iPhone Now Lets Women Hollaback Against Street Harassers

For those of you unacquainted with Hollaback, it's a website where women (and men) can post photos snapped of street harassers. HollabackNYC's tagline reads: "Whether you're commuting, lunching, partying, dancing, walking, chilling, drinking, or sunning, you have the right to feel safe, confident, and sexy, without being the object of some turd's fantasy. So stop walkin' on and Holla Back: Send us pics of street harassers!" The goal is to give harassees a means of fighting back, and hopefully making a perpetrator think before making a problematic move: Will this get my pic online?

Now, for iPhone users, the new iHollaback app makes it easier to take part in this "woman-powered guerrilla activism," as Shelby Knox calls it on Feministe. After being the target of street harassment, all someone has to do is pull up the app on their iPhone, input the location and kind of abuse that occurred, and upload the photo that she just snapped with her camera phone.

But wait: it gets better. This information doesn't just go out into cyberspace and sit there all fragmented. The report feeds into a database that women can search to find out what places and streets have a higher percentage of incidents, so they know where to avoid (or carry pepper spray). And, because street harassment is a big problem that there's little data on, the data compiled by iPhone users will give us all a better understanding of the frequency and type of harassment that occurs, a tool that can also be very useful to law enforcement and legislators interested in passing stricter laws to keep streets safe.

For those of you, like myself, who aren't iPod users, there's a texting platform and Droid app in the works, so that you, too, will be able to hollaback.

Photo credit: Jorge Quinteros