Stop Sexual Harassment! – a video

HEY MUMBAI! (BOMBAY)

We wanted to post this amazing public service announcement video created by Akshara, a leading women’s resource center in Mumbai, and one of our partners in this fight to end street harassment.

We think it’s fantastic that the filmmaking team interviewed many women for this project, and that the women were as brave and candid as they were. We’re also glad that they involved men in the video, uncovering some of the myths and motives behind street harassment, but ultimately sending the message that street harassment is unacceptable – through women and men.

What was particularly interesting to me was the guy who says: “I enjoy eve-teasing (street harassment,) but when someone teases my girlfriend, sister or my mother, I feel hurt.” This seems to be a common refrain for many of the men we have spoken to while setting up Hollaback!MUMBAI, and we’re still trying to understand the roots of it. It sounds like pretty backward logic to us. There seems to be this sense that if women are close to the men who harass, part of their families, personally connected to them, then they see the trouble with harassment, but otherwise, it’s all fair game. I think the point we need to drive home is that women aren’t deserving of respect because they’re personally connected to men in some way, they’re deserving of respect because we’re ALL deserving of respect. No compromise, no exception – every single one of us. This applies to other marginalized groups too.

The introduction at the beginning goes by pretty quickly, so we’ve typed it out for you. It reads:

All the characters, stories and locations in the film are real. The makers of the film are a team of young girls and boys who have witnessed and experienced sexual harassment closely. In the process of making this film, our team has moved one step further towards understanding gender inequalities. We expect you to be sensitive to the views of the characters shared in the film.

Thoughts? Comments? As always, comment below or email us at mumbai@ihollaback.org
And pass this on to your friends!

show us some facebook love

HEY MUMBAI (BOMBAY,)
Our Facebook page is here! Click here to add us as a friend and stay updated on new stories, events and other exciting happenings.
Bol. Speak up. Hollaback for a city that we can all enjoy more fully.

diana’s story; speak up, speak out and tell ‘em that it’s not okay.

The city whose spirit never breaks saw people come out of their fears post 26/11 in ways which showed their upbringing – even ones of which society disapproves.

The day after it was reported that all those held hostage had been released, it was time for everyone to breath easy. I did my usual train routine to Bandra where I worked and the first thing I was privy to as soon as my feet touched the platform of this hip part of the city was catcalling or ‘eve-teasing’ as we call it in India, from a bunch of guys hanging outside a harbour line train.

It was then that it struck me, what I should have realised years ago. Street harassment/eve-teasing/catcalling stems from a low self-esteem and these men were doing it to raise their confidence. The confidence which had hit rock bottom on knowing that major haunts in the city – Taj, CST and Colaba – were in the clutches of terrorists, and it would only be a matter of time when these men, dressed in black would break in and terrorize them. They must be trembling in their homes throughout the incident. I actually pitied them.

And here I was thinking that it was my fault. Thinking maybe it was the way I dressed or the makeup I used or the way I carried myself…maybe, I was thinking, that it all shouted out for attention which I ended up getting. In the bargain I forgot that it’s a human right to be able to express myself in whichever way I want as long as it didn’t hurt another. It’s my prerogative to look beautiful as it is for any woman (or man).

Terrorists are still among us and it’s for you to recognize when they violate your basic right of being able to enjoy the public space as much as they do. When this happens, take necessary action. Even if it’s just another woman at the receiving end, SPEAK UP. Remember, keeping silent on seeing injustice take place makes us a criminal as much as the criminal himself.

When such behavior is displayed, discipline is called for. In my case, it’s getting discreetly physical, which is sometimes not so discreet. Grab hold of the person’s face, push them as much as your strength allows, stand on their feet, nudge, poke or jab them and then apologise without meaning it in your expressions.

The non-physical way of doing this is staring them down, throwing disgusted looks, mouthing curse words, asking rhetorical questions like whether they have mothers & sisters at home or did their parents teach them manners. Anything to bring down their perceived confidence.

I’d blogged about this earlier but this is not publicly available anymore so thought I’d repost here. Hope it helps others going through the same problem.

asha’s story: marine drive, near cuffe parade

this isn’t like an official incident, but it happened months ago and it’s still bothering me. i was at the end of marine drive, near cuffe parade. i was crossing the street. i was in the middle of the street on that middle bar thing, waiting for the cars to pass. and this man in a big jeep who was driving down the road swung the car towards me for a second, like he was going to hit me, then laughed pulled back and kept going. he obviously knew he wasn’t going to hit me, but he wanted to frighten me. it’s been two months and every time i think back to that, it bothers me a little bit.

Funny Anti-Street Harassment Ad Shows Exactly What (NOT) To Do

HEY MUMBAI!

We just came across this YouTube video of an Aaj Tak ad against street harassment. While we at Hollaback! don’t completely agree with the method used, the message is that street harassment is unacceptable. Aaj Tak’s heart is clearly in the right place, so props to them!

But we’re not really into men always being the chivalrous protectors of women. We’re all for men being involved in this movement to end street harassment (and so many are!) but we don’t want them to be involved in a way that makes women feel silenced. My question while watching this was, what is the woman thinking? If I was her, what would I have wanted the older gentleman to do?

Which leads us to talking about bystander strategy. The truth of it is that most of us have seen someone else being harassed, and we at Hollaback!MUMBAI frequently get asked what people should do when they see someone being harassed. So here’s Hollaback’s bystander strategy: wait till the incident has passed, then go over and ask the woman if she is okay, and if there is anything you can do. That’s it. Simple, hey? We’re all about giving power and control back to the woman, reminding her that she is being respected and looked out for by those around her.

While this ad is clearly anti-street harassment, (as Hollaback! is,) WE DO NOT ENDORSE VIOLENCE! Men who see a woman being harassed should use nonviolent confrontation techniques to stop harassment without using physical violence. Martha Langelan, the US activist and author of ‘Back Off! How to Confront and Stop Sexual Harassment and Harassers,’ says:

Male-to-male confrontations can escalate very quickly. We need men — all the good guys on the planet — to be our allies, but if we want men to intervene, we really need to teach them how to do it. Please tell the men you speak with to intervene, but to PLEASE do so using nonviolent confrontation. The “Voice of God” technique involves standing at least 30-40 feet away and shouting, “stop hassling her,” and ”leave her alone, we see you, we’re calling the police.” Then call 103 and stay on the scene, from a safe distance, until the police arrive.

Tell us what you think! Send us an email at mumbai@ihollaback.org or comment below. If you were the woman in the video, what would you have wanted someone to do?

Santa Cruz train station. Priya’s story: my name is not ‘baby.’

This is my first Hollaback story. I was at the Santa Cruz train station and I was late for an appointment and rushing through the station. I got to the women’s compartment section and was waiting there. Then I noticed these two guys just standing and watching me. One of them came over to me and said, ‘hey baby, aap ka tamatar kitna rahe?” i was so embarassed! I was so angry! thankfully then the train came and i got on the ladies compartment and they were still laughing when they got on the train. If I could do the whole thing over again, I would shout: HEY GADHE. MY NAME IS NOT BABY.”

Why Loiter? Women and Risk on Mumbai Streets

CONGRATULATIONS to Shilpa Phadke, Sameera Khan and Shilpa Ranade on the release of ‘Why Loiter? Women and Risk on Mumbai Streets.’ Keep reading for a short writeup on the book as well as an exclusive interview with the authors.

THE SCOOP:
In ‘Why Loiter?’ the authors argue that though political and economic visibility has brought women increased access to urban public space, this has not automatically translated into a greater claim to public space. Based on more than three years of research in Mumbai, this book not only maps women’s exclusion from several public spaces, but also attempts to understand how women from different localities, classes and communities negotiate with real and implied risks of being in public everyday.

Why Loiter? argues that loitering should be celebrated, not reviled, as an act that offers possibilities for a more inclusive city where all people have a right to city public spaces. The ideas and insights of this book will resonate with the experiences of women in other Indian cities and the world, especially those that are re-envisioning themselves as global cities.

THE INTERVIEW:

First of all, congratulations on the release of your book! What drew you personally to this issue of women’s access to public space in Mumbai?
Shilpa Phadke: As is discussed in the book – on a trip to north India with a woman friend I began thinking about how much one needs to strategise to be out in public space. Returning to Mumbai, I realized that I strategised almost as much in my own so-called ‘friendly city’ for women except that I’d stopped noticing it; it had become part of my taken-for-granted everyday activities.  I began writing notes on this and talking to other women especially on the train, and find my narratives were replicated. The idea of exploring women’s access to public space in Mumbai was born.

Shilpa Ranade: I started working on the project after it had already been conceptualized. Personally, living in an American campus for two years where I did not have to strategize daily about what I was wearing, how I was walking, who I was with, made me acutely aware of how uncomfortable I was in public space once I came back home. I also noticed how that discomfort actually prevented me from accessing space at times. Ironically, although the fear of actual rape loomed much larger in America than it ever did for me in India (there was a serial rapist at large around my campus), it did not limit my sense of freedom in the way that the small everyday acts self-policing did here. That is when I started articulating the gendered politics of public spaces.

Sameera Khan: Ever since I started commuting from my suburban home to college in Mumbai at the age of 16, I started to realize how much strategy and negotiation was involved while moving through the city. But it was only in my mid-20s when I was in in graduate school in New York that I realized that this was not the way things had to be, and that they could be different. I loved the fact that there were open spaces even though NYC was a big city, and that as a woman I could hang out in those spaces feeling at ease and fairly comfortable. I could sit in a park on a Sunday morning all alone, sip my coffee, eat an apple, wander, loll about, read a book with hardly anybody staring at me or looking interested in
what I wore, did, didn’t do etc. The gendered gaze though not absent was more tempered or toned down. So the interest was in women and public space started there and initially, I helped plan some of the ideas related to pedagogical aspects of the gender and space project. Gradually, I got more involved in the project and got into it full-time.

What was the most interesting finding of this study?
Shilpa Phadke: Some things stand out:
1. We found that public space is deeply hierarchical and not just women but a whole host of other groups (hawkers, bar dancers, sex workers, lower class unemployed men, Muslim men) are seen as illegitimate users of it.
2. We found that for women it seemed more important to protect their reputations than to produce actual safety. For example, women would get dropped off at a distance from their buildings if they were coming home late at night with their boyfriends, so people would not see the boyfriend and ‘talk.’ In this sense it was more important not to be ‘talked about’ than to be dropped outside their homes which would have been safer.
3. We realized that in Mumbai it was acceptable to work or shop in public but not to have fun, especially at night.

Sameera Khan: For me, the fact that we were studying the everyday negotiations of women with public space was most interesting. Most fascinating was the fact that not only did women have to produce safety for themselves every time they were out of the home but also that they always had to establish a purpose for being out and always had to remain spotlessly respectable. That women in Mumbai, this ‘most friendly’ of Indian cities, had to constantly shoulder this burden and had unconsciously made it such a part of themselves over time was interesting.

Why did you choose the word ‘loiter?’ To you, what does the possibility of women loitering around Mumbai represent?
Shilpa Phadke: Loitering represents the possibility of moving towards a much more inclusive city. Loitering also represents the possibility to simply have fun in the city and to see the quest for pleasure as an important element of enshrining women’s rights in public space. If we take loitering seriously, and if a critical mass of people take loitering seriously, it has the capacity to transform our cities making them more inclusive, diverse and just simply more exciting. Loitering is our vision for a more inclusive city. It is a vision that finds resonance particularly among young women. Every time we mentioned “loitering” in a workshop with students, the women’s eyes would light up and we knew that we weren’t just building castles in the sky. Given a chance, many people enjoy loitering.

Sameera Khan: By loitering we can lay claim to the city in a way that is both pleasurable and political. We can break this idea of women always being mere commuters through public space, and always having to establish purpose. We can be in public with no visible purpose and have fun and just that idea is so exciting.

Shilpa Ranade: The act of loitering represents a sense of comfort and belonging to the city that is extremely desirable. Yet as our research showed us, women just do not loiter. We therefore use loitering as an interrogative tool to query the question of women’s access to public space. By playing with the possibility of loitering – pleasure without purpose – we try to deconstruct the rhetoric of women’s equal access and visibility in a city like Mumbai.

How have the rise of capitalism, the increase of women in the workplace and other such changes contributed to attitudes towards women on the street?
Shilpa Phadke: Mumbai, relative to other cities, has always had a larger number of women in the workforce, both white and blue collar. One of the wonderful things about this city is how late shops are open, especially in the bazaars abutting the suburban railway stations. Also, the acknowledgment that women work late hours is seen in the fact that one can always buy homemade chapattis and vegetables at various shops in these bazaars – so that women who come home late don’t need to go home and cook.

It’s also worth mentioning the last two decades and globalization here. Globalisation appears to open up spaces for some women – the new spaces of consumption: malls, coffee shops and multiplexes. This space may provide a certain degree of enjoyment to the middle-class women it invites in, but is nonetheless a restricted space, dependent on women conforming to certain codes of femininity and middle-classness. What globalisation also does is deepen the divisions between those who can afford these ‘spaces” and those who cannot. It also makes the poor now responsible for their poverty. And so if the poor cannot afford these new spaces of consumption, the city administration can ignore its responsibility of providing recreational public spaces for all since the middle-classes are taken care of by these new spaces of consumption.

We all have a part to play in this struggle. What do you think members of the press could do to further this cause?
Shilpa Phadke: I think that the press needs to be careful about using alarmist tones when it discusses violence against women in public space.

Sameera Khan:
1. The press needs to stop reporting just events and also needs to look at the processes at work. It needs to bring in historical, political and economic context when discussing violence against women.
2. It needs to take a serious look at the violence in domestic situations and not make the home seem like an unquestionably ‘safe’ haven.
3. .The press has to consider the issue of class and not only be obsessed with the coverage of the middle-class and ignore the reality of working class
people.
4. Finally, it has to recognize that as equal citizens women have complete and full rights to public space and that questions of morality, honour and “what was she doing there” or “why she was with six men” have no relevance and bearing when discussing violence against women.

How does class play into these issues?
Shilpa Phadke: Class is integral to the hierarchies in public space. For instance, middle-class women have much greater legitimacy in public space than lower-class men. Also, the pressures of sexual endogamy are reflected in the fear that a woman will fall in love with the wrong kind of man, such as a man of another class. One of the ways society seeks to prevent this is to stop women from accessing public space, except in the most functional of ways. From the point of view of families, a woman being sexually assaulted in public space and a woman publicly ‘choosing’ to be sexually involved with the wrong kind of man (wrong class, wrong caste, wrong religion) are almost comparable offences. This situation ironically renders both lower-class men (as potential perpetrators of violence) and middle-class women (as potential victims of violence) forever outsiders to public space.

The book uses middle-class women as a way of entering into debate. The point we are making is that a call for middle-class women’s safety in the city is woefully inadequate as it is conditional on women producing a sense of purpose and respectability in public space. Fundamentally, the case we are making is for ALL marginal citizens – women across class and morality lines including bar dancers, sex workers, hawkers, north Indian migrant men – to be in public spaces without being seen only as potential perpetrators or victims of violence. We are aware that these groups may not be friendly to each other, but what we envision is a city life based on respect for difference; not that all groups accessing public space should be friendly to each other but that there should be no question that all groups have an equal right to be in public space.

Sameera Khan: We are making a case for the access for all classes, groups, communities, male and female, able-bodied or not. We are saying that if the middle-class are said to have it all, and middle-class women are said to be the ones with most privileges, namely education, employment and the power of consumption, then let’s look at whether they also have more access to public space. We found that they don’t have ideal and unconditional access to public space, it is conditional on them being able to also produce purpose for being in public
space, and conditional on them producing respectability.

Although this is a women’s issue, the onus shouldn’t entirely fall on women to make Mumbai’s streets safer and more accessible. How can men play a part in making the streets of Mumbai safer for women?
Shilpa Phadke: I think the book looks to both women and men to change things.

Sameera Khan: As urban planners and policy makers, women and men can plan cities which accommodate the needs of women and men, abled bodied and differently abled, and so on. As law enforcers, women and men can be more sensitive and less moralistic when dealing with cases of violence against women. And as fathers, brothers and husbands, men need to understand, and really deeply understand, that the same freedoms that apply to them should also apply to all women – to the women they know as daughters, sisters and girlfriends/wives, and also to the women they do not know but encounter on the city’s streets.

What would a Mumbai that is safe for women look like? What do you envision is possible? What would our city of dreams look like?
Shilpa Phadke: I don’t think any of us can say it any better than we do in our book:
“Imagine an Indian city with street corners full of women: chatting, laughing, breast-feeding, exchanging corporate notes or planning protest meetings. Imagine footpaths spilling over with old and young women watching the world go by as they sip tea, and discuss love, cricket and the latest blockbuster. Imagine women in saris, jeans, salwars and skirts sitting at the nukkad reflecting on world politics and dissecting the rising sensex. If you can imagine this, you’re imagining a radically different city.”

Click here to buy the book.

churchgate train station

this man followed me all the way around the churchgate train station. i was so scared. i finally got into the ladies compartment and lost him. i wish i felt safer in bombay!!

we expect better behaviour too, chitra. keep holla’ing.

walking down hughes road, this group of men at a construction site ALWAYS stop and look at me. they tell each other that i’m there and what bothers me is that they know they’re making me uncomfortable and they still do it. i hate this. i expect better behaviour from bombay men!!

you do deserve better, bahen. the holla community is with you.

i go to xavier’s and last week when i was leaving college, some guy pinched my butt. i turned around and he laughed with his friends. it made me so angry. i know that i deserve better.

submitted by: sanchita (not my real name)