One of my favorite websites, HollabackNYC, is opening a new website, Hollaback! (for people country-wide), and creating an IPhone application!!

What is Hollaback you ask?? It’s a website dedicated to ending street harassment towards women. Every single woman I know (and many men, too) has been harassed or groped or worse. Street harassment, as the PSA video states on the new website, is just the first step in a ladder of sexual violence (“If street harassment is OK, then groping is OK,” and so on).

It works like this: say you and your friend are riding the subway to Coney Island and a middle-aged man sits across from you and starts masturbating (a true story I just grabbed from the website, aptly titled “D Train Dick-aster”). You can take a picture of him, post his image on the website and tell your story. This seemingly simple act allows people to “fight” back against those who make us feel uncomfortable in our own skin, who turn public places into places of fear; and it allows us to tell our stories and remind others that they are not alone. Because as the website states:

We all have the right to feel safe, confident and sexy!