HOLLA Worthy Link Round-Up
It’s been a busy week online for Hollaback! Boston, with some really terrific engagement surrounding Amelia’s experience and her response. If you haven’t weighed in yet, please do!
Before you go about your weekend business, peruse Rebecca Pacheco’s five favorite commencement speeches in honor of recent grads, review three ways to speak your truth without blowing your lid, read up on how bikes empower girls in rural Cambodia, and take a peek at Stop Street Harassment’s report on International Anti-Street Harassment Week 2013.
Happy Friday!
–Kate
image credit: Kate Ziegler
no comments
Introducing: Beverly!
“Introducing” is an ongoing series in which we ask bloggers, activists, allies, entrepreneurs and assorted Bostonians about their inspirations, motivations, super powers and experiences with street harassment. If you know someone you think we should feature here, please drop us a line!
Beverly is a Boston cyclist who laughs in the face of harassment – and who doesn’t love that?
Tell us about yourself – what are you into? I’m 40 and have been in Boston for 11 years now. Can’t imagine living anywhere else! I have four nephews who are so awesome I do not know how to put into words! I love to read, and I try writing from time to time. I also love music…I would blow my best friend off for a live show (to be fair, he would probably go with me, so the wrong I did him would be moot). I am also a huge Dowton Abbey fan and Anglophile. Most of all, I love to bike. It is my main mode of transportation, and I absolutely love being on any one of my three bikes.
Define your style: I am more of a classic girl, but I love statement pieces, mostly scarves or bags.
Favorite Boston fact: I am actually intrigued by the story of the candy factory explosion. I am sure at the time it was horrific, but it almost sounds like a Looney Tune cartoon.
Your favorite place in Boston? Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum or Fenway Park, I cannot decide.
Have you experienced/witnessed street harassment in Boston? Absolutely.
What stood out most in your memory? Mostly that it was so unnecessary and lame. I was stopped at a light on Mass Ave. When the light turned green a lady sped up and turned right in front of me then yelled out the window, “Take the fucking bus!” I burst out laughing.
What’s your signature response to street harassment – your go-to Hollaback? I usually yell out British swear words-they don’t sound all that awful, and no one knows what they mean anyway. If it is truly egregious, the good words come flying out!
Your superpower is… I am one with the cats. They know me. All of them.
What are you excited about in 2013? I am currently unemployed and I am really excited to see where my career can take me!
What inspires you? What inspires me also humbles me. I am inspired by bravery. I was excited to see it come out during the bombing.
If you could leave the world one piece of advice, what would it be? Really, it’s THAT bad? Really?
Thank you, Beverly! For more bike posts in honor of National Bike Month, stop by our archives.
no comments
“Must you communicate like wolves instead of humans?” | Jacqueline’s Story
In honor of National Bike Month, we’re sharing stories of bike harassment both in Boston, and from Hollaback! sites worldwide. This story is cross-posted from Hollaback! Halifax.
I was biking along Cunard toward Robie at about 9 pm on a Saturday night, and a group of guys emerged from the apartment building and barked at me (seriously, like “arf arf”) as I passed.
I was more bemused than threatened (do you mean you think I’m a bitch? or that you want to do me doggy style? or that you yourselves are so manly you must communicate like wolves instead of humans?) but I was still very glad to be on a bike, so I could flip them off as I sped past rather than have to share the sidewalk with them.
For more bike posts in honor of National Bike Month, stop by our archives.
no comments
Clever or Creepy, Part 2: Amelia Hollas Back
Last week, I shared a story – and my personal reaction to that story – about the experience of a friend. Amelia is one of my very oldest friends, dating back more than 20 years, and I left any identifying information out of that post in case she felt she wanted to stay out of the conversation entirely. Her experience prompted quite a range of reactions, and over the weekend she decided to chime in, and to write a full response from her perspective. We’re sharing her piece here because the conversation is a valuable one, because we should always be willing to question our own truths, and because her experience is equally valid - please keep this in mind and be respectful in any comments. Thank you so much, Amelia! –Kate
I choose to Hollaback! a different way.
My friend Kate was kind enough to protect my anonymity in her initial post, but I’m generally an open book, as my story makes clear, and the guy in the pick-up maneuver in question is now a confirmed NO in the boyfriend department so there’s no reason to distance myself from last week’s post. In fact, I welcome the opportunity to share my side of the story and encourage the Hollaback! audience to perhaps take a different approach. My experience, especially after Kate chose to share it with the universe, has been the subject of a lot of thoughts and soul-searching on my part and so I’ve chosen to collect those thoughts in this post and see where the Hollaback! adventure takes me next. I’m looking forward to becoming a part of your community.
I do feel the need to start this by identifying myself as an ally. Partially out of loyalty to my friend, but also because I support it and find it interesting, I have been following Hollaback! Boston’s online presence and recently donated to the Pride fundraiser. I am one of you (although I do not live in Boston). A man has no right to look at you, say something to you, or touch you in any way without your permission, which you furthermore have the right to revoke at any time. And I do recognize how seemingly mild comments and behaviors are a part of a larger broken system whereby women are still (mind-bogglingly enough) seen as objects, weaker or lesser in some way, and thus become victims of harassment and violence, along with lower pay and a host of other less violent but equally unjust circumstances. Please try remember these things if you get very frustrated or disgusted by what I’m about to say. I think it will result in a more meaningful conversation moving forward.
First I’ll give you the full play-by-play.
Picture this: I’m sitting on a bench smack dab in the center of my university campus, in front of my office building where many people I know and trust are toiling away in the name of academia. It is a sunny 2pm on a Tuesday. I am reading my Twitter feed while waiting for my male friend to come meet me to go to lunch. He is expected to approach at any moment.
-Rather than my friend, a tall, dark, handsome-ish young man (henceforth TDH-ish) carrying a backpack and wearing sunglasses approaches the bench. TDH-ish says, “Excuse me, is this seat taken?”
-It’s not, so I say “no.” My overstuffed backpack is on the bench between us.
-He sits down. I go back to Twitter (@ameliajane).
-TDH-ish: “I’m sorry, actually, can I borrow your phone?”
-I look at him incredulously because who borrows cell phones on a college campus in this day in age? Don’t we all have them already?
-He says, “I know, I’m sorry, it’s just mine died. It will just be a second.”
-Now remember, he’s cute-ish, so I open the door for him a bit, perhaps, by saying (after noting his accent) “It’s not going to be long distance, is it?” I’ve been accused of being naturally flirtatious. I guess I can’t help myself.
-TDH-ish: “No, no, and it will just take a minute.” I decide I’m zooming in on the part of the world he’s from. I give him my phone. If I were in a bind and needed a phone because mine were dead/lost/stolen I’d like to think people would help me out.
-TDH-ish dials. His pocket starts ringing. He hands my phone back to me and says, “I’m so sorry, I’m already late for a meeting so I have to run, but now I have your number.”
- I say, “Nice to meet you, my name is Amelia.” TDH-ish puts out his hand to shake mine and says, “Hi, Amelia, I’m TDH-ish. Have a lovely afternoon.”
-An hour later, presumably when he finished his meeting, he texted me and after a few exchanges correcting the spelling of my name and questioning the veracity of his we decided to meet for coffee the next day.
So now my thoughts on this:
I don’t think what happened to me was street harassment.
I don’t even think it should be put under the same umbrella term. I think we are doing ourselves a disservice if we do that. I was actually sort of irritated that it was Kate’s reaction to label it as such. I sent the text to my girlfriends as a funny tidbit of “haha, isn’t it funny that this guy did this in this way? Isn’t it fun that I’m just recently back ‘out there’ on the dating scene and this is how I come across a dude? Lol” to break up the monotony of our days. I think it is essential for everyone to understand that I didn’t feel uncomfortable. At all. I didn’t feel bothered or threatened or creeped out. This may because I missed the memo about talking to strangers as a child and I make a regular habit of talking to anyone and everyone. It may be because I was raised in a small town and that’s how we do things. It may be because I travel alone a lot. More on that later. My point is, as Marléne pointed out, it’s MY choice to feel harassed or not. Not yours. Not his. And I don’t think this was harassment. He tread lightly, I didn’t shut him down. The “forceful” taking of my number I guess is the only place it might even come close to harassment, but how invasive is it, really, to have someone’s cell number? I mean, if I don’t want to talk to him, I don’t answer. That’s easy enough.
On the subject of being handsome…
Britni tweeted me the other day:
@ameliajane @hollabackboston @kziegs Would your reaction have been different if he hadn’t been attractive or handsome?
— Britni (@hopefiending) May 18, 2013
I will repeat and elaborate my answer here. I texted my girls and my sister right away and retold the story to my friends because it was a “hey look at me” moment. My sister’s response: “OMG! Like a movie!” and another friend said she’d probably sleep with him. To each her own.
If you don’t appreciate positive attention for your outward appearance from someone of the gender you generally go for who you also find to be outwardly pleasing, quite frankly, I think you’re either messed up or lying. Since he was tall, kind of cute, the type I usually go for and had a foreign accent (I study languages and linguistics, so I live for that), I tallied this in the win column. Also, I hadn’t showered that morning and was wearing men’s jeans. Bonus points. Get it, grrl. I realize that this is playing into an age-old issue within the feminist movement about whether reclaiming your own sexual power as a woman is feminism, or just feels like feminism but really reinforces patriarchal standards of beauty and sexuality by giving them what they want. I choose to see it as powerful. Then again I am also an unabashed Beyoncé fan, so judge away.
If he hadn’t been borderline handsome, I probably wouldn’t have bragged about it. Kate would never have received that text and none of you would have your opportunity to reflect. (FYI: Discovering that I was now open to such evaluations from my fellow feisty females of the Hollaback! crowd was more intimidating to me than the pick-up itself.) But I still would have let him sit down. The seat wasn’t taken. And I still would have let him borrow my phone if he had asked politely and didn’t appear to have a flesh-eating disease on his hands. I pride myself on being a kind person that believes in the good in others. I think if more people believed that, more people would be more good. I also like to collect interesting friends and experiences.
On meeting new people…
This brings me to perhaps my biggest personal concern about Kate’s reaction to this experience. She is lucky to be in a long-term relationship with a highly evolved man who respects and adores her. Some of us haven’t found that yet. I furthermore live in a small, college town where the most common way that people meet people of the opposite sex is at frat parties or in the seedy darkness of the one local nightclub. At 27 and almost done with a PhD, it feels a little gauche and not particularly productive to try and find a partner that way. Most of them are 21 and very drunk and we’re just on different planets. So if I assume that every man that approaches me in booze-free, daylight contexts, no matter how politely he does so, is bad or dangerous or is seeking to use his male superiority to victimize me, how exactly am I supposed to meet people? I know my power. I know my risks. I’m not giving him my social security number or my home address or even my last name. At the first feeling of discomfort I will disappear from his universe (in fact, I sort of already have). In this particular situation I am not at risk because I’m not letting myself be put there. I, too, have power, and I am using it.
Subsequent retellings of this story over beers with friends and colleagues and even other dates have yielded myriad replies. Men tend to either think it’s a really clever thing they wish they had the balls to try or that I’m ridiculous for falling for it. One particularly enlightened man friend I shared the story with immediately said, “What a dick move!” with a genuine look of disgust on his face. His reaction was so strong and so from the gut that he pushed me the closest to reconsidering my initial feelings about it. But on second reflection after we talked a bit more he, too, recognized that I wasn’t bothered by it and that was ok. Most women actually go more the way of Kate or Sabine and say, “euw euw euw creepy creepy creepy.” A couple expressed jealousy at my having handled it without nerves or fear.
So when do we Hollaback! and why?
I think this is where my real contribution, my real point in writing this somewhat lengthy response, comes in. Is your negative reaction to this quite benign act of flattery reinforcing the harassment rather than undermining it? I met TDH-ish for coffee the next day after “the pick-up.” He was very polite. Respectful. Did all the things I like in a potential mate in the early phases of dating, like asking me interesting questions, really listening to the answers, and at the end of the first date inviting me to go out again instead of playing that wait-to-call game for 3 days. Our conversation was only so-so and sans sunglasses and with more time to look at him it turns out he doesn’t inspire any butterflies in me, so I’ve passed on date #2, but I have no regrets about having met him once. I certainly am not avoiding him because he’s creepy. (And I’ve had every reason to convince myself that he is, what with all this Hollaback! dialogue I’ve been involved in this week.) I suppose I could apologize to the other women in the world who will be creeped out by this move the next time he tries it for having encouraged his “bad” behavior, but I don’t think it’s so bad. As a matter of fact, as I’m writing my response I’m realizing that when done in an appropriate way, as TDH-ish did, it’s a behavior that may merit celebration.
I do feel a bit guilty about having been placed here among people who are truly being insulted and violated by words and actions on the streets of Boston. I think that while the work you all do every day is valuable and important, you must not let it cloud your perspective to the extreme. Viewing everything through a filter of harassment is a terrible way to live. Being predisposed to perceive any unknown man who approaches as an aggressor probably won’t make any of them want to improve the patriarchal society in which we now live, it will just make them feel like they can’t win. And it certainly won’t make you feel better. The purpose of a holla! as I see it is to reclaim your strength, your rights, your sexuality if you so choose. It is to feel safe and comfortable, but also confident and hot when you wanna be.
I see my choice to be kind and welcoming to TDH-ish as a holla-ing back in its own right. I learned more about TDH-ish through his pick-up and our subsequent coffee than I could have reliably gleaned from less confrontational methods of meeting a total stranger. He’s ballsy. He’s clever. He has good taste. :) I don’t want to date him because I don’t feel that *spark* or whatever, but I wouldn’t be averse to being his friend because he seems to be genuinely not a bad guy. He’s new in town and he was looking for a way to meet people. So I chose to say, “Thank you for approaching me in a respectful way. Thank you for recognizing my beauty. Thank you for being more creative and forthright than just grinding up on me in a club or shooting me an anonymous message on OkCupid. Thank you for making me smile in the middle of a boring, busy day. Thank you for putting yourself out there in a world where women are sometimes so standoffish in an attempt to adjust gender roles that it’s hard for even a good guy to catch a break.” Our society needs not only to recognize the bad so that it can be wiped out, but also to recognize the good so that it can be proliferated. So to all the good, if unorthodox, men out there – Holla!
7 comments
Introducing: Kayla!
Hollaback! Boston is so excited to welcome our summer intern to the team – we’re expecting great things from her, and asked her to introduce herself before she gets started. Welcome, Kayla!
Hi, I’m Kayla.
I’m currently an undergrad at Tufts University, studying American Studies and Sociology. My academic focus thus far has been comparative race and ethnicity and institutional power in the U.S. When I’m not in class, I like to explore Somerville and Boston, tell jokes, and really get to know people. I’m originally from Kansas City (Missouri, of course) and I’ve truly come to love Boston these past three years, but I joined the Hollaback! movement because I want Boston to be better than it is. Street harassment runs rampant in this city and in all cities, but I believe it’s a mere symptom of larger issues of inequality. It presents itself as a specific issue that we can tackle, so why not try? Any wins against this oppression have the power to affect the bigger picture, causing a rupture in the current power dynamics that consistently advantage some over others. I think that by telling our stories and contributing solutions, those of us affected by street harassment can make the streets a safer place for us all.
–Kayla
one comment
HOLLA Offline: JP!
Join us this afternoon for our next HOLLA Offline event at Ula Cafe in Jamaica Plain!
We’re plotting our Pride Parade float and making plans for the summer, and we would love your ideas and feedback. Come hang out offline, meet new HOLLA friends in person, and help us determine next steps.
We can’t wait to see you!
–Kate
image credit: Ula Cafe
one comment
“I shouted that I was calling the police.” | TJ’s Story
In honor of National Bike Month, we’re sharing stories of bike harassment both in Boston, and from Hollaback! sites worldwide. This story is cross-posted from Hollaback! Halifax.
I was unlocking my bike on South Park Street, around 1pm. I heard some men yelling from a big, white, unmarked truck. I could tell they were yelling something gross, and threatening. I heard “Fat!”
I turned around and one of the men looked right at me and yelled, “Nice ass, bitch!”
They had pulled up a little further but were stopped at the lights at South Park and Sackville. I could see that there were three men in the truck. I walked up with my bike and shouted to them, “Don’t yell that at me!!! I can see your license plate number!” I read the number out loud so I would remember it and so they would know I saw it. Then I shouted that I was calling the police. They yelled, “Have a nice day!” and laughed. (The plate was only on the front and it was yellow.)
I called the non-emergency police line as soon as I got home. We’ll see if anything comes of it. I’ve had friends report street harassment to the police and get pretty negative responses.
I hate that a group of men can drive around threatening women, feeling totally entitled and immune. They can make me feel scared and unsafe, like I can’t go to the gym, or the grocery store or wherever without being threatened and demeaned.
I just wish there was something more I could do.
For more bike posts in honor of National Bike Month, stop by our archives.
no comments
HOLLA Worthy Link Round-Up
Have you caught the Harlow Project’s traveling Anti-Street Harassment video series yet? Consider yourself introduced:
For more of this series, head to the Harlow Project’s YouTube channel.
We’ve been talking a lot about bikes, I know – it’s my fault (that, and bike month/weeks colliding), but before the weekend, you really should read Tiny Fix’s guide to street harassment and potential assault on two wheels (trigger warning: violence). In the realm of worthy reads beyond bikes, don’t miss Olivia Cole’s brief but spot-on explanation of the effect of quotidian street harassment, Kimberly Matus’ discussion of the empowerment of signing her name to her groping experience, and yet another excellent post from Gradient Lair about her own street harassment observations.
And, if you have time on Sunday, come join us at Ula Cafe for HOLLA Offline!
Happy weekend-ing,
–Kate
video credit: Harlow Project, via Topp Bottom
