Girls, the younger the better, are rightly perceived by boys and men who harass girls and women on the street to be most ill-equipped to deal with it. According to Holly Kearl, author of Stop Street Harassment: Making Public Places Safe and Welcoming for Women, by age 12, 22% of girls experience street harassment. By the time they're 19, it's 87%. Today, a study released by the American Association of University Women, reveals the degree to which sexual harassment occurs to girls (and boys) in 7th-12th grades: 56% of girls surveyed had experienced it in school.
If you are a man and you are not sure what street harassment is, check here, because every woman, literally every woman, knows. Regardless of race, class, ethnicity, education, age and especially, clothes, all women are harassed on the street by men, sometimes very aggressively. It's any public interaction that makes a girl or woman feel vulnerable, intimidated, embarrassed, attacked and almost always sexualized. As I discussed in a recent post, it's a gendered form of social control.
When my daughter asked me if she could go get some ice cream by herself one day, I was flooded by disturbing memories of years of street harassment. Instead of being excited for her, for her sense of independence and her eagerness to be in the world, I was deeply saddened. I wanted her to stay fearless and to explore the world, safely. So, I looked into how things may or may not have changed since I was younger and what resources might be available to young girls and women. Here are the top five things that I came up with:
1. Review the basics with her in a "safety rule" -- not "scary reality" -- way:
3. Let her know that if she's groped, yelled at, whispered to, it's not her fault, she doesn't have to "like it." It's bullying. Let her know it's doesn't have to be this way, she's not alone and she doesn't have to shamefully keep the harassment to herself. A recent article in Psychology Today, "Hey Baby Hurts," discusses some of the psychological implications for teens, which includes fear, self-objectification and withdrawal. Often, girls don't talk to their parents about the street harassment that they are subjected to. The study released today explains: "Nearly a third of the victims said the harassment made them feel sick to their stomach, affected their study habits or fueled reluctance to go to school at all." Share with her the fact that there is a worldwide movement to combat street harassment. Organizations like Stop the Harassment and Holla Back! are dedicated to empowering girls and women by teaching them assertive responses, self-defense, and easy mechanisms for reporting harassers.
4. Set an example if you're her mom or grandmother or aunt. Stop accepting sexually-based street harassment as the price of being a woman. Men who harass often don't know they're being offensive. Tell them. There are places and times when even if you feel threatened you don't have to be scared. You can look for allies, politely but firmly say, "Stop, that's offensive," shame the jerk, call the police. Model fearless behavior for her. If you're a dad, it's really important that your daughter understand you don't think she's "asking for it." If she tells you it's happening, don't ask her what she was wearing, because she could be wearing a burka and it would happen.
5. And, lastly, very importantly tell boys and men in your life what's going on. It's vital. Most men don't harass women on the street, but they also don't realize the extent to which their mothers, sisters, daughters, female friends and coworkers go out of their way to adapt to this reality. We have to stop saying street harassment is just "boys being boys." This excuse is a reductionist and harrowing definition of masculinity that maintains essentially that all men are animals. Most men are not animals. They are capable of respecting civil boundaries and personal space in public. In particular, boys need to learn three things:
The Good Men Project has an excellent article for boys and men, as well as several pieces about empathizing with what women experience. The international organization Stop Street Harassment also has a page for educating boys.
6. Remind your school that sexual harassment is bullying and that Title IX makes it illegal. The AAUW report "observes that sexual harassment and bullying can sometimes overlap, such as the taunting of youths who are perceived to be gay or lesbian, but it says there are important distinctions. For example, there are some state laws against bullying, but serious sexual harassment -- at a level which interferes with a student's education-- is prohibited under the federal gender-equality legislation known as Title IX. "Too often, the more comfortable term bullying is used to describe sexual harassment, obscuring the role of gender and sex in these incidents," the report says. "Schools are likely to promote bullying prevention while ignoring or downplaying sexual harassment."
Fighting against street harassment isn't silly or futile. Men who harass, who are predatory, do it because they can. For girls and women, half of all humans, there is nothing "normal" about it. It takes place in the context of cultural misogyny, disrespect, discrimination, rape and power, keeping public places largely male-dominated and impeding equality in the most base and threatening way possible. All this for a scoop of ice cream on a sunny day.
Follow Soraya Chemaly on Twitter: www.twitter.com/schemaly
Sorry but that is insanely broad. That would include something like saying hello to a shy person.
You said: "Most men are not animals." For the record we would prefer a simple 'Men are not animals'. I don't see the need to dehumanize any humans.
Young women are going to have to deal with unwanted advances. That is apart of being a women like it or not. It's not because men can't control themselves, it's because they are trying to find women that have interest in them and some are reduce themselves to mass marketing. A persistent sales men makes more sales but annoys a lot of people in the process. I think teaching young girls to understand males might also help. Instead of just being annoyed or feeling they should be this way or that how about relating to life from their point of view so you can understand how they managed to end up on a corner saying silly things to girls as they pass by. Diffusing fear and building understanding would help a lot with the feelings of vulnerabilities, embarrassment, and intimidation.
There will be no threat free world for our sons or daughters. Let them know what's going on, teach them to be street smart and hope for the best.
Teach girls to understand males? In what sense? Understanding that they only insult and intimidate and dehumanize women because they're terribly oppressed by the social pressures of having to ask girls out?
Why do you never consider the only true solution here - teaching boys to control their own behavior?
Teaching boys to be good who are trying to stand out by being bad does not makes sense. The ones who will care don't harass anyway because they are like most men. Being bold, and again defying societies accepted boundaries is a bad boys way of being a alpha male. What still matters to them is how women respond since that is who they most want to impress.
You are not interested in educating boys to change them, you just like bad mouthing the male gender in general. You are still attached to the second wave man shaming strategy. Shame does not work when you don't care.
I think it's useful to compare a male trying to get the attention of women to a sales man. They both try to get the attention of random people on the street to serve their self interest. They both operate by defying normal decorum and social harmony. They both share the goal of standing out in the crowd.
They stand on the street like a merchant hawking their goods attempting to pull in customers by engaging people on the street. Anyone who has done that kind of selling knows you can't take the negative response personally and you have to move past the fact your actions annoy people. I think it's a good albeit imperfect way to try and understand what's going on in the minds of these men.
What you didn't mention, is that respect begins at a very young age. The reason being is that respect is non-threatening, and most humans learn well, and slowly over a long period. Any attempt to teach social mores to a young person, including females, is almost futile, in that there are so many anti-social distractions that severely limit a successful change of behaviour. Awareness of course is very important, but when young people are constantly challenged with sex, sexual behaviour, and pictures of females usually in a submissive role to their male counterparts, I don't think much will change. Women of all walks of life including starlets, need to take a stand of how they portray themselves.
I remember a poll of how women liked or disliked the "Macho Man". Well the answer was not what I thought, there was a 89% female acceptance for that particular type of male. I am sure the same would go for the opposite sex, with all it's sex isms, and anti-social-behaviours.
Females can no longer can make valid blanket claims of oppression in America or most of the developed world. A macho male is not a oppressor, it is just some male being who he wants to be. If women like him then so be it, but don't at once like him and complain about the fact he is macho. That's just trying to have your cake and eat it too.
A sexy girl in a picture is not oppressed, she is just some girl being sexy as she wants to be for the camera. We can't keep making victims out of everybody, it's a unnatural and anxious state. That in itself would make people fearful, annoyed, embarrassed, and uncomfortable. We should be at ease around each other, develop trust and community but we don't need 100% control over everyone to do that because when we had that trust people were not much better than they are now.
My main point is that small children are very capable of learning respect for each other, and that over time, the required result in behaviour will be realized. However, if this basic training is lacking, then the social mores that were lost will be, in essence, be learned from the child's environment, and resulting (immature) point of view, rather than the principals set out by the author of this article.
It is very difficult to modify social behaviour over the short term.. We as a society have failed to apply properly the points the author is making, and instead we have given in and allowed the media etc. to make our bid. There are many points to make, and I have only made a few, but they are important, in the most basic sense.