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Direct Action, Education, Consciousness-Raising, Activism and Street harassment (men calling out to, whistling or honking at, commenting on, touching, following, and attacking women in public places) is a real problem for many women. My own experiences with men harassing me during my training runs and the stories of harassment my female friends and relatives shared with me over the years inspired me to write my Master's thesis for George Washington University on street harassment in 2007. I learned a great deal from researching and writing on the topic and I thought I'd share as much of my findings as possible on my website in the hopes of providing interested people with a better understanding of the phenomenon of street harassment and suggested ways people can work to combat and confront street harassment when it occurs. [Chapters III, IV and V are not online] Introduction: It is my belief that most street harassment of women by men occurs due to a lack of respect for women by the harassing men. Based on my research, it seems that most men who engage in calling out, whistling at, or grabbing women in public do not mean women any real harm, but are usually acting out of boredom, for fun, for bonding with their male friends or for their own sexual gratification. They do not care how their actions will make the woman feel, and indeed, they often call out, whistle at or grab a woman in such a way that she has no time to react before the man disappears down the road or into a crowd. Men who harass women are not usually thinking that the woman may be engaged in serious reflection or an interesting conversation or that she may be late for a meeting or just simply want to be left alone. Most do not care; they just want to gratify themselves and/or their friends through their behavior. Men’s lack of respect for women is not confined to the streets and until there is a societal change where men respect women in all levels of society, then sexual harassment at work, domestic violence at home, date rape, and the street harassment of women in public will continue. However, in the meantime, some women are tackling street harassment head-on in an effort to help end it and ignite a societal shift; I hoped to learn more from researching and writing my thesis. Data: In addition to reading studies conducted by others on street harassment, the data for my thesis came from an online survey of 225 people I conducted (here are the results), information from a Street Harassment Summit I attended in New York City, reading 706 postings that people wrote on six anti-street harassment Web sites, and interviews I conducted with three of the anti-street harassment Web site facilitators. I wanted to find out people's experiences with street harassment, their ideas on how to combat it, and how they viewed the use of the Internet, particularly anti-street harassment websites, for combating street harassment. Please feel free to contact me, Holly Kearl, if you want to learn more about my research on street harassment. |
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