Transcript

Vanessa:

What I've noticed is that, especially with the gender harassment, it's always two dudes, it's always two dudes and they are egging each other on. It's always one guy who's being like, "Hey, check this out. Ni hao," and he is trying to impress his friend or create a fun situation.

Jay Ooi: 

What causes incidences like this to happen? And what are the ways they affect the Asian-Australian community?

Hello and welcome to Shoes Off, stories about Asian Australian culture. I’m Jay Ooi.

Jay Ooi:

I think most of us Asian Australians have had some kind of awkward interaction or derogatory comment yelled at us on the street, from being glared at for no apparent reason, to being told to go back to where you came from. In today’s episode, we’re taking a look at this concept of street harassment, and how to best tackle it. And leading the charge is Mark Yin.

Mark Yin:

Hello!

Jay Ooi:

Mark, who are you and why are we talking about street harassment today?

Mark Yin:

I’m a University of Melbourne student, talking about street harassment because it’s more common & also more harmful than we realise - more common because there are so many different behaviours that we don’t really think about, and more harmful because even though it happens quickly it can leave you with a lot of questions for a long time after. And it doesn’t just affect women - so much racist street harassment has happened in the past year, and it’s worth unpacking those experiences.

Jay Ooi:

So what is street harassment, or what counts as street harassment?

Mark Yin:

Well, to answer that question, let me introduce our first guest, Aakanksha Manjunathaswamy, the Executive Director of It’s Not A Compliment which she refers to as INAC, a Melbourne-based organisation fighting street harassment.

Mark Yin:

...how do you define street harassment or what is street harassment to you?

Aakanksha:

INAC defines it as any unwanted behaviour directed at someone by a stranger in a public space. So it can include acts such as unwanted comments, whistling, leering, sexual and racist remarks, persistent requests for someone's name and personal information, general intimidation, stalking, threats, so on and so forth, to the point of sometimes it can escalate to physical acts of violence as well, such as groping and sexual assault. So basically it's an act that forces an individual into having an unwanted interaction

Jay Ooi:

So it could be anything from asking to borrow someone’s phone to make a call, to literally stalking someone on the street. That seems really broad.

Mark Yin:

Yeah, it’s a bit tricky to define. Even researchers find it hard to pin down: Dr Bianca Fileborn is a lecturer at the University of Melbourne who’s done a lot of research around street harassment and justice. In their definition of street harassment, they point to not only actions and behaviours, but also locations and contexts.

Dr Bianca Fileborn:

There's forms of harassment that are generally occurring in a public or a semi public space. So that could be obviously the literal street, but public transport, shopping centers, licensed venues. Really anywhere that's not at our own home, that we would think of as being a public space. Even though some of those spaces are technically private. 

Jay Ooi:

So street harassment is more a collective term, and it includes incidents that happen outside of the literal street.

Mark Yin:

Exactly, it could be something that happens while you’re at university or at the gym or at a restaurant.

Aakanksha:

The one common thing that all these different forms of street harassment face is that they make someone uncomfortable in a public space. And when you look at the emotions people feel, is that it's the common feelings of anger, of anxiety, of fear, of just sadness, hopelessness. All of these things connect all these different forms of street harassment.

Jay Ooi: So even though street harassment is a really wide range of behaviours that can happen in a really wide range of situations, it does have some common underpinnings, mainly the unwanted nature of it and the distress it causes. 

Mark Yin: Right, and where it gets really interesting, particularly for this podcast, is where it collides with race.

Dr Bianca Fileborn:

A lot of people don't have a great understanding of the intersecting nature of a lot of forms of harassment, so I think we tend to just think of women as a homogenous group and they all experience harassment in the same way, without realizing how it can co-occur with things like racist abuse. For example, some of the women from Asian backgrounds who I've spoken with, have spoken about experiencing orientalist abuse, that kind of stereotype of the Asian woman as a really submissive, sexy whatever, I don't really know the right word. That they'll experience abuse that's quite explicit around drawing on some of those stereotypes and tropes.

Jay Ooi:

Look I don’t know about you Mark, but I certainly haven’t experienced this racialised but also misogynistic type of street harassment.

Mark Yin: 

Yeah, there’s a whole other layer of intersectionality when it comes to street harassment aimed at Asian women or non binary folk that we as Asian men don’t experience. That’s not to say that Asian men are free from racist street harassment, but it affects women more and in different ways. In 2020, the Asian Australian Alliance documented 377 reports of COVID-related racism in two months, and over 65% of victims were female

Dr Bianca Fileborn:

I think that has to come back to bigger picture systemic inequalities and power imbalances. I think racist harassment occurs because Australia is a racist country… I think there's a lot of denial about how ingrained racism is in Australian society… I think when we see these types of power imbalances and this type of systemic racism in this country, it enables things like racist street harassment to occur. It's a way of continuing to other someone else, a person of color. In this instance it's a way of maintaining white superiority and the power of white Australians. 

Mark Yin: 

Now I know some of you might not agree with Dr Fileborn’s views on white superiority, and that’s okay, but no matter what we think about Australia as a country, when we think about who is the default Australian, I think we’d all agree that they’re probably white. They’re not Asians, and they’re certainly not first nations people. 

Jay Ooi:

And it might seem harmless, but I think by extension, it can lead to a sort of entitled-ness, where these non-white groups are subconsciously or perhaps consciously viewed as lesser.

Mark Yin:

Yeah, and racist street harassment is effectively a way to maintain these hierarchies. It can sometimes feel like those hierarchies are invisible, or that we’ve moved past them now, and I think that really speaks to just how ingrained they are. They stay hidden until moments like this, street harassment or whatever, and they only really get exposed in those moments

I think the fact that it's occurring in public space is also really significant, so it's saying something about who these spaces are for, and it's sending a powerful message to the targets of harassment, that this space doesn't belong to you, you're not fully welcome or you're not fully included here.

Jay Ooi:

Mark, I find this a bit of a tricky one, because I imagine there are parts of Australia where white people would feel quite uncomfortable and might be the subject of street harassment themselves because of their race.

Mark Yin:

My response to this would probably be to think structurally about this, and in particular about this whole idea of race as a visible marker. If we think about race and public spaces, there’s nothing particularly remarkable about, for example, a suburb that has a lot of white people - whereas other places like Box Hill in Melbourne/Burwood in Sydney are constantly talked about as being very, very Asian. 

Jay Ooi:

Right, but wouldn’t non-Asians feel like they’re not welcome or not included in those very Asain places?

Mark Yin:

I imagine they might, but it’s a different dynamic.  Harassment against people of colour taps into existing dialogues about where they can or can’t be. White people would be seen as the ‘default’ in most of Australia, so when they get harassed, there’s not this other baggage of: the dialogue in the media, from our politicians, from certain members of the community even, that suggest they don’t belong - whereas for Asians and other people of colour, it’s like we go back to the two suburbs where we do “belong” or leave the country altogether. 

Jay Ooi:

Right, so we’re not saying that harassment against white people categorically cannot happen or that they’re somehow the enemy, it’s just a different experience for people of colour because it feels like they have to constantly justify their belonging.

Mark Yin:

Yeah, and justify it even outside of when they’re getting harassed, whereas it’s easier for white people to kind of walk away from that moment and see it as a standalone or one-off incident. But this is all quite specific to racist street harassment - of course other identity markers like gender and ability are going to come into the picture. But even with race, there’s still another side to the issue.

Aakanksha:

Australia's a country that's built on migrants. It's built on top of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who were the original descendants and who are the original... Who this land belongs to, at the end of the day. So if you think about it, everyone else is an immigrant.

Aakanksha:

But the people who propagate all of this kind of racism, their belief is that Australia belongs to them, and therefore everyone else is the other. 

Jay Ooi:

This idea of who public spaces belong to is a really interesting one.

Mark Yin: 

Yeah, and both Aakanksha and Dr Fileborn brought it up themselves without us prompting them. Both touched on this idea that street harassment is a way to express who belongs and who doesn’t belong in Australia, who deserves to move through public spaces unprovoked, and without their belonging called into question.

Jay Ooi:

And I think , like Aakanksha mentioned, in lots of Australia, particularly in urban areas, it’s definitely not the original owners of this land who can move through public spaces unprovoked, which is quite sad.

Mark Yin:

And often it’s not Asians either.

Jay Ooi:

Which I guess is why I feel super comfortable going to those suburbs like Box Hill and Burwood that are super Chinese or super Vietnamese, because those streets do feel a little more like a space I can move through unprovoked.

Mark Yin:

But outside of those small pockets of certain cities, or sometimes even in those highly Asian areas, racial street harassment does happen, even if it doesn’t happen to you personally. 

Vanessa:

Well, I guess in the context of 2020 and now 2021, I realize that it has actually shifted in that... I used to be aware that I look different and I was always treated differently in school. But when it came to being on the street, especially being female, I am caught in situations a lot that involve my gender and race. 

Vanessa:

I'm Vanessa Wong. Feel free to redact that. I am 23 years old, and I use she, her, they, them pronouns, and I was born in Australia but I'm of Chinese Malaysian heritage.

A big one is people coming up to me and trying to hit on me by saying, "Ni hao" or "Ni hao, sweetheart" or whatever, "Ni hao, baby" that's to me that... It pretty much summarizes my experience because firstly, they demand my attention based off of something that they believe is a gateway into my life. Just by bringing up some language that they think I should be able to speak because of the way I look, and then using that as a way to take advantage of the fact that I'm a female who's alone, who is not wanting to cause trouble.

Mark Yin:

Vanessa is a friend of mine and an Asian-Australian woman living in Melbourne. Having grown up here, she’s continually encountered signs or reminders of her Asian-ness, and with COVID-19, she’s had her Asian-ness pointed out to her by randoms on the street more times than ever.

Jay Ooi:

Yeah, I guess COVID-19 revealed how little progress we’ve really made about race and belonging.

Vanessa:

...over here, we're still either an international student who's got super rich parents or we literally just are super foreign. Asian is foreign still. 

Vanessa:

It depends on what mood I'm in because then again, sometimes I'm down for random talking on the street quite like a social person would say, but I think I've definitely been forced to reduce my own identity in a public space.

Vanessa:

[In] public spaces, especially on public transport, I've noticed that I tend to take up less space physically because I don't want to create a situation where I have to interact with someone. And I definitely am hyper-aware of the fact that I would just look like some Asian kid and that is someone’s way to speak to me. And I do feel like when people walk towards me in public, even if they are just walking a different way, I’ll look at their face and make a judgment. Are you going to interact with me? Are you going to try and talk to me because I can’t do it right now. 

Jay Ooi:

Mark, I think the effects of street harassment is something I haven’t thought that much about.

Mark Yin:

Yeah, and as we’ve seen from Vanessa’s story, the culmination of all these incidents over the years has led to her constantly trying to suss out if people are going to give her trouble, before anything even happens. 

Jay Ooi: 

And it’s that idea again of, who do these public spaces belong to, and I guess by extension, who does Australia belong to?

Mark Yin:

Not for people like Vanessa, it seems. Here’s Dr Fileborn again.

Dr Bianca Fileborn:

There's this kind of hyper-vigilance and constantly having to monitor your environment for who's in your space? Is this person going to perpetrate some kind of harassment? Or if they do harass you, is it going to escalate in some way? And is anyone else going to step in and help if they are? It can be really quite all consuming. For some people it's contributed to things like anxiety, depression, PTSD. For people who have had other experiences of sexual, gender based violence, or other forms of racist harassment or homophobic and transphobic harassment, experiencing harassment again could be quite triggering and impact them more severely than it might otherwise. Certainly for a lot of people there was that feeling of not fully belonging in society and knowing that this space isn’t for you. 

Mark Yin: 

So street harassment is really a tool of exclusion when it comes down to it. It’s a bit more abstract than just one person saying or doing something to another person, it’s who feels they have the power to force an interaction onto someone else. That can make its effects tricky to talk about so in 2015, Dr Fileborn conducted an online survey of 292 people who’d experienced street harassment in Melbourne, and this is what they found. 

Dr Bianca Fileborn:

...the impacts of street harassment are incredibly far reaching and I think much more substantial than I think a lot of us would commonly realize. For participants in my study, the impacts have really ranged from feeling angry and pissed off in the immediate aftermath of an incident, feeling really fearful. And that includes being fearful after an incident, but also in the shorter to medium to longer term in some cases. It stops people from fully participating in public life, and I think that this is one impact that people really don't understand or recognize the significance of how severe the harms of harassment can be. I've spoken to people who've stopped catching public transport for example, because they were experiencing so much harassment when using public transport. I've spoken to people who stopped going out at night or they won't go out by themselves. I've spoken to people who've changed how they dressed. What spaces they'll use, whether they'll go out by themselves or not.

Jay Ooi: 

So these things people do and say that are often justified as harmless or “just having a bit of fun”, they’ve got huge consequences. Besides the hyper-vigilance, street harassment can literally cause people to change the way they behave.

Mark Yin: 

A study conducted by an American organisation Stop Street Harassment found that 24% of women and 27% of men stopped going to the location where the harassment had happened. Some people also tried to avoid harassment by wearing headphones or clothes they thought would attract less attention. Others gave up an outdoor activity like exercising or going to a park. 4% of people even made a big life decision like quitting a job or moving neighbourhoods.

Mark Yin:

Do you feel like it's changed anything else for you in terms of how you behave or your habits?

Vanessa:

Street harassment has it changed anything? Well, I try not to let it, but it definitely has. So I don't enjoy going out as much, which sounds sad. And it could be a symptom of extended lockdown, but I definitely used to feel a lot more comfortable just being out and about in public

Vanessa:

I did have an incident recently where I did feel like I was profiled by the Myki inspectors. And I think I was telling you about that, but no one stood up for me and I was crying in public and they were like, "What's your legal name?" And I was like, "Bruh, check out my ID." And they're like, "Where do you live? Prove that you live in this residence and open up an Uber Eats app to show me that you have delivered food to this address." And I was like, "I don't understand what is happening right now." But everyone on the tram was listening and no one was helping. So I'd say it's hard to know, but I do also believe in the general goodness of people in public. And there are good people, especially in Melbourne. So I think if I was truly in trouble, someone would step up and help, especially if I asked for it. But yeah, it's again, I think unfortunately you do have to be prepared to defend yourself, especially if you're alone, especially if you're a woman.

What should we do when it happens?

Mark Yin:

I guess I want to move along into the: how can we actually address these in the moment? Kind of question. 

Mark Yin:

This is me talking to Aakanksha from It’s Not A Compliment again.

But let's start with the first step which is actually identify that it's actually happening in the first place, right? Yeah. How would you identify, firstly, that street harassment is happening?

Aakanksha:

So if you see someone on a tram, on the street, or in the supermarket being uncomfortable and someone else exerting or saying things to them, exerting their power over them, that's just the most basic identifying marker for street harassment, I would say.

Mark Yin: 

OK, now you’ve identified street harassment, check. But in Vanessa’s story there, she mentioned wanting people to step in if she was in trouble, or if she’d asked for help. That can be a difficult judgment call to make. Even if you’ve identified street harassment, how do you know if stepping in is the right thing to do?

Dr Bianca Fileborn:

...this is a really challenging, again and really complicated issue. So certainly for the people I spoke to, they really valued bystander intervention because it clearly expressed to the perpetrator at the moment that, "Hey other people have seen what you've just done. We're not okay with it and we're going to tell you that what you've done is not okay." It's this clear condemnation from members of the community that, we won't tolerate this behavior. 

Dr Bianca Fileborn:

I think everyone who'd experienced bystander intervention appreciated it on some level, because someone helped them, noticed what's happening, said that it wasn't okay. That could be quite powerful in and of itself.

Dr Bianca Fileborn:

Where it gets a bit more complicated is that firstly there's not a lot of evidence around bystander intervention and whether it's actually effective or not. Most of the research that's been done has been with prospective bystanders, and it's asking people, "What would you do in this situation?" Or, "How confident would you feel to intervene?" It's much more them saying what they think they would do if they encountered it, rather than what actually happens in the moment. 

Jay Ooi: 

So people have expressed their intention of intervening hypothetically, but what about in the actual incident?

Mark Yin:

That we don’t have a lot of clear research on yet. 

Dr Bianca Fileborn:

However, in other cases, bystanders intervening could actually exacerbate the situation. Some people told me about times where a bystander confronted the perpetrator and the perpetrator punched them in the face. Not a great outcome. Sometimes it just meant that the bystander also became the target of harassment, or it escalated the situation even further. It's not always successful, and we don't necessarily know what's effective in different situations, what tactics are more likely to escalate the situation rather than to help in the moment. Certainly for anyone who's thinking of intervening as a bystander, it's really important to put your own safety first. So you should never intervene if you think you'll be at risk of harm if you do so. 

Mark Yin:

So like most things in life, safety first.

The other thing that we don't know is whether it actually has any effect on the perpetrator. Certainly for the people I spoke to it made them feel better in the moment, as someone who'd experienced harassment. But does that intervention actually change the attitudes and the behaviors of the perpetrator. We don't know.

Dr Bianca Fileborn:

It's quite possible that, again, it could cause them to push back and actually double down in their beliefs. This is a bad analogy, but when you challenge anti-vaccers and they're totally impervious to any kind of evidence or logic or whatever, and cling more strongly to beliefs. It's feasible that something similar could be happening when bystanders intervene but we don't know. So it makes it really challenging because bystander intervention, it's really popular as a strategy. 

Jay Ooi:

So intervening can potentially make it worse, and we don’t know if it has any impact on the perpetrator.

Mark Yin: 

It’s clearly quite complicated - and that’s partly because there are so many different ways it can play out, but I think if you’re in doubt, it’s best not to engage with the perpetrator.

Aakanksha:

Yep. Because there's some methods where you directly distract the perpetrator or you call it out, but at the same, there's situations where you feel it might be better to wait for the perpetrator to be gone and then focus on the person who's faced it. It's about considering their needs and what they would want to be done in that moment, because every single person is unique.

Aakanksha:

So asking questions is the best way to start, because that way you don't end up harming instead of trying to help as well, further worsening the situation. You're basically asking the person that's faced it what they would want to be done in that situation, therefore you're not just imposing your solution or your Band-Aid. You're taking into account their experiences

Mark Yin:

Stepping in and confronting a perpetrator can seem really scary, but it isn’t even always appropriate or effective to do that - in most cases, you can probably at least ask the person experiencing it if they’re ok and what you can do to help

Jay Ooi:

But at other times, that in itself might be a bit creepy though, right? Or it might make the person on the receiving end feel more uncomfortable?

Mark Yin:

As Dr Fileborn mentioned I feel like people who experienced bystander intervention generally appreciate it on some level - so I don’t think there’s any harm inherently in asking if someone is ok. But to make sure they don’t feel uncomfortable or weirded out, pay attention to their cues and language: if they say they’re ok and don’t want to engage further, let it go - don’t insist on following through with something just because it’d make you feel better. I guess the main thing is to centre them and be really attentive to what they’re actually wanting. 

Jay Ooi:

So Mark, what can we do as kind of first steps in addressing this?

Mark Yin:

I’m glad you asked Jay!

Aakanksha:

I would say that first thing to do is really hone it in, develop a solid understanding of street harassment first, because it's only when you have solid understanding of something can you take a proper educated stand or stance against it or for it, in this case. 

Aakanksha:

...the bystander intervention training that It's Not A Compliment has come up with is the only one of its kind here in Australia. It came out of the idea that... It was born out of the idea that there's training for sexual assault in the workplace, there's training for all these different things, but there's no training for what to do when it comes to witnessing street harassment, and that's a gap. That's a considerable gap that we wanted to fill, because street harassment affects thousands of people every day in Australia, and also millions worldwide every day as well.

Aakanksha:

And so we wanted to make sure that we created training that focuses on... It's broad enough that it teaches you about the different types and forms of street harassment, but it's also specific enough that gives you all the different approaches you can take when you witness street harassment happening to someone else. Because as you know, one size doesn't fit all. So you have all these different methods and you can pick the one that is the safest and best possible one in that moment. 

Jay Ooi:

We’ve kind of already covered two methods of intervention: the conventional version that you might’ve thought of first where you step in and confront the perpetrator, to the less risky option of checking in with the person who’s just experienced it and asking if they’re okay. 

Mark Yin:

These are kind of the two extremes: other methods It’s Not A Compliment talks about are things like diffusing the situation by asking the victim a random question, for example asking for directions, or recording and capturing the incident, in case the person getting harassed wants to report it later. But as we’ll see later on, not many people will want to report it - a good baseline expectation then might be to check in on the victim while making sure their needs are centered. At least this is better than inaction.

Jay Ooi:

But when do I do what, Mark? When do I address the perpetrator, or when do I try to distract by talking to the person on the receiving end?

Mark Yin:

I think another consideration is your own identity and how that fits into the picture - if you’re Asian and see another Asian person getting harassed, addressing the perpetrator might just expose you, a second person, to the same violence, and that’s not necessarily ideal (which is why white allyship is important!). Think realistically about the power you have to change the situation - again because safety should come first. If you’re not a very confrontational person, directly addressing a tall and intimidating perpetrator just might not be the way to go for you; if you’re more personable, you might want to try starting a conversation. If you’re more introverted, you might check in after. But no matter what mode of interaction you prefer, nobody’s completely powerless to change and improve the situation.

Aakanksha:

...on the streets, who's accountable? We all are, if you think about it.

[no narration here but I think we can mark this shift with music or something?]

How can we shift the culture around/underpinning street harassment?

Dr Bianca Fileborn:

In the work that I've done, I think for most participants they have really emphasized preventative and transformative action as being a form of justice. I think for a lot of people, where they've said by the time harassment has happened it's too late to actually receive justice, the harm has been done. What they really want is sweeping, broad ranging efforts to address those power inequalities and the attitudes and beliefs that underpin harassment. Ultimately that would be things like challenging gender inequality in Australia around transforming how we think about what it means to be a man or a woman or to be gender diverse. Really breaking down those strict gender roles. In the case of racist harassment, ending racist street harassment really involves tackling racism as a structural problem that's embedding in our society. That was definitely the kind of number one response that people wanted.

Jay Ooi:

Mark, this feels really big and kind of unattainable. Like, I get that addressing racism itself will help prevent racist street harassment, but I dunno, I guess it feels very blue sky thinking of this amazing utopia where inequality doesn’t exist. Like, it just feels pretty much impossible.

Mark Yin: 

Well that’s quite pessimistic of you Jay! Whilst I do agree, it’s definitely a long way off, there are small things that are possible to move us in that direction, beyond bystander intervention. 

Mark Yin:

...could you speak to the contrast between retrospective and transformative justice a little bit, in the context of street harassment?

Dr Bianca Fileborn:

Yeah, so retrospective justice is kind of justice after the fact. It's trying to make reparations for something that has already happened and trying to hold a perpetrator to account for something that they've already done. I guess it's backward looking, trying to address something that's already occurred. Transformative justice on the other hand is about, it has several components. It is about transforming the structures that are underlying, different types of crime or harmful behavior. It can be much more proactive

Mark Yin:

This means thinking about the causes of the behaviour, rather than going straight to punishment. Is it that the person isn’t really culturally aware, or hasn’t had a lot of education around this particular issue? Maybe they’re also experiencing socio-economic strain or a mental health condition which they haven’t been able to address...

Dr Bianca Fileborn:

...the idea there is that the incident or crime or harm is kind of used as an opportunity to do some of that transformative work, so to challenge some of those structural and underlying causes of the harmful behavior. If we're talking about racist harassment, it might mean doing some really intensive work with that perpetrator around their attitudes and beliefs about race and racial equality or inequality. So where did those beliefs form, what are they based on and trying to undo that learnt racism. It can also mean supporting the perpetrator and recognizing that a lot of perpetrators are also disadvantaged or oppressed in some ways

Jay Ooi:

So transformative justice is more of a cultural change, instead of big punishments to the perpetrators, it’s more using government and social systems to provide a service of perhaps learning and growth. Mark, is this sort of transformative justice happening at the moment?

Mark Yin:

Yeah for sure. Probably the best example of this is in Argentina, where they’ve set up women’s police stations where people, particularly women, who experience harassment can kind of choose the method of redress they like—whether that’s with the help of a lawyer, social worker, police officer, advocate, counsellor or even just being connected to a survivor’s group. I guess this is moving away from criminalisation and towards a model that actually addresses the harm, and depending on which avenues the victim chooses, can work towards transforming the perpetrator’s views too. 

Jay Ooi:

But at the end of the day, it’s all about empowering the victim and their needs?

Mark Yin:

Yes absolutely—if we can work with the perpetrator too, that’s also great, but more importantly, these Argentinian stations show us how we can let the person who’s just faced street harassment decide what to do with the perpetrator.

Jay Ooi: 

But that all seems a long ways away. What can we do in the meantime?

Aakanksha:

Think of it this way: the more people are aware, the more people are likely to take a stand against it. Because it's not just about empathizing with the women or the girls or the people of color or the members of the LGBTQI+ community, or people with disability that you know, it's about having broader empathy for society as a whole, for different members. It's about cultivating that, basically.

Jay Ooi:

I really like that point you make about feeling that when people stand up next to you then you realize that it's not your fault. And, I guess, I'm just thinking personally that a lot of people probably have internalized, specifically when it comes to racial street harassment, they've internalized a lot of these comments over time and probably start to feel like they don't belong. And perhaps that's why bystander intervention, when appropriate, is important, because it makes them feel like, "Oh, I'm not the weird one for feeling like I don't belong in Australia. Other people do support me being here."

Vanessa:

I'd rather focus on, like you said, the bystander effect and how we can affect real change by building up a community that understands that this isn't okay even though it's not technically a crime.

Mark Yin:

I think that makes sense. So we can be more there for each other.

Vanessa:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Because where are we putting our energy? If we focus on trying to understand the culprit or whatever, it's like, "I don't really care what you think.”

Mark Yin:

So Jay, what have you learnt today?

Jay Ooi:

Street harassment is super widespread and has really impactful consequences like people choosing to not go out much or not use public transport.

Mark Yin:

And it’s something that impacts Asians and other people of colour in ways that are pretty specific to our racial background.

Jay Ooi:

It’s also a marker for who feels like they belong, and who kind of owns that particular space.

Mark Yin:

Yep, and bystander intervention is one of the things you can do, in a couple of different ways, to change the impact of that experience - but it’s certainly not the only thing happening towards solving street harassment. This was never going to be easy, but cultural change in the community seems to be a pretty major part of that solution as well. It can sound difficult, but I think the shift is already starting

Vanessa:

There's a solidarity now that I didn't feel before. Often older Asian people will come up to me and ask for directions. And I didn't notice that as much before. I feel like we've sort of banded together in an unspoken way. And often, I have interactions with Asian women on the train where we'll sit together and we'll look at each other, we'll make eye contact and then we'll go back to living our lives. But it's this unsaid thing of, well, we've got each other's backs, and that's happened a lot of times and I don't know how to articulate that feeling, but I do feel like it's related to the bystander effect that you were talking about and that if someone started to harass her, I'd be like, "What?" So yeah, we have physically started to group together in public spaces, whether it’s conscious or not conscious.

Credits

Mark Yin:

This episode of Shoes Off was written and produced by me, Mark Yin.

Jay Ooi:

With help from me Jay Ooi, and editing and mixing also done by myself.

Mark Yin:

Special thanks to all of our guests: Aakanksha Manjunathaswamy, Dr Bianca Fileborn and Vanessa Wong.

In the show notes for this episode at shoesoff.net you can find links to It’s Not a Compliment and their resources on street harassment, as well as all the references in this episode.

Jay Ooi:

Some music in this episode is by Avik Chari, and the episode artwork is by Yelly Chuan.

Mark Yin:

What has been your experience of street harassment? Let us know @shoesoffau on facebook and instagram.

Jay Ooi:

If you liked Shoes Off please subscribe, we’re on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or wherever you’re listening to it right now, or head to shoesoff.net. Mark, where can people find you?

Mark Yin:

I’m @myin.rbc on Instagram, and I make my own podcast! It’s called POC Pathways, and it’s also on Instagram @poc.pathways. And if you know someone who needs to learn more about street harassment, please share this episode with them.

Jay Ooi:

Thanks, and catch you next episode.

Mark Yin:

Bye!

Jay Ooi:

Bye!

 

Guests

Aakanksha Manjunathaswamy

Dr Bianca Fileborn

Vanessa Wong

Resources

It’s not a compliment: https://itsnotacompliment.org/

Dr Bianca Fileborn’s work: https://minerva-access.unimelb.edu.au/handle/11343/227182, https://academic.oup.com/bjc/article-abstract/57/6/1482/2698882