Giving Compass' Take:
- Anika Merkin shares her experiences of sexual harassment at an early age, shedding light on the continued pervasiveness of sexism and how it impacts girls' lives.
- What steps can you take as a donor to help put an end to the pervasive sexual harassment women and girls face across the world?
- Learn more about key gender equity issues and how you can help.
- Search our Guide to Good for nonprofits focused on gender equity in your area.
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We were on the subway heading home from a Broadway show. It was late, and I was sitting next to my mom when both of our phones started blowing up.
I was in sixth grade and had just gotten Instagram. My mom had agreed to let me download the social media app, so long as she also had my login and could monitor it. It would just be for the first couple of months, she said.
That night, out of the blue, I started getting added to a bunch of group chats. The boys in those chats didn’t seem to realize I could see what they were saying. They talked about my body using derogatory language, some of which I had never even heard before; they called me names that made me feel ashamed, showing how girls are harmed by sexual harassment before they even fully understand it. Especially because my mom could see everything they had said.
My mom, alarmed, asked me about it.
I shrugged it off. Even though I was only 11, this kind of attention and the discomfort that came with it had already started to feel routine. The comments, the screenshots, the way girls are sexualized without consent — it has become so familiar that many teens and tweens don’t immediately recognize it as wrong.
But it is wrong. And it happens constantly, in ways big and small, online and in person, in school and on city streets, starting way earlier than most adults think.
The problem is pervasive. Some 71% percent of women and girls in the U.S. report having experienced street harassment, with more than two-thirds of them saying it started when they were 13 or younger, according to the nonprofit organization Stop Street Harassment. When I was barely a teenager, a man exposed himself to me at the subway station down the block from my house; it would be the first time of many. And this kind of street harassment doesn’t even take into account what teens experience among peers, in school, at social gatherings, and online.
In seventh grade, after trying to explain to a boy in my grade how exhausting it was to be watched and commented on constantly, he essentially told me it was my fault, saying, “You want people to stop objectifying women, but you’re giving them a reason to do it.” That sentence stuck with me, demonstrating the attitudes that lead to girls being harmed by sexual harassment.
Read the full article about the impacts of sexual harassment on girls by Anika Merkin at Chalkbeat.