I have just received an email from the co-ordinator of Hollaback Europe saying that due to a campaign of intimidation she has been forced to close the site.

There has been a lot of negative press about this site and it really angers me that it could create such a violent backlash.

She was seeing offensive posts on the site and having had posted her home address was genuinely fearful of what would happen to her.

Street harassment IS sexual violence and it creates an atmosphere of fear preventing many from actively choosing their daily route to work, nights out and use of transport. A campaign of such fear is nothing but out and out socially acceptable violence.

Why are people so scared of a platform created to allow women to re-empower themselves?

The backlash is often thought of as some faceless patriarchal machine, but clearly it is carried out by such deluded people as those who threatened and intimidated the co-ordinator of Hollaback EU.

This was a chance to revolutionise how society viewes street harassment, to get people thinking and debating about the line between flirting and sexual harassment. I wonder how long it took society (i.e. the patriarchy) to accept equal pay and work harassment.

Women are still perceived as victims in the public sphere, up for approval or disapproval by the "normal" majority, and clearly any attempts to question this is met by complete opposition, allowing no room for debate.

Another problem faced was the lack of posts. People just weren't prepared to engage in this project. Why? Fear of reprisal? Misunderstanding of what street harassment is? Thinking there was nothing wrong with it? Or was it that they didn't know about it?
As such a successful project in the US it is a shame that it didn't pick up, but after such a short time, maybe we will never know if it could.

Well done though to the co-ordinator, she genuinely risked her own safety to set up this site, and its such a shame that it never had the chance to get going because of some appalling behaviour from the ignorant, frightened bullies who posted on the site.

I am still incredibly keen to get this project up and running, and if anyone has any ideas then lets do something about it!