Member-only story
How to Respond to Street Harassment
Either as a witness or as someone subject to it
As far as I can tell, street harassment hasn’t gone down at all in the past 50 years since it first started happening to me as an 11-year-old. In fact, a 2014 study by Hollaback (now known as Right To Be) in partnership with Cornell University determined in a massive global study that street harassment was rampant around the world and that 85% of American women reported first being harassed as children, often as young as nine or ten years old.
Shockingly, 12–15 year olds experience the most sexual harassment, both on the street and in schools and other places where they should be safe — often at the hands of adult men — although also at the hands of their peers. Children are easy prey, particularly in a culture that still too often abdicates responsibility by saying “boys will be boys.”
But this isn’t a natural function of maleness. On the contrary, it’s a learned behavior in a patriarchal culture where boys are taught not only that they are better than girls, but that women and girls exist to sexually gratify them and that if they want to leave the house, they are fair game for comments, groping, and even sexual assault as a way for perpetrators to demonstrate masculinity.
Far from being harmless, or complimentary, street harassment is a show of domination and intimidation, as well as a form of objectification. It often involves dehumanizing language, such as, “I’d hit it” or “Look at the tits on that!” which characterize the woman/person as a sexual object and not a human being. Many local and international organizations consider it nothing less than a human rights violation.
Experiencing this on a regular basis can have deleterious effects on mental and emotional health, and it forces many women and girls to restrict their movements or take circuitous routes to try to avoid it. LGBTQ+ people and people from other marginalized groups can experience street harassment as well, but the bulk of it is aimed at young women and girls.
