INVESTIGATING THE UTILITY OF THE FILM WAR ZONE IN THE PREVENTION OF STREET HARASSMENT

Abstract

Street harassment, the act of sexual harassment by strangers in public, is a common experience shared by many women. This paper reports the first experimental evaluation of the impact of a popular documentary-style film, War Zone, on men’s attitudes toward street harassment and empathy for women who experience it. The sample was an ethnically diverse group of undergraduate men attending an urban university (N = 98). Given the film’s primary focus on women’s perspectives and the relation of street harassment to rape, we predicted the film would decrease acceptance of street harassment and increase empathy toward women who experience street harassment. We did not find support for these main effects. Hostility toward women, however, was negatively related to cognitive empathy and feelings of distress following the film, and hostility toward women moderated the effect of film condition on distress. Peer acceptance predicted greater self-acceptance of street harassment. Implications for future street harassment research and prevention strategies are discussed. Street harassment, sexual harassment by strangers in public, is an experience shared by so many women that it is an expected part of womanhood (Bowman, 1993; Gardner, 1995). Street harassment includes catcalls, whistles, and sexual gestures and comments. It shares defining features with sexual assault: Targets are most often women, initiators are most often men, and targets are forced to endure the often degrading, objectifying, and threatening behavior (Bowman, 1993; Lenton, Smith, Fox, & Morra, 1999; Quina, 1990). Compared to other forms of sexual victimization,thephenomenonofstreetharassmentisunderstudied. This paper reports findings from an experimental examination of whether a popular film, War Zone (Hadleigh-West, 1998), affects men’s acceptance of street harassment and empathy for women who experience street harassment and whether theseimpactsaremoderated bypeer attitudesand hostility toward women.