Hollaback

• What advice should I give my teenage daughter about what to do when she’s harassed by men in public?
• We all want our loved ones to feel safe when they’re out in public.
• Many forms of this behaviour are not against the law, meaning victims have limited options for reporting or seeking support.

Shouting back

• Some participants described verbally challenging harassers, often by telling them to “fuck off” or shouting back at them.
• So there was a moment where he grabbed my arm […] and then I just gave him a big slap at that moment.
• Read more:
  'I started walking the long way': many young women first experience street harassment in their school uniforms

Reclaiming power

• Challenging harassers could be an important strategy for some participants to reclaim a sense of power and disrupt the normalisation of harassment.
• Sometimes I kind of like yell at them or make a gross face at them or give them the finger.
• Feel so comfortable staring you down, that I don’t want to make them feel comfortable doing that.
• Read more:
  Catcalls, homophobia and racism: we studied why people (and especially men) engage in street harassment

Resistance and safety

• There was often a delicate balancing act between resistance and maintaining a sense of safety.
• Resisting harassers involved significant mental, emotional and physical labour, with participants having to make rapid assessments of how safe they felt to respond.
• People said they’d often been in shock or felt unable to process what had happened in the moment.

What can we do?

• The short answer is: do whatever you feel safe and able to do in the moment.
• And we need to shift the focus to how we, as a community, can best support people who’ve experienced harassment.
• This places the focus where it belongs: on the actions of harassers and the structural drivers of their behaviour.