Will there ever come a day when minority groups feel safe leaving their home?

#IsThisOk is a gender-based violence campaign that looks at how women are treated in society as second-class citizens/lesser beings because of their gender.

In this short campaign we see a woman on a run being harassed by men who take pictures of her as well as women out after sundown who are being harassed by men, and just lots of little things that maybe you could think isn’t really harassment because it doesn’t involve anything sexual or touching, but is in fact just as bad or worse than these harassment types.

I think the biggest issue and the reason why we need to have campaigns like this is because people don’t understand the severity of what they are doing. When you tell a woman to smile when she is alone at night it can be very daunting and scary, especially if you don’t engage with the person telling you to smile, or you do. I have been in situations where if I have smiled at them they then think that’s an invitation to come and talk to me, and if I have ignored them or scowled they also take this as an invitation to berate me for being stuck up, there is no winning in the situation and if people understood that if you leave people alone or don’t give these unnecessary comments then the world would be a better place and people would feel more safe.

A big part of it comes down to group culture and how other people will often take the sideline for people being harassed or abused instead of standing up for them, and as a female myself it’s very hard to see someone being harassed and wanting to stand in and help them but knowing that, that will then come on to me. We need men to stand up for us and to tell their friends, co-workers, who ever it may be, that this is not ok because if we try and do it we just invite more harassment which is disgusting.

If you want to educate yourself on these micro aggressions that go towards women in terms of sexism and harassment then give their short campaign a watch. I will link it here as it is so valuable in showing you that harassment isn’t just rape or being touched inappropriately or being physically abused but a lot of it comes down to emotional treatment of the victim as well, and usually that is just the beginning. In a lot of the true crime documentaries I watch people will start with saying things before they start with physical attacks because it is a build up, and we need to stop it at the beginning so that it doesn’t get worse and these women don’t end up living in fear.

Let me know what you think of the campaign in the comments.

Until next time.

Published by shonaharding

Media graduate with a passion for reviewing film and TV. View all posts by shonaharding