Take back the streets
A popular website dedicated to ending street harassment in New York and in the Indian cities of New Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai uses the power of the web and blogging to create awareness of street harassment.
Los Angeles: The streets belong to all of us. Yet, thanks to catcalls, jeers, and sly pinches of some, many women are afraid of walking freely. But now an international move to reclaim the streets, using the wide reach and power of the Internet, is on.
The Hollaback movement started in the summer of 2005, when founder Emily May and her friends got together to discuss how common street harassment was in New York City and created Hollaback, a web site dedicated to ending it.
Early in January this year, Hollaback came to India, opening chapters in Mumbai and Delhi.
Led by Prajnya, Chennai-based non-profit organisation working on peace and security issues, the Chennai phase (chennai.ihollaback.org) was inaugurated on December 7.
Hollaback uses the power of the web and blogging to create awareness of street harassment. Anyone who faces harassment can post on the website, drawing instant responses from understanding folks around the world and having a support system to understand that no one is alone in this predicament. It is a safe, non-judgmental sounding board of sorts, according to Project Coordinator Hamsini Ravi and Anupama Srinivasan, Project Director, Hollaback Chennai.
They know Chennai, compared to cities like Delhi, has a reputation of being a safe city for women. “This doesn't mean that there aren't incidents of street sexual harassment. Women are socially conditioned to expect and even tolerate street sexual harassment. We don't really see it as a genuine social issue. We use misnomers like ‘eve teasing' to make light of it,” Ravi explains.
Hollaback hopes to break the silence around street harassment in Chennai and get people to talk about it.
Srinivasan says, “We only launched two days ago, but people are thrilled that we're doing something about this oft-trivialised issue. Various city colleges too are keen on getting involved — we are optimistic that this will translate into more people sharing their stories and breaking the silence on this issue.”
Ravi believes that publicising it extensively on the social media, using blogging tools and getting popular bloggers to talk about Hollaback will ensure greater participation.
Both plan to work closely with city colleges by conducting workshops that will serve as platforms for students to talk about this issue.
