“Özgürlüğün
en temel anlamı yani qısıtlanmadan özgürlük (freedom from restraint) esas
alındığında aslında qadınların özgürlüğü xiyabanda taciz ile qısıtlanır. Çünkü qadınların fiziksel ve coğrafik hareketliliklerini sınırlayır ve qamusal alanda
yalnız olaraq tezahürlerini engelleyir. Bu anlamda, xiyabanda taciz qadınların
enformal getolaşdırmalarını – özel alanın aile ocağına getolaşdırma- başarmış
olur” (Bowman, 1993, s. 520).
* Street
harassment is a phenomenon that has not generally been viewed by academics,
judges, or legislators as a problem requiring legal redress, either because these
mostly male observers have not noticed the behavior or because they have considered it
trivial and thus not within the proper scope of the law. (p.519)
* The
liberty of women, in this most fundamental sense of freedom from restraint, is
substantially limited by street harassment, which reduces their physical and
geo- graphical mobility and often prevents them from appearing alone in public
places.12 In this sense, street harassment accomplishes an in- formal
ghettoization of women - a ghettoization to the private sphere of hearth and
home. (p.520)
Toward
a Working Definition of Street Harassment
* Although
street harassment encompasses a wide variety of behaviors, gestures, and
comments, it has some defining characteristics: (i)
the targets of street harassment are female;31 (2) the harassers are male; (3)
the harassers are unacquainted with their targets; (4) the encouniter is
face to face; (5) the forum is a public one, such as a street, sidewalk, bus, bus station, taxi,
or other place to which the public generally has access;32 but (6) the content
of the speech, if any, is not intended as public discourse. (p. 523-524)
* Central
to the freedom to be at ease in public spaces is the capacity to pass through
them while retaining a certain zone of privacy and autonomy - a zone of
interpersonal distance that is crossed only by mutual consent. If, by contrast,
women are subject to violation of
that
zone of personal privacy when they enter public areas, that very invasion of
privacy effectively drives women back into the private sphere, where they may
avoid such violations. Thus, by turning women into objects of public attention
when they are in public, harassers drive home the message that women belong
only in the world of the private. (p: 526 – 527)
* The
target of street harassment is literally every woman between the age when her
body begins to develop sexually and that undefined point when she is no longer
assumed to be a sexual being because she is "too old." Different
women may experience street harassment in different ways, though. For a very
young girl, it is one of her first lessons in what it means to be a sexual
being - a confusing and shame-producing experience. (P: 531)
The
experience of street harassment may also differ with the race, class, or
ethnicity of the targeted woman and the history of gender interactions to which
she has become accustomed.
The
Consequences of Street Harassment for Women, Gender, and Society
* The
fear, psychological trauma, and restrictions on personal liberty described
above have obvious consequences for women as individuals. Not so obvious,
perhaps, are the consequences suffered by society as a whole. In fact, the
harms of street harassment extend to its impact upon the relationship between
the sexes, upon the construction of gender in our society, and upon social and
political relationships in general. (P:540)
* street harassment both increases women's dependence on men and contributes to
distrust and hostility between the sexes.
* Second,
contrary to the folk wisdom that "sticks and stones may break my bones but
words will never hurt me," language is instru- mental in the construction of reality;
language locates individuals within that reality and thus constructs their
gender identities.Women learn
to associate their bodies with shame, fear, and humili- ation.115 Women also learn their place
in society from language, and they learn that this place is not a public one.
The remarks women hear from harassers on the street carry the implicit (and
sometimes explicit) message that women do not belong in public, where they draw
attention by their mere appearance, but rather in the private sphere, at home.(p.541)
qaynaq: The Harvard Law Review (1993), vol. 106, N. 3, pp: 517-580
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