THE 3 PETAL PLAN TO DEFEAT STREET HARASSMENT

Defeating street harassment requires a 3 Petal Plan that involves a combination of actions represented by the petals of Society, Targets of Harassment, and Bystanders. While each petal has a different role, they must all work together in order to create a lasting effect.

1. Society must create a culture of intolerance for street harassment in order to eliminate the behavior.

2. Targets of Harassment must learn strategies and methods to directly voice their disapproval when harassed.

3. Bystanders - must learn strategies and methods to intervene and mitigate when observing incidents of harassment.

Every situation of street harassment is different. Each situation requires a different response. But the overall strategy is the same: Society, Targets, and Bystanders need to communicate that street harassment is unacceptable behavior and will not be tolerated.

THE PERVERT, THE CREEP, AND THE CRUDE OAF: MAKING THREAT ASSESSMENTS WHEN BEING HARASSED ON THE STREET

Despite widespread fear of stranger danger, the majority of assaults against women are perpetuated by men that are known to the woman victim. Those that are initiated by strangers typically follow two methods of operation.

The first method is to engage the woman in some type of a verbal interaction in order to get close enough to launch a surprise attack. The second method is to use to launch an “ambush” style attack from concealment. In either case, the element of surprise provides the attacker with a huge advantage. Reducing or eliminating this element of surprise is why “awareness” is critical for self-defense.

In the case of The Pervert, The Creep, and the Crude Oaf, if a man exposes himself, publically masturbates, or calls out an offensive comment to you, he has effectively lost the element of surprise. He no longer has the ability to launch a surprise attack. He has just provided you with a key piece of information. You now know that he has a “bad intention”. By eliminated your uncertainty, he has made it easier for you to act with conviction. Any overtly aggressive movement by him towards you is your “Trigger to Act” and for you to escalate your defensive response.

The rattle snake can be extremely dangerous to humans. It stalks his prey silently. Therefore, it is not in predatory mode when it is rattling its tail. It is in threatening mode. From a self-defense prospective, now that you have been warned of its presence, you don’t need to run away, you just need to avoid coming too close to it.

The same is true for The Pervert, The Creep, and the Crude Oaf. Their overly threatening actions are inconsistent with enabling a predatory surprise attack. Therefore, while these types of harassers may look and act scary, their behavior is more bark than bite. Since they do not have the element of surprise they are less dangerous than the Opportunistic Predator and the Predatory Stalker who typically disguise their true intentions.

INNER ARMOR: REPLACING FEAR WITH KNOWLEDGE & POWER

Inner Armor is the confidence, conviction, and competence required to keep you safe. It is based on the synergy of having the confidence that comes from knowledge and planning, the conviction that comes from eliminating all doubt and uncertainty, and the competence that comes from preparation and training. Inner Armor can be represented by a 3 Petal Plan. It is built by simultaneously developing each Petal.

Having Inner Armor means that you have replaced fear with knowledge and power. When harassed, you have the self-assurance to stand up for yourself at the time and place of your choosing. As a bystander to street harassment, you have the empathy to stand up for others who need your help. And as a member of the community, you have the motivation to make a difference in how society views and responds street harassment.

THE HARASSER, THE TOAD, AND THE GODDESSES' DAUGHTER: A TALE FOR WOMEN

Satire is a powerful artistic form designed to change bad human behavior. It uses irony, wit, and ridicule to attack human vice, folly, and foolishness. As such it is a tool that can be used to defeat street harassment.

Satire can be used to deny and refute the power of street harassers and expose their weaknesses and flaws.


The Harasser, the Toad, and the Goddesses’ Daughter: A Tale for Woman

A long time ago there was a far away land where almost all people treated each other with friendliness and respect. Men and women would politely nod or say “hello” as they passed each other on the sidewalk. There only two exceptions to this behavior, and they were the grownup brothers Tom and Terry Toaden.

The Toaden brothers lived with their elderly mother on the outskirts of town. The Toadens looked the same as other men. But they were different. The Toadens were disrespectful and inappropriate to women.

As a result of their harassing, they both had never had a girlfriend or even had gone on a single date. The more women rejected them due to their unattractive behavior, the worse their behavior became. Their behavior was frowned upon by the entire town and as a result, they were unable to stay employed. While other men worked, the Toaden brothers would spend their entire day harassing women and scaring teenage girls.

Tom, the more verbal of the two, would hangout on street corners and parks. He would hoot, holler, and hiss as women walked by. While driving the family Toaden mobile, he would roll down his window and honk and yell at women as they went about their daily business.

Terry, other the other hand preferred to creep and crawl in underground areas where women and girls could be found. Sometimes he would leer at and frighten young girls. Other times, he would expose himself, or sneak up and rub against unsuspecting women.

One evening Tom and Terry were walking home after a full day of harassing women. A teenage girl passed them on the side walk. Tom took one look at her and began one of his favorite lines, “Hey baby, I’d like to …”. But this was no ordinary mortal girl. This was Wanda, the youngest daughter of a goddess. Wanda was in training to become a full fledged goddess.

Upon hearing the comment, Wanda became furious. She whipped around and said “Who are you, and you how dare you speak to me that way?” The brothers replied in unison “We’re the Toaden brothers. We treat all women this way.”

As the youngest daughter of three, Wanda was a bit impulsive. She responded with “Well, I see you for what you really are: Sexless Toads.” With a wave of her hand, Wanda cast a curse upon the two brothers. “From now on, whenever you harass women on the street, you will reveal your true form for all to see.” said Wanda with a smile. The Toaden brothers immediately took the form of Sexless Toads and hopped home as fast as they could.

But Wanda had made a terrible mistake. Unfamiliar with lasting effects of her powers, she did not realize that Sexless Toads can multiply on their own. No females are necessary.

Now to this day, the decedents of Tom and Terry Toaden can be found hanging out on street corners, in parks, on buses, riding subways, and in public areas in cities all over the world. They hoot, holler, hiss, honk, exposure themselves, grope, rub against women and girls during the day and night. But they are easy to spot. The moment they begin their harassment, they show their true form, the form of the Sexless Toad.

The End.

The purpose of this story is to demonstate how to change the power dynamic of a situation with either spoken worlds or visual imagry. If car drive drives by you filled with men hooting and honking, it is likely you will feel angry and intimidated. But if you imagine that they are in fact half-naked sexless toads, the visual imagine will help counter your inital anger and feeling of intimidation.

This same method applies to the Charmer Wannabe, Crude Oaf, the Creep, and the Touchy Feeler. These harassers depend upon the Target being overly intimidated. Refuting the harasser's power changes the power dynamic.

To read more about satire as tool to change bad behavior, please refer to this report:
The Power of Ridicule: An Analysis of Satire" by Megan LeBoeuf

STREET HARASSMENT AND THE BYSTANDER EFFECT: When Society Lets the Riffraff Rule the Roost

The Bystander Effect or Genovese syndrome is a social psychological phenomenon that refers to cases where individuals do not offer help in an emergency situation when other people are present. The probability of help has in the past been thought to be inversely related to the number of bystanders; in other words, the greater the number of bystanders, the less likely it is that any one of them will help.(1)

The case of Kitty Genovese is often cited as an example of the "bystander effect". It is also the case that originally stimulated social psychological research in this area. Genovese was stabbed to death in 1964 by a serial rapist and murderer. According to newspaper accounts, the attack lasted for at least a half an hour. The murderer attacked Genovese and stabbed her, then fled the scene after attracting the attention of a neighbor. The killer then returned ten minutes later and finished the assault. Newspaper reports after Genovese's death claimed that 38 witnesses watched the stabbings and failed to intervene or even contact the police.(1)

In October 2009, a 15-year-old girl at a Richmond High homecoming dance was gang raped while a number of onlookers did nothing and were said to have been laughing, jeering, and taking photos with their cell phones. According to the Richmond Police Department, the girl was raped by at least four different suspects who committed multiple sex acts. She was flown to a hospital in critical condition after the attack.(2)

Early in the morning of April 18, a 31-year-old homeless was stabbed while trying to save a woman from an attacker with a knife in Queens, New York. The homeless man, now identified as Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax, was stabbed and left dying on the street in a pool of blood for more than an hour.(3)

Surveillance video, obtained by the New York Post, shows people walking by the man. One person took a photograph on his mobile phone then walked away and another stopped, shook Tale-Yax, and even rolled him over so that his wounds were visible. Still, officials weren't called until one-hour-and-twenty minutes after Tale-Yax collapsed.(3)

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect
(2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richmond_High_School_(Richmond,_California)
(3) http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2010/04/26/understanding-the-bystander-effect/

Street Harassment is an example of the Bystander Effect in action. It may be less extreme than the above examples, but it follows the exact same pattern. The following video link shows the Bystander Effect at work on a subway.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjkEVnkswaA

The Bystander Effect has multiple origins, but a part of it comes from the bystanders feelings of powerlessness. Powerlessness leads to apathy. Apathy creates powerlessness. It is a vicious cycle of deny, delay, and do nothing. But in reality, the power lies in the hands of the bystanders. It is their inaction that allows the harasser to act with total impunity.

The dirty little secret that all street harassers know is that it is very easy to intimidate the general public. They realize that by talking loudly and making dramatic gestures they can get away with outrageous behavior. Both men and women will be fearful of getting involved. Therefore, the harasser is able to take charge. Street harassment provides the harasser the opportunity to flip the social structure. The riffraff get to rule the roost. The harasser has learned from experience how much he can get away with. He reads the bystanders. He uses his harassment to take control not only over his target, but over the bystanders as well.

The bystanders are now faced with a choice. They can get involved, or they can internally justify their inaction with rationalizations such as: “I am too busy”, “it’s not my problem”, and “the harasser may turn on me”. Alternatively, the rationalizations could seek minimize the scope of the problem, “well, she looks ok”, “he was only kidding”, or “he didn’t hurt her”. Another form of justification is to blame the target of harassment, “she was asking for it”. All of these rationalizations are methods for the bystander to minimize their feelings of cognitive dissonance. They must justify the conflict of their inaction with the type of moral person they believe themselves to be.

The reality of modern society is that few people have developed the ability to do more than to disengage from a perceived threat. They have conditioned themselves to be non-responsive as opposed to being proactive. Therefore, while it may be too much to expect that the bystanders directly confront the harasser with his unsocial behavior; it is not too much to expect that they provide some type of moral support to the target of harassment. In the case of the video, someone could have seated themselves next to woman being harassed.

Every instance of street harassment is an opportunity to rewrite history. It is an opportunity to diminish the Bystander Effect. It provides people with a concrete opportunity to stand up for their beliefs. By taking action, no matter how small, bystanders will recondition themselves from being passive observers into proactive participants. Major change will not happen overnight. Reconditioning only comes through continuous small steps. Each step becomes a little bolder than the one before. Eventually, bystanders will be able to assert control and the riffraff will no longer rule the roost.

STREET HARASSMENT SYNDROME: WHY MEN NEED TO STEP UP BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE

Street harassment is thought by some people to be nothing more than harmless banter between the sexes. Others see street harassment as the front lines in a battle between the genders. I view street harassment as a more far reaching issue. I believe street harassment can described as a cultural disease that attacks the basic civility of society.

On the surface, street harassment shows it’s self in the form of inappropriate and threatening behavior by men towards women on the street or in other public areas. This learned behavior is infectious with certain urban areas such as New York City and Washington DC experiencing street harassment in epidemic proportions.

Beneath the surface, this disease which I call Street Harassment Syndrome (SHS) is ripping the civil fabric of society. While SHS may have the most immediate effect on the young girls and women who are harassed, its damage doesn’t stop there. SHS causes a degenerative cycle in the manner in which people treat each other. Both men and women become accustomed and conditioned to treat each other with rudeness and indifference as opposed to politeness and compassion.

The less obvious, but wide spread symptoms of SHS can be seen in large cities where street harassment is the norm. Some of these symptoms are (in no particular order):

• The majority of women are afraid of men they encounter on the street.
• Some men exhibit highly aggressive behavior towards women on the street.
• The majority of women purposely ignore men they see on the street.
• The majority of men become accustomed to being ignored by women on the street.
• Some men view the majority of women as “bitches”.
• Some women view the majority of men as “assholes”.
• Some women change their routines and style of dress to avoid the attention of men on the street.
• Both men and women become accustomed to “not getting involved”.
• Some women develop angry reactionary responses to males.
• Some men develop angry reactionary responses to females.
• Men and women engage in a destructive cycle of finger pointing and blame.
• Some women develop generally lower feelings of well-being.
• Some men become passive and intimidated of more verbally aggressive men.
• The majority of women learn to be silent and passive to verbal abuse.
• The majority of men see “calling out” to women to be acceptable behavior.
• Some men learn that outwardly aggressive behavior is an effective method to dominate both women and men.

The above examples are just some of the negative side effects of SHS. The majority of these symptoms can be summarized as lowered feelings of safety, well-being, and civil behavior in the general population.

An incident of harassment is the wound that allows the entry of SHS into the culture. Just like a contagious infection, the more incidents that occur, the faster the disease is able to spread throughout the culture. What stops the inflection is a strong response from all members of society that both refutes and repels the behavior as it occurs. Outspoken social disapproval from both men and women is needed in order to contain the spread of Street Harassment Syndrome and to ultimately remove it from society.

THE APPLES AND ORANGES OF STREET HARASSMENT

The simplistic view of street harassment portrays men as apples and women as oranges.

It then goes on to highlight problems and differences in terms of a “battle of the sexes”.

My view is different. I believe that all men can be described as follows:

- Oranges are men who are NOT sexist to women.
- Apples are men who ARE sexist to women either knowingly or unknowingly.

The Apples can be further divided into Good Apples, Bad Apples, and Rotten Apples.

1. Good Apples are sexist. They don’t realize it and are unknowingly harmful to women.
2. Bad Apples are sexist. They know it and are knowingly harmful to women.
3. Rotten Apples are sexist, perverted, and dysfunctional and thus harmful to women.

The world is a giant fruit stand with Oranges on the left side, Apples on the right, and with women walking in between. The problems are as follows:

1. The fruit stand is packed with Apples on the right and only a few Oranges on the left.
2. The Good Apples think that women’s objections to street harassment only refer to the actions of the Bad Apples and the Rotten Apples, but not to them.
3. The Bad Apples don’t care about women’s objections.
4. The Rotten Apples are too far gone to care.
5. Most women are annoyed or angered by the Good Apples, afraid of the Bad Apples, and disgusted by the Rotten Apples.
6. Sometimes Bad Apples disguise themselves as Good Apples.
7. Sometimes Good Apples unknowingly act like Bad Apples.
8. Good Apples can turn into Bad Apples and into Rotten Apples.

Therefore, the problem can be summed up as follows:

There are too many Apples and no enough Oranges.

The solution is therefore a multi-part action plan the does the following:

1. Educates the Good Apples on how street harassment is harmful to women and converts them in to Oranges.
2. Controls and stops the behavior of the Bad Apples.
3. Removes the Rotten Apples.
4. Provides women with methods to differentiate the Good Apples from the Bad Apples.
5. Provides women with methods to protect themselves from the Bad and Rotten Apples.
6. Provide women with a means to talk about their experiences with Good, Bad, and Rotten Apples as part of the healing and educational process.

I believe the rise of blogging and mobile reporting technology provided by Hollaback, Stop Street Harassment, and other websites serve the purpose of the following:

1. They make society aware that street harassment is a major problem for women. That the mere existence of harassing behavior, even if unintentionally harmful, is a major problem. Therefore, the majority of men will no longer be able to claim that their harassing actions were unintentional. They need to either take responsibility for changing their actions or be identified as intentional harassers.

2. They use mobile reporting technology as one method to control and stop the harassing behaviors that women find to be both fearful and disgusting.

3. They provide an outlet for women who have been previously victimized by street harassment.
4. They provide meaningful education to women on how to handle and deal with street harassment when it occurs.

5. They provide meaningful education to men on how to both eliminate sexist behavior in their own actions and the actions of other men.

6. They provide meaningful education to both young men and women on how to be respectful and how to communicate effectively with each other.

WHY THE DESIRE TO "TEACH SOMEONE A LESSON" CAUSES CONFLICT ESCALATION - AN INTERNET ENCOUNTER WITH MICHELLE HEBDEN

Why the Desire to “Teach Someone a Lesson” Causes Conflict Escalation – An Internet Encounter with Michelle Hebden

The purpose of this post to examine the concepts of Progressive Boundary Setting as they relate to real life situations. Progressive Responses are designed to de-escalate confrontations. The desire to “teach someone a lesson” is not a progressive response, it is a confrontation escalator. Therefore, it is important to understand and recognize the difference.

The ease in which a person can fire off an angry email or make negative internet comments has provided many people with a new type of power. Instead of dealing with a person on a face to face basis, people are now able to comment, complain, and criticize from the safety of their home computer. As a result, restraint is ignored, aggressiveness becomes the norm.

I have never met Michelle Hebden in person. All I know is that she is a mother. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is a school teacher. But Michelle wants to “teach me a lesson”. According to her latest email she states “I can certainly vent my frustrations (and I intend to do so) on the numerous parent list serves I belong to, with the babysitting co-op that I founded, in my daughter's preschool, and on whatever review websites I have to post to until I feel that my frustration has been adequately heard.”

Michelle is upset because I attempted to set a behavioral boundary with her. I had admitted that my business had made an unintentional error “Once again, I am sorry for what occurred. These types of events are clearly a frustration. But I have no intention of being the subject to either an email lecture or a venting.”

My point was that making a mistake does not give another person the right to be rude. Our society is based upon respect, and communication. The problem is that the faceless nature of email communication makes it very difficult to set a behavioral boundary. Progressive Boundary Setting only works when there is the real possibility of enforcement. This is one reason cyber bullying is so pervasive. The safety of internet communication provides an easy outlet for aggressive communication and faceless conflict escalation.

Ordinarily, I would have dismissed this encounter, but it was this comment from Michelle that I found to be most disturbing “I am frustrated because someone at your company made a mistake. I don't know who, and it doesn't matter why - scheduling mistake, someone's mother died, whatever.” Coincidentally, the day before, I received an email from a very good friend whose mother had just died after a long illness. Making light of a mother’s death shows an incredible lack of empathy from someone who is responsible for teaching children.

As adults, our actions set an example for children and others to follow. Children need learn empathy, as opposed to thinking only about themselves. In order for a civilized society to function, children and young people must be taught the importance of respecting others and themselves. It is our job as adults to teach children about the importance of respect, communication, and enforcement in the form of personal responsibility and accountability. We must teach them how to de-escalate conflicts and forego the natural desire to “teach a lesson”.