I've Got Your Back by Jorge Arteaga & Emily May of Hollaback!

Author:Jorge Arteaga & Emily May of Hollaback! [Arteaga, Jorge & Hollaback!, Emily May of]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781647006839
Publisher: Abrams
Published: 2022-05-10T00:00:00+00:00

They expressed gratitude and caught the next train. It was a good result, but it begs a deeper question: Why is it more normalized to expect the people who experience harassment to catch the next train—and not the people who harass others?

At Right To Be, we don’t endorse increasing the criminalization of harassment, but we do endorse prioritizing the needs of people who experience harassment over the impulses of those who harass. When we tell people who are experiencing harassment to change their behavior in order to “avoid” harassment, we put the blame in the wrong place. Ultimately, it’s the responsibility of the person who harasses to stop.

If you’re considering contacting the police in an instance of harassment, we strongly recommend giving agency to the person experiencing harassment by letting them make the decision about whether to report it. The police have a long history of harassment and brutality, especially toward communities of color. In fact, they don’t even have a great track record of de-escalating conflict—in New York City, for example, the police force did not receive conflict de-escalation training until 2021.51

In our work with trans and gender-expansive communities of color, who represent some of the people most at risk of harassment, we have heard that even as the police are an absolute concern, delegating to people in other positions of authority, like store managers, transit workers, educators, doctors, etc., doesn’t always feel safe, either. Those people can also be part of biased systems eager to criminalize others: For example, teachers with racial bias that are more likely to suspend Black and brown students than white students, transit workers and private bus companies that threaten the safety of undocumented commuters by harassing riders about their identification “papers,” and medical professionals who misgender their trans patients.

In a medical emergency, you may need to call for an ambulance, and in most parts of the world that will signal the police to come, too. When someone is hurt to the point that they can’t verbally or otherwise indicate what they need in terms of support, calling is worth it—but the rest of the time, keep in mind that the best person to delegate to is probably right beside you.

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