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Student activism regarding public sexual harassment in the UK

Definition of Public Sexual Harassment

Public Sexual Harassment (PSH) has been defined by Plan International UK and Our Streets Now as “unwanted sexual behaviour, actions or gestures, which could be verbal, non‑verbal or physical, in public spaces.” This definition is an expansion of the term street harassment which had previously been criticised by scholars for not being clear, scholars argued that although some organisations do offer simple definitions for street harassment which are useful in providing a starting point these do not definitely hold the victim in mind and fail to determine how "different severities of street harassment were defined".PSH takes place because of gender discrimination and power dynamics. Our Streets Now explains that this behaviour happens because the perpetrator seeks to dominate the victim. PSH perpetuates an environment that disregards historically victimised and oppressed groups of people like women, non-binary people and members of the LGBTQ+ community. PSH diminishes their sense of self-worth whilst denying them access to public space.

History around the language of Public Sexual Harassment

Previous to the term Public Sexual Harassment there was other definitions of street harassment such as Cynthia Bowman’s, she defined it as when “one or more unfamiliar men accost one or more women in a public space, on one or more occasions, and intrude or attempt to intrude upon the woman’s attention in a manner that is unwelcome to the woman.”This has been critiqued as this definition is limited to men on women harassment cases, and has been argued as failing to acknowledge all street harassment victims. A 2014 nationwide UK study by Stop Street Harassment found that the three minority groups who face street harassment at disproportional rates are; women, people of colour, and members of the LBTQ+ community. The SSH Study further found that although men disproportionately commit the offence of street harassment, men can also be victims, citing that men who are part of the LGBT community often face street harassment by other males.

PSH was also used in replacement as the previous term street harassment was limited to harassment happening on the street. When PSH can happen in any public space such as a park, outside a school, a train platform. Finally, this term hopes to stop the trivialisation of this action by replacing words and phrases such as wolf-whistling and catcalling.

Prevalence

Prevalence of Public Sexual Harassment in the UK

In Britain over 70% of women have experienced sexual harassment in a public space in some form and among young adults aged 18-24, this is even higher at 86%. A report by Plan International UK found that 66% of girls aged between 14-21 have experienced PSH and 35% have experienced this kind of violence and behaviour whilst wearing their school uniform. Plan International UK’s research also suggests that this behaviour has a severely damaging and lasting impact on the lives of the victims by affecting their mental health, self-esteem and sense of safety. Over 92% of girls paired their experiences of PSH with a negative emotion with 49% feeling unsafe, 44% feeling anxious and 32% feeling degraded.

Definition

Public Sexual Harassment activism is defined as campaigning which can include but not limited to; protesting, writing, educating, supporting and talking in order to bring about change within the Public Sexual Harassment sphere.This ranges from culture change about the opinion on PSH but also legal change such as criminalising Public Sexual Harassment in the UK.

History

Student activism around Public Sexual Harassment first emerged through online sites such as Right to Be, previously known as Hollaback! Right to Be is a social movement that started with a public blog called Hollaback NYC where a group of friends documented their experiences of harassment, however, they found the response so overwhelming they become a community-based organisation. Five years later in 2010 they registered as an official not-for-profit organisation and now have 45 branches across the globe that operate in over nine languages and nearly 30 countries, with sites in every continent except Antarctica. They have also recently trained over 200,000 people during the Covid19 Pandemic in bystander intervention. And since then a range of web pages, blogs, article sites and more have emerged in response to the previous lack of focus on street harassment by the official legal system and institutions.

The existing state of affairs

In the UK, sexual harassment is recognised as a form of discrimination under the 2010 Equality Act while harassment in public spaces is illegal under legislation such as the Protection from Harassment Act and the Public Order Act. But street harassment has yet to be made a criminal offence. The Equality Act 2010 does not explicitly mention PSH but instead defines sexual harassment more generally as “unwanted conduct of a sexual nature" which has the goal or outcome of “creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment." The UK Government began to look at this in  2019 recognising street harassment as a form of gender-based violence in its refreshed national strategy to end Violence Against Women and Girls. Plan International UK and Our Streets Now launched a campaign in November 2021 alongside the hashtag #CrimeNotCompliment to call for a clear law that makes all form of Public Sexual Harassment illegal. In October 2021 Boris Johnson, the UK prime Minister blocked plans to make public sexual harassment a specific offence.

Activist groups tackling PSH

Our Streets Now

Some of the first UK activism around Public Sexual Harassment came to light when two sisters Maya and Gemma Tutton, 15 and 21, spoke about their experiences of Public Sexual Harassment and decided to set up a petition to make Public Sexual Harassment a criminal offence in the UK. On the first day, they got 15 signatures but the petition grew as, in the first 100 days, 100,000 people signed their petition. They opened up an Instagram account, @OurStreetsNow, and have now amassed over 60,000 followers. Over the next year, they received hundreds of people, mainly women and girls, who went online in support of the campaign to share their stories of being grabbed, sexually harassed and assaulted in the UK. Very quickly thousands of young people were following their Instagram accounts and they grew to become a recognised name in student activism. From two students in 2019, they now have a wider community of nearly 100 students all determined to challenge the myths and taboos that had previously prevented this topic from being discussed. The movement has gone on to partner with photographers, illustrators and charities such as UN Women UK and Plan International UK to break down the misconceptions of PSH and ensure their Parliament-ready bill to criminalise PSH is passed in legislation.

Our Schools Now

Through the response Our Streets Now received a group of their activists set up Our Schools Now, they did this because they believe that it is crucial for every young people to be taught about PSH, why it happens and the impact it has on young people. They believe that every young person should be equipped to challenge PSH, show empathy to those who experience and never become a perpetrator. In 2021 their report found that only 5% of students had been taught about Public Sexual Harassment,a student from the report quoted that “Making it less taboo to talk about by encouraging students to talk freely without judgement,” and making the case for education around PSH.In the report the activists call for PSH to be made mandatory in the PSHE curriculum, train staff in responding and teaching about PSH and encourages the student to make their own activist moves to tackle PSH in their local communities.

Individuals Fighting to tackle Public Sexual Harassment

There are many individuals,who have built their individual platforms to fight against Public Sexual Harassment and tackle it through education. One of these is Eliza Hatch who founded CheerUpLuv, a photo and interview series that retells the accounts of street harassment from women all across the UK . She does this by combining photography with activism and social media by photographing the women in public places that are related to their experiences of street harassment and featuring their stories on her Instagram page and website.  This has led to her hosting her own CheerUpLuv podcast and curating a group community-focused exhibition that celebrated women and marginalised gender whose work focuses on activism and uplifting others in March 2022.

CuteCatCalls is a 59k+ strong Instagram account run by student Zoe Stromberg, and is an ongoing project that turns anonymous stories of PSH from marginalised individuals and turns them into illustrations. Her work has been featured far and wide in publications such as Grazia UK, and BBC Radio and facilitated events with UN Women UK.

The motivation of student activism of end PSH.

With a growing amount of interest and activism from individuals and groups, there is a wide range of motivations around why activism around PSH has grown so much in the last few years. Research across Western democracies like the UK has shown that encountering PSH increases a women’s fear, anger, violation and anger, alongside a range of other negative emotional effects.

Impact of Public Sexual Harassment

The US based campaign Stop Street Harassment explains how PSH changes women's lives in negative ways by limiting people's access to public safe spaces and causing people to choose less convenient routes home or change their habits to stop themselves from getting harassed. Another motivation for ending PSH is because they see street harassment as harmful because it falls along the spectrum of violence, starting with verbal PSH and escalating to sexual assault and rape .

According to the sexual violence charity RAIIN they explain some of the reasons why there is a student activism with PSH. Firstly according to their statistics, they explain how it rarely happens just once and is not an isolated incident This fear that is described by them creates a sense of anxiety, knowing it will happen again. Secondly it has a damaging effect on communities as their research has found that people are less likely to engage with strangers and go to community or school events if there is a fear of being harassed.PSH limits an individual's ability to be on public, with girls in the Plan UK study quoting that sometimes they fear walking to school which limits their access to opportunities and communities. Finally RAIIN explains how it can have financial consequences, such as the cost of the fear of being harassed when walking home meen many people are forced to spend money on private public transport.

Impact on mental health

A study in 2019 by Maria DelGreco and John Christensen looked at the effects of street harassment on anxiety, depression, and sleep quality of college women. There results were indicative that street harassment was highly related to all of the mental health outcomes being tested and that it was significantly related to increasing anxiety and depression. This is consistent across other research that has demonstrated that Public Sexual Harassment has negative effects on the mental health of the victims.

Impact on marginalised groups

LGBTQ+

A study commissioned by the European Union of Human Rights of 93,000 LGBYQ+ individual's found that 47% of respondents felt personally discriminated against because of the gender identity or sexual orientation. Another finding was that half of respondents avoided public spaces and two-thirds avoided holding hands in public to reduce the risk of being harassed.Finally they found that more than four-fifth of there respondents said they often hear casual jokes about the LGBTQ+ community.A Plan International UK study found that 90% of lesbian, gay and bisexual girls and young women have experienced public sexual harassment.

BIPOC and the BAME community

The survey from Plan International UK found that 92% of those who selected ‘other’ for race have experienced some form of Public Sexual Harassment, followed by 88% of mixed race girls, 82% of Black, African, Caribbean and Black British girls, 75% of white girls and 70% of Asian and Asian British girls. A survey by Transport for London found that 8% of white and 10% of Black adults had experienced unwelcome sexual behaviour on or around London’s transport network. Women’s organisations report that racialised sexual harassment is common for Black and minority ethnic women and girls.

Students protesting Sexual Harassment

Protests

One way students have expressed their anger and outrage is through protests. For example in March students in Universities across the country protested against sexual harassment and abuse on the campus as they demand more to be done to support victims to help everyone feel safe at University. Some of these protests included students at the University of Warwick are holding a sit-in protest to call for more protection for women against sexual violence on campus which began on 18 March and at its peak, over 400 students were camping out in the middle of campus on the Piazza and lasted for over two weeks. Later in April, there was also the 97 protest which was a protest on the 3rd April in 2021 after a new survey by UN Women UK was published that revealed 97% of young women between the ages of 18-24 had been sexually harassed. Some of the demands set out by the movement were that schools and other educational institutions teach boys to be anti-misogynist from a young age which includes implementing a zero-tolerance policy and criminalising PSH in law.

Public Attitudes

Positive Consequences of student activism of PSH

As a result of students activism work around Public Sexual Harassment, it got picked up by Clear Channel, one of the UK’s largest Out of Home media and infrastructure companies.They joined forces with Our Streets Now and Plan International UK to launch a national campaign in efforts to make public sexual harassment (PSH) a criminal offence in the UK and change the culture surrounding it.

Backlash

In October 2021 the UK Prime minister claimed that he did not support any new law on tackling violence against women, stating there is abundant existing legislation which caused disquiet throughout the Home Office.

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