Week Four: Ladies and Gentlemen

This week, I had the opportunity to attend an event for Lentera Sintas, an Indonesian campaign to promote awareness about sexual harassment and to support survivors of sexual assault. Right now, they’re going around to middle and high school orientations, talking about what sexual harassment is and how to deal with it. There’s a lot of talk in Indonesia right now about reducing sexually based crimes but most of this talk is how to punish the perpetrators with jail sentences and even chemical castration. The legislation doesn’t do much for the survivors of these crimes, so this campaign is trying to help.   

Jakarta high school student shows her support for survivors of sexual harassment

After the event, I got to chat with one of the volunteers who lead the talk. She somehow managed to get about 100 tenth graders to engage in discussion about sex and other often-taboo topics. She told me a bit about herself, and how even though she is probably one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen, she isn’t married. She said she wants to chase her own dreams, not just be a mother and a wife.

One thing I notice walking around here is that there are so many men out in the streets, but far less women. In my neighborhood, men sit out on their porches in groups every night. Boys run through the streets, playing catch and riding bikes. But where are all the women? When I run at the local sports complex I see soccer fields full of boys’ teams, but not a single girl kicking a ball around with pink cleats and a bouncing pony tail.

My country is absolutely guilty of marginalizing women, but I think I’m just used to seeing it in different ways. It’s normal to see girls in my hometown, walking down the beach wearing string bikinis and being hit on by men twice their age.  Girls here often cover themselves from head to toe. Women at colleges across my country are welcomed to frat parties with sickeningly pink punch spiked with cheap vodka, and sweet-talked by boys into bedrooms upstairs. The taboo on alcohol here prohibits the nearly 200,000 people under the age of 21 who are sent to American emergency rooms every year for alcohol related injuries.

Cartoon by Malcom Evans

I guess I’m just learning a lot from a world so different from my own. It would be a lie to say I don't feel vulnerable sometimes, walking down the streets in America. Some men there will say a lot worse things than “would you like a taxi miss?” when you walk by. But some groups of men here just stare. And there’s something about fifteen pairs of unwanted male eyes locking onto you without many other woman around that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. And its not just grown men that do this, but groups of schoolboys who catcall when you walk by.

I think that's why its so valuable that this group is starting a conversation about sexual harassment, and is advocating for women’s’ rights. I never realized how lucky I was to be from a world where girls are ballerinas and soccer players, where women are CEO’s and carpool drivers. Not to say that my country’s way is the right way, the only way, but I’m glad to see people in this country fighting to give girls more choices.