HALIFAX — A Halifax woman hopes to shed light on the issue of street harassment through social media, joining an international movement of women working under the hashtag #StopStreetHarassment.

Mélissa LeBlanc is behind @catcallsofhfx, an Instagram account that acts as a space for victims of street harassment to share their stories about being catcalled.

The main goal, said LeBlanc, is to let people know that it’s OK for people to talk about street harassment and stand up for themselves when it happens.

“Catcalls are a way to assert power over another person, because a lot of the time, people don’t think that you can say something. It’s not a harmless thing,” said LeBlanc, 27.

“It can inflict a lot of fear in people. People avoid going to certain areas, and that’s not OK. People should walk around freely and go where they need to be.”

The @catcallsofhfx account follows in the footsteps of similar accounts from other cities that collect stories from people who have experienced sexual harassment while walking around.

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The idea behind it is simple, said LeBlanc: people send her their own stories of street harassment, which she then screenshots and posts on the account’s Instagram story.

“People are pretty comfortable with talking to me about it because it’s all anonymous,” she said.

“I try my best to console them and tell them that they’re not alone, this is something that happens in the city all the time.”

One of the more recent stories was that of a 14-year-old girl who had been sexually harassed by a group of men, LeBlanc said.

Since starting the account about a month ago, stories have started to trickle in with nearly 150 followers as of Sunday afternoon. While she used to get one or two stories a week, she now receives around four.

LeBlanc, a criminology graduate at Saint Mary’s University, said most of the stories come from experiences in and around Halifax campuses.

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She believes the issue boils down to a sense of entitlement, an influx of students during the school year, and a lack of accountability on campus.

“From my own experience at Saint Mary’s, there aren’t a lot of policies in place that are accessible for people to look at, and if somebody decides to disclose to a faculty staff member, it’s not often that it’s received with compassion and understanding,” she said.

“If someone comes to me with a disclosure, I really want to emphasize the fact that they’re not alone and that they have the right to be safe in the streets.”

As the account gains more traction, LeBlanc said she plans on using chalk to write down some of the catcalls people have gotten at the place where it happened to further raise awareness around street harassment. Some of the accounts in other cities like New York do this, she said.

She noted that a number of people have reached out to her to offer their assistance in the project.

“It’s not up to me to tell my community ‘this is what we need to do.’ I think it’s a collective thing,” she said.

In the past, websites like Hollaback! Halifax have highlighted street harassment in the city as part of a campaign where anonymous stories are plotted on a map to showcase where incidents have be reported.

A few years ago, Hollaback! also teamed up with the Avalon Sexual Assault Centre in 2014 and 2015 where large groups of people dressed as felines walked, rolled and biked through downtown in a “Cats Glare Back at Sexual Street Harassment and Sexual Violence” event.

LeBlanc believes that sharing stories about street harassment has a dual purpose: both to provide resources and let victims of harassment know that they aren’t alone, and to show the perpetrators that the people they harass are no longer afraid to speak up.

“It can assert the notion that violence against women can come in all different shapes and sizes and all different forms,” she said.

“If the people who harass other people know that there are consequences for their actions, or they know that they’re going to be shamed, it creates a sense of accountability.”

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