STREET HARASSMENT: For women who cross the other side of the street before anything is said, who look down at the ground because they've learned to avoid eye contact. For Women who have yelled back "FUCK YOU!" (or wanted to). Street Harassment Project Defining it Street Harassment refers to disrespect women receive daily in public spaces: streets, busses, and parks. Acts of street harassment can include lewd sexual comments and solicitations, stalking, touching and grabbing, demands to smile, cat calls, whistles, glaring, and remarks. What's the big deal? Street harassment targets women, making them constantly aware that they--as woman--are not totally welcome or respected in public space. Harassment communicates to women that they will always stand out and be treated as sex objects -- wherever they go. When women want this kind of attention, they want it on their terms. Women don't want men to control how they are defined in public. Harassers don't give a shit about what women want. Street harassment is forced. Street harassment happens with or without a woman's consent. Harassers impose themselves without regard to respect for a woman's own demands and desires. Street harassment is about control and power. If women assert control, harassers get angry. It does not matter what a harasser is thinking. Ethnographic on-the-spot interviews reveal they aren't thinking about much. What matters is what a harasser's actions are saying, because this is the message that women deal with when it comes down to it. The Message If it's a compliment, then why does it offend me? Compliments are made to please the recipient, not the giver. Harassers treat women like speciments or playthings that exist for their pleasure and for their judgement. Harassment tells women that if they are not being claimed by some other man, they are and their bodies are naturally and publicly available. This takes control and individual rights away from us. Blame Because I am dressed this way, do I have no rights? Is my body no longer mine? Whether women resist or remain silent, they are often blamed for what is happening to them. Just like with rape and other forms of harassment, the questions often are: What were you wearing? Why were you walking alone? Why did you walk over there? Why did you look at him? Why did you get so angry? Harassment happens to all women and blaming women only ignores the real problem. Women should be able to look and say whatever they like and still be safe and respected as human beings. Talking with Violence The reality of rape and assault effects the way street harassment is experienced. Interviews consistently show that women are mindful of a felt threat of potential escalation to assault, violence, and rape during encounters of street harassment--no matter how mild the "compliment." (See Carol Brooks Gardner). When "flirtation" happens on the street between strangers, it takes on this added meaning--especially when it is one sided. Women have many reasons to feel this threat of possible escalation on the street. Rapists test potential targets with harassment. Harassers often get angrier, more persistent or intrusive. This can make many women feel like getting away and remaining silent is their only option. Living With It As "everyday" situations that come to feel normal or expected, many women feel like they have learned to live with less threatening forms of street harassment. We must ask then: How does "living with" street harassment effect us? Living with street harassment means having to take the message about our bodies that harassers bring. It means accepting assault and disrespect as normal. Many women are taught to never respond to harassers, to pretend it's not happening. If they something they are called a "bitch," blamed, or can face violence. Living with street harassment means learning that in uncomfortable sexual situations, you should do nothing. It means that when you walk outside you do not walk with freedom. It means you have to come to expect and accept disrespect. Street harassment changes who you are and how you are allowed to live. R-e-s-p-e-c-t Means: The right to walk down any street at any hour freely. Without protection or worries about protection. The right to exist without someone else defining you, demanding of you, or trying to take from you. To not be told that YOU as a WOMAN are there for someone elses pleasure, there to respond to solicitations, asking for it, or wanting and waiting for male judgement. To be a human being that is not treated as "woman," "girl," "hoe," "bitch," or "ass." We demand respect. We demand an ackowledgement of our individual autonomy. We demand freedom. Considering Race and Class DIRECT ACTION
Demanding Respect-RIGHT NOW, RIGHT HERE FUCK YOU!!!! Improvisations: Non-Violent Confrontations Group Counter Harassment Attack Photography/Video Please visit the Street Harassment Project for some great fliers/posters like this! Water is Life: Photographer refocuses attention on a simple necessity: drinking water Ariane Alzhara Kirtley thought she had seen the poorest people on Earth during her travels in Africa. But then she discovered the people of the Azawak region of Niger, who often simply have no drinking water. After living among these people for three months, and seeing some of them needlessly die, Kirtley has put on hold her photography career and is working full time to raise money for a well-building project. Kirtley returned from Niger with a collection of her evocative photos, on exhibit at the New Haven Free Public Library, 133 Elm St. The title: "Water is Life." Kirtley spent her childhood in Niger, so she has a natural affinity for its people. It was the Africans she met as an infant who gave her the middle name Alzhara, meaning "the flower who blossoms in the desert." ""t also means 'luck,'" she said with a big smile Thursday at the library. "I do feel lucky," she said. "I've already been able to raise $28,000. But I still have a long way to go." (Her goal is $250,000, the cost of building two deep wells.) Kirtley moved to Niger when she was 6 months old because her parents, Michael and Aubine Kirtley, were photojournalists working for National Geographic magazine. She lived there until she was 12. Kirtley received an anthropology degree from Yale College in 2001 and a master's degree from the Yale School of Public Health in 2004. Then she landed a Fulbright Scholarship to return to Niger and do public health research. After her Fulbright research assistant asked her to go to the Azawak region, Kirtley's eyes were opened to the worst poverty she had ever encountered. Humanitarian groups such as CARE will not venture into that area, Kirtley said, because CARE officials are hesitant to send staffers to a region with such a limited water supply. The Azawak population numbers about 500,000 and many of them are nomadic. In rural areas, which comprise 99 percent of the Azawak, there are no roads, no schools and no health centers. Last year, in the district where Kirtley was living and working, 25 percent of the children under age 5 died because they had no water to drink, she said. "Every day, children as young as 7 or 8 walk up to 35 miles round trip to find water," she said. "The parents have to take care of the animals (livestock)." During the rainy season, Kirtley noted, the people drink contaminated water from ponds. As poor as these people are, she said, "They welcomed me. I was showered with little gifts they had made, such as leather pouches. They walked 10 miles to get a goat and killed it so I would have meat. "What I want people to understand," Kirtley said, "is that these people I'm trying to help are extremely hard-working and courageous. They are generous, beautiful people that need a little help to live." She said in the area she was working, 10 children died last year because they drank dirty water. And several months ago, "a good friend of mine died in child labor because she couldn't ride a donkey." (It is a two-day donkey ride to the nearest medical center.) "It was completely preventable," Kirtley said of her friend's death. "And this happens all the time. All the time. "I consider these people my children, my family," she said. "And they're dying." The public appears to be drawn to these photos of smiling people working to survive, to get water. Connie Taylor, a security guard at the library, was watching Dennis Hamilton put up the photos Wednesday, and she was stunned by the exhibit. "This is amazing," she said. "I can't believe they don't have water. But their clothing and their braids are beautiful." Kirtley is working through the Friendship Caravan, based in Washington, D.C., to raise funds for those wells. People wishing to donate should make out their checks to the Friendship Caravan and mail them to The Friendship Caravan, Project Water is Life, 1211 S. Eads St., Suite 2101, Arlington, Va. 22202. Kirtleys exhibit will be up until June 15 in the lower level of the library. The library is, regretfully, closed Fridays and Sundays. But it is open Mondays from noon to 8 p.m., Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Randall Beach can be reached at rbeach@nhregister.com or 789-5766. New Haven Register 2006 |
