Navigating and Healing from Experiences of Street Harassment

This guide from Girls for Gender Equity (GGE) provides helpful tips for coping with street harassment. It is geared towards young people, gender-based violence professionals, activists, and allies.

While there is no common definition for street harassment, Stop Street Harassment (SSH) notes: 
“Gender-based street harassment is unwanted comments, gestures, and actions forced on a stranger in a public place without their consent and is directed at them because of their actual or perceived sex, gender, gender expression, or sexual orientation.

Street harassment includes unwanted whistling, leering, sexist, homophobic or transphobic slurs, persistent requests for someone’s name, number or destination after they’ve said no, sexual names, comments and demands, following, flashing, public masturbation, groping, sexual assault, and rape.”

Sexual harassment can be traumatic. It can be especially difficult when it’s experienced in public. We may not know how to or be able to respond in the moment.

The GGE provides the following tips for coping with and working to eradicate street harassment and sexual violence. We can:

• Check in with our bodies and assess our needs, during and after the experience
• Share our experience with someone that we trust. We can address what would make us feel safe before, during, and after the experience.
• Seek professional support from text lines, hotlines, and other resources such as:
  • Crisis Text Line Text Line: Text HOME to 741741 in US 24/7 confidential support to people in crisis.
  • Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN) – National Sexual Assault Hotline 1 (800) 656-4673 Available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week via phone and online chat
• Create a healing or self-soothing toolkit. The toolkit can include whatever makes us feel comforted, such as candles, coloring books, candies, or a playlist of sounds or songs.
• Find spaces of community with other survivors, such as a community safe haven, a survivor support network, a crisis center, or a healing circle.
• Speak with other people in our network of care, such as a school counselor or a best friend. They can help us strategize and provide a space of release.
• Express our truth through creative outlets, such as dance, writing, and cooking.
• Speak out against street harassment and other forms of gender-based violence, whether attending a protest, launching a campaign, or working with an organization.

A national survey found that 65% of women experienced street harassment. Out of these women, 23% had been sexually touched, 20% had been followed, and 9% had been forced to do something sexual. Among men, 25% had been street harassed (a higher percentage of LGBT-identified men than heterosexual men reported this) and their most common form of harassment was homophobic or transphobic slurs (9%).

SOURCE: Girls for Gender Equity