Chapter II: Data Methods and Summary of Data Results

Data Methods

To collect my own data on street harassment, particularly data on how women may be using the Internet to discuss or combat street harassment, I read and analyzed 706 postings people wrote on six anti-street harassment Web sites, conducted an online survey of 225 people, interviewed the founders/facilitators of three of the anti-street harassment Web sites, and attended a Street Harassment Summit in New York City.

Anti-street harassment Web sites:  The anti-street harassment Web sites that I examined are interactive ones.  Anyone in the general public can e-mail their experiences with or thoughts on street harassment to the site facilitator who then posts the comments, allowing anyone in the general public who visits to view them.  Visitors to the site can scroll through scores of postings and read stories of street harassment, advice on successfully combating harassment, and messages of solidarity and support in the daily struggle against such harassment.  The Web site facilitators also usually provide Web links to resources related to street harassment.
The first such anti-street harassment Web site I found, The Street Harassment Project, started around 2000.  In the United Kingdom, a similar Web site started in 2003, called “Anti-Street Harassment UK.”  In fall of 2005 a new Web site called HollaBack New York City started, where people can submit photos of the harasser from their camera phone, often in addition to their stories.   HollaBack New York suggests taking a photo as a way that women can safely take action against a harasser by discreetly taking his photo and then posting it online to warn other women to stay away from him and to shame him.  Since the NYC chapter of HollaBack started, geographic chapters formed all over the country and world.  While I read postings on numerous chapter sites, I decided to focus on the NYC, Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco Hollaback chapters for geographical variety.  Further, the NYC chapter is the largest and original site and the facilitators of the Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco sites were tremendously helpful.  They posted my online survey on their sites and allowed me to interview them.  A more detailed discussion of the Web sites, differences between sites, and their usefulness will be discussed in chapter 5, but I found the Street Harassment Project and UK Anti-Street Harassment Web sites to be the most comprehensive and useful in addressing street harassment.    

To study the Web site postings, I used content analysis.  Content analysis is a conventional social science method that, as women’s studies and sociology professor Shulamit Reinharz discusses, has been used in feminist research.  According to Reinharz, people who conduct content analysis do so by studying a set of objects, in my case Web site postings, systematically by counting them or interpreting the themes found in the postings.¹  These objects are naturalistic, meaning they were not created expressly for the purpose of study and they are non-interactive, meaning they do not require questioning the creators or observation of subject behavior.²  Typical examples of artifacts or objects studied in content analysis are magazine or newspaper articles and commercials or television programs.  Sociology and gender studies professor Patricia Lina Leavy discusses how the exact process one follows when using content analysis will vary but that generally it requires a sampling of data, which are then broken down into units of analysis, next they are coded or categorized, and then they are calculated in the categories.³  As the next paragraph describes, I followed a similar process.  A benefit to content analysis is that, as Reinharz writes, “historically ignored women are made visible when relevant artifacts are located and studied, and conversely, analysis of this type of material illuminates the forces that shape the lives of the vast majority, in contrast to the elite minority.”⁴  This is true of the anti-street harassment Web site postings because normally the experiences of the vast majority of women who experience street harassment are not visible to the larger society but now can be when shared on publicly searchable Web pages.

During my process of content analysis of the Web site postings, I read through the postings on each site an average of three to four times.  The first time I read the postings simply to become familiar with the kinds of messages people were submitting to the Web site.  The second time I read the postings, I printed them and made notes in the margins as I read through them, noting anything that seemed interesting.  I particularly noted anytime someone made a comment regarding the Web site in their posting (“I’m so glad I found this site,” or “Thank you for having this site, it makes me feel less alone”) or provided or sought advice to other readers and/or the Web site facilitators.  I also started noting the kinds of reactions the writers had to the street harassment experience(s), particularly after I attended a workshop at the Street Harassment Summit in New York City that focused on responses to harassment.  

Before I read through the postings for a third time, I created categories of common themes I found in the postings based on my first and second readings and what I had learned about street harassment by that point through my research,.  These categories were:

1. Offered/sought advice or wrote commentary of solidarity or frustration to the other readers.
2. Mentioned the Web site in some way, or for the HollaBack Web sites, mentioned taking or wanting to take a photograph of the harasser.
3. People who wrote about their street harassment experience(s) and had a non-confrontational reaction. (A discussion of my reaction categorization starts on the next page.)
4. People who had an assertive confrontational reaction.
5. People who had an aggressive confrontational reaction.
6. People who had a combination of reactions.
7. People who mentioned their own physical appearance or age in the posting.
8. People who mentioned the physical appearance or age of their harasser in the posting.
9. People who mentioned commentary on street harassment not aimed at anyone, but that was more of a reflection or analysis of their experiences with street harassment or of street harassment in general. 
   

Then I read through the postings a third time and analyzed and grouped them as they related to each of the nine categories I created.  Many postings fell into several categories.  For example a person may have opened the posting by saying how grateful she was to find the site (category 2), then shared her street harassment experience including her reaction to it (category 3 or 4 or 5 depending on her reaction) and perhaps her age or what she was wearing (category 7), and then wrote something in general about how much she dislikes experiencing street harassment and why (category 9).  All of the categories were straightforward for coding except for deciding which reactions were non-confrontational versus assertive confrontational versus aggressive confrontational, which I determined in part based on reading Langelan’s book Back Off! and from a discussion of reactions at the Street Harassment Summit I attended (will be discussed in more detail later).  I also categorized some postings as “combination” if the person mentioned having one reaction but then as the harassment continued, having another kind of reaction.

Based on Back Off! and a Street Harassment Summit workshop, I categorized people’s descriptions of their reaction to the harassment incident at the time of the harassment as non-confrontational if the person being harassed did not or could not challenge the harasser or let the harasser know that what was happening was harassment and unacceptable.  Examples of non-confrontational reactions included: walking away without saying anything, ignoring the harasser, humoring the harasser by answering their questions or laughing nervously at what they are saying, altering one’s own behavior or appearance to avoid harassment, and taking preventative measures to avoid harassment like crossing the street or wearing headphones.  I created a separate category for people who indicated that the harassment occurred too quickly for them to react in time or they were too shocked to react right away.  I also created a separate category for people who indicated that their non-confrontational reaction was because they feared for their safety.  Lastly, I categorized people on the HollaBack Web sites who only took a photo of the harasser as non-confrontational because in the moment, taking a photo does not challenge the harasser’s behavior, particularly as most people took the photo after the harassment incident was over and the harasser was a distances away.  Though posting the photo and a story later on a Web site in the hopes of shaming the harasser is somewhat confrontational, it is my interpretation that at the moment of harassment, simply taking a photo and nothing more is non-confrontational.  If a person took a photo and told the harasser why or also said something to address that the harassment occurred then I categorized it differently.  Of the three response types, non-confrontational was the most frequent.  Section VI examines the reactions in great detail.

I categorized the reactions that people described having during the harassment as assertive confrontational reactions when people took constructive action to stop the harassment, whether it was reporting the harassment to the police or other person of authority (such as a bus driver or subway manager) or directly confronting the harasser using calm, strong language.  Usually the person indicated in some way that the harassment was wrong or unpleasant.  Examples of reactions I categorized as assertive include: naming the harasser’s behavior and telling them to stop, asking the harassers to repeat themselves, telling them they are being rude and to stop, saying something like “you just harassed me and I don’t like it,” reporting them to police, reporting them to non-police persons of authority, telling the persons to leave her alone, and confidently talking to people who seems about to harass to normalize the situation and prevent them from harassing.  An assertive reaction was the second most frequent response type.
I categorized aggressive confrontational reactions in the instance of harassment as ones that were violent or offensive while not letting the harasser know that it was his actions that were problematic (as opposed to him being the problem; many harassers assumed this and would call the upset woman a racist or a snob).  Examples of aggressive reactions included: shouting obscenities, flipping off the harasser, insulting the harasser, yelling “shut up,” spitting, screaming, giving them a mean look, or having a physical reaction like shoving, kicking, elbowing, or digging one’s nails into their skin.  Most women only had an aggressive reaction, particularly a physically aggressive reaction, after being harassed numerous times during a short period of time or when they were being physically harassed.  An aggressive reaction was the kind women had the least often.

After I divided the postings among the nine categories, I recorded the numerical breakdown of each category.  I read through all of the excerpted postings (fourth time reading posts) and divided them into subcategories.  Each of the examples of reactions I listed above were subcategories I used.  Nearly all of the postings fit into a subcategory.  Then I counted how many excerpted posts were under each category and subcategory.  These results will be discussed briefly in section IV and in depth in section VI. 

Compared to participation in an interview, which is how most data on women’s experiences with street harassment has been collected, the Web postings offer a unique way to learn about women’s experiences because women are able to share any experience(s) they want, when they want, and make the stories as long and as detailed as they want.  Reading other people’s experiences may trigger memories of their own street harassment experiences that they can then share.  However, since most of the women who post to the site do so after a particularly frustrating experience with harassment or while looking for resources to help them combat street harassment after the accumulation of harassments has taken its toll, the information gathered from the postings is skewed towards showing the experiences and insights of women who are upset by street harassment.  Without being able to ask the person for clarification about their reaction or ask for more information, I had to make assumptions about what they wrote that may not always be accurate.  Another downside to using the Web site postings is that most people do not identify their age, race, or sexual orientation, though of the ones that do, I have found a mix of women ages 12 to 50, white, black, Hispanic and Asian, and self-identifying lesbian and bisexual women as well as self-identifying straight women. 

Online Survey:  After conducting preliminary research on street harassment and anti-street harassment Web sites, I created a nine question online survey.  The following are the abbreviated questions, see Appendix A for the complete questions and results and Appendix B for the approved Institutional Review Board consent form that was page 1 of the online survey.

1. Have you ever been harassed while in a public place like the street, on public transportation, or in a store? ⁵
2. If yes, have you ever tried to stop the harassment when you encounter it?
3. If yes, how?
4. If yes, do you feel you were successful in stopping the harassment?
5. What do you think would be the best way to stop street harassment from ever happening?
6. Have you ever heard of, read entries on, or participated in an online forum discussing street harassment?
7. If you answered yes to question 6, what are your reactions to these Web sites?
8. If you have heard of or visited the Web site but have not posted anything on it, do you think you ever will?
9. Do you think the Internet or other forms of multimedia, such as videos/dvds or audio recordings, can be utilized in effective ways to combat street harassment?

I conducted the online survey with a company called Survey Monkey which allows anyone to create free online, anonymous surveys for up to 100 respondents and the company charges a small fee for those collecting more than 100 responses.  With Survey Monkey I was able to create as lengthy a survey as I wanted, create multiple choice or open-ended questions and when I had multiple choice questions, I was able to provide an “other” text box.  I posted a link to the Web address for my online survey to various Web sites and emailed a link to it to various people, allowing recipients to choose whether or not to take the survey and as I could not track who took it, no one felt pressured into taking it.  People could take the survey completely anonymously, at their convenience.  They did not have to write their name or e-mail address or any other identifying information.  They could skip questions they did not want to answer or could quit taking the survey at any time.  I did not ask demographic questions of my respondents so I do not know the sex, race, age, sexual orientation or location of the respondents, except for those who volunteered that information in the open ended questions.  I now wish that I had asked these questions to better gauge at the very least which experiences were reported by women.  However, I assume most respondents were female since I largely targeted women’s groups.   

I undertook several tactics to gather responses to the survey to target people I thought would have been the most likely to know about and use the anti-street harassment Web sites to find out their opinions and views of the sites and street harassment in general.  Thus, my sample is not intended to be statistically significant or representative of the general population.  I e-mailed the facilitators of several of the anti-street harassment Web sites and asked if they would post a link to my survey on their sites.  The facilitators of the HollaBack Boston, HollaBack Chicago, and HollaBack San Francisco sites were the only ones who wrote me back and agreed to post the link.  I posted my survey on discussion forums for Craigslist.com (a Web site with geographic chapters all over the country that each has classified advertisements and discussion forums) in New York City and Washington, D.C.  I sent the survey to the national women’s studies list serv and to individual women’s studies departments, including my alma mater Santa Clara University in California, current program at George Washington University in Washington, DC, and at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, where I was then an employee.  I also recruited responses for the survey through word of mouth, e-mailing it to friends and family and asking them to pass it on, and posting it on my online social networking account in Facebook as well in my Instant Message account profile.  Across nine weeks, I received 225 responses to my online survey. 

Interviews: I contacted several of the anti-street harassment Web site facilitators to conduct interviews with them.  After unsuccessfully trying to conduct in-person interviews with facilitators of HollaBack sites closest to me and facilitators of the Street Harassment Project, I asked the facilitators of HollaBack Boston, HollaBack Chicago and HollaBack San Francisco if they would conduct interviews by e-mail as they had already helped me with my online survey and I knew that I would not be able to travel to their cities to conduct in-person interviews.  They all agreed.  I mailed them copies of the consent form and e-mailed them the interview questions.  They mailed back signed consent forms and e-mailed their answers to the interview questions.  While most of the questions I asked were the same, one or two I tailored specifically for the geographic location and information I knew about the sites.  Boston was the oldest of the three, having been running about a year, while Chicago and San Francisco had each been running about six to seven months at the time of the interview.

I focused primarily on the Web sites themselves in the questions, asking why they started the Web site, was the Web site achieving what they had hoped it would, what they do to maintain the site, and what kind of feedback they received from the general public.  I also asked what role they thought the Internet could play in combating street harassment and what other ideas they may have for combating street harassment.  All of the responses were useful in better understanding the Web sites.  I also found a lengthy interview online conducted several years ago with one of the founders of the Street Harassment Project Web site, which I refer to a few times in the remainder of this thesis. 

Street Harassment Summit: On May 5, 2007, I attended a Street Harassment Summit in New York City called “Sisters in Strength Strikes Back: Our Struggle with Street Harassment.”  The Summit was free and open to the public.  I will discuss it in greater detail later but there were three main components to it that provided me with data.  During a workshop, the facilitators discussed non-confrontational, assertive and aggressive responses to street harassment, which, as I discussed above, helped me categorize the postings from the anti-street harassment Web site and helped me organize a later section of this thesis.  In the workshop I was able to listen to and take notes on the street harassment experiences of the 23 attendees.  At the beginning of the Summit we watched the documentary “War Zone,” which exposed me to more kinds of street harassment women experience and some of men’s excuses and reasons for harassing. 

Summary of Data Results

My data results support the conclusions of other studies of street harassment.

Prevalence of street harassment: In my online survey, the first question I asked was, “Have you ever been harassed (such as verbal comments, honking, whistling, kissing noises, leering/staring, groping, stalking, attempted or achieved assault, etc) while in a public place like the street, on public transportation, or in a store?”  Over 99% of the respondents reported having been harassed.  The following table shows the breakdown of their responses (the percentage total is over 100% because three people chose two answers):

Of the fifteen people who reported “other” and wrote in a responses, nine reported that they used to receive harassment frequently when they were in their teens and twenties but now that they were middle-age or older, it was very infrequent.  Two respondents mentioned they were harassed “frequently” and that it had to do with “being a dyke.”  Another person wrote the “frequency depends on location.”  One person wrote “1-2,” another person wrote “a few times a week,” and the last person wrote, “no because i enjoy it it isn’t harassment [sic].”  So, including the “other” responses, only two people who took the survey responded that they had never been harassed.  Thus my survey results support scholars’ findings that street harassment is prevalent for women, though it is hard to generalize the experiences of all women based on my survey results since many of the women who took my survey were more likely to be feminist activists and thus more likely to regard catcalls and wolf whistles on the street as harassment.
At the workshop I attended at the Street Harassment Summit, everyone in attendance (23 people) could mention at least one recent incident where they had been harassed on the street in a sexual way by a stranger, suggesting prevalence as there were people in attendance from a wide range of racial/ethnic backgrounds, ages, and sexual orientations.  However, since they were attending a workshop on street harassment, they were probably more likely to view harassment as a negative experience compared with the wider population. 

As not everyone knows about the anti-street harassment Web sites and/or has the inclination to write their experiences on the sites, it is hard to gauge from the number of postings how prevalent street harassment is overall, but some demonstration of the prevalence of street harassment is shown by the fact that those who have posted have self-identified themselves as women of all ages, races, and sexual orientations from all over the U.S. and various other countries.

Race and street harassment:  Throughout my data collection, there were numerous examples of the intersectionality of racism and sexual harassment.  I did not ask any questions specific to race in my online survey and no one volunteered any information relating to race in the open ended questions.  However, in both the anti-street harassment Web site postings and at the Street Harassment Summit Workshop there were discussions of racism. 

During a workshop at the Street Harassment Summit in New York, everyone was asked to relay a recent experience with street harassment and two women shared examples that were a combination of sexism and racism.  The following text was taken from notes I took when one woman spoke about her experience:

“Street harassment is a huge part of my day and it makes me very angry and I think it’s always tied in with my racial identity. The worst thing that happened to me lately was I was on my way to work at a new job and I was very happy, and this guy said something to me and I kept walking and he came up around me in my face and said, ‘You look just like Bin Laden’s sister.’  My mouth was closed, and I was like, why aren’t I responding?  He continued to scream at me and I kept walking, and he said, ‘You should get home, women like you don’t work.  Don’t your men keep you locked up?  Oh that’s right, your men aren’t real men.  I’ll show you what a real man is.’ And he proceeded to tell me the actions that real men do to their women.  People on the street were stopped and were staring at me but no one said anything.”

The following text is from the notes I took when the second woman spoke about a recent experience she had:

“There were tons of people around and I didn’t even see the person, I had my sunglasses on and he said to me something like, it happened really, really fast, he just said all this stuff: ‘Oh you’re really beautiful.  Then he’s like 'What?  You don’t like me because I’m black?’  He’s like, ‘you’re racist, fuck all white people.’ I was like what?  But then the first thing I thought was I’m not white, I’m mixed.” 

In the postings on the anti-street harassment Web site, people discussed race in a few different ways.  Some women noted racism in their experiences with street harassment, usually citing how they were called racial slurs when they did not react favorably toward the harasser.  Women who were African American, Asian American, and Anglo American all reported being recipients of such slurs.  For example, a woman who was trying to read a book on a subway while being harassed by a nearby passenger was wrote on a HollaBack NYC posting that she was called “nothing but a white racist” for asking and telling him repeatedly to stop talking to her. 

A few African American women wrote about their general experiences with street harassment as related to race.  For example, one woman wrote on the Street Harassment Web site:

“As a black woman, I'm not going to keep grinning and going along to get along. No other race of woman has to endure the defeminization that goes along with being forced to accept sexual aggression from strangers, as a social norm. Every time it happens, I'm going to say something. If the harassers get enough negative responses, they will stop or at least slow down. Boys may be boys, but I refuse to give up my modesty and dignity.”   

Another woman on the Street Harassment Project Web site wrote:

“I decided to do a google search for black women and sexual harassment because I am sick of this shit! Growing up in Nigeria being grabbed and harassed on the streets and in the market, coming here being leered at in Philadelphia. It's everywhere! The worse one is because I have short natural hair, I get these stupid bastard men coming to me and talking about how nice my hair is.” 

Another woman wrote about her experience being harassed by a black man:

“There were two black guys handing out those free newspapers at the station's steps. One of the guys thrusts the paper towards me when I didn't take it he said "psst, yeah, dreadlocks." I'm a young black woman who wears my hair in locs, I was so angry because he has no business speaking to me like that, it's totally unprofessional, he's just suppose to hand out papers with a good-morning and that's it. …I also felt because I was a black woman and he was black, he felt he could talk to me anyway he wanted to and when I challenged him he couldn't handle it. I can't be a non-confrontational victim to this type of treatment.”

Around 28 postings out of the 706 mentioned the race of the harasser and most of these also mentioned their own race to show the comparison.  A few additional posters also mentioned the race of the men who usually harassed them, often prefacing it by saying they did not consider themselves to be racist, but in their experience the harassers were usually from this certain race due to cultural differences, etc; the races was most frequently cited in this way were Hispanic, then African American. 

In response to reading these kinds of comments, a few other people posted that they did not think culture/race made any difference; men of every race/culture had harassed them in different situations and locations.  For example, one of the postings on Street Harassment Web site said,

“Alot [sic] of the women seem way too concerned with the race of the offender. I've been harassed countless times by white, black, red, yellow (insert color here) men and the thing that sticks out in my mind the most is that they were ASSHOLES. It's not a color/culture thing. It's an abuse of power and demonstration of disrespect.”

Sexuality and street harassment: A few people mentioned receiving homophobic slurs, sometimes right away and sometimes after they ignored the harasser.  In my online survey, two women mentioned being called “dykes” as part of the harassment and they, as well as another person, said they felt they were harassed frequently in part because of being perceived as homosexual.  On the anti-street harassment Web sites, a few women noted that men shouted “dyke” at them frequently and it was probably because of their short hair cuts.  For example, one woman wrote, “I always get the Dyke call, i [sic] presume it is because men always think women with little or very short hair are Dykes, but it inflames me even more, because then it becomes an anti-gay slur, ontop [sic] of an anti-woman slur.”   Another woman wrote, “Last night I was standing outside my dorm smoking a cigarette. An SUV full of men drove up to me. 'What the fuck is wrong with you? You look like Sinead O'Connor! Fuckin' dyke!' they yelled, and drove away.”

Some women specified that they were often harassed when walking with their girlfriends.  For example, one posting said, “My girlfriend and I were walking up 4th street in the village when 2 men who were smoking and spitting in front of a deli said, as we passed 'fucking dykes.' Now, since we're direct-action feminist (and yes, dyke) activists we turned around and said 'What? What did you say to us, in the middle of Greenwich Village?' and one of them looked at us up and down, came closer to us, and spit on us.”  Another woman posted, “Why do men think that two women together is for their sick fantasy pleasure?” 

A few women indicated that they were called dyke or faggot or lesbian when they rebuffed the harasser’s attentions or made him angry.  For example, one woman wrote on the UK anti-street harassment Web site:

"I was walking across a zebra crossing [cross walk] this morning and a car suddenly appeared, it was traveling fast and had to brake sharply. One of the male occupants leaned out of the window and called out "stupid dyke" - I turned but of course, the car speeded off - so I just gave the finger. The reason for this cretinous remark - the male driver had to stop in order to let me continue across the road. I, a woman had actually made a male driver stop for me, so because I had insulted his male pride, the only insult he could make was a homophobic one, which clearly proved he was a bigot.”

At the Street Harassment Summit workshop, no women volunteered experiences where homophobic slurs or comments were included with the harassment but one of the men in attendance talked about how, since he is visibly gay, he is often harassed by men.  He said that just the previous day as he was walking with female friends, men in a passing car yelled out loudly, “Yo, why do the fags always get the girls.”  


Other Data Results: The specifics of my data results will be detailed throughout the remaining sections of this thesis as part of my discussion on how women perceive street harassment, women’s responses to street harassment, women’s feelings regarding the law and street harassment, ideas for methods to combat street harassment, and women’s use of anti-street harassment Web sites.  However, the following is a summary of the results for each section: 

• Perception of street harassment: Nearly everyone I studied perceived street harassment within a feminist framework, viewing it as uncomplimentary, not a man’s right to call out to or touch any woman he wants, an angering/upsetting experience, and simply something men should not engage in.  This is to be expected though since most of the people I studied were likely to be feminists.  No one in the street harassment postings, at the Street Harassment Summit workshop and none of the Web site facilitators I interviewed discussed harassment as complimentary.  Only one person in my survey reported a positive perception. 
  
  
• Responses to street harassment: Across my data collection, the most common response that women had to the harassment was non-confrontational, then assertive confrontational, then aggressive confrontational.  Non-confrontational: 48% of anti-street harassment Web site posters reported a non-confrontational response in the incident of street harassment they were reporting, 92% of survey respondents reported a non-confrontational response to harassment some time during their experiences with street harassment, 72% of workshop attendees reported a non-confrontational reaction in a recent harassment incident; Assertive confrontational: 30% of anti-street harassment Web site posters, 53% of survey respondents, 17% of workshop attendees; Aggressive confrontational: 22% of anti-street harassment Web site posters, 50% of survey respondents, 6% of workshop attendees.  The remaining individuals reported a combination reaction, meaning they had one reaction but as the harassment continued, they had another reaction.  Even in the combination reactions, more people had a non-confrontational reaction either first or second compared to an aggressive or assertive reaction.  See Table 2:

• Law and street harassment: In both my online survey and in the anti-street harassment postings, few women looked to the law or police as a remedy for handling street harassment.  In an open-ended question in my survey where people could write their ideas on how best to combat street harassment realistically and/or ideally, only 8% mentioned creating anti-street harassment laws or reporting street harassment incidents to the police.  Only 2% of posters on anti-street harassment Web sites mentioned having reported the incident of street harassment to the police while less than 1% reported threatening to call the police.  Less than 1% advised others to report their harassment experiences to the police.
  
  
• Methods for combating street harassment: Two of the most common methods that people suggested for combating street harassment across my data collection were: 1) educating the public about the problem, such as through a nation-wide or city-wide campaign and school education and 2) taking direct action against the harasser at an individual level.  32% of my online survey respondents listed education as a way to stop street harassment (top response) while 10% of the 70 people who offered advice on the anti-street harassment Web sites suggested education as a way to combat street harassment.  All three facilitators of the anti-street harassment Web sites that I interviewed saw using the Internet as an educational tool as important in stopping street harassment.  13% of my online survey respondents advocated for direct action tactics in response to street harassment while 46% of the 70 offering advice on the anti-street harassment Web sites advocated for direct action tactics (top response).  The facilitators of the Street Harassment Summit workshop I attended advocated for direct action tactics.  See Table 3:

• Web sites and street harassment: From my survey and attendance at the Street Harassment Summit Workshop, I found that few people are aware of the anti-street harassment Web sites, thus their overall impact so far is minimal.  For example, over 50% of my survey respondents had never heard of the Web sites, despite the fact that I had heavily targeted people interested in women’s issues.  However, a significant portion of those who post on the site mention how comforting it is to learn they are not alone, how nice it is to have a forum to share their stories, how they came up with ideas on how to confront harassers while visiting the Web sites, or how sharing their story is empowering.  Each of the three facilitators of the anti-street harassment Web sites reported receiving nothing but positive comments from their communities and from users regarding the Web sites.  Given the increasingly important role the Internet plays in American society, particularly for those in their 20s and younger who grew up with the Internet, Web sites educating the public on street harassment and providing women with a voice for their experiences with it will be an important method for one day ending the harassment.  53% of my survey respondents said they believed the Internet could be utilized effectively to help stop street harassment as did all three of my anti-street harassment Web site interviewees. 

The remainder of my thesis discussed in great detail each of these points and compared them to the results of scholars who were discussed previously in the literature review section.