Street harassment
Street harassment, also known as everyday sexism is the widespread claim among feminists that women are routinely harassed in public by men.[1] The founder of the site stopstreetharassment.org undertook two anonymous online surveys and found results that claim street harassment is very common, with 38% of women participating in these surveys claiming to have been harassed by way of honking and whistling within the last month.[2]
Surveys like this are deeply flawed:
- They rely on subjective self-reporting
- They involve a selection bias in that people who see relevance in online survey are far more likely to take part in the survey
- They can involve leading questions intended to elicit a particular answer
- Having been undertaken by someone who has a known bias the research is immediately suspect
There is no doubt that both men and women are occasionally harassed in public by strangers and that some of this constitutes sexual harassment. Proof that this is endemic, as many feminists now claim, is lacking. The site stopstreetharassment lists only surveys, questionnaires and polls as evidence.[3]
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