Ending Street Harassment is a Democratic Responsibility
In this piece, Professor Laura Logan explores the links that exist between ending street harassment and ensuring the enjoyment of our full democratic rights. Using her own personal experiences as a starting point, Laura examines the role that street harassment plays in policing ‘difference’ in public spaces and how, through this process of demarking their use as to be enjoyed only by some, street harassment can become a blow to the very concept of living democracy.
As a sociologist and a researcher, street harassment has been on my mind for more than a decade now, but I’ve been listening to stories of everyday street harassment for much longer than I’ve been a scholar. And, like many women, I became aware of street harassment much earlier in my life because my first experiences of it were during childhood, and my experiences are far from uncommon.
My first memory of street harassment was when I was walking home from school in fourth grade and a man in a car slowed to ask me questions that made me feel nervous - suggestive questions about my age and my body. The next incident that lives large in my memory was when my family was visiting relatives and we’d all gone to dinner at a pizza restaurant. I was eleven years old, waiting outside the restaurant while the adults paid the bill, laughing with my younger cousins and siblings when a car filled with men pulled over to ask me how old I was and would I like to go for a ride with them. A man in the backseat opened his car door, then the car pulled away when my parents and aunt exited. There was a man in our block, a husband and father, who sometimes watched me walk home at night after babysitting and he’d touch the fly of his pants and tell me I should come talk to him. These early experiences left me feeling as if men were dangerous because some of them tried to get me to do things I didn’t want to do, and some talked to me as if I were a sexual grown-up. I became cautious in public space because I couldn’t tell the men who might harass from the men who might not harass.
There are more incidents, many of them during my teens and early adult years, but even in my thirties and forties and now my fifties, I have not been safe from street harassment. One disturbing incident took place when I was in my late forties, in the parking lot of a movie theater after I’d seen one of the Harry Potter movies. I was glowing with joy after seeing the film with friends (I’d read all the books and loved the films as well) only to find myself confronted by a group of harassing men when I got to my car.
Another particularly unforgettable incident, also when I was in my forties, took place when two men pulled alongside my car after I had parked on a downtown street crowded with both car and pedestrian traffic. They asked for my phone number and if I wanted to take a ride with them. I was preparing to exit my car and shook my head as I reached for my purse and the door handle, but they did not move their car so I could not open my door. When I looked to see if they were getting ready to move their car, the man in the passenger seat told me to “come along now.” He told me they just wanted to be friends. “Get in the car,” he said with complete authority. I gave him an incredulous look, firmly declined, and exited on the passenger side since their car was still blocking my door. I then walked to a restaurant where I was meeting my friend and her mom. The whole restaurant stilled when, a few minutes later, the men knocked on the large glass window and pointed to me, gesturing that I should come to them. I told the server that I did not know the men, that they were harassing me. She looked away from the window, took my drink order and was just walking away when one of the men approached my table to ask again for my phone number “so you can’t get away,” he said with a grin. “We’ll wait for you,” he said. I declined and asked that he and his friend please leave me alone. I threatened to call the police. He tipped over my glass of water, called me a bitch, and stormed from the restaurant. I felt shaken for hours and avoided the downtown area for months.
When I was about 41 or 42 years of age, men in a college fraternity harassed me from their porch as I was walking in our neighborhood for exercise. They made cow noises and told me to take my fat ass home. Once, while in a big city for a work conference, a man followed me for blocks, calling me vulgar names because I wouldn’t talk to him. He stands out in my memory because I didn’t know all of the words he used and I felt embarrassed when I asked a friend what those particular words meant.
My personal history with street harassment reflects what we know from the research and includes my avoiding certain spaces, avoiding going places alone after dark, driving to avoid public transportation, and in general finding ways to work and live while trying to avoid public space so I can avoid harassment. We also know from the research on street harassment that the vast majority of harassers are men – which is not the same as saying the vast majority of men are harassers. In fact, I would argue that the majority of men are NOT harassers.
As a sociologist, I’ve been collecting stories about street harassment for more than a decade, and during that time my understanding of the phenomena has deepened. At first, I focused on certain groups who were targets, primarily women. Then, when people discovered that I research street harassment, they’d tell me their story or they’d tell me what their mother, father, sister, younger brother, neighbor, colleague, or best friend experienced. My first round of research indicated that street harassment was in many ways a highly charged process of gender policing – hostile and sexual communication meant to tell the target who she is allowed to be. But since then, I’ve come to understand that street harassment communicates differently to different groups. For instance, street harassment tells overweight people that they are unacceptable and should hide, that they should not exercise or even exist in public space. Street harassment tells elderly men that they are no longer masculine enough, that they should be invisible. Street harassment tells breastfeeding mothers that their breasts are to be preserved for men’s pleasure and if they do not do that they will be punished. Street harassment tells gay men that they are objects of derision, potential victims of sexual assault, and failures as men. Street harassment tells persons of color that public space is white space, that they should remember which racial group holds power. Street harassment tells boys that they are not masculine enough, that there are two positions of manhood in public space – the perpetrator of harassment and the victims of harassment. Street harassment tells girls what they are in the world, what women are; it serves as a form of grooming girls to accept the threat and reality of sexual exploitation, hostility, and victimization. Despite the differences, the overarching message from the harasser is the same: “You don’t belong here; I do.”
We know that when we examine street harassment, really examine it, we can see that it designates public space for the harassers. Street harassers tell us, “This space is mine, not yours, and I will do what I want in this space.” But isn’t public space “our” space? Shared space? Particularly in a democracy? Ending street harassment is a call for living democracy not just pretending to live it. How can we tell ourselves that we believe in liberty or freedom or justice if we are not protecting public space as democratic space, space for all? I have come to believe that the way we treat public space reveals which humans we value so street harassment reveals to us that we have failed to live up to valuing and including everyone. Moreover, the work of democracy takes place in public space where access is essential to participation. I have come to see street harassment as a direct blow to democracy.
When we work together to end street harassment, we’re not only making public space better for women and girls. We’re making it better for older people, boys, people of color, and other marginalized groups, but also for men. When we end street harassment, no man will feel compelled to bond with other men through street harassment or pressured to display ideals of masculinity through harassing marginalized and vulnerable people. Together, we can embrace a democracy that lives beyond the pages of a constitution, beyond the hearts of its people. It’s time, past time, to ask members of our democracy - including men, and especially the men who do not harass - to help safeguard public space by interrupting harassers when it’s safe; by practicing being an effective bystander when they witness harassment; by seeing that online space is public space too; by mentoring boys and young men to abstain from street harassment; by asking for public policies and practices that condemn street harassment; by proclaiming out loud that they do not approve of street harassment. We can make democracy a flesh-and-blood reality by protecting public space as something that is for the people, by the people.
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Laura S. Logan is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Hastings College in Hastings, Nebraska, USA. She has a PhD in Sociology and has spent years advocating for an end to street harassment. Her work on street harassment has been published in academic journals and discussed in articles in The New York Times, the Washington Post and other media outlets. You can find more of her work over on her website.
