Women Strike Back Online Against Street Harassment: "Women Strike Back Online Against Street Harassment
Run Date: 05/09/06
By Rachel Corbett
WeNews correspondent
A group of young activists are tired of men who leer at them or make degrading comments. They are fighting back with their own weapons: camera phones, blogs, online protests and forums, plus an action campaign timed for 'street harassment season.'
NEW YORK (WOMENSENEWS)--On a cold day in February, Emily May, a 25-year-old employee for a low-income housing and employment nonprofit in New York, bundled up and left work.
As she turned onto Broadway, the main north-south thoroughfare in Manhattan, two men heading toward her interrupted her thoughts. One tapped his friend and gave May a long look up and down.
'Yo baby, you're gorgeous!' the man said to her.
'I wanna hit that!'
May whipped out her camera phone.
'Sir, can I take your picture?'
'Why do you want to take my picture?'
'Because I'm taking pictures of everyone who thinks I'm pretty today.'
What the men did not know was that May is part of a growing movement of women around the country and the globe turning the table on harassers.
May works with a group of women who take pictures of their harassers and post them online in a forum called Holla Back NYC. Tech-savvy women around the world send posts to Holla Back, which averages 1,000 hits per day, including women from Spain, Italy and India. Last week, European women established their own forum as the United Kingdom was the first country to sign on to the official European branch of Holla Back; Switzerland and Germany are expected to follow soon."