PHILLY

HAS THE POWER TO END STREET

HARASSMENT

philly.ihollaback.org








Street Harassment
Street harassment is a form of sexual harassment that takes place in public spaces. Unlike workplace
harassment, which generally invokes the threat of job-related consequences from known actors, street
harassment occurs anonymously between strangers. It takes on a harsher tenor, threatening a person
for simply appearing in public. It has little to do with sex and everything to do with power.

The Organization
HollabackPHILLY is a branch of the international Hollaback! organization, which is comprised of men
and women who believe in building communities where everyone feels comfortable, safe, and
respected.In its first year, Hollaback! launched45 branches in nine languages spread out over
16 countries, and it
continues to grow rapidly.
Using mobile technology, we
encourage victims to
hollabackand bystanders to
intervene when faced with
unwelcome comments,
groping, and more. By
collecting victims stories and
pictures in a safe and
shareable way with our very
own mobile phone applications,
Hollaback! is creating a crowd-
sourced initiative to break the silence perpetuating sexual violence internationally. We also hold
interviews, schoolworkshops, public talks, media outreach, public demonstrations and various local
campaigns for the movement.








PHILLY


The Movement













HollabackPHILLYs local projects are highlighted below in Notable Projects and Campaigns, but the
movement has a global scope. Women all over the world have already stimulated legislation and
demanded public and political responses to street harassment, and international collaboration will
continue to be necessary for this global response to succeed in crafting sustainable, long term
solutions. Sexual harassment is a gateway crime that creates a cultural environment in which gender-
based violence is acceptable. Mobile technology has given us an unprecedented opportunity to end
street harassmentand with it, the opportunity to take on one of the final new frontiers for womens
rights worldwide.

For information on our projects and resources, visit our website at www.philly.ihollaback.org.


Anti Street Harassment Week HollabackPHILLY
and allies in downtown Philadelphia in April 2013
You can also check us out on
Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Pinterest








Anti Street Harassment Week HollabackPHILLY
and allies in downtown Philadelphia in April 2013
Stuff People Say to Teen Girls PSA created by
students in our March 2012 alternative spring break
program



The Team
Rochelle Keyhan
Rochelle is the Director of HollabackPHILLY, which she founded in April 2011. She is also a
charter member of Hollaback!s Board of Directors and has been involved with Hollaback! since
April 2010 when she volunteered to incorporate Hollaback! as a national 501(c)(3) non profit.
She has done extensive research on street harassment which is scheduled to be published as a
chapter in a book through ISTR out of Johns Hopkins University. She has also written for
the Philadelphia Inquirer, COPS (at the USDOJ), and has been featured in the Philadelphia Daily
News Chillin Wit column for her work with HollabackPHILLY. As Director of HollabackPHILLY,
Rochelle handles the organizations programming, educational programming, and speaking
engagements.Rochelle is bar certified to practice law in Pennsylvania, and is a practicing
attorney in Philadelphia focusing on womens issues and non profit legal assistance. A graduate
of UCLA, Rochelle received her JD from Temple Universitys Beasley School of Law. Rochelle
has been actively and passionately involved in feminism since her first year in college when she was trained in feminist and gender
theory for the debate team. At UCLA she was Editor in Chief of FEM: UCLAs Feminist Newsmagazine and co-founder and captain of
UCLAs Debate team, both of which contributed to her outspoken approach to feminism and gender/LGBTQ rights. She is also a current
blogger at HBOWatch focusing on gender and feminist commentary in HBO programming.

Anna Kegler
Anna currently serves as Deputy Director for HollabackPHILLY. She enjoys developing media and research projects focused on the
problem of street harassment while also exploring media and communication issues around gender-based violence. She spearheaded
HollabackPHILLYs 2013 PSA campaign in Philadelphias public transit system. The ads were successful at starting conversations in
Philadelphia, so much so that SEPTA, Phillys public transit system, kept them published for an extra month
as a show of support and solidarity. The ads also went viral online, with over 350,000 Facebook impressions
and almost 100,000 reblogs on Tumblr, and received significant media coverage, including WHYY,
Philadelphia Daily News, Philadelphia City Paper, Womens Media Center, Stop Street Harassment, Bitch
Media, Upworthy, and the Philadelphia Inquirer). Anna is in the process of scaling these ads to other cities
with Hollaback! branches, and is excited to work on HollabackPHILLYs next large-scale advertising
campaign. Anna earned an M.S. in Criminology from the University of Pennsylvania in May 2011, and a B.A.
in Latin American Studies/Portuguese-Brazilian Studies from Smith College in May 2005. She speaks
Portuguese, Spanish, and has a working knowledge of French. Anna currently works as a case manager in
an Immigration law practice group, where she handles complex business immigration cases.

Erin Filson
Erin is HollabackPHILLYs Creative Director and the amazing artist who designed HollabackPHILLYs SEPTA
ads and made our anti street harassment comic book, Hollaback: Red, Yellow, Blue. She is a local
Philadelphian, a graduate of the University of the Arts, and has her own, hilarious online comic, The
Adventures of Ranger Elf! Her art is innovative, detailed, and she has received quite a bit of praise, including
being named Geekadelphias Geek of the Week May 22, 2013! Her comic and art skills have also been
featured by Glamour Magazine, Campus Progress, DC Women Kicking Ass, and Bitch Media, and she was
spotlighted by Action Studio Works! The crowdfunding campaign to publish Erins first comic book for
HollabackPHILLY met and surpassed all of its goals, allowing the comic to not only be published, but also to
be available online in over ten languages, and accompanied by a choose-your-own-adventure computer-
based comic for youth workshops. And well be tackling comic-con harassment at Philadelphia Wizard Con
2013 and International Comic Con 2014!

Notable Projects & Campaigns


Pennsylvania Conference for Women: Team Members Rochelle
Keyhan and Anna Kegler provided volunteer support through blogging and
live-tweeting the November 1
st
conference. They also lead a Social Media
Round Table on best practices for effective marketing through Facebook and
Pinterest, with a special emphasis on dealing with trolls (users who seek to
distract from meaningful discussion by engaging in debates and aggressive
commenting).
Philadelphia City Council Hearing: The
Philadelphia City Council is holding a public hearing on street
harassment in Philadelphia on November 7, 2013.
HollabackPHILLY will be presenting data, user submissions of
street harassment, and live testimony of peoples experiences with street harassment in Philadelphia,
together with local and national experts. We will use this hearing to advocate for a municipal
partnership for safety audits (UN best practices) in our city.

TEDx-style Human Trafficking Conference in Philadelphia. Feminist Public
Works Director, Rochelle Keyhan, coordinated a TEDx-style conference on human trafficking,
featuring renowned experts from around the country. Experts, service professionals, academics, and
community members gathered at Temple University, Beasley School of Laws Shusterman Hall to
listen to and engage with experts on the problem of domestic human trafficking and efforts underway
to address it.

Comic Book Tour. GeeksForCONsent and HollabackPHILLY havesent
teams to comic conventions across the United States collecting first hand
accounts of sexual harassment and groping on campus. GeeksForCONsent
has also supported other Hollaback! Branches as they expand the Cosplay
=/= CONsent movement, including Hollaback! Boston, Hollaback! Ottawa,
and Hollaback! Atlanta. These discussions about harassment at comic book
conventions and within the gaming community, and working to gather support
for formal and comprehensive responses to cosplayer harassment that
ensure that conventions are safe and welcoming places for everyone. . The team launched a petition
demanding that San Diego Comic Con finally create and enforce a formal anti harassment policy and
will be at San Diego Comic Con July 2014 to vocally hold the convention accountable.




HollaREV Talk: The History of Street Harassment Our
HollabackPHILLY site leaderspoke on the history of street harassment in
the United States at Hollaback!s first-ever international speaker series on
street harassment. In July 2013. This event reached over 1.8 million
people via twitter and livestreaming. HollabackPHILLY has quickly
become a thought leader in exploring the historical significance of the
movement to end street harassment, which contrary to what it may seem is not a new effort. We
have traced efforts to end street harassment back 300 years.
Penn Social Justice Research Academy.
HollabackPHILLY gave a talk on the movement to end street
harassment and culture jamming to a group of 40 high
school students enrolled in Penns summer program on social justice activism.

Philadelphia Trans-Health Conference. In
2013, HollabackPHILLY presented a workshop on street
harassment in the trans* and gender-nonconforming
community in collaboration with Hollaback! Baltimore and
Hollaback Richmond Virginia.

HollabackPHILLYComic Book. Creative Director, Erin Filson, created and
released the first ever anti-street harassment comic book. This project, translated into
five different languages, furthers our public education campaigns by providing an
accessible, United Nations approved way to reach and engage youth in discussing
street harassment, rape culture, and gender based violence. This project also helps
chip away at the glass ceiling in the gaming and comic book worlds through a woman-
themed, woman-created online and print comic book.

SEPTA Public Transit PSAs HollabackPHILLY designed and released public transit
advertisements April 2013 which quickly went viral online. The advertisements
invite the city (and the world via the internet) to join a conversation about how
to shift our culture towards one where women and LGBTQ Philadelphians
(and global citizens) arent made to feel unsafe in public spaces. They
launched an expanded campaign in April 2014, which also experienced both
local and viral-online success.


Anti Street Harassment Day 2013. On April 13, 2013,
HollabackPHILLY joined with FAAN Mail, Philadelphia Youth Poetry
Movement, POPPYN, and many other Philadelphia allies to show
our city that street harassment is a serious issue that deserves
attention. We chalked the sidewalk with anti-street harassment
messages, and rode the Broad Street Line to ask passengers for
their reactions to our ad campaign. Powerful documentary footage of
the event can be found at http://vimeo.com/karalieff.

UN 57
th
Commission on the Status of Women.
In March 2013 Rochelle presented at Huairou Commissions event,
Engendering Bottom-Up Reform: Grassroots Womens Tool for Securing
access to Justice, at the UN Commission on the Status of women.She
presented our comic book and transit ads as she talked about our efforts
at collaboration with City Council on a citywide safety audits to create a
safer Philadelphia. She spoke about the event for a Prevent-Connect and CALCASA podcast.

Human Trafficking Film & Panel Street Harassment often carries with
it real risks of violence and danger. MarthaLangelan, author of Back Off!: How to
Confront and Stop Sexual Harassment and Harassers, calls harassment used to
evaluate a would-be victim's response to escalated violence"rape-
testing." Pimps harass girls to assess their response and see whether they are
approachable/can be groomed toward the street lifestyle. This connection
inspired HollabackPHILLY to gather a group of experts in October 2012 to
discuss Philadelphias human trafficking problem and how community members
can help (sponsored by Senator Daylin Leach).

Fighting Offensive Billboards. A VisitPhilly.com billboard prominently
displayed in the center of the city promoted street harassment in a large,
unavoidable, unmistakable way, and on an advertisement meant to define
and promote Philadelphia to tourists. In May 2012,
HollabackPHILLYpetitioned VisitPhilly.com to replace the advertisement with
one promoting respect and safe streets. In April 2014, Feminist Public Works
and HollabackPHILLY launched a responsive ad that garnered even Visit
Phillys support!




Stuff People Say to Teen Girls In April 2012, HollabackPHILLY and
Nuala Cabral of FAAN Mail held a workshop for teens participating in
BuildOns Alternative Spring Break. The teens drew upon their experiences to
create a powerful anti-street harassment PSA.



Anti Street Harassment Day 2012On March 24, 2012,
HollabackPHILLY joined withallies from many other Philadelphia
organizations, including FAAN Mail,to take part in Meet Us On The Street
actions for Anti-Street Harassment Week. We gathered at Broad and Lehigh
to engage people in conversations about street harassment in Philly and what
we can do to change it.

Taking Back Halloween
We thought the standard sexy nurse and sexy police officer costumes were
offensive, so Hollaback!, SPARK and Beauty Redefined challenged the
women of Philadelphia to create costumes that celebrated womens strength
and courage, not just cleavage and curves. Our 2011 contest had 21 entries
and over 2,000 views(Pictured: 3rd place Rosie the Riveter costume).

Interview Series
HollabackPHILLYconducts interviews with experts to shed light on areas and
topics of feminism and street harassment that might not get much media
coverage. The videos and transcripts are posted online, and the goal is to
educate spark dialogue among viewers.(Pictured: October 2011 interview
with Nuala Cabral)


Press Mentions

15 Ads Combatting Street Harassment On
Philadelphia Transit
My body is not public property.

Krystie Lee Yandoli, BuzzFeed Staff
posted on April 1, 2014 at 6:08pm EDT
On Tuesday, HollabackPHILLY launched their Anti-Street Harassment Transit Ad Campaign in conjunction with
Feminist Public Works, an organization that promotes public awareness about the safety and well-being of women, as a
part of International Anti-Street Harassment Week.
The campaign includes a series of ads that will be found in the interiors of subway cars, subway platforms, and bus
shelters across the city. They are also featured on HollabackPHILLYs website with the hopes of spreading this
conversation online and bringing the issue of street harassment to as many peoples attention as possible.
We were frustrated at how many people had no idea what we meant when we said street harassment despite having
knowledge of the behavior from either experiencing, perpetrating, or witnessing it, Rochelle Keyhan, the Director of
Feminist Public Works and HollabackPHILLY, told BuzzFeed. So, we decided to find a way to expand the conversation
beyond our individual workshops to a broader, more accessible forum, like advertising.
There are ads that specifically discuss how bystanders can intervene during harassment and some that speak directly
to LGBTQ communities experiences with harassment.





Ad Campaign Targets Street Harassment of Women
New posters will go up in SEPTA buses, rail cars, and platforms.
BY JOEL MATHIS | APRIL 2, 2014 AT 12:08 PM, Philadelphia Magazine
Youll be seeing these posters a lot on your SEPTA trips for the next few months:
Feminist Public Works explains:
Beginning April 1, 2014,
thanks to a generous grant
from the Valentine
Foundation,
HollabackPHILLY, a
project of Feminist Public
Works, launched an
expansive transit ad
campaign in the interior of
subway cars, and includes
bus shelters and subway
station platform ads
throughout the city.
The campaigns messages
are designed to familiarize
the public with the term
street harassment
(gender-based harassment
by strangers in public
spaces) and define it as a
solvable problem, as
opposed to an inevitable
fact of life. Sexual
harassment in the
workplace used to be commonly accepted, but that is no longer the case. We hope to see street harassment
follow the same path of being recognized as a problem through increased awareness, public conversations,
and bystander intervention.


Here's another one. There are dozens!




Group Launches Street Harassment Campaign
Slideshow posted in Local/State | Wednesday, April 02, 2014

HollabackPHILLY (a project of Feminist Public Works) has launched a transit ad campaign in the city of Philadelphia
to increase public understanding of the problem of street harassment. The campaign is designed to familiarize the
public with the term street harassment (gender-based harassment by strangers in public spaces) and define it as a
solvable problem, as opposed to an inevitable fact of life.Organizers say sexual harassment in the workplace used to
be commonly accepted, but that is no longer the case. The group says it hopes to see street harassment follow the
same path of being recognized as a problem through increased awareness, public conversations, and bystander
intervention. ( Photo)










What is street harassment? Naming the problem in
Philadelphia and the world.

By akegler | Posted September 23, 2013 | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania


A couple of months ago, HollabackPHILLY gave
a talk to 40 high school students taking part in the
University of Pennsylvanias Social Justice
Research Academy. After we finished describing
our work with street harassment, one young
woman raised her hand and said What youre
talking about I just realized that that is what Ive
been dealing with every day since I was 8 years
old. A momentary hush fell over the room, as we
were all touched by the realization and saddened
by the reminder of how so many of us are
conditioned from a very young age to accept harassing behavior from strangers.

It deeply disturbs me that street harassment has been normalized to the point that as a culture, we tend to see
it as an inevitable part of life. When we see examples of street harassment on TV and in movies, its often
minimized and portrayed as funny or validating (and of course, all harassers are construction workers). In
workshops and conversations in Philly, most of the time when we mention street harassment to a group of
people, we are met with confused looks. We regularly have to clarify that street harassment means sexual
harassment by strangers in public places, including unwanted comments, following, whistling, staring and
other behaviors that make a person feel unsafe and uncomfortable. Thats when it clicks, and the stories start
bubbling out. People know exactly what were talking about. They are angry and frustrated by these
harassing behaviors; behaviors that most have learned to accept as normal. The fact that so many people still
have no name for this problem convinced me of the need for a widespread advertising campaign to bridge
this gap.

In April 2013, HollabackPHILLY ran a unique PSA campaign in the Philadelphia subway system. This set
of six ads, which can be viewed atphilly.ihollaback.org/ads/, were up for two months in the subway and
quickly went viral online. Though many people have referred to it as such, this was not an awareness
raising campaign. Do we need to raise awareness that the sky is blue? Street harassment is so common and
normalized that we hardly even talk about it. Instead, our goal was to name it, and by naming it,
problematize it.

HollabackPHILLYs PSA campaign was challenging to create, because we had very little to use as a model.
What are the best strategies for talking about street harassment with a mainstream audience? Were not sure


- the research just doesnt exist. We know that pointing an accusatory finger at harassers will get us
nowhere. We also know that statistics dont resonate with people, and language that is too general falls flat.
We had to keep our ads interesting and inclusive enough to resonate with a wide audience, while showing a
clear connection between the problem and its name. We shared them widely before deciding on our final set
of six messages, incorporating feedback throughout. Our final messages were not without flaws, and we
debated them for months (one in particular that we went back and forth over repeatedly reads In a perfect
world, what would your sister/daughter/girlfriend hear as she walks to the subway? We feel strongly that
no person should be defined by their relationship to others, but this ad resonated extremely well with people
and we could not deny it had value in spreading our message). Because HollabackPHILLY had to purchase
the ad space ourselves, our campaign was very limited in scope. We will be running a larger campaign in
Spring 2014, with an expanded set of messages. With this larger campaign, we will aim to include messages
focused on LGBT audiences, as well as bystander intervention. It will take a community effort to end street
harassment, and for that to happen we need to recognize how harassment affects all members of our
community.

Until more people become familiar with the name for harassing behaviors in public spaces, and start
viewing it as a problem, the default response will continue to be boys will be boys. The movement to end
what we now know as sexual harassment went through a very similar process. Just a few decades ago,
sexual comments in the workplace were considered normal and acceptable; it was just fine for a man to call
his secretary honey and comment on her body. For her to complain about it would have been either
laughable, or cost her her job. Naming this behavior sexual harassment was a major first step in reframing
the harassing behaviors as harmful and socially unacceptable.

Street harassment is one of the final frontiers of gender equality worldwide and the perfect example of rape
culture: it is incredibly common and normalized to the point that people regularly tell us that we should not
take it so seriously. Being harassed on the street reduces girls, women and LGBT folks to objects, causes
discomfort and fear, and restricts our movements in public spaces. No one should feel uncomfortable
walking down the street because of harassment, and especially, no young person should grow up
internalizing messages from strangers commenting on their body and making sexual advances.

How can we end this? It is not enough to simply say, I dont harass people, so Im doing my part. As a
community of bystanders, it is our responsibility to start challenging the social norms that support harassing
behaviors - and we can only start doing this once we define these behaviors as problematic.
HollabackPHILLYs ad campaign uses mainstream advertisements to spark discussions among young
people around what street harassment is, how it impacts people and what we can do to stop it. People who
don't experience street harassment often do not realize how prevalent it is, or the kind of impact it can have
on young girls and members of the LGBT community. Street harassment starts at a very young age, and can
deeply affect young peoples sense of self-worth. Its time we all start recognizing it for what it is.

Small as it was, our Spring 2013 campaign resulted in an outpouring of local support from individuals and
organizations. Once the ads went viral online, we began to receive messages from people all over the
country and the world, thanking us and saying they wished their cities had our advertisements. We had
purposely designed the ads to be scalable, and just as wed hoped, activists from several cities reached out to
us to request to bring the ads to their cities. Plans are now underway to spread the message to more cities in


the next year, which is a beautiful thing. In addition, city government has started to take note. The
Philadelphia City Council recently set the date for a public hearing on street harassment on November 7th
(details below), recognizing that this is an important issue in our city. Slowly but surely, conversations like
this are starting to happen all over the world.

The social norms that support street harassment have deep, anonymous roots in our global culture. Naming
the problem and bringing it to light will ensure that in the future, no young kids will grow up accepting that
it is normal to feel uncomfortable and unsafe in the public spaces that they have every right to occupy. As
the Executive Director of Hollaback!, Emily May, said recently: We dont have much time. In just 8 or 9
years, the babies rolling around in strollers today will start hearing the kind of harassment were dealing
with now. Lets make sure that doesnt happen.

Anna Kegler





Street Harassment: Part of the United States Culture
Since our Early, Formative Years

By HollabackPHL | Posted September 5, 2013 | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

My first experience with street harassment was
walking home from high school in suburban
Southern California back in the late 90s. Men in a
pickup truck followed me at a walking pace,
blowing kisses and making vulgar gestures I
didnt even understand as a 14 year old. I had to
cut through the neighborhood to reroute around
the road they were on so they couldnt follow me
anymore. Fast-forward ten years and I was living
in a more urban setting of Center City
Philadelphia, and men were harassing me on my
subway ride home after law school. I again re-routed and got off a stop early so they wouldnt know my
home stop. One of the men followed me off the train, waving goodbye to his friend, while shouting at me
and laughing. He followed me for almost 4 blocks, making vulgar, sexual comments. It wasnt until he
realized I was headed straight towards the police station that he finally left me alone.

I was scared during each of those experiences, and they stuck with me, obviously, since I can close my eyes
and relive them now after all this time. When I told people these stories, it became clear that the mindset
around the behavior was that it was just "boys being boys". When I was 13, I was told I was being dramatic


and should be able to just brush it off, it was a rite of passage. When I was 23, I couldnt take a
compliment, and was lucky he hadnt assaulted" me.

Shortly after that incident when I was 23 years old, I got involved with Hollaback!, an international
organization dedicated to ending street harassment. The next year, I started HollabackPHILLY, where I
currently serve as Director. The Hollaback! network, comprised of 64 branches of anti-street harassment
activist organizations spread out over 25 global cities, collects first-hand accounts of street harassment while
working toward changing local cultures to be less permissive of gender-based harassment and violence. At
HollabackPHILLY were focused on innovative and engaging public programming to educate the
community about street harassment, the consequences of the behavior, and ways we can improve our
interpersonal relationships to make the streets feel safer. That work also involves extensive research into the
history of the problem, as well as the history of anti-street harassment activism, because unfortunately, this
history has been endlessly repeating since our countrys inception.

Throughout my research, I have read hundreds of stories about street harassment in the United States,
spanning over more than 200 years. The types of harassing behaviors described 200 years ago, and the way
those behaviors make the harassed person feel, are so similar to the modern experience that they could
easily be stories submitted to HollabackPHILLY last night. The experience hasnt changed, nor has the
discontent with how widespread and unchallenged the behavior remains.

And these story submissions arent all from adults: sadly, we also get stories of harassment of children as
young as seven years old. In the Spring of 2012, HollabackPHILLY hosted a community workshop with
FAAN Mail Co-Founder, Nuala Cabral, during BuildOns alternative spring break for high school students.
At the workshop we talked about street harassment with a group of high school girls and some boys, and
heard the stories of the harassment they get as they walk to and from school. Their words were so powerful
that we had them write a PSA script drawing on their experiences (the video recording of which is available
above). Once again, lest you think this is a new phenomenon, if we rewind almost 150 years to 1880
Virginia we can see that school-aged children have historically been the target of street harassment, or
mashing as they called it back then. In the 1880s and 1890s Virginia legislators were approached by
schoolgirls, their parents, and the administrators of the all girl schools in the state about mashers lurking
outside the schools. Principals and parents wrote to the legislators discussing the impact the harassment had
on the students, and how it impacted their studies and senses of security. Some legislators took the matter
seriously, advocating for a bill banning the mashers from being around the grounds, because the girls
deserved to feel safe and comfortable as they sought their education. Unfortunately, the bill was ridiculed
across the country and ultimately did not pass.

The same concerns for the safety of our girls and LGB and trans* youth as they walk to and from school are
shared by parents and school teachers today, in cities all over the world. Throughout HollabackPHILLYs
anti street harassment workshops, and confirmed by stories collected through the website, high school and
middle school students describe vulgar and menacing things said to them as they walk to and from school,
and how it makes them uncomfortable and fearful. Harassers often specifically ask their age, confirming
theyre under 18 years of age, while continuing to make the vulgar comments. While street harassment
discussions usually discuss the impact harassment has on women and girls, the harassment of LGB and


trans* folks is just as frequent, and more often (and more quickly) escalates to hate speech, violent
comments, and actual physical violence.

Sexual harassment shouldnt be a rite of passage into adulthood. It shouldnt be an inevitable lesson for
which we have to brace our children. Its time we stopped giving the harassers a free pass because
continuing to do this means we accept that our countrys women, LGB, and trans* citizens are subjected to a
hostile environment whenever they leave their homes. Accepting it as inevitable means we embrace that
"boys will be boys" is an excuse to never teach our youth how to respectfully interact with one another in
public, and how to demand respect. Its time that we shifted our culture from one of impunity surrounding
gender-based violence, to one where we stand up for, and beside, each other in solidarity, condemning street
harassment as unacceptable.

Rochelle Keyhan







Sorry Fanboys: Activists Seek to Rein in Comic-Con Comments
Hollaback Philly is speaking cosplayers' language.
Samantha Melamed
City Paper
Thu, Jun. 6, 2013

The convention center was quiet Friday outside the Wizard World
Comic Con, where a skinny teenager, still more Peter Parker than
Spider-Man in a full body suit, lingered near the entrance tapping on his
cell phone. Inside, though, the comic collectors and fanboys were
lining up in throngs to meet demi-celebrities and purchase lots and lots
of merchandise. As young women wandered the floor dressed as
Wonder Woman, Poison Ivy and more obscure but equally sexualized
characters, photographers stopped them for photo ops. Rochelle
Keyhan of Hollaback Philly was approaching the women with a
different motive: to rally support against comic-con harassment.

Yes, this is a real problem, confirmed Brittany Jacobs, an avid cosplayer short for costume play at
the convention with her husband, Patrick, and daughter, Miriya. Jacobs, whose face was painted Smurf
blue in homage to Mystique, an X-Men villain, said she had dealt with overly aggressive photographers,
including one whod tried, literally and figuratively, to pick her up. Just because Im dressed up kind of
sexy doesnt mean you can hit on me, she said. The three agreed to pose with a sign reading Cosplay
Consent, the motto of a nationwide anti-harassment movement.



Hollaback Philly, an anti-street-harassment group, is speaking comic fans language with its own comic
book, Hollaback: Red Yellow Blue, promoted at a table at Wizard World. They were also giving out wallet
cards reading, That was harassment, to be distributed by cosplayers in distress. Anna Kegler, manning
the table, said visitors told her that, unfortunately, the cards would be getting good use.

Image: Brittany, Miriya and Patrick Jacobs at Wizard World Comic Con

The e-newsletter of the COPS Office | Volume 6 | Issue 6 | June 2013


What We Can Do About Street Harassment

Street harassment, or sexual harassment in public by strangers, is the most prevalent form of gender based
violence according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It includes following, staring,
vulgar comments, groping, and other forms of gender-based violent speech. While street harassment is a
global issue, it is not often directly prohibited. The closest existing laws in the United States are the
Harassment laws, which are on the books in most jurisdictions. Those laws vary by state and are usually
summary offenses akin to being drunk in public. They necessarily involve reporting of the behavior and
apprehension of the offender, and do not address the motivation behind the harassmentthe same
motivation behind gender-based violence: exerting power because one can do so largely without successful
resistance.

Similar to physical forms of gender-based violence, street harassment is largely unreported, in part because
reporting the problem is usually met with dismissal or minimization. Reporting is also low because of the
culture surrounding street harassment. Society as a whole still focuses on those whove experienced
harassment as having brought it on themselves in some way, instead of focusing on what we can do to stop
the behavior altogether. We have to hold each other accountable, and reimagine the culture surrounding
gender-based violence as one that values our communities enough to recreate them into nurturing and safe
environments.

You might askif theres nothing were trying to actively change on the criminal side of things, why should
I care? The answer is that cultural change requires those responsible for policing public behaviors to be
aware of and sensitive to actions that cause others to feel unsafe in their own communities. Hollaback! is an
international, 62-branch network of local activists in cities all over the world working to end the permissive
culture surrounding street harassment, one conversation at a time. Part of that activism involves collecting
street harassment stories. Many branches have received stories outlining positive, supportive responses
from law enforcement when they reported their street harassment. They have also collected stories of street
harassment at the hands of law enforcement. When law enforcement engages in the very behavior that
makes people feel unsafe in public, it reinforces that feeling of powerlessness, reminding people that even
those who are here to protect dont necessarily value and respect them enough to show them that respect. If
we cant lean on our law enforcement officers, how can we ever feel safe?

Law enforcement should also care about street harassment because it has a lasting effect on those who are
harassed. Aside from restricting their mobility and safe-and-equal access to the cities in which they live,
street harassment can cause lasting psychological and emotional damage. Akin to bullying in school,
harassment based on appearance and gender identity causes many to question their own identities and self-


worth. Additionally, being constantly evaluated by men in public for sexual appearance and desirability
communicates to women that they are worth nothing more than their bodies. That evaluation system
applies as much to those women who are harassed about their sexual desirability as it does to those who are
not harassed and thus, in the silence of the harassers, told they are undesirable.

These two sides of street harassment can be described as self-objectification: people begin to internalize
the objectifying harassment, or lack of harassment, and re-value themselves; reducing themselves to their
bodies the way the harassers have reduced them. This leads to a new layer of self-doubt and insecurity that
can impact peoples performance in school and work, and their overall
happiness and self-esteem. That harmful form of self-evaluation is
complicated even further when harassment attacks other portions of the
persons identity, whether it be race, sexual orientation, gender-
representation, disabilities, or other externally visible characteristics of
themselves.

Since this issue is complex, and criminalization is not the ideal solution, law
enforcement can assist in transforming this culture by keeping an open mind.
Many Hollaback! branches receive stories about law enforcement being dismissive of reports that women
were harassed, followed, and groped. You dont know the guy, we cant find him. Theres nothing I can do
for you, are all common responses law enforcement is reported to have given to women attempting to
report the behavior. That dismissal of a traumatic experience further enables street harassers, while telling
those harassed that their experience and safety arent important. By joining us in this effort to understand
and validate street harassment as a behavior that causes many women and LGBT people to feel unsafe in
their own communities, law enforcement can create a culture that supports those who are harassed.
Providing a sympathetic ear to people reporting harassment goes a long way in building trust in law
enforcement, as well as sending the message that gender-based violence is intolerable. Additionally,
directing harassed persons toward local and national Hollaback! sites can empower them by providing
them with a sense of community on a global scale.

Rochelle Keyhan
Director of HollabackPHILLY
Executive Member, Board of Directors of Hollaback!





The Next Step In Fighting Street Harassment? A Comic Book

May 15, 2013 by Ponta Abadi

HollabackPHILLY, a branch of the anti-street harassment organization Hollaback!, hasnt taken many breaks in the
last few months. Theyve placed campaign posters on Philly subway trains, have met with companies about
removing pro-harassment messages from their advertising and, last Thursday, the group sent their newly finished
anti-street harassment comic book to the printer.



Hollaback! started in 2005 and now has chapters in 64 cities and 22 countries. It fights against street harassment by
encouraging people to document incidents and not to just walk on but to hollaback! The group also teaches people
to take street harassment seriously, and not dismiss it by saying something like, Well, boys will be boys.

The 24-page comic book, called Hollaback: Red, Yellow, Blue, is written and drawn by Erin Filson (one of the
current leaders of HollabackPHILLY, along with Rochelle Keyhan and Anna Kegler) and features characters who deal
with street harassment. One of the story lines features Blue, Reds boyfriend, who begins to realize the impact street
harassment has on girls and women. He then struggles with how to respond when he overhears harassing behavior.
Besides the printed book, the group will offer an e-book option and plans on putting up an interactive (choose your
own adventure) comic on their website.

The Philadelphia Hollaback! crew has plenty of personal experience with harassment. Keyhan, whos originally from
Southern California, remembers an instance in which men blew kisses and made crude gestures at her when she was
just 12 years old and walking home from school. Now 28, she says she still witnesses street harassment all the time,
as have her Hollaback! counterparts. Its rampant, its everywhere. You just expect it, almost, when youre walking
around, Filson says.

If you live in the Philadelphia area, you may have seen examples of Hollaback! in anti-street harassment campaign
posters in subway cars. These posters and the comic book point out the difference between a compliment
and harassment. We want to get people to recognize [street harassment] as a problem that can actually be solved,
Kegler adds.

The first move is getting people to realize street harassment shouldnt be inevitable. In an effort to find new ways to
increase awareness, the group raised more than $8,000 to create the comic book, and theyre planning to use some
of that money to distribute it at national conventions, such as the2013 Philadelphia Wizard World Convention and
the 2014 Comic Con in San Diego. Harassment isnt a problem limited to the streets: Complaints of harassment at
comic conventions are posted online after many events, mostly coming from women who attend in costume. The San
Diego Comic Con, one of the worlds largest comic conventions, does not have formal anti-harassment policies or
officials who are looking out for harassment, so HollabackPHILLY is pushing to change that. The message, says
Filson, is cosplay [short for costume play] is NOT consent. She explains:

Youre dressed as these characters that everyone fantasizes about theres this idea that, I can talk to or touch this
person and photograph them in any way I want and not treat them like theyre still an everyday person.

One of the main goals of Hollaback! and its Philadelphia branch is to help women, especially, and those in the LGBTQ
community to find and amplify their voices when faced with harassing behavior. As Keyhan puts it,

Hollaback! doesnt necessarily mean in the moment shouting at the harasser. Find your voice and let us help you do
that, even [by] just acknowledging, That was harassing behavior that just happened and were not going to just
ignore it.

The comic books will be completed in time for Philadelphias Comic Con, where Keyhan, Filson and Kegler plan to
distribute the Hollaback! message to as many comic-book fans as they can.





Tired of hearing catcalls? Hollaback!
Jenice Armstrong
APRIL 18, 2013


HollabackPhilly, a local branch of an international organization pushing for an end to the street
harassment of women, is educating the city's men with ads on SEPTA trains.

WOMEN, AREN'T you tired of having men holler at you out of car windows as you
walk down the street?Or maybe you find yourself frightened by male passengers
on SEPTA who compliment you on your appearance and then proceed to follow
you off of your bus when you get off. My own personal pet peeve is when
passers-by notice that you're deep in thought and then walk up to you and say,
"smile." Most of us fume over this type of unwanted attention.

But a group called HollabackPhilly has taken to calling it what it is - street
harasssment. It also is fighting back with a new ad campaign on SEPTA that debuted this month. SEPTA trains on the
Market-Frankford and Broad Street lines now carry posters explaining how calling out "Hey sexy" or "Hey baby" can
constitute street harassment. The signs have various messages, such as this one:

"In a perfect world, what would your sister/daughter/girlfriend hear as she walks to the subway? (Check one)

* Hey sexy
* Can I have a smile?
* What, you gay?
* Good morning!

Too bad we don't live in a perfect world."

The ad goes on to point out that yelling catcalls, staring, whistling and following are considered street harassment.The
women from Hollaback deserve a high five for what they're trying to do.This tiny grass-roots organization doesn't even
have an office, yet it's attempting to address a huge problem that's been going on forever. There's no better time than
spring to kick off a campaign like this. What makes it even better is that it's geared toward educating people who may
be clueless that what they're doing is wrong.

"We're not having enough conversations with youth about this," said Rochelle Keyhan, 28, who heads up
HollabackPhilly, which is the local branch of the larger international movement. "The main mission of Hollaback is to
give voice to a reality that many people experience every single day. When people tend to talk about street
harassment, quite often the response that they get is that it's just 'boys being boys' . . . instead of their saying, 'Oh, I' m
so sorry that happened.' "

Keyhan, a lawyer who moved to Philly five years ago from California, was inspired to come up with the ads after
spotting a billboard by the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corp. that she considered offensive. It said, "Dear
walking this way, I like the way you move it, move it. With love, Philadelphia xoxo." Keyhan was taken aback that the
sign appeared to mimick the type of unwanted sexual advances that many women have to deal with on a daily basis,
and asked GPTMC to take it down. Tourism officials said that the wording came from the Dreamworks kiddie flick
"Madagascar 2." The banner, which was on the side of a Center City hotel parking lot, has since come
down.Confronting that sign is what inspired Keyhan to organize the current SEPTA campaign, which continues
through May 26.

On Saturday, she and other members of Hollaback took what they're doing further, when they boarded SEPTA trains
and talked with passengers about street harasment."We're trying to make street harassment taboo," said Nuala
Cabral, who has organized youth workshops for Hollaback. "It's so normalized. It's such a normal part of our day that
we don't even see it as a problem. We just accept it. We're trying to say, 'No, this is not OK. This is not normal."These
women deserve high fives, not catcalls and whistles.












HollabackPHILLY ad campaign aims to reduce
'street harassment'

April 8, 2013
By Taunya English @taunyaenglish

New ads posted in SEPTA trains are a bid to start a conversation about street harassment including cat calls,
unwelcome comments and inappropriate touching.One transit ad makes suggestions about ways to greet women in
the subway: "Good morning" would welcome by most. "Hey sexy, not so much.

Anna Kegler helped craft the media effort for the group HollabackPHILLY. Many people have never heard the term
"street harassment," she said, so the posters equate that concept to something more familiar.Workplace sexual
harassment used to be very normalized and it was not considered a big deal at all, Kegler said. Now it's something
that's completely unacceptable. So we're hoping to make some of those connections and then, hopefully, get people
to start thinking about street harassment along the same lines.

When HollabackPHILLYs director, Rochelle Keyhan, speaks with community groups, she often asks how many have
been street harassed.Most people don't raise their hands, Keyhan said. Then we start asking how many of you have
been followed home? How many of you have been uncomfortable on the subway because of attention you were
getting from someone? How many of you have been grabbed, groped? How many of you have had vulgar things
shouted at you. Then all of the hands start shooting up.

Keyhan said she's not aware of any specific scientific studies on the health impacts of street harassment, but her
group is working to share the many negative experiences reported by individual women. Researchers are also
building a case using analogies to bullying directed at lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender people.

When people talk about street harassment, Keyhan said those experiences are often downplayed by parents, friends,
peers who say its just boys being boys" or "youre being sensitive" or "get over it.
The ads will be posted on SEPTA's Broad and Frankford lines throughout April.












HollabackPhilly Combats Street Harassment Through SEPTA Ads
"Nice ass" is not a compliment
Samantha Melamed
City Paper
Thu, Apr. 18, 2013, 12:00 AM
When the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation (GPTMC) ran an ad reading,
Dear Walking This Way, I like the way you move it move it. With love, Philadelphia, XOXO last
year, Rochelle Keyhan of the anti-street-harassment organization HollabackPhilly was frustrated.
After all, the billboard-size catcall was perpetrating just the type of speech her group had been
combating. So, HollabackPhilly began developing its own ads, raising $1,000 to run spots on
SEPTA trains this month.
But, just as GPTMC probably did, Keyhan has learned that just about any ad can be offensive,
depending on the audience. Theres a lot of conversation about how were trying to police
compliments, that were killing social interaction, Keyhan says. But now at least theyre
thinking about what a compliment is and that, as one ad notes, nice ass is not one. Others
complain the ads dont go far enough, citing one that asks: In a perfect world, what would your sister/daughter/girlfriend hear as
she walks onto the subway? and offers options ranging from Hey sexy to Good morning.

Hollabacks Anna Kegler says the ad gave her pause because it implied a question: Do women need to have a relationship with
someone to be seen as human and treated with respect? But it also resonated with the most people. Much of this feedback has
been online, where the ads have gone viral. The local impact is unclear, since the ad run is limited: $1,000 doesnt buy much SEPTA
real estate. But Keyhan says its just a start. People still dont know what street harassment is, she says. One of our goals was to
get people to start recognizing the term.




Philly's Hollaback campaign calls out catcalling
The real motive of street harassment is intimidation. To make its target scared or uncomfortable, and to make the harasser feel powerful.
But what if there was a simple way to take that power away by exposing it?

Dr. Jill McDevitt , thesexologist.org
POSTED: MONDAY, APRIL 15, 2013, 3:27 PM
The first time it happened, two young men in a yellow sports car drove by and yelled I love your pussy at
me as I walked down the sidewalk on my way home from school in fourth grade. I was 9 years old. The last
time it happened was two days ago. I was pulling out of a Wawa parking lot, and the man in the next car
over blew kisses and made obscene gestures with his tongue at me.

I dont know of a single woman who hasnt experienced it countless times. For some of us, it happens
nearly every time we go out in public. It starts when were minors, in some cases, like mine, it starts when


were still prepubescent; men whistling, barking, catcalling, yelling, leering, even stalking. Once I was
walking down the street when a man in a car in the oncoming lane did a sudden u-turn in the middle of the
road so he could drive up next to me at 3 miles per hour, pacing me as I walked, incessantly asking me to
get in his car. I was 17.

Its a phenomenon that every woman knows it exists and yet, we have no name for it, no measure, no data
or way to measure and quantify it. Its a phenomenon that every woman you know has had to contend with
if she goes outside, and yet it lives in secret as a nameless event thats hard to describe. At least it used to
live in secret.

An organization called hollaback has been working tirelessly to end it. First, they popularized a label: street
harassment. How can we talk about something when there isnt even a word to describe it? Giving street
harassment a name was such an important next step.

Next, hollaback created a phone app that lets women clock their location when they are street harassed, as
well as submit a description of what the offender said, and even take a picture of him. This has provided a
wealth of data documenting patterns in this behavior, learning where women are getting street harassed,
who is harassing them, and what types of things theyre saying.

And just this month, hollaback has launched an awareness campaign in Philadelphia by creating several
different advertisements now on SEPTA subway cars. Click here to view photos of all the ads.

HEY SEXY is not a compliment. Unwanted comments are street harassment.
Hey sexy. Hey baby. THIS IS STREET HARASSMENT. Lookin good. MMM. Look at you. Look
at those legs. THIS IS STREET HARASSMENT. Hey, you a man or a woman? You a
dyke?THIS IS STREET HARASSMENT. Can I have a smile? Whats your name? You got a
boyfriend? Where are you going? Come here. Let me get at you. Oh youre ugly anyway.
THIS IS STREET HARASSMENT.

If your boss says Hey sexy, lookin good today at work, thats a problem. What if a
stranger says it to you on the street? Catcalls, staring, whistling, and following are street
harassment. Its time to start calling it what it is.

In a perfect world, what would your sister/daughter/girlfriend hear as she walks to the
subway?

If you see it happen, have her back. Unwanted comments are street harassment.

The last one is my favorite. Street harassment doesnt happen in a vacuum, it by definition exists in public.
Weve all seen it. What would happen if a bystander called a harasser out every time they see it happen?














How 3 Girls Turned Their Catcalling Horror Stories Into
a Kickass Comic Book Aimed at Ending Street
Harassment

by Megan Angelo
TUESDAY, 03/19/2013 5:40 PM

If someone could shut up those guys on the corner two blocks from your officethe ones
who never give it a rest with the come-onsthat person would pretty much be your hero,
right? Your superhero, actually.

Done. Meet your superheroines: from left to right, Philadelphia artist Erin Filson, and
Anna Kegler and Rochelle Keyhan of Hollaback Philly, an outpost of the worldwide organization working to end street
harassment.Their weapon of choice?A comic book. Hollaback: Red, Yellow, Blue follows two women enduring
street harassment (Red and Yellow) and a male bystander to the act (Blue). Sharply drawn and boldly colored, the
illustrations are so cool you want to frame thembut the book is 100 percent aimed at educating. (Even more
impressivethe e-book will have an interactive, choose-your-own adventure element.) I talked with Rochelle, Anna,
and Erin about their own harassment stories and Hollaback's quest.

Why address this issue through a comic book?

Anna: Storytelling is a big part of trying to fix street harassment.
Rochelle: It's so important because the mainstream narrative is not by women. It's definitely not by women of color,
and then you factor in LGBT [issues]...storytelling is a way to add our reality to the main
narrative. And it's therapeutic for the people telling those stories, people who have
experienced street harassment and heard, "Oh, you're overreacting. That's just boys
being boys." Or "You can't take a compliment."
Anna: One of the issues is naming the problem. It's not a very recognized issue. When
we say "street harassment," some people don't know what we're talking about.

Right. I think even if you find that stuff icky, you don't immediately identify it as
harassmentor realize that it's necessarily bothering all the women you know
too.

Erin: When you're being harassed on the street, you feel vulnerable and alone. But
when you say to your friend, "This happened to me today,"and they're like, "that
happened to me yesterday!" it bridges that loneliness gap.
Anna: It's a crazy transition, going from thinking of it as an annoying, normal thing to
thinking about it as something that can and will end.
Rochelle: And not every street harasser is unreceptive. We do get people apologizing
and saying, "I never thought of it that way."

Did you guys have personal experiences that made you want to get involved with this on an organized scale?

Erin: When I'm stuck in a moment in which it's happening, I tend to freeze and not know what to do. You feel gross.
My roommate had a crazy interaction where she was walking home from work at six o'clock at night on Broad


Streeta really crowded streetand this guy started harassing her, flashed her, followed her down the street. She
didn't know what to do; she ended up calling the cops. It was a huge, crazy thing.
Rochelle: My first experience was when I was a 12-year-old walking home from school. These guys in a truck literally
followed me at a walking pace, shouting really lewd things. When I got home, my dad was really supportive, but he
was like, "Those guys were assholes, but they weren't going to do anything."

And at Hollaback now, you work with girls as young as that age you were, educating them on how to deal
with this stuff.

Rochelle: Yes, middle school and high school age. Most of them don't know what "street harassment" means, but
when you ask how many have been followed, called at, told to smile, groped, hands shoot right up. Some girls say, "I
don't mind it. I take it as a compliment." So we start to break down self-esteem things, to talk about how there are
some compliments you don't have to accept because there are layers of degradation built into them. But for some
girls, if that's the best thing they've heard about themselves all day, it's hard to take it as harassment.

The video above really drives home the importance of Hollaback's mission: Those teen girls are reading from
a script of things they've had said to them on the street. The organization is currently in fund-raising mode
for Hollaback: Red, Yellow, Blue, so to learn more and donate, click here.
Art: Erin Filson



Hey Girl! Check Out this New Comic Book About Street Harassment
Comics post by Sarah Mirk on March 28, 2013 - 2:58pm; tagged comic books, comic con, ihollaback, street harassment.

Fed up with catcalls, street harassment awareness group Hollaback Philly has raised $7,000 to write, draw, and
print a comic book about how all those daily "hey, good lookin"s add up to a major problem.

Creator Erin Filson wrote and illustrated the book that follows three main characters, each of whom has their
own color that's used only on their pages of the story. Two girls who get harassed are red and yellow, and the
comic also follows a boy in blue who learns how to be a proactive bystander. Hollaback is printing 2,000 copies
of the comic which you can buy here and will also be sold at San Diego's Comic-Con in 2014.

"The significance of an all-female crew creating a comic book featuring womens issues and realities is magnified
when the comic is then used to break down the glass ceiling of the boys club of the comic and gaming worlds,"
says Hollaback Philly's media coordinator Anna Kegler, who has been advising on the project along with
Hollaback organizer Rochelle Keyhan. "There have been lots of issues with harassment at comic cons."

Check out two final pages from the comic as well as an in-progress page below.









What If Your Superpower Was Ending Street
Harassment?

Posted Tuesday, March 5, 2013 by Pauline Holdsworth

In a medium where street harassment only occurs if Clark Kent is around
to swoop in and save the day, three Philadelphia activists are making
room for a new perspective.

As part of a project for Hollaback! Philly, a branch of an international anti-street harassmentorganization, the
three are working on a crowd-funded comic book that stars Red and Yellow, two women dealing with street
harassment, and Blue, a man learning to engage with his responsibilities as a bystander.

Philadelphia artist Erin Filson currently publishes a webcomic called Ranger Elf, but after an experience with
street harassment, she reached out to Rochelle Keyhan and Anna Kegler at Hollaback! to use her experience to
do something proactive.For Filson, the comic is a call to action, intended to get people to rethink their own
power to address street harassment. You can be a hero in mundane and pedestrian ways," she said. "You
dont have to have superpowers to stand up for people.

Depictions of street harassment in pop culture often reproduce a problematic narrative where harassment is
seen as a form of validation. The message is that if youre not being harassed, you should feel bad about it,
Kegler said, whos seen these kinds of narratives featured in "30 Rock" and "Ugly Betty."

The comic is part of Hollaback!s efforts to model a new realitya world in which public spaces are more
accessible to women, queer people and people of color. And since its a comic book, its also part of growing
efforts to challenge sexism, homophobia and racism in geek culture at large.I would love if you could help us
create that reality, instead of the one we have now, Keyhan said in a video they produced for their crowd-
sourcing page.

Fiction is particularly relevant to anti-street harassment activism. It allows readers an access point for
experiences and anxieties different than their own. Thats even truer when it comes to speculative fiction and
comic books, which imagine new futures governed by new rules.I think it really reflects back to the whole
mission of Hollaback!, Keyhan told Campus Progress. Until we write that reality from our own perspective, it
doesnt exist.

Hollaback! is also planning an online version with a choose-your-own-adventure component. Readers will be
able to witness different street harassment scenarios and choose between a variety of responses.
Hollaback! Philly will ship the completed comic to branches of the organization in 62 different cities and 25
countries as well as distribute it at conventions and comic book stores.



Pauline Holdsworth is a reporter for Campus Progress. Follow her on Twitter at @holdswo.



HollabackPHILLY's Comic Book Project
Posted: 04/28/2013 2:33 pm

Anna Kegler, Media Projects Coordinator, HollabackPHILLY
This post is written as part of theRaiseforWomen Challenge, a joint campaign between The
Huffington Post, the Half the Sky Movement and the Skoll Foundation to raise funds and
recognize NGOs that are empowering women.

The Half the Sky documentary is hard to watch. The challenges facing women and girls around the
world are so serious -- lack of access to school, human trafficking, female genital mutilation -- that after
seeing the documentary, it took me a moment to refocus onHollabackPHILLY's current project. If girls
around the world are at risk of being trafficked, raped and mutilated, shouldn't I drop everything and work
on that... not on a comic book about catcalling? Luckily, like I said, refocusing only took me a moment.
What we're fighting here is rape culture, and unless we work on it from all angles, we'll never uproot it. The
message of Half the Sky is that we all have to work together to end these problems, and every person's
effort makes a difference.

At the time I saw the documentary, HollabackPHILLY was just starting to work on developing an anti-
street harassment comic book in partnership with Philly artist Erin Filson. During the fundraising phase of
this project, we had many people ask us "Why is this important?" Our response? Being harassed on the
street reduces girls, women and LGBT folks to objects, causes fear,and restricts their movements in public
spaces. No one should feel unsafe walking down the street because of harassment, and especially, no young
girl should grow up internalizing messages from strangers commenting on her body and making sexual
advances. Street harassment is the perfect example of rape culture: it exists in every country and is
normalized to the point that people regularly tell us that we should not take it so seriously. We will never
stop taking it seriously. Every one of the issues featured in Half the Sky was not taken seriously at some
point, and most of them are currently still not being taken seriously enough.

HollabackPHILLY's comic book is meant to be used as a tool in school workshops, to start discussions
among young men and women around what street harassment is, how it impacts people and what we can
do to stop it. People who don't experience street harassment often do not realize how prevalent it is, or the
kind of impact it can have on young girls and members of the LGBT community. Similar to Half the
Sky's game, we are also developing a choose-your-own-adventure style interactive component that will help
students talk through their options and possible outcomes in street harassment scenarios. We hope that
approaching the problem in this more open-ended way will lead to discussions of the deeper issues at play.
We are particularly proud that our comic book includes a bystander intervention storyline. Street
harassment will not end just because some people choose not to harass others on the street. Like any major
cultural shift around gender equity, the end of street harassment will require engaged bystanders and men
and boys who talk to each other about the problem, establishing new social norms for acceptable behavior.



The other question we are often asked about our project is "Why a comic book?" There are two reasons for
this: one, that comic books are considered UN best practices for engaging younger audiences; and two, that
the world of comic books itself is in need of anti-harassment activism. Not only is comic book culture
historically male-dominated, but gender-based harassment at comic book conventions, particularly
towards women participating in cosplay, is endemic. We'll be taking our anti-street harassment comic book,
and more importantly, our message to both the Philadelphia comic con in 2013, and the San Diego comic
con in 2014. We are not the first people to speak out against harassment at comic book conventions, but
just like with any of the issues highlighted by Half the Sky, the more voices calling out the problem, the
better.

Half the Sky has inspired us to take heart in addressing a legitimate, serious problem that is routinely
minimized. For anyone who still wonders whether street harassment is really a problem, a quick Google
search will show you how many activists are out there working on it all around the world -- from the U.S., to
India, to Italy, to Peru. We are proud to be a part of this global community, and all of our efforts are
designed to be scalable so that we can share them.

Please feel free to send us any questions or comments at philly@ihollaback.org, or viaFacebook or Twitter.