“I Actually Snapped”: Conceptualizing Resistance to Street Harassment as Feminist Snap and Erosion

Abstract

In this article, I examine the strategies of resistance deployed by people who have experienced street harassment. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 47 heterosexual women and LGBTQ+ people, I document how participants skillfully and contextually deployed resistance strategies to disrupt harassment. Notably, participants often represented resistance practices as moments of affective, subconscious snap. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s concept of feminist snap as well as feminist scholarship on affect and embodiment, I argue that practices of resistance must be located within a much longer history of harassment which builds up or sediments in the body over time, culminating in an affective breaking point. As Ahmed suggests, “a snap is not the starting point.” Conversely, other participants described being worn down by harassment over time, which I conceptualize as a form of feminist erosion. In examining practices of resistance to street harassment, I aim to provide insight into the disruption and contestation of dominant power relations and the formation of embodied, gendered subjectivities.