Yesterday morning I listened to a segment on the Brian Lehrer show about street harassment (cat-calling) in NYC. Lehrer interviewed three women: Latosha Belton and Ashley Lewis, two Brooklyn teenagers who worked with Girls for Gender Equity to create “Sisters in Strength Strikes Back: Our Struggle with Street Harassment,” a city-wide summit this past May; and Maggie Hadleigh-West, maker of the anti-street-harassment film War Zone.
The three women talked about their extensive experiences with street harassment directed at them from men of all ages. Ashley Lewis described how she feels like her new way of responding to street harassers is better than staying silent:
The approach I’m taking now, I feel like it’s better ’cause I’ll ask a man something, “Do you really think it’s appropriate to come at me in the street?” And they’re so taken aback by the question that they’re stunned, they don’t know what to say. So instead of answering it, they kind of walk away from me, so it kind of helps.
Hearing that, I couldn’t help worry that the girls would encounter some men who would do far more and far worse than run away. Continue reading ‘Gender/queerness and street harassment’
Published at July 17, 2007
in sports.
Well, I always knew that rugby was pretty hardcore*. That’s part of why I’ll always watch it if I get to change to (which is infrequently) and why I wanted to play for a while in college (except I was quite out of shape and super over-committed to campus activism.) But this just takes it to a whole new level. From ESPN.com:
Rugby player Ben Czislowski kept competing for more than three months despite the headaches that started after a clash with an opponent…
“I’ve got the tooth at home, sitting on the bedside table,” he said. “If he [Matt Austin, the player to whom the tooth originally belonged] wants it back he can have it. I’m keeping it at the moment as proof that it actually happened.”
* That is, of course, if we measure hardcore-ness by the level of recklessness, violence, and likelihood of getting really, really dirty.
As you may have gathered from the little “cross-posted” note at the end of my last post, I’m guest blogging over at Feministe this week. I’ve never guest blogged before; it’s an honor and quite exciting. And I think it’ll be a good springboard for this whole “blogging a lot again” business. I’ll be cross-posting stuff here, but I suggest that folks check out and engage in discussion in the comments over there, in addition to reading the posts by the resident Feministers and my fellow guest bloggers.
