Photography: No Fear Art Can Help Expose Sexual Harassment

Mary Finch East London Socialist Party

- Mary Finch

“No one stopped to help me when I walked through the barriers at Leeds train station and a drunk man grabbed and pulled my hair. No one helped me as he then proceeded to shout ‘slag’ and ‘bitch’ at me across the station when I managed to free myself.”

Every woman has a story like this. Amy Cousens, a friend and fellow Socialist Party member, told me this one. I’ve been trying to capture those experiences - of the endemic, systematic sexual harassment and assault of women - in a photography project titled No Fear.

Emilie Autumn, a musician poet, and author, writes in her book ‘The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls’ that in the US a woman is raped approximately every two minutes. A pedestrian is hit by a car in the US every eight minutes.