Dr. Laura S. Logan Street Harassment

Dr. Laura S. Logan details the complex, intersectional history of street harassment, including its history, causes, prevalence, victims, and harassers, in her research article “Street Harassment: Current and Promising Avenues for Researchers and Activists.” Enlightening the reader on the history of street harassment, or lack thereof, Logan explains why there appears to be little research on the common social issue. It is through this explanation that Logan develops a term that encompasses the various types of harassment that women and members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual (LGBTQIA+) community face daily. This term, street harassment, is the first step in Logan’s call to action for researchers and activists

Logan utilizes a popular argument in sociology “that when an issue is recognized as ‘bad or undesirable by a significant number of people or a number of significant people who mobilize to eliminate it’” to provide a definition of what a social problem is (Logan 199). After this definition, Logan details the numerous organizations that have formed in response to street harassment and what actions they have taken to eliminate it. In providing the definition of a social problem, Logan frames street harassment as a social problem, further emphasizing the urgency there is to compile more cohesive research and formulate ways to prevent it on a legal level. Establishing street harassment as a societal issue is Logan’s first step in deconstructing the cause and prevalence of this issue, which she does by first looking at the victims who are the focus of most research on the subject. Logan begins her section about the victims of street harassment by evaluating studies about the frequency of street harassment. Shifting the focus of the reader, Logan begins addressing the harassers who are overlooked in research on street

Logan furthers her call to action by recognizing that researchers need to address this issue because “at the least, [researchers] can imagine that lesbians of color have even less permission than white lesbians to violate norms and to decline men’s violent overtures” (Logan 203). Examining the harassers themselves, Logan seeks an explanation for the reader as to why street harassment occurs. She narrows it down to two explanations for the behavior: bonding between men and control. Logan alludes to the fact that encompassing both rationalizations is masculinity; male bonding is seen as harmless fun that begins with teenage males that continues into adulthood, control, on the other hand, is rooted in male entitlement. The harasser is entitled to his victim, it is their fault for the harassment, it is their fault for provoking the harasser, and their behavior warrants the harassment they receive. It is this thinking that is prevalent in society, and it is what allows street harassment to