“You’re maybe the last person I could rape; come here.”
“A month ago, as I was leaving to do my shopping, a man in a car ran me over as I was about to cross the street, stopped at my level, insulted me, and threatened me with rape, because I had not responded to his heavy flirting.”
“Today I decided to walk home from my jog, to enjoy the sun. A very tall and muscular man with his medical mask, which only showed his eyes, saw me arriving in the distance; he put his hand in his jogging pants and groped his sex while walking towards me.”
From the United Kingdom through Malaysia to Peru, while half of humanity was on lockdown this past April, street harassment was nowhere confined. The COVID-19 pandemic stopped industries, closed stores and restaurants, and even managed to make politicians admit mistakes. However, the pandemic did not stop the scourge that is street harassment. The most often targeted group, women and LGBTQI+ individuals, struggled with street harassment in parallel with the peculiar challenges of our times: health and safety concerns, economic difficulties, and liberty restrictions—to name just a few.
Street harassment should not be brushed off as trivial or a non-event. At the very least, a street remark is a “major deviation from what sociologists refer to as the norm of civil inattention among strangers in public places”. However, street harassers do more than simply deviate from a civility norm: through “frightening and threatening whispered messages of power and subjection”, they reinforce hetero-patriarchal domination over female and queer subjects. In a time where we need solidarity, community care, and kindness more than ever, street harassment fills our streets with just the opposite. We need to study this chilling reality to gather important lessons about what fosters or hinders street harassment to shape our legal responses.
To design a legal apparatus that will be effective in protecting all victims of street harassment, actors should look to the unique context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Stay-at-home orders resulting in empty streets and subway cars have left victims isolated without by-standers and community help. When nobody is watching, “[w]hat if you get someone mad? You don’t know who they are, and you might end up raped or killed”. On the effect of bystander intervention, a participant in Doctor Bianca Fileborn’s research explains, “[i]f you outnumber the harasser or can create a sense of community condemnation they’re more likely to leave you alone”. The emptiness of streets and public transport is a dangerous catalyst for street harassment and assault as perpetrators can get away with their behavior by taking advantage of victims’ isolation. Thus, a comprehensive response to street harassment needs to encompass by-stander trainings and awareness-raising for third parties, victims and perpetrators. These actions together with a legal response can increase protection in public spaces and accelerate the process of un-learning street harassment.
Another lesson to be drawn from the study of street harassment during the COVID-19 pandemic is the need to include street harassment within the broader discussion of violence against women and sexual minorities. There are two different ways one can be particularly at risk of street harassment: being stereotyped as sexually disruptive or promiscuous and being subjected to increased or inevitable exposure to public spaces. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, homelessness and low socio-economic status created increased risks of being exposed to street harassment, leaving victims with no other option than to be on the street or to take public transportation. During the COVID-19 crisis, essential workers were among the few who had to travel through public spaces every day. For example, in France, while many applauded health care professionals every evening, their increased fear led to drastic measures: several nurses in Paris had to be escorted by policemen from the hospital to a subway station.
The implementation of a law on street harassment can produce three positive results. First, through its objective to protect the safety and freedom of movement of all, such a law states “that victims […] are valued members of our polity”. Second, a legal instrument recognizes that these daily events affecting female and queer lives are extremely harmful under conditions of male domination and heteronormativity. Third, a legal condemnation of street harassment is also a condemnation of the resulting harms as far-reaching and part of a multifaceted system of oppression. However, the law can also fail us. Three main obstacles to effectively putting in place a judicial response to street harassment exist: legal procedures and their built-in biases, the issue of finding the appropriate legal framework, and the problem of drawing a line between punishable and non-punishable behavior. In this sense, policymakers should listen to the stories arising within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic to finally strive to design a legal framework surrounding street harassment that guarantees its desirable outcomes to all and is cognizant of avoiding undesirable effects.
I hope these outrageous instances of street harassment will draw the government’s and private entities’ attention to the importance of designing a multi-sectorial response that considers intersectional identities of victims and perpetrators to design more comprehensive, inclusive and context-specific solutions.
Too many of us have been deprived of our freedom of movement for too long. We need to finally listen to the #MeToo coming from the streets.
Marie Dry is a consultant at the World Bank Group for the project Women, Business and the Law focusing on family law reforms in Francophone countries. She is also a graduate law student at Sciences Po Paris Law School. She hopes to pursue a career to improve the legal rights of women and LGBTQI+ individuals. As part of her Master in Economic Law, she studied human rights law and sex discrimination at Harvard Law School.
[1] Paye ton confinement, Facebook (Mar. 22, May 4, Apr. 19, Apr. 15, 2020) https://www.facebook.com/pg/payetonconfinement/posts/?ref=page_internal (Testimonials of street harassment during the lockdown in France collected on a Facebook page). [2] Cynthia Grant Bowman, Street Harassment and the Informal Ghettoization of Women, Volume 106 Harvard Law Review 517, at 526 (1993). [3] Robin West, Pornography as a Legal Text, in For Adult Users Only: The Dilemma of Violent Pornography 108, at 111 (Susan Gubar & Joan Hoff eds., 1989). [4] Deborah M. Thompson, The Woman in the Street: Reclaiming the Public Space from Sexual Harassment, Volume 6 Yale J.L. & Feminism 313, at 313 (1994) (citing Are People Rude on the Street?, Usa Today (1991)). [5] Bianca Fileborn, Bystander intervention from the victims’ perspective: experiences, impacts and justice needs of street harassment victims, Volume 1 Journal of Gender-Based Violence 187, at 195 (2017). [6] Deirdre Davis, The harm that has no name: Street harassment, embodiment, and African American women, Volume 4 UCLA Women’s Law Journal 133, at 176 (1994) (African American women in the United States are fetishized and stereotypically viewed as inherently submissive and amoral. They are portrayed as already deviating from traditional feminine norms, and their sexualities are presented as publicly available for men and unworthy of privacy and protection. Subjected to many forms of sexual terror, designed to remind African American women constantly of their lower status as women and as women of color, their experiences of street harassment are interdependent of other forms of violence, together “murdering their spirits”). [7] Leslie Kern, In place and at home in the city: Connecting privilege, safety and belonging for women in Toronto, Volume 12 Gender, Place & Culture 357, at 364 (2005) (A higher socio-economic status can be a criterion for under-exposure to street harassment as for example, the cost of a taxi ride is always higher than one of a ride with public transportation, leaving more modest individuals to the hands of daily street harassment). [8] Mari J. Matsuda, Public Response to Racist Speech: Considering the Victim’s Story, Volume 87 Mich. L. Rev. 2320, at 2322 (1989).