#MoveEquity

Brianna Myers for Race, Gender and the Media

This week I participated in a tweet chat called #MoveEquity. It was a discussion about how can we encourage the youth of today to walk and bike outside without subjecting them to street harassers. Children are expected to have 60 minutes of physical activity a day. Walking to and from school would be a great opportunity to achieve this requirement, but some children (especially young women) do not feel safe in doing so. In the tweet chat we talked about who is usually the target and what we can do to help.

The discussion on Twitter provided very good information concerning this matter. We talked about programs that are designed to help, walking in numbers, getting local government involved and even hosting forums for the actual kids to talk about what would make them feel safe. Towards the end of the discussion we got to what really needed to be handled: talking to our young boys and teaching them that it's WRONG.

Obviously yes, we should have measures to take care of when it does happen. We should be educated on how to be a proactive bystander and know when to intervene if we see street harassment occur. Lets face it though, most street harassers are of the male gender. Why are we not pounding it through our boys' heads that this is not something they should be doing. Although I'm sure they've seen it in 50% of the movies and TVs that they watch.

This made me think about the discussion we had in class about the new driving service that's for women that only allows women passengers and women drivers, including people who identify as a woman. Have we completely given up on education the male generation about how to treat a woman? Not just because she's a woman but because she's a freaking human being! Why oh why is this okay? I understand that these programs are necessary because it's starting to look like a lost cause for a portion of the male generation out there and if these programs save lives, well then let's keep them coming.