Street Harassment Quotes

I feel like we're looked at as either completely nonsexual characters or overly sexual characters, and I feel like that affects how we're treated in the public space by men. I believe that women of color experience street harassment in a very hyper way. So I wanted to draw these women in their very normal, regular states and put those images out there in the public for people to see, instead of these other, very sexualized, images of women.

Every woman knows that any man engaging in street harassment can switch to anger very quickly and that anger goes to rage and their rage is their masculinity being threatened. We're scared for good reason.

Men who are offenders of street harassment and women who experience street harassment can walk by and feel something about it, because it's out there in the environment where the harassment actually happens. So it's a lot more powerful than an oil painting that's stuck in a gallery or under my bed or in my studio where only a couple of eyes are going to see it, as opposed to it being in an environment where it could possibly effect a change.

I'm a woman of color. I've lived in black neighborhoods all of my life, and most of the time I get hit on in my neighborhood - and mostly by black men. And so I wanted to have my specific experience and my perspective on street harassment out there.

I'll definitely pay attention to someone who is critiquing the artwork. But as far as someone not thinking street harassment is a big deal or that I'm being uptight? I don't think that's a valid critique.

I think it's very important to get this stuff on film, not just the behind-the-scenes of the process, but also the interviews with the women. We're going to try to do some on-the-street filming, getting people's reactions to the work, and seeing if we can get some street harassment happening on film so people can see what we're talking about. It's important to have some type of documentation so people can see what happens when we create this artwork and why I'm creating it.

Online media is the future, and younger feminists are already instrumental in using social media and multi-media platforms on the web to document street harassment, archive and critique the media, and create art.

I've generally gotten negative feedback from men who don't understand and don't find street harassment to be a serious issue. I've also gotten a lot of responses from women who are appreciative and thankful for the project; who relate to it who are passionate about it.

In Boston, a couple of the women were students and they mentioned how Boston has a huge student population, and that's specific to their experiences of street harassment. They feel like the men were a lot more aggressive, particularly when it comes to social outings and things like that.