Girls are not prey. Let’s stop encouraging men to be predators.
Author: Holly Kearl
Holly Kearl is an anti-street harassment expert, writer, and nonprofit professional based in the Washington, D.C. area. Her work has been cited by the United Nations, CNN, New York Times, Washington Post, the Guardian, ABC News, NPR, Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire Magazines, Feministing, and Jezebel.
Street Harassment Still Happens—But It’s Becoming Less Socially Acceptable
Laws signal what is okay—and what is not. That’s why laws against street harassment matter, and it’s why new laws in France and the U.S. show promise for a future without public abuse of women.
What the Numbers Behind the #MeToo Movement Show Us
When the #MeToo stories began pouring out a few months ago, I thought: now is the time to procure the national data we are lacking on this issue.
6 Places to Celebrate International Anti-Street Harassment Week
From the age of five, gender-based street harassment has been an undercurrent in my life—even on my wedding day last year. I was in a grocery store parking lot when two men told me I looked beautiful, then immediately escalated into sexually explicit comments about my body, making me feel dirty and humiliated. I am […]
How Do YOU Respond to Street Harassment? Here Are Some Suggestions
Earlier this month, thousands of people in Berlin held a vigil for Tugce Albayrak, a 23-year-old student who died at the hands of a street harasser. Albayrak bravely intervened when she witnessed a group of men harassing two teenage girls on November 15. In retaliation, one of the young men, an 18-year-old, turned on her, […]
Shout It From a Billboard: Street Harassment NOT Cool
When was the last time you saw a billboard flashing messages about consent, respecting women or street harassment? I’d guess never. I had never seen one either, until a few days ago when I drove to Lancaster, Penn., and stood in front of a digital billboard along Dillerville Rd. displaying these three messages. As an […]
Indian Women Reclaim Buses for International Women’s Day
When I spent a week in Delhi, India, to attend an international conference on women’s safety, I saw many public buses around the city as I walked or rode in auto-rickshaws. Each of the crowded buses was almost entirely full of men. It was so rare to see women on a bus that if I […]
When Street Harassment Is More Deadly Than Catcalls
Recently in Florida, a 14-year-old girl was walking down the street when a man in an SUV pulled up beside her and offered her $200 to have sex with him. When the girl refused, he pulled her by her hair into his vehicle and choked her until she lost consciousness. Then he dropped her on […]
Street Harassment Fuels a Viral Documentary
One day, during a typical 15-minute walk from her office to her apartment in the center of Brussels, 25-year-old graduate film student Sofie Peeters was harassed 11 times. To channel her frustration with her inability to commute in peace, she produced a short documentary for her final school project called Femme de la Rue (Woman of the Street). The […]
Egyptian Women Refuse To Be Silenced By Assaults
Violence against women demonstrators in Egypt erupted again on Tuesday when a frenzied mob of 200 men sexually assaulted a female protester in Tahrir Square. Then, during a rally on Friday to protest the incident, about 50 women and their male allies were themselves brutalized and chased away by another mob. Journalist Ghazala Irshad, who […]