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Street harassment is a form of harassment, primarily sexual harassment that consists of unwanted sexualised comments, provocative gestures, vehicle horn, wolf-whistling, indecent exposures, stalking, persistent sexual advances, and groping by strangers, in public areas such as , and public transportation. Besides actions or comments that contain a sexual connotation, it often includes homophobic and transphobic slurs, and hate speech referencing racism, religism, classism, Ethnic group and ableism. The practice is rooted in power and control and is often a reflection of societal discrimination, and has been argued to sometimes result from a lack of opportunities for expression of interest or affection (e.g. an inability to have social interaction).
Recipients include people of both genders, but women are much more commonly victims of harassment by men. According to Harvard Law Review (1993), street harassment is considered harassment done primarily by male strangers to females in public places.
According to the founder of Stop Street Harassment, it can range from physically harmless behavior, such as "kissing noises", "stares", and "non-sexually explicit comments", to "more threatening behavior" like stalking, flashing, grabbing, sexual assault, and rape.
According to Judith R. Walkowitz, the public's perception of street harassment was shaped by the middle-class women who were the new subjects of this courtship practice, which was perceived to be far too casual and informal to be proper. Their experience was given a greater weight by the society than those of working-class women. Leading ladies' journals of the era contained advice on how to avoid being "spoken to" by men when going about their business.
The modern discussion regarding the subject began in 1944 with the rape of Recy Taylor. Rosa Parks was commissioned to investigate the crime in which Taylor, a black woman, was kidnapped and gang-raped in Abbeville, Alabama. Parks responded by starting what was later dubbed the "strongest campaign for equal justice to be seen in a decade."
Street harassment severely restricts the physical and geographical mobility of women. It not only diminishes a woman's feelings of safety and comfort in public places, but also restricts her freedom of movement, depriving her of liberty and security in the public sphere. Women assess their surroundings, restrict choices of clothing, wear headphones, choose to exercise inside, and avoid certain neighborhoods or routes as proactive measures to reduce the chance of being harassed. In recent studies, street harassment was linked to indirect consequences that decrease the quality of women's lives. The decrease in quality of life is contributed to avoidant behaviors.
A study in 2011 was aimed at recording the health effects of street harassment on women and girls. It was found that they were mentally stressed after experiencing street harassment. Poor mental health has been found to be linked to street harassment caused by paranoia that certain spaces are not safe. The main way the women and girls put a stop to this was reducing the amount of time they spent on the street. However, this negatively impacted their ability to hold down a job or go to where they could receive healthcare. Stranger harassment reduces feelings of safety while walking alone at night, using public transportation, walking alone in a parking garage, and while home alone at night.
A 2000 article, based on Canada's Violence Against Women Survey, showed that past exposure to harassment from strangers is an important factor in women's perceptions of their safety in public. Harassment from a stranger, as opposed to an acquaintance, is more likely to induce fear of sexual victimization.
This problem is not only transnational, but also transcultural and affects people of all identities, races, and ages—every day.
Five hundred cases of mass sexual assault in Egypt were documented between June 2012 and June 2014.
For women, most harassment is performed by a total stranger. This comes from a 1990s study from the American Midwest. It was found that numerous women have experienced street harassment on numerous occasions. Another 50% were physically harassed or followed by such strangers. Half of those surveyed revealed this harassment occurred by their 17th birthday. In 2014, researchers from Cornell University and Hollaback! conducted the largest international cross-cultural study on street harassment. The data suggests that the majority of females have their first street harassment experience during puberty. According to Stop Street Harassment, "In 2014, nationally representative survey of street harassment in the USA, half of the harassed persons were harassed by age 17." They also state that, "In an informal international online 2008 study of 811 women conducted by Stop Street Harassment, almost 1 in 4 women had experienced street harassment by age 12 (7th grade) and nearly 90% by age 19".
According to the Stop Street Harassment national survey, LGBT men are 17% more likely to experience physically aggressive harassment and 20% more likely to encounter verbal harassment than heterosexual men. In a separate survey, verbal harassment was cited as the most common form of abuse. However, there were also a significant number of people who were harassed by being denied service or being physically harassed.
Research from Patrick McNeil at George Washington University in 2014 showed that 90% of participants in his survey of gay and bisexual men said that they felt "unwelcome in public because of their sexual orientation." 73% said that they experienced specific homophobic and biphobic comments targeted towards them in the past year. Almost 70% reported that by age 19 they had experienced "negative public interactions", and 90% said that they had experienced these negative interactions by age 24. Some members of the LGBTQ+ community are strongly impacted by street harassment. 5% of the group surveyed said that they had moved to different neighborhoods in response to interactions they had experienced, and 3% reported a change in job in response to being harassed in the area of their job.
In a national survey in the United States done by the Human Rights Campaign, women were found to be more likely to experience street harassment, and 60% of women reported being harassed at some point in their lives. "Among LGBT youth, 51 percent have been verbally harassed at school, compared to 25 percent among non-LGBT students."
A Harvard study published in 2017 found that in a group of 489 LGBTQ+ Americans, 57% of them had been subjected to slurs. It was also found that 53% of those surveyed had experienced offensive comments. In addition to this, most of those surveyed mentioned a friend or family member who was also a part of the LGBTQ+ community that had been harassed. 57% said their friend or family member was threatened or harassed, 51% said their friend or family member had been sexually harassed, and 51% reported that they had someone in their lives who had experienced physical violence because of their sexuality or gender. The study also found that LGBTQ+ people of color are twice as likely to be harassed on the street or elsewhere than their white counterparts.
A sample survey of 331 LGBTQ men in 2014 indicated the phenomena occurs worldwide. 90% of them claimed to be harassed in public spaces for their perceived differences. It was mainly their lack of traditionally masculine features that singled them out for abuse. This abuse was mainly aimed at how they did not fit typical gender roles while in public.
In a municipality near Barcelona, called Santa Coloma de Grammet, awareness days were planned for 400 staff who have regular interactions with passengers. This was part of an initiative known as puntos violetas (purple points), to enable the staff to respond to situations of harassment of LGBTIQ+ phobia. On peak days for travel, purple spots will be installed in seven metro stations.
In some cases, men may enjoy the thrill of doing something illegal or taboo, and some may experience sexual gratification from groping, flirting, or sexual humiliation. Negative remarks can also be the result of transphobia or homophobia.
According to Dr. Joe Herbert, a neuroscience professor at Cambridge, harassment also comes from a biological need to find a mate. Unlike animals, the human brain can cognitively recognize that power dynamics and psychological and physical manipulation can be forcefully used on other humans to coerce them into becoming mates. Because of societal structures and laws, it is more attractive to most people to use psychological methods, which manifests in different forms of harassment. According to Dr. Herbert, street harassment is another form of sexual coercion to encourage reproduction that is not widely socially acceptable.
Australian reporter Eleanor Gordon-Smith recorded interactions in the 2010s in Kings Cross, New South Wales, and found that men who catcalled women enjoyed getting attention, flirting, and the public performance. The men were also under the impression that the women who were the subject of their remarks and gestures enjoyed the attention and believed they were helping the women have a good time or were giving a compliment about physical appearance that would be appreciated. The vast majority of women in the area, in contrast, found such conduct degrading, wished they could avoid it, and worried that it could escalate into a physical assault. In conversation with one man in particular who perceived his catcalling to be welcome based on his experience, Gordon-Smith pointed out that women may feel pressured to play along and pretend to enjoy the attention as a means of de-escalating the situation, fearing the response their honest reaction could provoke.
YouGov conducted a poll of about 1,000 Americans in August 2014. In their findings, 72% said it was never appropriate to make a "catcall", 18% said it was sometimes appropriate to catcall, and 2% said it was always acceptable. The majority (55%) labeled catcalling "harassment", while 20% called it "complimentary". Americans in the 18–29 age range were the most likely to categorize catcalling as complimentary.
The vast majority of women in the Kings Cross area study found such conduct degrading, wished they could avoid it, and worried that it could escalate into a physical assault. In a more representative sample, a 2014 U.S. survey found that 68% of harassed women and 49% of harassed men were "very or somewhat concerned" the situation would escalate. As mentioned above, Gordon-Smith pointed out a reason for the difference may be that pretending to enjoy the attention was one way to avoid provoking an escalation which could lead to a physical attack. The U.S. survey found 31% of women responded by going out with other people instead of alone, and 4% of all victims made a major life change to avoid harassment, like moving or quitting a job.
Many theorists see the female's positive reaction to street harassment as a form of gender discrimination and how male hierarchy is being forced upon females. Mild street harassment is likely to be seen harmless and welcoming to some women; thus some theorists evaluate these women as the "victims of false consciousness" who lack self-value and feminism within them.
Mainstream media has also been criticized for the overuse of invalidating rhetoric in their description of harassment. As with other forms of oppression against women, the language presented by media sources commonly undermines the validity of street harassment complaints. The particular overuse of the words, "alleged," "supposed," "expected," immediately create a sense of uncertainty toward claims of harassment and assault, therefore imposing a sense of responsibility and/or guilt on to the victim.
Activists have made use of to publicize the frequency of unsolicited comments that women receive in public areas.
One American used Kickstarter to raise money for a campaign called "Stop Telling Women to Smile." The artist posts portraits of herself and other young women accompanied with messages against street harassment.
A Minneapolis woman created a set of printable "Cards Against Harassment" (in homage to the game Cards Against Humanity) that she distributes to street harassers. The cards are meant to explain to street harassers why their comments are unwanted.
The Safe Cities Global Initiative created by UN-Habitat in 1996 is an approach to address harassment in public places through partnerships with cities’ communities, local organizations, and municipal governments. Actions taken to address this include improved street designs and lighting in urban areas. The United Nations Commission of the Status of Women (CSW), a subcategory under UN Women, is committed to empowering women and advocating for gender equality. For the first time, it included multiple clauses into their " Agreed Conclusions" that focused on sexual harassment in public places in March 2013.
A 2016 study in The British Journal of Criminology examines the extent to which online sites serve as a form of informal justice for street harassment victims. The results show that individuals experience "validation" or "affirmation" after self-disclosing their experiences online and may receive acknowledgment or support by doing so. Notably, some individuals feel re-victimized or experience re-traumatization. It was found that online justice is limited, but in particular for street harassment, it is possible that victims achieve some form of justice.
Plan UK launched a campaign in 2018 called #ISayItsNotOk to stop the street harassment of girls and raise public awareness of the issue. This campaign has gotten a lot of public attention and has made girls and women in the UK share their stories of street harassment. In 2019, another group in the UK called Our Streets Now has launched a campaign to make street harassment of girls, women, and transgender individuals a criminal offense and to educate students in schools about street harassment so "girls will learn how to avoid it and boys never become perpetrators of it". Plan International UK and Our Streets Now partnered in late November 2020 to create the #CrimeNotCompliment campaign and make public sexual harassment a crime.
Punishments include imprisonment or fines depending on the seriousness of the crime.
The public's rejection of criminalizing offensive speech and hate speech in view of the First Amendment poses a challenge for the legal system. Contrary to popular belief, it is not just those who are unaffected by street harassment that hold this ideal; victims and survivors of offensive speech and hate speech are reluctant to advocate against this First Amendment right. Adversely, the public is hesitant to rely on the law in their daily lives as they prefer autonomy, regardless of how grave the situation may be.
In a series of interviews conducted by Laura Beth Nielson in 2000, regarding the attitudes of the public in relation to the law and street harassment, four paradigms were offered. The freedom of speech paradigm is based on the ideal of allegiance to the First Amendment's ideology. The autonomy paradigm is based on the desire for self-governance. The impracticality paradigm is based on the impossibility of regulation in regards to offensive speech and hate speech. Lastly, the distrust of authority paradigm is based on the lack of faith in legal officials to enforce laws. These four paradigms exemplify the reasoning behind the lack of criminalization for street harassment.
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