Over the years I’ve tried a variety of responses to sexual harassment on the street.  I’m a big fan of drawing attention to inappropriate behavior for the entire community to judge.  You’ve probably heard the story of the woman on a subway who found someone groping her?  She grabbed his hand, held it up in the air and shouted “Does anyone know whose this is?  I found it on my ass!”  Take the shame and secrecy away – say what just happened.

I found a great community-wide project called HollaBack that encourages just that.  Women are invited to take cell phone photos of men harassing them and send them directly to a website to be published.  There are subpages for different cities, and a great video about the project here.

I have experienced a WIDE continuum of harassment – for example, at least twice in college I was followed while walking by a man in a car masturbating and calling out to me.  If I had a time travel machine, I would ensure both of those guys were immediately arrested.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 24th, 2008 at 7:05 am and is filed under self-care, training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.