Anti-Street Harassment Week

It’s Not A Compliment grew out of our desire to do something about how pervasive and normalised street harassment is in our society.
”We know that it’s something a lot of people – especially women– will experience at some point in their lives.”

Street harassment refers to any unwanted verbal or non-verbal behaviour directed at an individual by a stranger in a public space. This can include acts such as unwanted comments, whistling, leering, persistent requests for someone’s name or other personal information after they’ve said no along with more physical acts of violence such as groping and sexual assault.

This week is Anti-Street Harassment Week which aims to raise awareness of street harassment in your community, Co-Founders of Its Not a Compliment, Annelise Lecordier and Aakanksha Manjunath, were determined to have this issue recgonised even during times of isolation.

Tell us a little bit about the campaign It’s Not a Compliment is implementing during Anti-Street Harassment Week.

 

AL: Due to the pandemic and the social distancing rules that were put in place a few months ago, we obviously had to put a lot of the events that we had planned for International Anti-Street Harassment Week on hold. Nonetheless, it was really important for us to mark the week in some way – not only because it would be the first time a Melbourne-based campaign would take part in these global events but also because of what it would mean for us to not do anything as a result of the pandemic. Street harassment is not an issue that’s disappeared because we’re currently in a health crisis and it’s definitely going to keep existing past this.

To us, it was important to still hold virtual events as a way of keeping the conversation going and ensuring that the issue didn’t fall by the wayside.

So we decided to switch our events to forms of online activism during the week and use this time to expand understanding of what street harassment is. A lot of the time we’ll have people reaching out to us with experiences that have left them feeling uncomfortable or unsafe but they'll always precede them with comments about how they aren’t sure if these stories counted as street harassment and whether their experiences were valid.

We wanted to use this week to send a clear message that street harassment can take many different forms – particularly when you consider the fact that people can be harassed for a variety of reasons. Often it’s not just about sexism but it can also involve things like racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism or xenophobia. To us, it’s important that all of these different forms of street harassment are represented and understood as harassment - doing so is the only way to truly address the root causes of the problem.

This is why we started an online activism campaign that ran throughout the week where people were encouraged to write down stories of street harassment on a piece of paper and share a photo of themselves with their signs using the hashtags #thisisstreetharassment and #itsnotacompliment.

It was really important to us to get as many people involved in this campaign which is why we encouraged people to share a story they had either experienced themselves or been a witness to – that way men or people who had potentially never personally experienced street harassment could also be part of the conversation.

To us, preventing street harassment is a matter of community responsibility so it was essential to have people who may not traditionally think of themselves as being involved in this conversation to see their role in shaping a world free of harassment.

Throughout the week we also collaborated with artists who shared their own unique perspective on the topic and did our very first Instagram Live interview with Jamila Rizvi where we started to more deeply think about what kind of streets we wanted to go back to once restrictions start being eased. We wanted to use this time in isolation as an opportunity to start thinking about what street justice could actually look like in practice and how this current crisis could be a chance to radically change the parts of our current ‘normal’ that aren’t working for many of us.

Lastly, we also collaborated with Dr Bianca Fileborn, one of the leading academics on the topic of street harassment, to create a blog post for outlining the four reasons why street harassment is never a compliment. Having set those foundations throughout the week, we’re now going to focus on furthering the conversations we’ve started with men in regards to their role in addressing the issue of harassment and how they can be more engaged in our goal of creating safer public spaces for all.

Why did this initiative start?

AM: International Anti-Street Harassment Week was started by Activist Holly Kearl 10 years ago to raise awareness about street harassment, an issue that isn’t talked about enough. Over the years, activists around the global have participated in IASHW, which is a clear enough indicator that street harassment isn’t a local or national problem, but a global one. 

Initially, we had a number of activities planned out such as a chalk back, where we’d invite everyone to chalk out their experiences of street harassment in a public space; we were also going to publish a mini-magazine which we were going to distribute all over Melbourne. However, with the current situation we had to move all our activities online.

We decided to use the lockdown as a moment where we reflect on what kind of streets we want to go back to.

The first step to doing that would be raising awareness about what exactly street harassment is and the different behaviours associated with it such as leering, wolf-whistling, stalking, homophobia, ableism, racism, basically any unwanted behaviour that would make one feel uncomfortable while walking down the streets as mentioned earlier.

This way when we are back out on the streets we are better equipped to identify and call out street harassment (if it’s safe to do so). 

How can young people get involved?

AM: This week we encouraged people to pen down their experiences of street harassment and send it to us as anonymous submissions or by sharing it on their socials. However, as of next week we go back to taking story submissions in our usual format, which anyone can do whenever they are ready to share their story with us. 

Besides story submissions, we are also always open to artists submissions on the theme of street harassment as well as issues associated with it because as we know, Street Harassment isn’t an isolated issue. It has broader connections to consent, ableism, dignity, respect, sexism, gender equality, gender-based violence and so much more.
 

In your opinion, do you believe the issue of street harassment is well recognised in The Australian media today? If not, how could we possibly improve this?

AM: We think that the issue of street harassment is not so well-recognised in Australian media today. This might be because street harassment has been normalised for a long time and therefore, is not considered to be a headline grabbing moment or story. It is not to say that media outlets are not open to helping us raise awareness about the issue, but we believe that there is so much more the Australian media could do to raise awareness about the issue.  

It is well known that the media plays a very important role in a democracy, especially in a country like Australia. They help provide greater visibility to issues that are important which in turn could lead to (hopefully) household and community conversations about an issue such as street harassment and what we can do to tackle it.

The media also plays an important role in shaping public opinion and underlying sentiments. Considering how street harassment has become so normalised, the media could play a significant role in de-normalising street harassment, by raising awareness about the issue and the role we all play in it. 

 
During times of COVID-19, what are some of the ways that street harassment is still taking place?

AL: People seem to think that the social distancing rules we have in place automatically at the moment means that street harassment is no longer an issue, but that’s really far from the truth. Even in the short amount of time that people have to spend outdoors and in public spaces, strangers are still finding ways to harass them and turn these little moments of freedom into an uncomfortable – often flat-out unsafe – experience.

We’ve heard stories of people being catcalled by strangers in passing vehicles while out grocery shopping or exercising for example.

Just this week we had someone in our comments sharing an experience she had recently when out riding her bike along a relatively empty esplanade. Someone in a Ute started driving alongside her for a while and yelled out “hey sexy” before finally driving off.

Incidents like these can make outdoor spaces feel unsafe and inaccessible to many of us. This can be particularly damaging at a time when we’re getting such little opportunity to go out, clear our heads and try to get some sense of normalcy. In normal times, repeated incidents of street harassment have been shown to have a huge negative impact on people’s mental health.

Add to that the added stress, anxiety and uncertainty that this pandemic is bringing about and it’s not hard to see how these effects might be compounded. Not being able to enjoy being outdoors as much as we would like is already hard enough. Having those few moments be ruined by perpetrators of street harassment is an additional barrier that no one needs right now.

What’s been particularly upsetting to watch is the sharp increase in racially-motivated incidents of street harassment that have been taking place. This is something that we saw from the very start of this health crisis with a lot of anti-Asian sentiments being expressed early on. It has only gotten worse as cases of COVID-19 have increased in Australia, with people reporting increased rates of incidents ranging from racial slurs to physical assaults when out in public.

We’ve heard stories of international students being verbally abused while wearing face masks at tram stops, racial slurs being thrown at Asian-Australians while out in public spaces and people stupidly shouting out ‘coronavirus’ at Asian people passing by. Now, this has started to escalate to assault with people reporting being spat on or punched for wearing a face mask. Just last week we heard reports of a violent physical assault against two international University of Melbourne students.

These stories are unfortunately becoming more common and are sadly going mostly unreported, with only 5.6 percent of cases being reported to the police.

Read our first interview with It’s Not a Compliment

Follow https://www.facebook.com/itsnotacompliment/ to find out more.

Head to http://www.stopstreetharassment.org/2020/02/2020-sshweek/ to learn more about Anti-Street Harassment Week.

WORDS: ANNELISE LECORDIER, AAKANKSHA MANJUNATH
PHOTOGRAPHY: IT'S NOT A COMPLIMENT