How It Should Be Done

Recently we posted about the baffling (to us) phenomenon of targeting all prevention of violence against women toward women instead those who are the primary perpetrators of that violence (men). Several groups in New Zealand agree with us, and have come up with a wonderfully logical response to sexual assault prevention:

Rape educators want to train New Zealand's bar staff to intervene when they see "predatory males" plying women with drinks during the Rugby World Cup.

Rape Prevention Education (formerly Rape Crisis) has teamed up with the police, Accident Compensation Corporation and the hospitality industry to train 130 bar staff in Auckland and Wellington in a pilot programme this year.

Director Kim McGregor said she hoped the other agencies would help to extend the programme nationally in the lead-up to the World Cup, which kicks off in September 2011.

"We need to do much more on prevention and social attitudes, for example around the [Cup]," she said.

"For us it's an opportunity. We have two years to prepare for it."

The programme targets bars because three-quarters of sexual offenders and half of all "date rape" victims were drinking or taking drugs before offences occurred.

A fifth of sexual violence happens in or around licensed premises.

Bars already have "host responsibilities" under the Sale of Liquor Act, which imposes fines of up to $10,000 on managers who allow anyone to become intoxicated on their premises or supply liquor to anyone who is already drunk.

Dr McGregor said staff also needed to be aware of the sexual risks for heavy drinkers.

"We are teaching bar staff how to keep patrons safe - identifying predatory males, and being aware of the consent laws," she said.

"They don't understand that it's rape if you have sex with someone who is so stupefied by alcohol or drugs that they can't give consent.

"For some bar staff there's an attitude that if a woman goes home with a guy drunk, she deserves all she gets. But they can stop giving people drinks when they're drunk, and they can be offering free water in between drinks and putting [out] nibbles and snacks."

Programme co-ordinator Kylie Tippett said the workshops trained bar staff to watch out for "red flags" such as patrons being sexually harassed, being plied with double or triple drinks or drugs without their knowledge, simply getting drunk very quickly, or leaving the bar with no way to get to their next destination safely.

She said security staff could approach offenders and say, "We have noticed your inappropriate sexual behaviour towards women or men this evening. We don't tolerate harassment on these premises - either stop or you'll be asked to leave."

Or: "We notice that you are buying large quantities of alcohol for another person. It's our policy that we check that the person is not intoxicated and is aware of what they're drinking."

She said one of the biggest problems raised in the workshops was what to do with people leaving the bar drunk and unable to get home safely.

"They may tell people where the nearest taxi stand is, or some bars know taxi companies and use those, and some felt quite comfortable calling police and said they had a great response in those situations," she said.

She plans to talk to taxi companies and other agencies about a possible voucher scheme for people at risk who did not have any money for a taxi.

"There would need to be all sorts of training required. We'd have to check that they were not being misused."

Some bars wanted posters stating policies such as: "We do not tolerate sexual harassment or aggression. If you are concerned with any patrons, do come to us and we'll deal with it."

"We've been asked to develop some posters," Ms Tippett said.

Hospitality Association operations manager Scott Necklen said the pilot programmes were successful and the industry would support further workshops. "We are supportive of initiatives that give hospitality staff practical strategies to ensure patrons' safety and ensure patrons have a happy and enjoyable night out."

This is the way prevention should look.

Sexual Bullying on the Playground

According to a recent report by the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCFS) in the UK, more than 3,500 pupils are suspended each year due to sexual bullying. Equating to 19 suspensions each school day, the situation is becoming uncontrollable. This week Panorama broadcast a program called Kids Behaving Badly (which can be viewed on BBC iPlayer) highlighting the prevalence and severity of sexual misconduct in schools across the UK.

The title, however, was somewhat misleading.

While it suggests boys and girls are equally accountable for this behaviour, what this documentary exposed was the extent to which girls are victims of sexual harassment and physical assault from an increasingly younger age - beginning at nursery school level. Whereas for boys bullying predominantly takes the form of name-calling, with aspersions cast on their sexuality and sexual premise, girls not only have to contend with this, but also with lewd comments and threatening physical molestation. “Gay,” “lesbian,” “frigid,” and “slut” are used as part of an offence verbal currency (considered representative of sexual “abnormality”) that boys and girls spend frivolously. The documentary also found that schoolboys are vulnerable to sexual attack not by schoolgirls, but by their male classmates. This is a growing problem. Panorama, in conjunction with the charity Young Voice, conducted a survey of 273 children and youths and found that one in ten 11-19 year olds had been sexually bullied, a form of intimidation ranging from rumour-spreading about sexual activity to rape. Schoolchildren, specifically boys, are using sex as a form of power and control, but why? Why are they so sexually aware?

Paula Telford, spokesperson for the NSPCC, believes that instead of such instances being dismissed as innocent childhood games, effective handling by schools could help to significantly reduce this trend. While not always the case, she said that this needs to be “nipped in the bud” from an early age since a percentage of boys who are overbearingly sexual do mature into aggressive and dangerous sex offenders. Not all, but enough to suggest that for the greater social good it should not be ignored. But, where did this problem originate? And why is it getting worse? That sex can be used as a tool of dominance and control is nothing new. That popular culture encourages young girls to aspire to sexual maturity and young men to lust after women in order to assert their masculinity has exacerbated the problem in the school yard.

Women are positioned as sexual commodities. Little ladies can now go to beauty parlours and have treatments and make-overs coveted by women more than three times their age. Before baby girls can walk mothers are bombarded with advertisements for tiny high-heels, designed to look cute, suggesting a maturity well beyond their years. Little girls can replicate the sexy styles of twenty-something women, wearing baby mini-skirts and halter-neck tops, knee-high boots and sparkly lip-gloss. Infants and young children are encouraged to look like smaller versions of grown women, shown-off like designer shoes while everyone speculates about their age.

Since popular culture has promoted the idea that little girls are little dolls, it’s not surprising that said little girls believe that’s their worth. It’s not surprising that little boys view said little girls as public property, expecting each one to react in an amenable and accommodating way. Similarly, computer games endorse violence against women. Female avatars are commonly presented as caricatures of the female form - big-breasted, tiny waisted beauties who must be killed as violently as possible. Young, impressionable boys are being conditioned to view women as sexual fodder that must obey their every command. Boys are told they have to be sexually candid and have sex with lots of women to be considered men. That doesn’t make it excusable, but what it does do is explain why these attitudes have filtered through to the playground and, like girls, boys can also be seen as victims of our over-sexed society.

That girls are being denied the right to an education without being sexually harassed does indicate that this has gone too far, but what can be done? Innocence, once lost, can never be returned. While schools can try their best to implement strategies to educate boys and girls about the ways to behave socially, this is a band-aid rather than a long-term solution. Girls can be encouraged to step forward and share their experiences in a non-judgemental environment (this should go without saying, anyway), but that sexual misconduct is flourishing in the playground suggests that maybe it’s too late for a reprieve.

Read the whole story here.

Street Harassment Update

From Salon:

Sure, snapping a cellphone picture of a street harasser is good for humiliating the lech -- and alerting other women to his modus perverandi -- on the Web site Holler Back NYC. But, as a story in the New York Times shows, it can serve him with far more than embarrassment.

Last month, a 28-year-old woman was walking up a set of stairs -- wearing a skirt -- at the Dyckman Street station when she noticed a man suspiciously close to her. He just so happened to be fiddling with his cellphone and someone nearby told her that the man had snapped an up-the-skirt shot. The woman told the Times: "I said I had to do something. Since he is taking pictures of me, I am going to take pictures of him." So, she followed him onto a train and readied her cellphone. "And I told him 'smile' because I am going to the police," she said. She took a photo of his mug, e-mailed it to police and filed a criminal report. Bravo!

It's the kind of admirable act hardened city dwellers expect to lead nowhere -- except, thanks to the snapshot, a police officer recognized the suspect in a subway station earlier this week and he was charged Wednesday with attempted sexual abuse, harassment and unlawful surveillance. How's that for bursting your bubble of cosmopolitan cynicism!

See our original post on the topic here.

Take it to the Streets

Jennifer Kesler, who writes for the Hathor Legacy and Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog, has written posts directed at both men and women regarding catcalling, and why street harassment should not be considered a form of flattery.

In her post to women she writes:

Strange men do not hoot at, yell at, or leer at you because they think you’re hot. They do those things because they think you’re vulnerable and needy. If you think they want you sexually, you need some serious education on power psychology. They want to feel like they’re on top of you, but not in the way you imagine.

When you see someone attractive, it’s natural to look. But not to stare - there are rules against staring throughout the animal kingdom. And you don’t talk unless the person you’re looking at says something to you first, because when you get caught looking, it would be aggressive to follow that up with verbalization. This is something your cat understands, for pete’s sake. Stop reading Cosmopolitan and get in touch with your animal instincts. Discrete looks are flattering because they reflect only a natural aesthetic reaction. Leering - staring overtly at someone who’s watching you stare - signals aggression. Uninvited verbalizations are also aggressive - that’s why when the salesman at the kiosk leaps out to ask you if you ever get split ends, you feel pressured and cornered (until you realize you’re entitled to tell them to back off and leave you alone because they started the hostility and you’re only responding in kind).

To men, she says:

If you’re honest with yourself, you know it’s not really about how attractive she is. It’s about one of two things:

* The men. Most often, catcalling at a woman is a way men socialize with each other. You’re trying to impress each other with who can say the most outrageous things, or who can get a smile or glance from the most passing women. The woman is just part of the scenery, so it’s no surprise you’re oblivious to her feelings. Her responses don’t represent a person with sensitivities to you; they represent a finish line, and tell you whether or not your verbal volleys are scoring.

* Intimidating women. For every bunch of guys who thinks catcalling is harmless because they know their own motives aren’t hateful, there’s one guy who really hates women and revels in feeling that a woman is afraid of him. He thinks his buddies feel the same way, and when they engage in the same behavior, they are (perhaps unwittingly) encouraging him.

Whether you’re merely insensitive to what strange women feel or actually hate them doesn’t really matter. The behavior was invented by men who hate women, and by participating in it - in fact, by not calling on other men to stop doing it - you’re encouraging misogynistic attitudes whether you mean to or not, whether you share them or not.

Kesler's posts come in response to a May CNN article entitled Catcalling: creepy or a compliment?, in which some women report feeling threatened by men yelling at them on the street while other women express insecurity with their appearance if they are not catcalled.

But Kimberly Fairchild, 29, an assistant professor of psychology at Manhattan College in New York, says catcalling can take a larger emotional toll than many women realize.

"There seems to be some evidence that it increases self-objectification," said Fairchild, who surveyed 550 women both online and at Rutgers University in 2006 and 2007. The women -- who ranged in age from 15 to 64 in the international online component and from 18 to 24 in the Rutgers survey of women from central New Jersey -- were asked about their experiences with street harassment.

Catcalling "encourages women to look at themselves as body parts instead of as full, whole, intelligent human beings" and can cause women to fear for their safety, Fairchild says.

"When a man catcalls you, you don't know if it will end at that point or if it could escalate to assault," she added.

The CNN article also discusses HollaBackNYC, a site which encourages New Yorkers to snap pictures of street harassers and then post them to the blog as a way of fighting back.

Emily May, 27, and six of her friends were inspired to create the site in 2005 after a young New York woman used her camera phone to take a photo of a man who was looking at her while touching himself on the subway. The picture led to his arrest. (Such behavior is, according to New York state law, a misdemeanor offense). The blog has spawned similar sites in other major cities such as Chicago and San Francisco.

The site is a way to encourage dialogue, May says. "I think sites like ours can help women see that they're not alone, that it happens to women in all walks of life by men in all walks of life, and that it's not okay."

We encourage you to visit the links included in this post, especially those to Kesler’s posts and HollaBackNYA, to learn more.

90% of Teen Girls Report Sexual Harassment

A new study has been published concerning the way sexism is perceived by teen girls. The authors of the study surveyed 600 girls between the ages of 12 and 18, from California and Georgia who come from varied ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds.

Ninety percent of girls reported experiencing sexual harassment at least once. Specifically, 67 percent of girls reported receiving unwanted romantic attention, 62 percent were exposed to demeaning gender-related comments, 58 percent were teased because of their appearance, 52 percent received unwanted physical contact and 25 percent were bullied or threatened with harm by a male. 52 percent of girls also reported receiving discouraging gender-based comments on the math, science and computer abilities, usually from male peers, and 76 percent of girls reported sexist comments on their athletic abilities, again predominantly from male peers.

Perhaps more important than the existence of sexism is the way in which girls interpret the harrassment. The study, which will appear in full in the May/June issue of Child Development, Vol. 79, Issue 3, under the title "Perceived Experiences with Sexism Among Adolescent Girls", notes that there are cultural factors which influence whether any given girl interprets sexist comments as an external problem (i.e. indicative of the shortcomings of the sexist) or as indicative of their own "flaws."

Girls who had been exposed to feminist ideas, either through the media or an adult such as a mother or teacher, were more likely to identify and report sexist behavior than were girls who had no information about feminism. Girls who reported feeling pressure from their parents to conform to gender stereotypes were also more likely to perceive sexism. Girls who felt atypical for their gender and/or were unhappy with stereotypical gender roles were most likely to report sexism and harassment.

The study's authors noted that it is important that girls learn that sexism is an external problem because frequent sexual harassment can lead to low self-esteem and the expectation and acceptance of demeaning behaviors in heterosexual romantic relationships.

H/T Feministing