Many women will tell you they’re tired of hearing whistles and kissing noises from random men on the street. It’s degrading. And it seems someone is taking that conversation to the streets.
Recently, nonprofit clothing company Feminist Apparel partnered with Pussy Division, a Philadelphia-based feminist activist group, to create metal street signs modeled after “No Parking” signs. Their versions, however, feature the words “No Catcalling Any Time” or “No Catcall Zone.” The bottom of each says: “End Street Harassment.”
Feminist Apparel funded the campaign through sales of t-shirts including “Cats Against Catcalls,” and the signs were hung in New York and Philadelphia.
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“Awareness-building and dialogue-creation surrounding feminist issues is at the core of our nonprofit’s mission,” Alan Martofel, a production coordinator at Feminist Apparel, told Health via email. “And we just thought putting legitimate looking anti-catcalling street signs out on the streets where street harassment occurs would be a cool, visual way to capture people’s attention towards the issue.”
Cats staring down crotch-grabbing stick figures definitely have our attention, but the New York Department of Transportation says it will remove the signs since they were placed without permission, ABC News reported.
The campaign launched in conjunction with the fifth annual International Anti-Street Harassment Week and it’s a way to raise awareness about the problem with gender-based harassment, which “makes public places unfriendly and even scary for many girls, women, and LGBQT people,” according to Meet us on the Street.
These signs aren’t really marking where NOT to catcall—they’re making it clear that “hey sexy” isn’t a compliment. It’s harassment. Anywhere. Period.
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from Health News / Tips & Trends / Celebrity Health http://ift.tt/1Jr5RmN
