Street Harassment as Everyday Violence

Melinda A. Mills investigates women’s experiences with street harassment, recognizing this phenomenon as a form of everyday violence. The author argues that street harassment connects to other forms of violence that impact women’s daily lives and that can cause “multiplicative trauma” in the wake.

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In Street Harassment as Everyday Violence, Melinda A. Mills investigates women’s experiences with street harassment, recognizing this phenomenon as a form of everyday violence. The author follows feminist scholars to consider the ways that silence can potentially, if only partially, protect women from verbally assaultive men who harass women in public. This violence both reveals and conceals itself in the discourses of silence about and during street harassment. It maps onto and reflects the web of violence that proves persistent and difficult to dismantle. This work operates as an initial intervention, by way of recognition of street harassment as a problem that hides in plain sight.