Who Said Sexual Harassment Only Happens To Women?

Illustration (Pixabay)

JAKARTA - Who says sexual harassment in public spaces, especially on public transportation, is only experienced by women? From the results of the Survey of Sexual Harassment in Public Spaces conducted by the Safe Public Space Coalition (KRPA), it is noted that 1 in 10 men have actually experienced sexual harassment in public spaces.

KRPA representative, Rastra said, from the results of a survey that was attended by 62,224 male and female respondents, as many as 46.80 percent of respondents admitted to having experienced sexual harassment. They experience sexual harassment when using public transportation such as buses, KRL, and public transportation.

"Male respondents also experienced sexual harassment on the bus as much as 42.89 percent, KRL as much as 24.86 percent, and angkot by 19.65 percent," said Rastra when presenting the results of their survey at the Komnas Perempuan Office, Jalan Laturharhari, Central Jakarta. , Wednesday, November 27th.

It's just that, harassment against men is not as high as the abuse experienced by women. According to Rastra, this survey records that women are 13 times more prone to experience sexual harassment.

"This national survey found that 3 out of 5 women experienced harassment in public spaces," he said.

KRPA noted, sexual harassment against women mostly occurred on public buses with a percentage of 35.45 percent, angkot 30.01 percent, and KRL 17.79 percent. While the rest, occurred in online motorcycle taxis and conventional motorcycle taxis with numbers ranging from 4 percent.

The forms of sexual harassment received by these survivors also varied, namely in the forms of verbal, physical and non-physical.

The types of verbal harassment that are commonly experienced are whistles or whistles, kisses, comments on the body, explicit sexual comments, sexy comments, racist comments, flirting, being secretly photographed, snooping, honking.

As for physical harassment, usually the perpetrator will touch, grope, or rub their genitals. Meanwhile, non-physical forms of harassment are usually carried out by blocking, exposing genitals, approaching aggressively and continuously, and stalking.

"It is important for the public to know these various forms of harassment in order to be more able to identify them so that they can help intervene when harassment occurs," he said.

From the results of this survey, it was found that quite a number of witnesses tried to ignore incidents of harassment. KPRA noted, as many as 40.50 percent ignored the sexual harassment that occurred in their presence. In fact, as many as 14.80 percent of the witnesses actually blamed the victim of abuse when the incident occurred.

"Meanwhile, for those who defended and helped victims, the percentage reached 36.50 percent. The method is usually to confront the perpetrators directly with a total of 22.90 percent, distract or distract the perpetrators by 25 percent," explained Rastra.

While the rest, as many as 33.90 percent of witnesses usually confirmed that the victim was okay and as many as 13.40 percent of witnesses immediately tried to seek help by reporting to the security forces or other people who could help.

"When harassment occurs in a public space, it is the responsibility of people around or witnesses, not victims, to help intervene or stop the incident," he said.

Press conference on the Survey of Sexual Harassment in Public Spaces conducted by the Coalition for Safe Public Spaces (KRPA) (Wardhany Tsa Tsia / VOI)

Public transportation for women is not a solution

The rise of acts of sexual harassment has actually been attempted to be resolved by stakeholders in the field of public transportation. TransJakarta, for example, the Head of Public Relations and the Secretary of PT. Jakarta Transportation Nadia Diposanjoyo said that her party has actually provided a special bus for women or a section of the bus that can only be boarded for women.

"It's just that, it turns out that in the field women still like to get on the part of the bus which is for the public. Even though there are prone cases of sexual harassment there," he said when attending the event.

Not only TransJakarta, the MRT and Commuter Line actually have carriages specifically for women. However, in fact, there are still many women who are more comfortable sitting in carriages mixed with men.

From the observation of the reactions of netizens on social media, many women actually feel uncomfortable sitting in the women's carriages. Especially during rush hour when the carriages are full. Because, just a little friction in this carriage can cause prolonged verbal fighting.

This is also agreed by the Co-Director of Hollaback Jakarta, Vivi. The organization concerned with sexual harassment says the carriages that are grouped according to sex do not have any influence.

"This actually doesn't solve it. Like the woman's carriage, it causes other problems, or even a man asks why there are women in the mixed carriage even though they have been given a special carriage. Well, this actually limits the dark space," said Vivi.

There is also a special reason why women who sit or occupy special carriages are usually more fierce. According to him, these women usually feel that their safe space is only in the carriage, so they fight each other and make other women uncomfortable.

"Yes, that's why it doesn't solve the problem. That's why in the long term there must also be education to the public about harassment and what harassment looks like," he said.

He added that the lack of sexual education is actually one of the root causes of the rampant sexual harassment. This is because people do not understand about sexual boundaries which are usually taught in sexual education.

"They are not well informed about these issues. They do not understand which one is actually joking, which one is harassment," said Vivi.

Apart from not being informed about sexual harassment, the public also does not know which body boundaries other people can or cannot hold. "There is no comprehensive education regarding sexual and reproductive matters. They do not know which boundaries should not be touched," Vivi explained.

In addition, he considered that there is a culture of romanticization related to sexual harassment. One of them is the problem of cat calling or whistling, which has been considered excessive if it is considered sexual harassment.

"Like earlier, cat calling is considered to be praising, those things that actually people don't know and when they become perpetrators, they don't realize what they are doing is violence because there was no such education back again," he concluded.