privacy; and when we engage in perfectly legal public recourse, suddenly we're suspect of violating their privacy. Talk about a double standard. Nearly hidden in this discussion, the Voice admits in a one-liner that it if a guy disruptively catcalls, then "it's near impossible for that person to cry privacy invasion when someone takes his picture." Oh, ok. Then why all the fuss?! The Wall Street Journal similarly claims, "...lawyers say alleged wrongdoers shamed online typically have little legal recourse under libel and privacy laws if the accusations in postings are true, or if they are posters' opinions about behavior witnessed in a public place." Thanks again. So, let the women speak up already!

In the Voice article, Bill Brown, an anti-surveillance activist, argued, "I'm taking pictures of you, you're taking pictures of me. And all in the name of keeping people safe from some pretty soft crimes". Bill, last time we checked, sexual harassment and assault are in no way crimes of a "soft" nature. Same goes for the Wall Street Journal's unbelievable use of the phrase "most trivial missteps." Why did they not include the sexual violation of women within their distinguished alotment of "an online vigilantism movement that tackles meatier social issues: Community organization Cop Watch Los Angeles encourages users to send in stories and pictures of people being brutalized or harassed by police, for posting on the Web." Hmmm. Police harassment vs. sexual harassment. How did the latter possibly get characterized as a most trivial misstep?!!

Same goes for the argument that hollabackers are violating a "social" or "ethical" law, by supposedly promoting a punishment, noted by the Voice as a "digital scarlet letter," that far outweighs the crime. Interesting choice of metaphor; the scarlet letter being a historically gendered mark for regulating women's sexuality. Indeed, if holla'ing back is subverting an age-old gendered practice by instead effectively regulating men's sexual violations, then fantastic! The Voice makes a crucial mistake here: it equates hollaback with the scarlet letter timelessly; thereby ignoring what historical subversion means. To subvert is to turn the norm on its head, by simultaneously questioning the very ground that preserves that norm. The ground, in this case, is the imbalanced power differential between women and men; the one that preserves "Big Brother's" rights, while immediately questioning and silencing "Little Sister's."

Ultimately, we're still debating - personally and publicly - about the value of being called "vigilantes." We're sure of HOW we courageously take wrongful matters into our own hands in violating moments, not to mention WHY: for the very reason that women have had no other effective recourse. Recall that Thao Nguyen was completely disregarded by the police when she brought the picture of the NYC subway masturbator to them, hoping for action. It was only when the online circulation and media took up the case that the public and privates spheres started to take her violation seriously.

In the future, if and when hollabackers are cast in the role of cyber vigilantes, we would prefer that it's for the meatier reason that sexual harassment has to be vigorously and seriously combated, which includes elevating public opinion of gendered assault to an EQUAL standard of social significance as other forms of assault. And, speaking of, we could do without the comparison to dog shit.

Written by Hilary Allen, Michelle Riblett, & Brittany Shoot. Creative Commons 2.5.

Taking it Up A Notch: Cell Phone Stun Guns

2007-04-25T03:54:00.000-04:00

Although HollaBackBoston is definitely a non-violence advocate, we still acknowledge that violence is a reality, and women who are physically or sexually assaulted often feel they must defend themselves by whatever means necessary.

We're always appreciative of new and stylish (not to mention discrete and subversive) suggestions for self-defense. After all, catching a sexual assailant off-guard with an unusual defense mechanism might make a critical difference in your escape. One of HollaBackBoston's allies, KW Personal Security, is a GLBT friendly company that provides some pretty original "holla" merch. If you're so inclined, check out their Cell Phone Stun Gun (loaded with 180,000 volts and a 130 decibal alarm) or their Lipstick Pepper Spray. Rad.

Also note this practical advice about carrying any type of cell phone:

"Regardless of your particular view of the cell phone, they have a function that you may never have thought of. They can be a deterrent to a potential mugger or attacker! You may be thinking, well that's just not true... someone will see you on your phone and think you're distracted and that you're a perfect target. Well, think about it. If a potential attacker is sizing you up, and you appear to be on the phone, it's unlikely you'll be chosen. The person on the other end of that phone can hang up and call 911. That person is likely to know exactly where you are, and you could be giving them a description of every person you see. That potential predator is most likely going to move on to someone who is more alone."

It's funny too - just this week, one of us was walking home, late at night, and was approached by a strange man. But because she had her camera and phone in hand, after a while, he moved on, saying, "Have a good night. Be safe."

We're just really thankful for the times that small things like our phones, cameras, and other little extras act as powerful deterrents.

Written by Michelle Riblett & Brittany Shoot. Creative Commons 2.5.

Gender In Crisis: His Territory Or Mine?

2007-04-18T12:02:00.000-04:00

I'm continually amazed by street harassers’ use of innuendos and double entendre. Such as: backhanded talk about “melons”, mutterings about “junk” – and still one of my all-time favorites, “I want to be your toilet paper.” Harassers are certainly masters with their metaphors. In the process, they redefine words by giving them totally disgusting and obscene meanings. When did my melons become their melons? When did I become their mommy?! Who knew that a household item like toilet paper could even be used that way? What’s next? Windex? I can only imagine: “Oooh. I bet you’re a dirty girl. Spray on. Wipe off.” Eww.

Manipulating this kind of language is a way for street harassers to verbally and physically stake out territory in what might be described as a sociological crisis of meaning. This crisis negotiates the terms of what and how being gendered a woman means with respect to the everyday and the universal, the public and private, and the individual and community. Each incident of street harassment signifies a crystalized moment of this crisis: suddenly my melons become their melons.

The word, crisis, is apt here. Harassers are carrying the torch of a type of verbal sexual power coercion that has historically engendered very real, material effects for women. Harassment has driven countless women out of their jobs; stifled their income; discouraged them from seeking an education; isolated them from community involvement; given them debilitating ulcers, depression, insomnia, and PTSD; and derailed their sense of self-worth and confidence. Not to mention the ultimate fact that harassment often precludes brutal assault:

“About a year ago, I was aerobic-walking near a mall, for exercise. It wasn’t very late, just past dusk. It was the summertime. It was nice out. As I went by one of the stores, a man standing outside said hello to me, and just to be polite, I smiled and said hello back. Then he started to follow me, keeping talking to me. I was only a few blocks from home, so I started to run. The man started to run too, and he caught me and raped me. At gunpoint. They never caught him.” – Interview, from Carol Brooks Gardner's Passing By: Gender and Public Harassment (1995:p. 2).

This woman’s testimony is chilling. She testifies as to how street harassment constructs public space as a violently exclusive and prized territory - and simultaneously, as a gendered territory. Men's ability to govern public domains, to go wherever they want and do whatever they want to whomever, is an incalculably valuable privilege. But, it’s not innate or guaranteed. Such territorialism has to be rigorously maintained; especially now, when women are transgressing liberally into transnational networks, institutions, and power hierarchies. And especially in relation to geopolitical contexts currently obsessed with shifting markets and meanings. It's like a Coca Cola commercial. We all know about the pervasive availability of Coke. Yet, the Coca Cola company still feels the need to bludgeon our senses with advertising, huge billboards, and TV commercials, year after year, in fifty different languages. Are we all suddenly going to forget about Coke if the commercials stop coming? What if they just stopped commercials for one year; would we all convert to Pepsi? Maybe we would. The repetitive influx of messages and the billions of dollars spent on advertising must have some vital purpose in maintaining the status quo of compliant Coke consumers for generations, as well as maintaining such steady profits.

The same thing is happening with street harassment: the public street I’m trying to walk on has to be repeatedly staked out as the street harasser’s property. Women need constant reminders - in fifty different languages - for street harassment to have its desired effects. Women who want to maneuver easily and possibly even be respected in any public space are reminded by harassers that they are ironically trespassing on public property. Specifically, women are reminded that the possibility of shifting meanings about gender is a dangerous enterprise. Street harassment claims women’s bodies in speech-acts of gendered terrorism as anything but their own territory.

This might be why it is seemingly still effective on a local level (i.e. Boston...) of the street harassment diaspora for women to use behavioral modification strategies to prevent crime which etiquette books began encouraging in the 1970’s. For example, how does the “ignore it” response harrow back to 19th century etiquette writers’ advice to “…encroach as little as possible on the public by speaking as little and as quietly as they [can]”Passing By, (1995:21). Women still may feel safer when they’re accompanied by male escorts in certain places or at certain times. In the 70’s, this corresponded to the proper etiquette of providing male legitimacy to female public presence. Only thirty years ago, if driving at night, women were also advised to put a blow up doll in the front seat, since the mere illusion of a man was safer than appearing to be alone. The blow-up man functioned as a built-in advertisement for someone who complied with social norms. It also reaffirmed the very definition of a woman who was safely and obediently traversing in public.

There are versions of this 70’s mentality that are still thriving. For example, what was the woman’s crime in the above epitaph? That she spoke in public? Reminder: don't say "hello" to men who speak to you. I recently admonished my boyfriend for dropping me off in an empty parking garage about ten feet from my car and then nonchalantly driving away before I got inside. I only belatedly realized the incredulous implications of being a woman left alone for two seconds. But why wouldn’t I be afraid? After all, I’m still socially herded according to outdated etiquette standards. Reminder: if I happen to disobey certain social norms and am then verbally or physically assaulted, I’ll be the one readily punished with even more gendered reinforcement: it’s my own fault for getting assaulted because I didn’t take proper precautions to stay in the presence of a man, shut up, be modest, carry around a fake man, taser gun or mace (even if it’s illegal in MA…).

Underlying these examples of gendered representation is this ideological venom: it's always already the woman's fault because she didn’t use common sense, because common sense historically dictates that she shouldn’t be there in the first place. The message bludgeoning our senses is loud and clear: His world. Not hers.

Carried to its extreme conclusion, when the harasser talks about my “rack” that way, or rates my outfit, or puts a price tag on my body parts, the same territorial message dictates that the only surefire, 100% way for me to effectively diffuse problems like this, is for me to practice total abstinence (the Christian Coalition cheers!) from public space and just stay home, locked up in my house, with millions of alarm systems. Where have we heard this before…? Hmmm… Oh yes. Women’s place is in the home.

In 2007 and counting.

Written by Michelle Riblett. Creative Commons 2.5.

Why HollaBack Works

2007-04-11T17:37:00.000-04:00

We still get asked the question by both men and women how “effective” it is to hollaback. This begs the question of how effective any other means of combating street harassment can be. The truth is that women can never be sure that more traditional responses will quell the harasser or instead spur him on. Maybe today, telling him, “Stop it!! DON’T touch me!” will help; maybe tomorrow it won’t. No one has any control over another person. Who knows what a harasser is thinking or plans on doing or how he will react to more direct confrontation? What we do know is that a street harasser is already willing to intimidate, humiliate, sexually coerce, or even physically assault another human being.

So, how can using multi-media technology like snapping a picture and posting the story online help women?

***Hollaback empowers women. With cell phones, cameras, and computers, women now have the techno-savvy ability to upload the same violating words and images that were used against them, but with a different broadcasting message: a message that strips the harassment of its threat in the critical re-telling of such experiences. Diverse women are therefore defining what it means to be sexually harassed from their own various perspectives, one incident at a time. The harassers never get the last word. We do!

***It is immediate and direct action. Every woman can take care of herself. No need to wait for tedious legal processing or be further traumatized by official debates or approval that determines whether women have, indeed, been violated.

***Hollaback is a nonviolent, discrete, anonymous, and safe method of resistance. As a self-defense tactic, it realistically addresses the often paralyzing and frightening quality of harassment. Yelling at a harasser, “Stop telling me to smile. I don’t like it!” or “Stop sexually harassing women!” are brilliant confrontational responses, but may only work if you feel safe enough to use them. If not, women who hollaback no longer need to fear repercussions of direct verbal confrontation.

***Anyone can hollaback. People of all gender orientations who are allied against street harassment can choose to post a blurry picture, a clear picture, a couple sentences, or several paragraphs. All are experts at transforming their experiences.

***The posts are educational. For women to stop harassment, they first have to understand what is happening to them and to recognize sexual harassment in all of its myriad forms and guises. Reading the posts knits together the big picture: a continuum of sexual power abuse and victimization of women. According to Martha Langelan, author of Back Off! How to Confront and Stop Sexual Harassment and Harassers, “Analysis is not a luxury; it’s a matter of self-defense. Women are much less likely to be caught off guard, to be taken in by excuses, or to feel compelled to tolerate abusive behavior when they can recognize the harasser’s motives, identify the power dynamics involved, and analyze what’s really going on” (1993; p. 63).

***It reclaims public space for women. The blogosphere acts as a parallel universe, brimming with digital discourse. We are increasingly digital beings - cyborgs - enacting our online lives with just as much intensity and commitment as our lives away from the screen. Traditional media now reference blogs even prior to other sources to get "the story." Hollaback's newly reclaimed digital space, built with live information structures, is not merely virtual, it is real.

***Hollabackers have kicked off a global social movement. Thousands of women a week (sometimes an hour) read the stories. A post from someone in Canada can remind someone in Brazil of the time when she experienced something similar, and she in turn may decide to post, or even to engage in further self-empowering dialogue with friends or family. This cycle has built a vast resource of women’s voices, a coalition of witnesses, an international media frenzy, and historically unprecedented documentation and awareness of street harassment as a serious social epidemic. Secrecy and silence has safeguarded harassers in the past. Now, hollabackers are justice-seeking spies, signaling a future wherein harassers are unable to slip away from public watchfulness and accountability.

Written by Michelle Riblett. Creative Commons 2.5.

Hump Day

2007-04-04T02:30:00.000-04:00

We always post on Wednesdays (when we post) and much like on every other so-called Hump Day, street harassment continues to suck and pervade our spaces. Last night I contemplated buying another giant hat to wear over my giant sunglasses so that a few less people would come into my personal space on any given day. So it goes.

And so it goes this week that an old favorite of ours who keeps coming up in conversation was apparently on our minds for a reason. Enjoy Alanis on this Hump Day and note her willingness to fight back. We love that.

Written by Brittany Shoot. Creative Commons 2.5.

Harassment translations

2007-03-28T00:51:00.000-04:00

Virtual spaces and real lives got very creepy this week in two totally unrelated - but to us, equally disturbing - incidents.

First, well-known female tech blogger and educator Kathy Sierra decided to take leave of our virtual spaces after being the victim of misogynist cyberbullying. Anyone who has experienced online threats knows the fear that one feels for putting themselves out there - in Kathy's case, in nothing but positive ways - and despite the community with which you have surrounded yourself online, you're ultimately opening the execrable emails alone. Our best wishes are with anyone who experiences such attacks and hope people will participate in and support Friday's Stop Cyberbullying Day.

We also found out about an incident of street harassment gone too far. Not sure if this is the first of its kind, we're also posting this in no way to diminish the legitimate quandaries in how to handle online harassment and in fact to only illustrate the complexity and wide range of problems we currently face.

Last week, a pedestrian woman trying to avoid a man's advances was run down when he decided that instead of accept her dismissal, he'd drive his truck onto the sidewalk and hit her. While some bloggers make snarky remarks about the incident, we're pretty much speechless.

Look for the ladies of HollaBackBoston at the WAM! conference this weekend.

The Blank Noise Project - Action Heroes

2007-03-08T02:49:00.000-05:00

In alliance with the Blank Noise Project, aimed at combating street harassment - "Eve Teasing" - in India, March 8 marks the date for bloggers worldwide to blog their stories.

This year for International Women's Day, Blank Noise is asking you to share experiences of times when you were an ACTION HERO and fought back against harassment.

"When did you flip a situation so you could resist, when did you give back as hard as you got? How did you choose to confront the situation? When did you become an Action Hero?

Blank Noise hopes that the written accounts and responses will help us understand the different strategies women (across age groups, cultures, and countries) have instinctively created to deal with street sexual harassment.

(If you're a male blogger, ask your female friends and relatives about their experiences.)

Here's how to participate:

1. blog your story (as soon as possible, and definitely before March 8!)

2. email the link to your blog post to blurtblanknoise@gmail.com with a subject titled "Action Heroes Online"

3. they will link to you right away!

And don't forget your non-blogging friends and family members - they'd love to hear stories from your mothers, aunties and grandmothers!

Why You Wanna Go and Ask That Now, Huh?

2007-03-06T20:17:00.000-05:00

Pretty regularly, we receive a similar question from reporters and other members of the media inquiring about the work of HollaBack. While we know and respect that most journalism seeks to preempt the general questions of the public, we're always surprised when the following continuously pops up:

"Couldn't an angry girl send you a photo of her ex-boyfriend saying that he was a street harasser?"

When asked this question we respond with the usual - as you can see, the pictures on the site don't exactly depict discernible individuals; each story clearly describes an encounter with a stranger; and most importantly, it has never been our experience - nor that of any other HollaBack site that we know of - to receive such a submission.

What's bothering us lately about this issue, though, is the presumption that women would "use" the site for this purpose. What evidence do we have that when given a forum to empower themselves and respond to systematic subordination of themselves in the public space, women will abuse that forum for their own revenge? Why is it so hard for us to trust the experiences of women who have been harassed - or raped - or people of color, or members of other marginalized groups as truth?

It seems quite clear to us that this sort of presumption is exactly in line with a patriarchal society that prioritizes men's experience, contributions, and existence over that of a woman's or a person of any other gender; a society where men, on the whole, are given the benefit of the doubt, and women, for the most part, are suspect.

We look forward to the day that journalists remove this presumptuous inquiry from their questioning and simply see HollaBack as a safe space to build solidarity with others and seek refuge from an increasingly threatening society.

Take Back the Oppression

2007-02-14T14:56:00.000-05:00

We know, we know, we're maybe the last to blog about this, but we wanted to do it a little ceremoniously in honor of today's beloved holiday.

As you may have heard, the Independent Women's Forum is organizing a "Take Back the Date" Campaign. That's right, the language is supposed to remind you of that venerable campus movement that has transformed many a young women's experience at higher educational institutions. But what they are actually seeking to counteract is V-Day; they want to take the vagina out of February 14th.

Their motives are, in a word, to counteract the male-bashing and sexual freedom on which the Vagina Monologues and its offspring have built their strength. What the IMF misses though, and is so clear to us, is that their reported discovery of the prevalence of "random hooks ups" at colleges and universities says less about the impact of feminism on campuses, but in fact more about the pervasive dearth of it there.

We wish the IMF and the "Take Back the Date[rs]" would just come out and say what they actually mean: We need to "free cupid," "restore chivalry," and sit around expecting flowers (all their messages) in order to return to the time when women found their husbands at college. If instead they attend, achieve advanced degrees, and graduate single, we will have society running amok! Right? Damn, just SAY it.

We've decided that this V-Day what we are going to advocate resurrecting is not arcane gendered ritual but Veronica A. Shoffstall's powerful 1971 feminist manifesto of independence, "After a While":

After a while you learn the subtle difference between holding a hand and chaining a soul and you learn that love doesn't mean leaning and company doesn't always mean security.
And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts and presents aren't promises and you begin to accept your defeats with your head up and your eyes ahead with the grace of woman, not the grief of a child,
and you learn to build all your roads on today because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plans and futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.
After a while you learn that even sunshine burns if you get too much so you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure
you really are strong
you really do have worth.

Freezing the harassers off

2007-02-07T00:39:00.000-05:00

For those of you who are not local, let us share with you: It's FREEZING here in Boston. Which leads us to ask a few questions:

Where did all the holla'ers go? Were the naysayers right? Does the cold weather really curtail harassment?

The reason we're asking is because visitors to HollaBackBoston, or any of the HollaBack sites, can detect a noticeable decrease in posts in recent months. While there could be a number of reasons for the drop, we're tempted to wonder whether there's another trend at play: are harassers in hibernation?

Asking this question goes against our understanding of the pervasiveness of street harassment. We know and have heard testimony from countless others that the "eve teasing" happens in a big, puffy down coat in the snow just as much as in a skimpy tank top in the hell hot of summer. It keeps happening to us, as well as our friends and allies. But it does seem odd that most harassment reported our way happens indoors or in much warmer climates.

Last winter, RightRides in New York City shut down during the winter due to lack of volunteers but also didn't resume service until July [source]. Boston's Hyde Square Task Force goes on a street harassment combat break for the winter months.

Which leads us to ask: Are we just too busy surviving the city's cold to bother each other?

We think not, but hit us up in the comments and let us know how it is for you. Or better yet, send us your holla back story to post!

Feeding back

2007-01-31T00:00:00.000-05:00

Sites like HollaBackBoston.com exist because new media is interactive. Without public discourse, we wouldn't have a site, a purpose, or an audience. We wouldn't be building a participatory community or have a side blog (um, this one) to further open the discussion.

So, to follow up from last week, we've been scanning our RSS readers and news sources for further thoughts. It's not as if this topic is overlooked. Almost every day, someone's mouthing off about audience and interactive content. So, we decided to post what are, in our opinion, the most interesting reads of the week, coming first from Salon.com, Gary Kamiya's The readers strike back.

Perhaps most applicable to our work is Kamiya's statement, "The fact is that anyone who posts anything on the Internet is opening himself or herself up to every conceivable response -- from thoughtful comments to irrelevant ramblings to savage personal attacks." We couldn't agree more, and it's one of the many reasons we believe many of our readers and submitters wish to remain anonymous. The whole point here is fighting back against harassment - not incurring more.

Novelist and former Salon columnist Ayelet Waldman is also quoted so aptly by Kamiya, "The entire blogosphere is a first draft." We're all just learning the ropes, trying to find our ways through new rules of engagement and play. It's only slightly inconvenient that every mistake we make is cataloged by Google along the way.

Kamiya goes on to talk about the immediacy of feedback.

"Now, in the glorious days of 'disintermediation,' when writing a letter or posting a blog is as easy as banging away on a keyboard for a few seconds and clicking 'Send,' that contract has been trashed. Formality? The context of online communication is more like being in your car in a traffic jam than sitting across a table from someone and having a talk -- and it's easy to flip somebody off through a rolled-up window."

While it's hard to argue with this logic, we like the immediacy of a "holla back". There are consequences for all actions - from yelling at someone in the street to writing a nasty email to some writer with whom you disagree - and the implications of that feedback, in our opinion, are vastly different and exist with different intent and purpose.

Kamiya also refers to New York Times writer David Carr's January 15 piece, 24-Hour Newspaper People. Among other topics, Carr addresses the relationships created online with people and the sense of community that results. But when these issues are raised, I always wonder: do people recognize the Internet's false intimacy, awkward sense of connectedness with strangers, and what does that do to our causes and movements? We certainly feel more connected about issues like street harassment because of participatory media, but what happens when we meet in real time?

A lot of times, writers and media makers are told to ignore hurtful feedback. So are women who are bothered in public. And neither response seems particularly helpful or reasonable. Holla BACK.

Written by Brittany Shoot. Protected by Creative Commons 2.5

Are you talking WITH me?

2007-01-23T22:58:00.000-05:00

There's something going on with the current state of interactivity of the media. More people are blogging, uploading video, and generally active online than ever before. Accessibility is a hot button issue, user-generated content is making the Silicon Valley bubble reinflate, and space online has become just as important to some people as their physical space in everyday life.

Check out the message boards of any of your local papers or check social media websites and you'll find that people everywhere are sounding off and about anything and everything. Most times you don't even have to ask for their opinion. They just give it.

Even the producers of reality shows are recognizing that people must have to be able to affect - or feel as if they affect - the outcome of another person's life. Push 4 to vote for your American Idol contestant.

These days, everybody is an expert. Or are they?

We aren't the first to point out the awesome power and potential of the fact that almost anyone has the ability to have a blog or a website. (Of course we recognize that there are certain skill and resource boundaries that prevent this from being a reality for all people, but are just saying IN THEORY everyone can.) This, in turn, means that anyone with a camera - again those with the resources - can upload a video to YouTube and sound off about their political views, their religious stance, or their day.

We get it. And most times, we love it. What we are struggling with lately is the "interaction" component of social media. In his January 2 column, "Have Something to Say, I Don't Care," LA Times writer Joel Stein told us he was fed up with the interactivity.

"Not everything should be interactive. A piece of work that stands on its own, without explanation or defense, takes on its own power. If Martin Luther put his 95 Theses on the wall and then all the townsfolk sent him their comments, and he had to write back to all of them and clarify what he meant, some of the theses would have gotten all watered down and there never would have been a Diet of Worms. And then, for the rest of history, elementary school students learning about the Reformation would have nothing to make fun of. You can see how dangerous this all is."

Of course, Joel Stein is no Martin Luther and we're not all for treatises "tak[ing] on their own power", but that's not the point. While Stein's column is clearly tongue-in-cheek, it's also a very real statement about the current attitude about user-generated content and public opinion.

We personally know more than one blogger who has had to turn off commenting on their site and or posts because it's caused such personally emotional and psychological damage. Is that just the price we pay for putting our art and our perspectives out into the world? We think not.

Yet, we also support the ability for readers to interact with the medium. It was one of the reasons to start this space to begin with. We're just trying to figure out the healthiest and most productive way to interact from our keyboards. To figure out whether there is any way for this to start feeling more like a dialogue (or a polylogue?) and less like shouting from the mountaintops (or some days, into the valleys) is a constant conversation and struggle for us.

But at the end of our days, the ladies of HollaBackBoston still walk the streets of our city, interact with friends and allies, and when we can, meet in person. MySpace friends don't equal activism, nor is commenting on blogs all day going to get us very far. But in order to reach a large audience and potentially have a significant impact, we embrace the power of the Internet and the communication it allows. We're just still working out the boundaries and details on our end, too.

Written by Hilary Allen & Brittany Shoot. Protected by Creative Commons 2.5

Experience Interrupted

2007-01-16T21:07:00.000-05:00

This week, we proudly cross-posted a video holla from Ryanne. Then, she forwarded us this link. Tricia states "While I believe Ryanne attempted to document the men's behavior to demand respect, I believe that she mistakenly took the men's unwanted attention for egregious misogyny." Mind you, this statement follows a paragraph of description of Tricia's personal experience with similarly egregious misogyny. What Tricia misses is that those two behaviors - men's unwanted attention and egregious misogyny - are more often than not, inextricably linked.

HollaBackBoston publishes experiences like Ryanne's because women and marginalized people often feel they have no recourse for the generalized feelings of danger and assault they regularly feel in public spaces. We are interested in solving this aspect of the spectrum of sexual violence, but we also believe that taking the issue seriously and creating a safe space to share experiences is the first step towards any helpful resolution. When women start questioning other women's experiences like Tricia felt so compelled to do, we do nothing but work backwards and against one another.

Tricia also claims that Ryanne "ignores the racial and class issues of the men's action." But then confusingly, she goes on to state:

"Working class construction workers and Black culture has their own forms of cultural practices in appreciating women's beauty. Cat calling on construction sites is practically a tradition inherent to the job. I am not claiming that cultural norms are not sexist or even excusing the men's sexist behavior."

Sounds to us as if she is, in fact, excusing the behavior, not to mention justifying it using stereotypes - false or accurate - that individuals are able to leverage to oppress others! Harassment occurs in all cultures, and just because Tricia offers its stereotypical history within certain racial, ethnic, or socioeconomic groups does not mean women want or deserve unsolicited comments and verbal assaults on the street that may endanger their freedom. We challenged myths like this when we started the site (and apparently will be continuing to do so).

Tricia also claims to be concerned for the rights of the unrepresented men on sites like HollaBackBoston, when she says, "The cat caller is never truly confronted for his behavior, therefore it's not really effective in preventing harassment as there is no true confrontation."
That's interesting since a), we don't claim that posting on a blog confronts the specific harasser's behavior head on, and b), we didn't realize that "true" confrontation is always going to be the "really effective" way to handle something.

Additionally, we find it repugnant that Ryanne's actions would referenced as a "modern parallel to the lynching of Emmett Til in 1955 Jim Crow Mississippi." To be clear, we don't claim that race and class never play into occurrences of street harassment. But what happened to Ryanne is a real, frightening experience that does not deserve to be equated to an atrocious murder - for an alleged act - during a period of state-sponsored racism.

In reading Tricia's closing question "How do we find empowerment in documentation and effective confrontation while being sensitive to socio-economic dynamics?" we're left with our own: are you asking that we hold people of color and those from lower and working class backgrounds and professions (all perceptions and assumptions) to an alternative set of standards? That when we are harassed by a man of color or a service worker we retreat back into our old ways of ignoring it or keeping it to ourselves?

If you are, then we must posit that what is missed by such an approach is an idea one would hope those like Tricia picked up in recent days. It is Dr. King's message that, "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." If we consent to our oppression by others who are oppressed, then we all still end up oppressed, don't we?

Finally, we hope Ryanne is as proud as we are of the labels "vigilante," "citizen journalist," and HollaBacker! Her fearlessness certainly earned her them in our book.

Written by Hilary Allen & Brittany Shoot. Protected by Creative Commons 2.5

Repressed Hollas

2006-12-13T13:01:00.000-05:00

Since we started HollaBackBoston.com, we've had more than a few encounters with what we like to call "repressed hollas". Both in our own circle as with allies and friends at events and everyday life, we've found a high volume of women walk around, remembering incidents of harassment from years earlier. At first, the HollaBackBoston ladies would get together for planning meetings and end up sharing old stories of our own. Pretty soon, people would share the same stories with us, mostly unprompted.

"When I was twelve...and I mean, I was twelve!"

"Oh geez, I was ten the first time someone tried to reach under my dress."

"I'll never forget the time that guy followed me home when I was on vacation. I was totally convinced I was going to be raped and killed...yeah, I was, what, thirteen maybe?"

If you've been reading the site for a while, you may even recall some repressed hollas we received from our elderly readers. Women can often remember incidents that took place decades prior. Unsurprisingly, these accounts can be retold with clarity and the same frustration, if not more, due to years of simmering anxiety.

What does this mean? Critics of our work would blame it on the fact that we can't get a sense of humor, accept the way things are, and that we can't brush these things off.

But I believe repressed harassment experiences - or vivid memories, for that matter - are telltale signs of the real and actualized trauma many women experience, just for existing in public. Sexual harassment is commonly known to trigger trauma responses and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms due to the sudden, unexpected nature of verbal or physical assault. When a woman is followed home, the survivor of a violent verbal assault in public transit, or physically intimidated due to her gender alone, it's no wonder those accounts stay with us, reminding us that we can't feel safe in public.

I haven't listened to a lot of women who want feedback when they share their experiences. What I do hear are women who need to vent. Before we started HollaBackBoston, we, along with countless others, felt we had no recourse. In traumatic situations, there is often a "crisis reaction" when a victim isn't able to quickly respond due to situational danger, paralyzing fear, or shock. Women who tell us their stories are often still angry that they didn't react differently, acting with self-blame, and still pondering what went wrong.

Whether women take pictures or write in with their accounts, we hope creating space for validation and legitimacy unburdens us all.

Additional resources:
Sexual Harassment Support
Sexual Harassment resources: California NOW
Sexual Harassment and PTSD: Is Sexual Harassment Diagnosable Trauma? - Journal of Traumatic Stress * (requires paid download)

Written by Brittany Shoot. Protected by Creative Commons, Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5.

It never ends

2006-12-06T01:55:00.000-05:00

Tonight HollaBackBoston received one of the most disturbing hollas in recent memory from an ally/friend. Unable to comprehend the monstrosity and outrageous content of the post, I wrote. I don't feel better, but I didn't know what else to do.

HollaBackBoston has an event on Monday. We hope you'll come and talk with us.

Written by Brittany Shoot. Protected by Creative Commons, Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5.

Where Will You Be On December 11th?

2006-11-29T12:01:00.000-05:00

Mark your calendars!

The Greater Boston National Organization for Women has invited HollaBackBoston to facilitate a workshop on street harassment at their Annual Membership Meeting.

When: Monday, December 11th 7:00 PM
Where: Boston University
College of Arts and Sciences
725 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 233
(Take the "B" Green Line to the BU East stop)
[Map]

If you are interested in talking and learning about street harassment, be there. (You do not need to be a NOW member to attend this meeting.)

(click for larger view)

Recognition of the other

2006-11-22T00:06:00.000-05:00

When we were first starting HollaBackBoston, the idea was briefly tossed around that we should include stories of good will - public success stories, if you will, wherein women were respected and men kept their cool. This idea was quickly thrown aside because we chose to focus on creating a space for women and all marginalized groups who feel unsafe in public. While we applaud those who know how to handle themselves, we reasoned that we should be totally clear about our purpose and existence.

In the months since we've set up camp in our corner of the blogosphere, we've noticed lots of other HollaBack chapters toying with this idea. While it warms our hearts to know that some men understand these issues and are engaging in the dialogue (as we ourselves have encouraged), thus far, we've spent time privately thanking the men in our own lives - partners, relatives, friends, allies - for their work and resistance. This week, in honor of a holiday built on false history and oppressive behavior, we encourage everyone to thank the people in their lives who make them stronger, more confident, healthy individuals. We couldn't do it alone.

By Brittany Shoot, Creative Commons 2.5.

Blogging Feminism: (Web)Sites of Resistance

2006-11-09T10:00:00.000-05:00

Upcoming event hosted by the Center For Research on Women at Barnard College in NYC. Come Join Us!

Feminist Futures
Blogging Feminism:
(Web)Sites of Resistance
A panel discussion
Tuesday, 14 November, 7:00 PM
Altschul Atrium, Altschul Hall
Free & open to the public; no reservations required.

Cyberspace . . . will have important effects in encouraging women to participate in designing and implementing models of economic development, constructing stable democracies, ensuring that different cultures can exist side by side without violent conflict and providing the sense of trust, partnership and solidarity that are necessary to any society in which people cooperate for mutual well-being.
- Lourdes Arizpe

Of the internet's viability as a tool for political change, we ask, is there a better example than the blog? Young and youthfully minded feminists have learned that blogging allows them to carve out personal and political spaces where their lives, their issues, their analyses of the world can come into sharp focus. Outside the confines of mainstream media, where women are addressed (usually exclusively) as consumers, feminist bloggers have become the cultural producers blazing some of the most radical and rousing paths toward revolutionary social change.

In celebration of the publication of this fall's issue of The Scholar & Feminist Online, guest editors Gwendolyn Beetham and Jessica Valenti come together with select contributors to discuss how feminists are fulfilling the promise of creating a cybercommunity dedicated to securing a more just and peaceful world. Panelists include Lauren Spees and Michelle Riblett, BC '05 (Hollaback), Liza Sabater (Culture Kitchen), among others. Join us for a spirited discussion of feminism in the 21st century.

Tricks and Treats?

2006-10-31T16:01:00.000-05:00

A friend recently told me a story about an absurdly comical incident at a summer street festival. A man had constructed an elaborate costume: he stood ten feet tall, on cloven goat-leg stilts, which seamlessly blended into his own thighs that he had covered with thick black hair; an extra set of exposed ribs extenuated and hollowed his abdomen; a long black cape hunched over his back and arms; and his head was concealed entirely by a thoroughly grotesque mask, dripping with god knows what. This creative festival attendee then proceeded to weave in and out of the borders of the street, spontaneously pouncing on unsuspecting groups of young people. At one point, he picked the wrong girl. After pouncing, she screamed, immediately turned and started running full-speed in the opposite direction. The man felt terrible, and started running after her to apologize.

There may come a point when women no longer feel that “spider sense” or innate flight syndrome or unconscious “check-list” of their surroundings when they are walking down the streets alone at night. I’ve often tried to imagine what that would be like, how we might imagine some kind of social contract that deals with this scenario and all of its psychological baggage effectively…

Feminist scholar Katie Roiphe is famous for hacking away at “victim feminism,” arguing controversially that feminists only perpetuate the fear of “rape culture” by blindly delineating oversimplified roles for men as demons and women as victims. She targets Catherine MacKinnon’s work of constructing women as new innocents, advocating that women should “Take Back the Mind” instead of “Take Back the Night” – since victim feminism is merely acting as "a trope- convenient, appealing, politically effective." Check out Vanderbilt Professor, Jean Bethke Elshtain’s summary of Roiphe’s debate:

The Morning After: Sex, Fear, and Feminism on Campus

Roiphe is an extremist argumentatively, for sure; her reliance on the “facts” and statistics of rape to make her claims are obviously questionable. For example, how did she manage to miss out on all the complex reasons why rapes are not reported accurately? No one knows. At any rate, she is a useful troublemaker. I can appreciate her demand for co-responsibility by both men and women in the construction of a safe world, and her demand for renewed feminist definitions of demons/victims in the context of diffusing “rape culture.” I, for one, certainly do not want to live in a “rape culture.”

On Halloween I fully expect to be scared, grabbed, yelled at, and generally haunted on the street. My expectancy is really no different from any other night, but for the striking contrast imbued in the sense of “holiday,” a contrast that temporarily suspends the normative definition of fear. Halloween night has been staked out for anyone and everyone to romanticize and sublimate their involvement with ghoulish things, to hollaback at terror, and to turn death into the carnivalesque. Meanwhile, we all appear to covertly understand that the real demons are shamed into hiding on this night, and are supposed to take the night off so that even children can play in the dark without fear of being victimized. Given, real demons don’t always do this – but those who disobey the rules of play are immediately socially ostracized, ripped of their status and any claim to power; no questions asked. How perfectly delightful is this inverted reversal of the social power scheme? To risk waxing idealistic, why can’t we do this every other night of the year?!! Is this not the very definition of collectively responsible freedom and safety? A type of freedom that beautifully deconstructs the binary of predator and prey?

Written by: Michelle Riblett. Protected by Creative Commons License 2.5. Any copying, redistribution, or replication in any form of this work is prohibited unless permission is obtained from the author.

Holla back...anytime, anywhere

2006-10-25T02:28:00.000-04:00

You may have noticed that we've been posting hollas from CraigsList lately. Thing is, women were holla-ing back long before this movement and its branches sprang up. But I can't help but think it's amusing (well, as funny as street harassment can be, I suppose) that I keep running across these hollas-waiting-to-happen whenever I'm browsing the ol' CL. I suspect a lot (all?) of these annoyed females don't know we exist.

And I applaud them all the same.

While we strive to build a coalition around a serious issue, I want women to feel empowered and use whatever tools best suit their needs. A community blog isn't for everyone, and while we continue to work on bridge-building in our own city, women are standing up for themselves all over the country - and all around the world - with or without an organized structure.

Bravo, ladies.

I also like it when people holla with a sense of humor.

Have a safe week.

By Brittany Shoot, protected by Creative Commons 2.5.

Why Aren't We Shocked?

2006-10-18T02:00:00.000-04:00

Sometimes we come across an article that so accurately articulates our point of view, we feel compelled to keep it circulating.

Today's post comes to us from our friend and ally Denise's Myspace bulletin (Thanks!). We're including the full text to make sure all are able to access the article.

Why Aren’t We Shocked?
October 16th, 2006
NY Times Select
Bob Herbert, Op-Ed Columnist

"Who needs a brain when you have these?"
--message on an Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt for young women

In the recent shootings at an Amish schoolhouse in rural Pennsylvania and a large public high school in Colorado, the killers went out of their way to separate the girls from the boys, and then deliberately attacked only the girls.

Ten girls were shot and five killed at the Amish school. One girl was killed and a number of others were molested in the Colorado attack.

In the widespread coverage that followed these crimes, very little was made of the fact that only girls were targeted. Imagine if a gunman had gone into a school, separated the kids up on the basis of race or religion, and then shot only the black kids. Or only the white kids. Or only the Jews.

There would have been thunderous outrage. The country would have first recoiled in horror, and then mobilized in an effort to eradicate that kind of murderous bigotry. There would have been calls for action and reflection. And the attack would have been seen for what it really was: a hate crime.

None of that occurred because these were just girls, and we have become so accustomed to living in a society saturated with misogyny that violence against females is more or less to be expected. Stories about the rape, murder and mutilation of women and girls are staples of the news, as familiar to us as weather forecasts. The startling aspect of the Pennsylvania attack was that this terrible thing happened at a school in Amish country, not that it happened to girls.

The disrespectful, degrading, contemptuous treatment of women is so pervasive and so mainstream that it has just about lost its ability to shock. Guys at sporting events and other public venues have shown no qualms about raising an insistent chant to nearby women to show their breasts. An ad for a major long-distance telephone carrier shows three apparently naked women holding a billing statement from a competitor. The text asks, "When was the last time you got screwed?"

An ad for Clinique moisturizing lotion shows a woman's face with the lotion spattered across it to simulate the climactic shot of a porn video.

We have a problem. Staggering amounts of violence are unleashed on women every day, and there is no escaping the fact that in the most sensational stories, large segments of the population are titillated by that violence. We've been watching the sexualized image of the murdered 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey for 10 years. JonBenet is dead. Her mother is dead. And we’re still watching the video of this poor child prancing in lipstick and high heels.

What have we learned since then? That there’s big money to be made from thongs, spandex tops and sexy makeovers for little girls. In a misogynistic culture, it's never too early to drill into the minds of girls that what really matters is their appearance and their ability to please men sexually.

A girl or woman is sexually assaulted every couple of minutes or so in the U.S. The number of seriously battered wives and girlfriends is far beyond the ability of any agency to count. We’re all implicated in this carnage because the relentless violence against women and girls is linked at its core to the wider society’s casual willingness to dehumanize women and girls, to see them first and foremost as sexual vessels - objects - and never, ever as the equals of men.

"Once you dehumanize somebody, everything is possible," said Taina Bien-Aimé, executive director of the women’s advocacy group Equality Now.

That was never clearer than in some of the extreme forms of pornography that have spread like nuclear waste across mainstream America. Forget the embarrassed, inhibited raincoat crowd of the old days. Now Mr. Solid Citizen can come home, log on to this $7 billion mega-industry and get his kicks watching real women being beaten and sexually assaulted on Web sites with names like “Ravished Bride” and “Rough Sex — Where Whores Get Owned.”

Then, of course, there’s gangsta rap, and the video games where the players themselves get to maul and molest women, the rise of pimp culture (the Academy Award-winning song this year was “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp”), and on and on.

You’re deluded if you think this is all about fun and games. It’s all part of a devastating continuum of misogyny that at its farthest extreme touches down in places like the one-room Amish schoolhouse in normally quiet Nickel Mines, PA.

Through the Mirrored Shades

2006-10-11T01:04:00.000-04:00

Turns out there are more responses to the "Hey Baby" article in the Boston Globe a couple months ago which featured the work of HollaBackBoston.

Thanks to HollaBackNYC for passing along this email from their inbox of hate mail. We wonder if the writer even bothered submitting to the Globe for print. Well, we’re the suckers for publishing it here.

In the same vein as our previous post, "Where Have I Heard That Before", we’re gonna continue to characterize responses to the article (and our work) into categories. Let’s throw this one into the “Wear a Robe” Response camp:

This world is becoming more and more pathetic. Woman spend billions of dollars annually to look sexy. Who are they trying to look sexy for? When a good natured happy go lucky guy happens to pay them (female) a compliment on the street they are often accused of being a creep. This just sucks! Yes, there are a few creeps out there, SO deal with it, suck it up. If its too much to handle try wearing a robe or possibly crawl into a shell. Its always the ugly looking bitches that do most of the complaining anyhow, and that's a fact. Glamour, playboy, hustler, even the sports mags there are woman that are selling themselves daily for a few pieces of silver. If leering or looking ever becomes ILLEGAL I will be the first to bring back mirror shades. Fuck off!!
PS And that goes for all you looking for a cause homosexual male sympathizers as well.
- cybersniper

We realize this is the most simplistic retort we could have, but again, why should we have to curb our behavior, dress, LIVES – "wear a robe and crawl into a shell" – because we are confronted with violence EVERY DAY? Why shouldn’t the perpetrators have to adjust their behavior for once? Thank God the HollaBack movement exists to demand that they do just that.

Where we agree with this critic is in his attention to capitalism's exploitation of women's oppression. Yes, women do spend billions of dollars annually to look "sexy". Yes, there exist a multitude of magazines which provide women with the opportunity to display their bodies in exchange for monetary reward.

We recognize this reality makes it difficult for men, and women alike, to remember how to properly interact with others in public space. We must do more to demand media that more fully represents our experiences and identities but until then, "cybersniper" and others, try talking with women about what kinds of comments they welcome and ask them if they appreciate “compliments” from strangers. And when in doubt, imagine saying what’s coming out of your mouth to your sister or looking that way at your mother. You might be surprised by what you learn. You may also be surprised to learn that our male allies are a diverse group of organized activists who are doing their own work, or to use your term, have their own "cause" (see post about this as well).

Lastly, be sure to check out NBC’s Today show coverage of the HollaBack movement on yesterday’s morning show. Watch the segment here.

Written by Hilary Allen and protected by a Creative Commons 2.5 License.

Wikipedia: Defining Our Experience

2006-10-04T00:14:00.000-04:00

We've got a number of issues with Wikipedia, the free, user-written and edited online "encyclopedia."

We recently discovered that (perhaps unsurprisingly), it has been suggested that the definition of "street harassment" be merged with "objectification". Because the majority of Wikipedia contributors/editors (80%) are men, this is hardly shocking that two distinct concepts would be confused and possibly welded - for their convenience, assumedly. Wouldn't want to make too much of these issues. Wouldn't want to make it too complicated. Certainly wouldn't want to clog up a wiki with battling definitions. It's not like the guys do that.

According to the same rationale, should "rape" be merged with "violence"? Or, would it make more sense and be more convenient if "rape" were merged with "sex"? Should we merge the terms "race" with "bigotry" ?!! And then not expect that language and its associations have any particular play or animating effect on our continual perception of others?

The site contains at least as many errors as regular encyclopedias. As a source of reference, Wikipedia is run like a collective blog. Maybe it is, at the very least, pointing out to all of us just how biased print encyclopedias have been, and continue to be in the parallel online universe. A woman named Maia wrote a helpful response in her blog, Free? to a similar Wikipedia scandal about the sexist handling of the term, "Woman," that also got tagged by sites such as Feministe and scribblepad. Maia suggests that the free space of the blogosphere will replicate sexist patterns, as well as all other power structures, that exist in mainstream society unless we, as contributors, consciously do something to change that. Right on. So, in other words, holla back!

You can add to the discussion of this post and define the kind of world you want to live in by clicking here.

Source: Know It All, The New Yorker

Written by: Brittany Shoot and Michelle Riblett. Protected by Creative Commons License 2.5. Any copying, redistribution, or replication in any form of this work is prohibited unless permission is obtained from the author.

Street harassment zone: a hot and safe art installment

2006-09-27T03:01:00.000-04:00

Earlier this summer, the ladies of HollaBackBoston gathered with members of NOMAS-Boston and other community allies to discuss men's role in ending street harassment and to create an art installation. After an enlightened discussion and exchange of practical tips, those assembled took up their markers. Armed with spools of blank yellow zoning ribbon, activists created mock caution tape as an illustration of the problem of street harassment. Intertwined with parts of a real construction site on Mt. Auburn Street in Cambridge, MA, (and notably not removed for several days) HollaBackBoston co-founder Michelle Riblett explained the installment, "We're creating a street harassment zone because there isn't one already!" And yet, street harassment knows no zoning boundaries.

Play Quicktime HollaBackTALK movie

Written, taped, and produced by Brittany Shoot. Protected by a Creative Commons License 2.5. Music "Proceed with Caution" by The Dillinger Escape Plan.

OUCH! Body Narratives: Gender, Disability, and Harassment

2006-09-20T04:08:00.000-04:00

An ally in New Zealand recently pointed us towards a like-minded website that documents disability parking space offenders: CaughtYa.org.
I have a "hidden" chronic illness disability (although now, not so hidden...). Links to such websites can be useful in beginning to trace certain intersecting narratives about gender, disability, and harassment. Here is another resource that is absolutely Hot And Safe: ChronicBabe.com. I was hardly surprised upon perusing through this site to discover a richly insightful post:

The Question of the Day: May I Touch You?
November 23, 2005, by Jenni Prokopy, the Editrix.

In Jenni's words, "The answer today is: no, you may not. But unfortunately, you probably won't bother asking anyway. Sounds like a bad date, right? Wrong." Jenni has chronic physical pain due to fibromyalgia. She describes an incident of Bad Touch that occurred during a bodywork session, when the practitioner refused to listen to her admonitions "Oh, no, stop that," and then defensively argued that Jenni was the one who wasn't pliant enough. Jenni concludes that if the practitioner had just asked the simple question:May I Touch You? - and set up ground rules for consent - the negative experience of completely disrespecting her body and space could have been avoided.

Thank you, Editrix of ChronicBabe.com!

HollaBackBoston is committed to reclaiming public safety and respect for ALL women. And when we hear suggestions like - "JUST ASK" - it resonates loud and clear with our mission.

To think further:

Street harassment, a form of gender discrimination, may stand in stark contrast to disability discrimination for any myriad of reasons, since both terms, "gendered" and "disabled" are laden with historical, social, and ideological contingencies. For some, to be gendered a woman does not mean the same, monolithic experience as to be designated disabled. In the first-world, Euro-centric tradition (codename: "West"), however, equating gender to disability has purportedly been common.

Aristotle defined women as “mutilated males,” and described them in much the same way the disabled are described now, as a “departure from type,” who have “improper form” (Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Re-Shaping, Re-Thinking, Re-Defining: Feminist Disability Studies, 2001, p. 7). It is hard to forget Freud's pronouncement of women's castration and our subsequent need to fill such feminine lack with his rendition of the “penis-baby” (See Freud’s Three Essays on Femininity). Then there's menstruation taboos and sickness, and women considered to be overtly and obsessively emotional; due to our wandering uteruses inducing hysteria (according to Garland-Thomson, we are accused of suffering from "either excess or lack," both making us freaks), and we must surely be burned at the stake or hanged for having birth “marks of Satan” or being accused of any abnormal behaviors indicating Witchcraft.

More recently, feminists have controversially claimed we've been literally disfigured and distorted by sexist practices and thinking (i.e. anything from corsets to foot-binding to female genital mutilation to Gender Identity Disorder in the DSM IV), and theoretically crippled by our predilections towards feminine materiality, embodiment, and prosthetic and plastic surgery.

Finally, as Garland-Thomson pinpoints: “Beauty contests, girlie shows, freak shows, telethons, and medical theatre all testify to an appropriating to-be-looked-at-ness that supposedly inheres in the female and/or disabled body. Leering at women and gawking at disabled people are historical practices that constitute the female and disabled personhood throughout the social world” (For full discussion, See Barbara Waxman Fiduccia Papers on Women and Girls With Disabilities, Center for Women Policy Studies, 2001, p. 9).

I don't think we need any more grandiose analogies that further conflate these identities. But, I also refuse to presume that one is first a "woman," and second, "disabled," or vice versa; two neatly separate identity categories, one inevitably less informative, informed by, or subordinated to another.

I will toast the day when gender theory and disability theory become rampantly accessible as intersecting scholarship camps, and one can in fact major in “Feminist Disability Studies” and still feasibly get a job upon graduating. Both the gendering process (never fixed, always in process) and disability, it seems, are still acting as constructivist artists, hard at work on and within the ever-troublesome clay of the body – and yes, we are still dealing with The Body (it’s just disguised in lower case, now, because in spite of the essentialist police, the performative show must go on...yes?). Instead of conceiving of disability as some inherent condition of cursed, marked, abnormal, unpredictable or outcast bodies that are thus deemed inadequate and wrong, what if we inquired: who makes and enforces the rules of what a normative body is supposed to look like and how it is supposed to properly move and behave in the world? If we are to take responsibility for this task - in other words, represent our own bodies as disabled women - how about we conceive of disability and gender as similarly forged by critical discourse out of their tense case-by-case interactions with harassment?

Disability is just beginning to be recognized as a civil rights issue. The Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 dictates that the public respectfully accommodate the corporeal differences in disabled bodies. These laws indicate that there still seems to be an overarching, threatening, power-hungry, social monster that is persistently at odds with bodies that don't quite seem to fit, relegating them as expendable, abject outcasts in their own neat little social camps, keeping them at arm's length (from each other even) under watchful eye and governance by a pedantic and condescending state.

When we hear "gender" AND "disability", the AND immediately conjures the harrowed list of their oft-discriminated-against corporeal cousins: identity markers indicating age, race, religion, sexual orientation, national status, AND ethnicity. This list is often repeated ad nauseum in activist and academic circles, resulting in all sorts of creatively deviant bodies getting too quickly subsumed and forgotten under the blanket title, "The Oppressed." Consequently, the invisible, imaginary Center is shored up and maintained, the Oppressed huddle in their dark corners, flipping off the majority. The unfortunate anti-climax is that the entire point of being a woman, who happens to have a pluralistic identity that doesn't fit, gets diluted, erased, and subsequently rendered politically ineffective.

I motion that this altogether sucks, because up until a couple months ago, I had no clue that I could even aspire to be such a thing as a Chronic Babe. I am by no means discrediting the exceptional folks who ARE out there, doing feminist disability work. But, disability theory still seems to exist in a nameless void in feminist politics, not to mention pop-culture, and so perhaps we should risk asking tricky questions to continue to “respectfully accommodate” tricky bodies.

Jenni's story opens up imaginings for convergence of gender, disability, and harassment queries, because she illustrates her own unique resistance to the process of being treated according to the restrictive terms of a physically stable, fixed, and homogeneous state of being. Surely, the normative definitions of a massage do not have to include psychological and physical abuse, nor the further stigmatization of those who are not "pliable enough." Her experience testifies to what Garland-Thomson characterizes as the “narrative of overcoming” about disability. This frustrating narrative perpetuates an ironic fabrication that bodies must rigidly fit into overly simplistic, modernist definitions of independence, individuality, and flexibility IN ORDER to conform and be normal.

Garland-Thomson writes, “the fantasy of the malleable body conforms to modernity’s notion that the body is a neutral instrument of the omnipotent individual will, an instrument of agency that is both pliable and invulnerable, that we can control and alter” (pp. 13, 14). Anyone else find the terms “instrument of agency” to be a little suspicious?? Do instruments ever have their own agency? I wager that the problem that needs to be "overcome" is not within Jenni's body, but within the power dynamic governing agency, within the representational system limited to "your body should be this way.”

For, fleshing out the examples of social dilemmas that Jenni may encounter on a daily basis - the dilemmas that attempt to rigidly dictate the mores of disability identity – reveals how she (and other women) can possibly transgress across borders of such representational limitations, in order to negotiate consent and respect on her own terms, for her specific body-in-process.

Although Jenni was not sexually harassed, sexual harassment and violation definitely occurs and can be compounded within disability-related contexts. For example, in the recent award-winning film, Talk To Her, a woman in a coma is raped by her attending male nurse. From another angle, sexual harassment can be conceived as the direct cause of disability, such as significant and long-term forms of mental illness that fall within the federal category of disability, i.e. depression. There are also disturbing cases of those who interpret disability as a legitimizing excuse for sexual assault, such as this one reported in the ABC News: Expert Claims Sex Attack Was Pleasurable For Disabled Daughter.

On the home front, I will continue to intercept verbal missives such as "fragile," "vulnerable," "it's all in your head", "it's not that serious", and "you're oversensitive" -- because these words lace a double edged sword that serves only to invalidate my creatively deviant body.

Still wondering....

How and why have women with disabilities been so harshly ridiculed, intimidated, and abused by circulating stereotypes about fragility and sex?

In the struggle to reconcile gender and disability identifications, what are the terms of consent in your creatively deviant body narrative?

And finally, how have disabled women of all stripes experienced street harassment in Boston?

Written by: Michelle Riblett. Protected by Creative Commons License 2.5. Any copying, redistribution, or replication in any form of this work is prohibited unless permission is obtained from the author.

Isn't she a little young?

2006-09-13T00:35:00.000-04:00

HollaBackBoston focuses on street harassment as part of the spectrum of sexual violence. This wide scope includes all forms of disempowerment, abuse, neglect, coercion, and lack of consent. We believe in order to combat one end of the spectrum, we must confront the other as well. When misunderstood, we try to explain that when we participate in a dismissive, permissive culture, everyone suffers. Negligent, harmful attitudes about sexuality and the objectification of women carry over in disgusting, abusive ways, and much of this can be traced to base beliefs and core values about the worth of self and others.

Street harassment isn't confined to adult women and the immature boys who yell at them. Neither is assault, coercion, or domestic violence. While there are grey areas we all must navigate, as a grey area survivor, I know firsthand why the slippery slope of this violent spectrum is dangerous.

Take as an example the Virginia campaign to end the apparent widespread problem of young girls having sex with adult men. Though this campaign first surfaced in 2004, it remains an excellent example of the issues that lie along this weaving line of consent and appropriate behavior. Because many people do not always know or respect proper boundaries, this campaign, while seeming silly, does address a serious issue as young women become more sexualized in our culture and older men prey on this subordination.

Some further reading is available on Salon.com and on the state of Virginia's website, as well as the typical shrug-off from Boston's Weekly Dig, VA Does the Unthinkable.

By Brittany Shoot, protected by Creative Commons License 2.5

Feminism Not Man's Field

2006-09-05T16:23:00.000-04:00

Well, we're the ones dropping our breakfast toast and calling our friends over the latest effort from Harvey Mansfield, his new book Manliness.

Disclaimer: none of us have had a chance to read Manliness in full yet, but we found the content too remarkable to resist analysis. Besides, a simple web search reveals plenty to digest from interviews with Mansfield (not his real name, by the way) to extensive reviews of the said text. We are sure we will have more to say once we are able to cross Manliness off our to-read lists...

Our interest in Mansfield was piqued by the "On Point" NPR segment and an interview between Naomi Wolf and Mansfield on C-Span 2's BookTV (which Wolf was no doubt able to secure due to her celebrity and moderate feminist status). Katha Pollitt was on the line for the NPR chat, and she made a couple of nice retorts to the obscene arguments put forth in the book. We also give props to Wolf for repeatedly illuminating the aged nature of Mansfield's argument, especially his ignorance of 40 years of feminist theory that occurred while he was...well, wherever he was doing whatever he was doing. You can also read a great review of the book, Man Overboard, by Martha Nussbaum - one of our favorite pieces that really hits it home.

Nussbaum points out our central issue with this book and its ludicris assertations:"that a woman can resist rape only with the aid of 'a certain ladylike modesty enabling her to take offense at unwanted encroachment'! (How does he handle the well-known fact that a large proportion of rapes are committed by men with whom the victim has already had an intimate relationship, or with whom she currently has one?)"
Aside from the manner in which statements like this absolve responsibility for a violent, permissive rape culture, Mansfield also completely ignores many well-known facts about sexual violence. Existing as a dangerous spectrum upon which many acts of violation harm and diminish women every moment, rape sources from a place far too similar to behavior like street harassment. Like many of the HollaBack critics who believe women should "just ignore it", Mansfield places the blame and responsibility back on the women with his belief that violence is avoidable through simple demure, submissive behavior. He could not possibly be more out of touch.

A few other less blood-curdling assertions are made: that the definition of manliness is "confidence in the face of risk." A manly man is a "take charge" guy. One who displays courage. Now you may no doubt be thinking, "I know plenty of women who behave in such a way." Well, here's the kicker. Mansfield argues that for women to manifest these traits is inherently wrong. He does so because Mansfield is an essentialist, meaning he gives no credence to the way in which history has ascribed behaviors to particular genders, as well as the ability for these prescriptions to be circumvented and overcome. Instead, he supports stereotypical, genetic rationale for particular behavioral traits - i.e. a male's essence is manliness.

He attempts to emphasize that he does not intend to defend manliness as exclusively good, yet based on his critique of feminism we find this a little hard to swallow. Mansfield attributes manliness' dark side - as evidenced by absent fathers, war, and again rape - to feminism. Because women no longer "act" like women, men have been made to feel irrelevant. We won't even bother addressing whether this was the intent of feminist movement.

We get off of Mansfield's runaway train around the time he places the responsibility on educated women - his explicit audience! - to adopt a new feminism. Last time we checked, we didn't need or want men to define our work for us, and when they offer to be allies in a struggle for justice, we're thrilled to engage in partnership. But feminism is not responsible for defining men's existence in this world, despite the unfortunate reality that at times, women's self-actualization and self-determinism has not coincided with theirs. So Mansfield, do your work and we will do ours. And we will be happy to meet in the healthy, productive middle.

Basically, it appears we have a conflict of values with Mansfield. His assertion that the consciousness-raising technique of the women's movement was for lack of a better word, "soft"; and that grassroots community building and activism is irrelevant in a world of electoral politics is entirely contrary to almost the sum total of our life experience, not to mention our present work. Further, to say that women can prevent their own rape misses the entire point. We wonder if Mansfield would harass us on the train to assert his John Waynish manliness? Guess we'd better steer clear of his side of the tracks or have our phonecams ready.

Written by: Hilary Allen and Brittany Shoot. Protected by Creative Commons License 2.5. Any copying, redistribution, or replication in any form of this work is prohibited unless permission is obtained from the authors.

For the long weekend...

2006-09-01T09:23:00.000-04:00

We're taking a few days off for the long weekend, but we know the harassers won't. So in the meantime, here are a few bits of reading material for you.

One link we recommend is a short piece about what it means to be objectified: Definition: But Don't You Like To Be Objectified Sometimes?. Many people - women included - like to talk about how objectification is actually empowering. This article posits a contrary definition of objectification as a "forced loss of self" and outlines the difference between the valid enjoyment of attention and the disabling powerlessness of being made an object - something we are continuously clarifying for those who object (ha!) to our work.

And, from a fellow HollaBacker (PNW), here is another subject we have considered for a future editorial, which Luke has already covered quite well: T-Shirts: Street Harassment Without the Audio. Aren't vulgar, insensitive t-shirts just as he says: passive aggressive street harassment?

We'll be back on Wednesday to talk about Manliness as defined by Boston's own Harvey Mansfield. Enjoy your weekend Holla folks!

Hey, Man. STEP UP AND HOLLA BACK.

2006-08-25T23:39:00.000-04:00

On July 11th, the ladies of HollaBackBoston.com were invited to host our *first event* with the local Boston chapter of the National Organization for Men Against Sexism - NOMAS. The discussion was lively and informative. Thank you guys for being totally HOT AND SAFE with us! And thanks for being so supportive as we "role-played" diverse instances of street harassment for you. In contrast to women who consistently confirm that they "know it when they see it," we recognize that it is not nearly as common for men to know what street harassment looks like, how seriously frightening and oppressive it can be, and how pervasive this kind of sexual harassment is for women all over the world.

While HollaBackBoston.com provides an online opportunity for women to reclaim public space, we are also working diligently with local organizations to create a coalition of allies that can help us in the international fight against verbal and physical assaults against women. This event launched our ongoing outreach strategy for men who are interested in learning what they can do to fight street harassment.

ART INSTALLATION:
HollaBackers created over 100 feet of caution tape that we then installed at 9:30pm on July 11th in Harvard Square. Our installation remained on the street for more than a week, woven sneakily among pre-existing orange construction cones demarcating a public walkway on Mt. Auburn St. We inscribed the caution tape with WARNINGS to harassers and EXPERIENCES from our posts about how street harassment damages everyone's daily lives and inspires women and men to Holla Back!! See FilmLoop at the bottom of the page for photos from the event.

And - Coming Soon: Video Clip of Art Installation

Flyer from our event:
HollaBackBoston.com presents
WHAT MEN CAN DO TO STOP STREET HARASSMENT
For National Organization of Men Against Sexism.
Info inspired by: HollaBackBoston website: www.hollabackboston.com,
Men Can Stop Rape, A Call to Men, and NYC Alliance Against Sexual Assault.

1. HOLLA BACK: SO BOSTON CAN BE HOT AND SAFE!
Use your camera phone to document street harassers. HollaBack is a community blog committed to ending street harassment by encouraging everyone to *SNAP* a picture of street harassers with their cell phone cameras or digital cameras and post them online for the world to see. We encourage posts from men and from women, since men are often those who indirectly witness the harassment in public places. This method REALLY works to fight street harassment because it empowers everyone to do something fast, discrete, and easy - in the moment that the harassment occurs. It provides a ready alternative to the more time consuming, possibly traumatizing, and often ineffective procedure of trying to report the incident to the police.

SEND POSTS TO: hollabackboston@gmail.com

When you post on our site, street harassment is captured so that it cannot fade or disappear after the incident. What starts as something small, personal, and seemingly singular gets magnified creatively and globally online. A simple click of a cell phone camera simultaneously constructs: a witness, a subversive agent, a public document, an educational resource, and a diverse member of an international coalition and conversation.

2. SEE SOMETHING? DO SOMETHING!
If you feel safe enough to do so, say something to the harasser that lets him know how it makes YOU uncomfortable: anything from "That's not cool" to "Show some respect" to "That's street harassment." Whatever you feel like saying. Part of the reason why most people, especially men, are unaware of the frequency and severity of street harassment is because it happens on such a daily basis and NO ONE TALKS ABOUT IT.

Ever read a news story that exploited the survivor's behavior or clothing option, or blamed her for the sexual assault? Tired of newspapers that reveal the survivor's identity against his or her will, and don't address public attitudes that condone sexual violence? Write a letter to the editor of the newspaper! If the paper won't publish it, you can still speak out: send your response to our website. Tell your friends, family and others about the site, to let them know that you don't condone irresponsible reporting or sexual violence, and you hope they won't either.

3. TALK TO OTHER MEN
Talk about how it feels to be seen as a potential street harasser and/or rapist; how does this damage the overall safety of public space? How does it impair the relationships and interactions that you may or may not be able to have with women? Talk about the fact that ten to twenty percent of all males will be sexually abused in their lifetimes. Talk about the consequences of perpetuating a public sense of fear: for example, in Japan, they have segregated subway cars as "Women Only" during rush hour due to the rampant cases of street harassment there. Can you imagine this kind of segregation in Boston?!!

Street harassment is often encouraged and escalated in group dynamics of men. Take a stand around other men that your masculinity does not have to be affirmed or defined by sexual violence. In other words, take advantage of every opportunity to tell the world: Real Men Holla Back!

4. LISTEN TO WOMEN
Learn about how the risk of being street harassed affects women's daily lives: where they choose to live, what restaurants they go to, their means of public transportation, where they feel they can walk, what they feel they can wear, how they feel limited in the ways they can interact with men in stores, businesses, and schools.

Ask women about what has been said to them or done to them in public that has made them feel violated. All women experience street harassment despite race, creed, nationality, religion, age, sexuality, size, or style. Of the thousands of women the HollaBack project has spoken to about different types of street harassment, we have yet to find one who doesn't "know it when she sees it." The posts run the gamut in tone and context, while signaling the trademark emotions of frustration, anger, anxiety, annoyance, shock, and fear. While the typical "Hey Baby, nice tits" seems pretty obvious, there are many other forms of street harassment that go by unnoticed except by those who experience it. Learn about these variations, including "undressing someone with your eyes," approaching someone alone late at night on the street, or paying supposed "compliments" or using "pet names" when referring to unknown women in public. Part of our site's mission is to continually redefine what street harassment means and looks like for diverse women. Read our posts and posts from other HollaBack sites around the world to learn how to recognize street harassment.

5. BE AWARE OF LANGUAGE
The difference between "flirting" and "harassing" is very clear: one is consensual, one makes a woman feel violated. If you're confused about something being ok or not, ASK HER. Accept her answer. Consent is totally sweet. Use common sense. The everyday words, "Hey Baby," are not contaminated in and of themselves; they become so only when they are used like graffiti to abusively tag sexualized bodies. Suddenly the problem with "Hey Baby," is that in a given moment, it marks women's bodies with deep yet invisible ink. Imagine if women were walking around covered with all these degrading VISIBLE tattoos, marking every time she'd been harassed in public!!

Words are very powerful, especially when spoken by people with power over others. We live in a society in which words are often used to put people down who are already marginalized. When language is used to enforce a power dynamic during cases of street harassment, it sends a message to everyone in earshot that women are less than fully human. When men harass "because they can" - it becomes easier to treat women with less respect all the time, disregard their rights, and ignore their well-being. Resist this reality!

***This work is protected under a Creative Commons 2.5 License. Copying in full or in part is prohibited without permission.
Please contact us at hollabackboston@gmail.com if you would like permission for copying and distribution of this work as a flyer.

Where Have I Heard That Before...?

2006-08-18T03:09:00.000-04:00

Last Sunday, the Boston Globe ran an article about street harassment in Boston and highlighted groups - including HollaBackBoston - that are working to combat the issue.

Since then, responses to the article have cropped up in the Globe's Letters to the Editor (read HollaBackBoston’s here) as well as in the Weekly Dig's Media Farm. Sadly, they all obscure the point. What they do, however, make quite clear are the all too typical negligent responses from the general public about any attempt to address the systematic subordination of women in public space, as well as understanding the complexity of the task at hand.

Here’s our characterization of these responses -

First, and so often our favorite: the "JUST IGNORE IT" Response:
Unfortunately, women seem to be the biggest proponents of this one. We hear you ladies, and we've tried that one. But sadly, it's just not our experience that ignoring anything makes it go away or prevents it from happening the next time. Instead, silence and denial about sexual violence frequently serve as key players in repeat offenses. Fran Hutchinson clearly illustrates this one:

Sending a message August 13, 2006

I was born in Dorchester and after college lived in the neighborhood for 10 years, and walking and/or the T was my sole means of transportation.
If you want to let someone know what a speck on the landscape they are, ("Hey, Baby!", City Weekly, Aug. 6) simply roll your eyes and stifle an exaggerated yawn as you walk on.
Fran Hutchinson, Newfane, Vermont

Second, and a distant cousin to JUST IGNORE IT, is the "NAH Response":
Conversely, this seems to be a real winner among men. We suspect it might have to do with the fact that harassment is oftentimes outside of their experience, but it usually ranges from downplaying and/or ignorance of the rampant occurrence of street harassment to outright dismissal. We’d throw the Dig’s post into this one:

Media Farm - Unwanted = sexual harassment?

We're a little confused by "this City Weekly story" on sexual harassment, which appeared in yesterday’s Globe. According to fliers distributed by the Hyde Square Task Force, "If it's unwelcome, it's Sexual Harassment." [sic] Not to downplay how annoying it must be for a woman to not be able to walk down the street without some dickhead yelling shit at her, but isn’t this definition of harassment a little broad? For example, is the car insurance bill we just got in the mail sexual harassment--because that's about as unwelcome as it gets. Also: T schedule adjustments? Sexual harassment? You decide.

To be clear, we're all about the lighter side of life, and generally appreciate the efforts of the Dig's Media Farm, but what's with the incessant need to question, invalidate, and doubt a woman's experience? Yes, life's inconveniences are annoying but the threat of sexual assault is terrifying and disproportionately gender-specific, all over the world. The Dig's comments make it clear that they apparently missed other central messages on the flyer, including "please treat me with respect."

And last, but not least, the "HERE, LET ME HELP" Response
We all know this one. It's when a seemingly informed, priviledged person comes along to "suggest" how we could best do our work, while simultaneously displaying a blind spot towards one of the main points of our work: to safely reclaim public space for women.

Suggested solution August 13, 2006

Great article
("Hey baby!" Aug. 6, City Weekly).
In answer to your question, is there a way to amend the law from "accosting and annoying members of the opposite sex" to include everyone, regardless of gender?
Can we simply change "opposite sex" to "the public"?
Ryan Bennett Dorchester

Gender matters. And unfortunately, social change to reconcile gender inequality (not to mention legal amendment) is not as simple as Ryan Bennett may like it to be - which is why spaces like HollaBackBoston.com and the important work highlighted in the original Globe article are so critical.

On another level, if Mr. Bennett happened to be implying that the law is also participating in shoring up restrictive gender norms (and discrimination based on enforcing binary male/female gender differences), then by all means, we would appreciate such a nuanced interpretation of future harassment laws and their possible limitations. From this theoretical standpoint, we still advocate fighting for gender equality, while at the same time strategically employing terms such as "women" in our fight, in full recognition that such sexed/gendered terms are often wielded in our society as tricky and politically loaded identity constructions.

Ultimately, we’re glad the article generated such a reaction and we're looking forward to encountering new and unique responses to our work (which we can also characterize!).

Written by: Hilary Allen, Michelle Riblett, and Brittany Shoot. Protected by Creative Commons License 2.5. Any copying, redistribution, or replication in any form of this work is prohibited unless permission is obtained from the authors.

Welcome to HollaBackTALK.

2006-08-15T14:48:00.000-04:00

Welcome!

HollaBackTALK seeks to engage HollaBackBoston supporters, allies, and skeptics in the critical theory that backs our mission of safety in public spaces. Dedicated to ending sexual violence that exists on a wide spectrum, HollaBackBoston catalogs street harassment and gives women and marginalized groups a space for recourse, solidarity, and resources. In addition to a space on HollaBackBoston to vent about the everyday frustrations of being followed, cat-called, and groped in public, HollaBackTALK will focus on the wider implications of these unwanted advances and acts. We will discuss strategies for avoiding and ending harassment, explore misconceptions about harassment, and address skeptics who do not seek to understand the ramifications of verbal and physical assaults that women and marginalized people experience every day in public spaces.

For feedback, email hollabacktalk@gmail.com.

HollaBackTALK is a side project of HollaBackBoston and is in no way affiliated with any other site bearing a similar name or likeness. All works are held under a Creative Commons License 2.5 and are the sole property of their respective authors.