Street Harassment Signs Return to Park Square for Sexual Assault Awareness Month
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Artwork and readings that address street harassment are displayed at Park Square for a second year in observance of Sexual Assault Awareness Month.
The Berkshire Domestic and Sexual Violence Task Force installed the public art exhibitions by activist-artist Tatyana Fazlalizadeh from her book "Stop Telling Women to Smile: Stories of Street Harassment and How We're Taking Back Our Power."
The series includes phrases such as "Let women walk in peace," "You are not entitled to my space," and "I am not here for you."
This year, they are accompanied by blue flags to represent sexual assault survivors who contacted the Elizabeth Freeman Center in 2021.
"April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month in the U.S., and actually in a fair number of countries globally, and we wanted to repost the signs from last year because street harassment continues to be a serious problem and because we thought that they were powerful tools," planning committee co-chair and Elizabeth Freeman Center board member Susan Birns said.
She explained that in recent years, the Freeman Center has posted blue pennants on its lawn to represent every sexual assault survivor who contacted the agency during the year.
The numbers come from its database, meaning that a person could have reached out looking for services or a referral and identified that they were sexual assault survivors. The survivors could have called because they were in a domestic violence crisis but if sexual assault was a part of their history they were identified as such.
"And those numbers are really staggering especially considering that for the past year, we've still been in pandemic, there were 373 people in that category in 2021, and that represented a 10 percent increase from 2020 when there were 335," Birns said.
"And if we go back a few more years to 2016, there were 318, so before the pandemic, and the 373 is a 17 percent increase over the 2016 number, which was 318.
"So the numbers have been, I can't say going steadily up because there were a couple of years between 2016 and 2020 that the numbers were down a little bit, but primarily it's been an upward trajectory and obviously, that's very problematic."
There are about 200 blue flags in Park Square to represent the sexual assault survivors.
The signs and flags are also displayed in front of Monument Mountain Regional High school in Great Barrington.
The task force is also starting to gear up for its next "One Book, One Community" read that will kick off in October, which is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Community members will be reading "Assume Nothing: A Story of Intimate Violence" by Tanya Selvaratnam.
In the book, Selvaratnam recounts the intimate abuse she suffered while in a relationship with former New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.
"At the same time that he was publicly an ally for survivors, he was abusive in his own relationship," Birns said. "So it's a memoir, it’s a very powerful book, it was published in 2021 and we're very excited about it."
A webinar event is being planned with the author for April 2023.
Last year, the community read with Fazlalizadeh's "Stop Telling Women to Smile: Stories of Street Harassment and How We're Taking Back Our Power" attracted about 250 readers and 250 attendees at the April webinar.
Fazlalizadeh is a visual artist who attended art school in Philadelphia, which is where she became aware of the strong presence of street harassment in women's lives. Upon moving to New York City, she became tired of the harassers and wrote the book that includes 40 portraits of women affected by this kind of harassment.
To create the pieces, Fazlalizadeh interviews women and asks "what would you like to say to your harasser?" She then uses the women's responses as a caption under pencil sketches that she draws of interviewees. These images can be easily shared and blown up. They have been featured on building facades and in public spaces all over the country and internationally.
Birns reported that there was an indigenous woman from Canada at the webinar who said she felt validated by Fazlalizadeh's work.
A strange act of vandalism occurred last year when the street harassment art installation was taken down from Park Square and moved across the street and put into piles on lawns with about 10 of them being displayed upright.
Birns said the task force still has no answers about the incident and hopes it does not happen again.
There are also a number of events coming up that address sexual assault.
The Freeman Center is hosting Stand Out Against Sexual Assault events on Thursday, April 21, from 4:30 to 6 p.m. at North Adams City Hall, and on Thursday, April 28, from 5 to 6 at Park Square. A standout was held in Great Barrington this past week.
"Denim Day" will also be recognized on April 27. It was created when the Italian Supreme Court overturned a rape conviction because the survivor was wearing tight jeans, "thereby implying consent." The next day, the women of the Italian Parliament showed up in jeans, demonstrating solidarity with the survivor. It is now an international movement.
Tags: harassment,
