A few months ago I stood next to my favorite on-campus food truck while waiting for my food to be ready. It was just around the time students from a near by elementary school were getting out for the day, so a few boys around the age of 12 came over to the truck to grab some snacks.
While waiting, a woman walked by on her cell phone and one of the boys yelled, “Hey sexy, whatchu up to?!”
The girl shot them a dirty look and then continued down the block, as they erupted in a fit of laughter.
The boy who started this ruckus said to the others, “She ain’t even cute…but that’s what girls want to hear.”
I don’t know where these boys are getting their information from, but that is certainly not what we want to hear. Yet it is what we do hear.
I love living in the city, and I am confident in my abilities to scoot around by myself using only public transportation and my own two legs, but traveling alone frequently means being a target of street harassment. Sometimes it’s guys making comments under their breath about my body, or a worker in a pick-up truck yelling something at me as they drive by. Sometimes it is just a strange man telling you to smile. How many times I have wanted to flip the bird to those guys! Fear and intimidation holds me back every time though, and I know I am not alone, as I’ve seen many fellow Temple students get harassed and heard innumerable stories from friends.
I was intrigued when I stumbled upon a Hollaback! Philly ad that read “’Nice A**’ is Not a Compliment” on the Market-Frankford Line recently. I looked up the movement’s website, and read up on what the ads were trying to do:
“Hollaback is a movement to end street harassment powered by a network of local activists around the world. We work together to better understand street harassment, to ignite public conversations, and to develop innovative strategies to ensure equal access to public spaces.” – Hollaback! Philly’s website.
I followed Hollaback! Philly’s Twitter account, @HollabackPhilly, and was overwhelmed by the tweets that started showing up on my feed. At first, they were mostly retweets of people who had encountered the ads and were excited by what the organization was igniting. As the weeks passed, those retweets turned to women sharing their stories of standing up to street harassers. I was invigorated by these experiences, and I was even more excited by the fact that most often, the harassers were stunned to shame and silence by women sticking up for themselves.
That silence is exactly what Hollaback! Philly wants – by fighting back against street harassment, women can change the culture that allows it. In addition to the Twitter feed, Hollaback Philly’s website has a feature that allows women to “share their story.” This can be a story of street harassment you experience or witnesse. Hollaback! then uses the data (which can be as anonymous as you wish) to collect information about where and how street harassment is occurring in Philadelphia. Hollaback! also encourages women (and men) to step in when they see street harassment occur, and suggests the most appropriate ways to deal with it.
Overall, Hollaback!’s mission is to ignite a cultural change to make sexual harassment unacceptable in our society. You can get involved with the organization, share a story, and at the very least, holla back!
Photos from: Tumblr, Hollaback! Philly