National Stalking Awareness Month
January is National Stalking Awareness Month (NSAM), a time when many organizations - including WomenSafe - work to share information and spread awareness about the warning signs and impacts of stalking. I can’t imagine that anyone would argue against the importance of this work, and I’d think generally most of us would agree that stalking must be something that is prevented and eliminated. But a key component of prevention is knowledge and awareness, which had me thinking about what I do (and don’t) know about stalking.
First, the basics. Stalking is defined by the CDC as “when someone repeatedly harasses or threatens someone else, causing fear or safety concerns. Most often, stalking occurs by someone the victim knows or with whom they had an intimate relationship.” According to the CDC, approximately 1 in 6 women and 1 in 17 men have experienced stalking in their lifetimes, and most women (54%) and many men (41%) are under the age of 25 when they are victims of stalking. Further, research has shown that the impacts of stalking are severe. About 68% of female and 70% of male victims of stalking experienced threats of physical harm during their lives, and stalking has been shown to lead to depression and post-traumatic stress disorder for those who experience it.
I can read all of this and take it in, but when I close my eyes and imagine what stalking is, what comes to mind is essentially a scene straight out of any generic horror film - a woman is trying to get into her home or her car at night while she becomes more aware that a person is following her, perhaps while dramatic music surges in the background, communicating danger.
But there are other versions of stalking I have learned from popular media, behaviors that are portrayed as romantic instead of dangerous. I’m thinking of the character Lloyd Dobler in “Say Anything,” standing under his ex-girlfriend’s window holding a boombox and loudly playing the song to which she lost her virginity. I’m thinking of Benjamin showing up at Elaine’s college and forcing her to interact with him after she explicitly told him she never wanted to see him again in “The Graduate” (a reasonable request given she just found out he was sleeping with her mother). I’m thinking of “Love Actually,” when Mark appears at the door of his best friend’s wife Juliet and uses cue cards to tell her that he’s secretly in love with her and always will be.
I know plenty of folks will roll their eyes at those or other similar examples from film. When I consider them I have similar thoughts of “but these are romantic gestures, they aren’t threats!” But according to the CDC, common stalking tactics include unwanted phone calls, approaching a victim or showing up unwanted at their home, workplace, or school. Essentially, behaviors or actions based on unwanted contact that scare and threaten the other person. In each of the films I listed, the women do not appear to be frightened or harmed by these unwanted advances. But what would it actually feel like if my ex-lover started playing a deeply personal song under my bedroom window, loud enough for neighbors and my parents to hear? And how would I feel if the person who slept with my mother while trying to date me repeatedly violated my request that they never see me again by repeatedly approaching me on my college campus? And if I were newly, happily married, would it feel nice or upsetting to have my partner’s best friend secretly tell me that they are obsessively in love with me, to the point of filming only me during my wedding?
Through popular culture osmosis, I have been raised to believe these are all expressions of healthy, aspirational romance. And yet, when I think about the most romantic things that defined the early days of my marriage, they never violated my requests or desires. But what if they had crossed those lines, into the territory of unwanted texting or contact or obsessively watching and tracking me? Would I have recognized these behaviors as stalking? Would they have communicated danger to me in time to ask for help or seek intervention? Or would I misunderstand them as my “Say Anything” moments, pushing down my unease and fear and try to ignore them as important warning signs?
January is the month when we acknowledge the importance of increasing stalking awareness, and to do that, we have to talk about how and where stalking is misrepresented as love and romance in popular culture. Within my own family, I work to speak openly with my kids about what healthy and loving relationships do - and don’t - feel like, and I am rethinking how I see and consider the portrayals of relationships in their media diet, at least while I have that level of influence. And on the macro level, I plan to continue supporting WomenSafe and other community organizations that do this critical work every day, providing support and resources to help stalking victims through scary experiences and hopefully reconnect them with the safety and security everyone deserves.
Now, can we get a movie about something like that?
If you think you may be experiencing stalking, call WomenSafe at 802-388-4205 to speak to an advocate or go to https://www.stalkingawareness.org/what-to-do-if-you-are-being-stalked/
Ellen Whelan-Wuest (she/her/hers) - co-chair of the WomenSafe Board