Not Your Baby street harassment app tells you how to respond to scumbags

A new app has been developed by Canadian charity METRAC (Metropolitan Action Committee on Violence Against Women and Children) to empower women to respond to situations of sexual harassment wherever they are.

You simply select who it is that’s harassing you, where you are and the app will serve up random suggestions about what to do and how to respond.

So for instance, if it’s a co-worker and you’re at work, Not Your Baby suggests:

“Report the harassment to a supervisor, human resources or union.”

And if it’s a random stranger in the street, the app tells you to:

“Make a phone call even if there’s no one on the other end”

The advice changes each time and some seem sensible and logical, whereas others feature specific put downs to say to gross weirdos who hit on you in awkward situations. There’s also a section for you to add in your own suggestions and more information for those experiencing specific problems.

We love the idea behind the app and we ALWAYS love the idea of putting leery scumbags in their place when they approach us in the street. But we don’t love the idea of being all on our own and taking out our shiny, expensive smartphones in order to figure out how we should respond to someone who’s clearly a little bit nuts. It just seems a bit, well, stupid.

However, we imagine the app hasn’t been designed for people to follow religiously, but it’s certainly an interesting way to raise awareness about the problem of street harassment, which far too many of us don’t talk about enough.

Not Your Baby is available from iTunes for free.