Sport on the Street: How Harassment Pervades [International Anti-Street Harassment Day] #antistreetharassmentday

This post is a part of the First Annual Anti-Street Harassment Day and is written by Kate Stence. To learn more about how to stop street harassment and other ways you can take action, click here.

I am on the move often. Last week on a train en route back to my hometown, I contemplated considering myself a nomad. I settled on the fact that for the past five years, I have essentially circulated between Manhattan, San Francisco, Pennsylvania, and Paris. As often as possible, however, I forgo mass transportation and traverse the world on foot. Yesterday my dear friend actually asked if I wanted to run behind the car after not having enough time to train because I was finishing an article on Libya’s ceasefire and the unknown number of sexual assaults against journalists.

“It’s only a fifty-mile drive,” she laughingly said, knowing full well I am currently training for Comrades 2011, the same 56-mile race I completed last year.

“I could probably make it,” I replied smiling.

As an endurance athlete who prefers training outside, this also means I began dealing with street harassment at a rather early age. I can remember cars slowing down as I ran the otherwise deserted country roads of Pennsylvania as an eleven-year old girl. Most cars would just slow to pass safely, but perhaps once week a car’s brake lights would remain on for too long. My body would tense. Sometimes, I would stop running so as to alert the driver I would not come any closer. Sometimes, I quickly looked around to assess what means would offer the best escape. How to stay safe as an endurance runner was an early lesson for me. I carried mace by twelve years old.

At that age, I was aware of safety being an issue on the street. I even could have told you I was being harassed. However, the two words, “street” and “harassment” were never linked together. Presently, they are.

March 20 is the First International Anti-Street Harassment Day being recognized throughout the world from Cairo to London to Washington, D.C. According to Holly Kearl, founder and expert author on global street harassment, “Eighty percent of women worldwide face catcalls, groping, stalking, and other forms of gender-based street harassment, especially when they are alone in public.”

Vive Le Sport

In 2009, when I was training for the Paris Marathon, I often ran through the wintry streets of Paris all bundled up alone, tears streaming down my face due to how cold, but beautiful the city. I would leave my home near Bastille, run to the Seine passed Notre Dame on to Invalides and the Eiffel Tower then wind down in the Jardin Tuileres. I often heard, “Vive le sport!” as I ran, which I considered very positive in comparison to what I used to hear running the streets of Manhattan during my undergraduate college years.

Back then, I was armed with the sharp mind of a young lady opening up to NYC’s urban landscape packed with a male population who were not nearly as egalitarian as desired. I would often run along the West Side Highway or Washington Square Park and imagine doing a short film about women from different historical time periods on the streets of Manhattan being harassed, showing how verbal expressions change along with clothes, but how the basic premise of street harassment has always been the same: to interrupt, agitate, and disempower.

That was in early 2000, just as cell phones were becoming extraordinarily popular. Now, thanks to Emily May, founder of Hollaback!, an NYC-based organization that is dedicated to ending street harassment through technology, women from around the world can openly photograph the person who harassed them then upload and share their story.

According to the Hollaback! web site,

Street harassment teaches us to be silent, but we aren’t listening. We don’t put up with harassment in the home, at work, or at school. And now we aren’t putting up with it in the street, either. By holla’ing back you are transforming an experience that is lonely and isolating into one that is sharable…And you enter a worldwide community of people who’ve got your back.

Last year, I was training in Paris again but this time living in Montmartre. I was interviewing a young feminist who lives in Budapest for a story surrounding sex-trafficking in Hungary and throughout Europe. I believe I mentioned to her that I was often training for Team Congo Paris through the streets of Pigalle, the red light district of Paris. The first day I went grocery shopping I watched a man come out of strip club and push a female stripper out the door, on the verge of openly hitting her in broad daylight. Every run, I raced past leering men who commented on everything from my body to my possibly coming to work for them. What amazed me was that while training, I always wear the clothes of the charity organization for which I am racing, meaning hats and shirts that outwardly express my devotion to women and girl’s health. To harass someone marketing her commitment to female health seems lunatic. Yet, the Hungarian-born feminist shared with me that as a runner, she was also harassed almost every day. She directed me to Dawn Foster’s blog about her experiences as a cyclist in London.

One of the things, I love most about endurance races are how often men and women are not sexualizing one another during the race, but are respectful of our shared athletic experience. Endurance running is about taking care of yourself and competing with your best. It’s not reliant on taking down the person next to you. Men and women respectfully race through the streets together. On First International Anti-Street Harassment Day, I wonder why this is not a metaphor for every day living?

Kate Stence is the Senior Editor and Contributing Columnist of the International Museum of Women’s Her Blueprint as well as an avid endurance runner. In 2010, she ran 56 miles across South Africa to complete the 85th Comrades Marathon for Girls on the Run International while this year she plans to race for Women for Women International.

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