By Amanda Adedeji
Women and individuals of the LGBT community are more likely to encounter street harassment than are heterosexual men, two speakers said during an event at Towson University Thursday.
Shawna Potter, who is the founder of the Baltimore chapter of Hollaback, an organization designed to raise awareness about street harassment, said that walking through the streets as she was growing up made her feel uncomfortable because she would get cat calls and teased.
She said she decided to ignore it because she thought it would eventually stop.
“As I kept getting older and it didn’t stop happening, I started to get angry,” Potter said during the event, which was titled My Name is not Baby. “I realized that it wasn’t just people interacting with each other and trying to flirt. It was about power and who thought they could take up space and what they thought they were entitled to.”
Potter founded Hollaback after she grew tired of street harassment. She said the turning point for her came when male workers at a Jiffy Lube consistently harassed her while she was on her way to work. When she complained, she said, neither her boss nor the manager of the Jiffy Lube thought it was a serious problem.
Speaker Chantelle Bateman, a member of Fostering Activism and Alternatives Now (FANN), an organization formed by women of color that focuses on media literacy, said that street harassment is one of those big issues where images of the media actually show up in our real lives.
By consuming the media, she said, people should look at how certain media images impact their lives.
“Media literacy is about thinking what you consume media-wise the same way you would put food into your body,” Bateman said. “We know the difference between an apple and a Twinkie, but sometimes we don’t know the difference between Two Chains and Tupac.”
The conversation was held at Towson’s University Union and was sponsored by the Center for Student Diversity. The event was hosted by Harriet Smith, who is aTowson alum.
The speakers debated on how to define street harassment. Not all women consider those comments and gestures street harassment. In fact, the speakers said, some might take it as a compliment.
Bateman said a woman can tell if a comment is street harassment by the way it is delivered as well as what was said.
“I think it’s OK for a stranger to comment on whether my hair is nice or not,” Potter said. “But it’s not OK for that stranger to comment on my body features because I can’t control that, but my hair I can.”
Potter also said that women should not feel like they have to be nice to the harasser. She said women should share their experience on the Hollaback website if street harassment becomes a problem.
“Street harassment isn’t just their problem, it’s our problem and when we see it happening we should do something about it,” Bateman said.