Bicycle by her side, a woman on the BART notices a man get on the train. He wears a white long-sleeved shirt and black shorts that rise above his knees. As he sits directly in front of the girl, he takes out his newspaper and opens his legs wide—so wide that he shows private parts to her. But this is no accidental slip. The man peeks over the top of his newspaper to see if she will notice. While he waits for her attention, she reaches for her phone and takes a picture of him—all of him.

Aside from using the photo as proof for police officers who charge him for indecent exposure, the woman also posted the same photograph on a website that brands him as a street harasser—a website called Hollaback-SF.

San Francisco, a city that prides itself on its left-wing politics, still has a constant problem with sexual harassment on the streets. Now women are fighting back with the Hollaback-SF blog. If it’s a catcall from a passenger in a car, a kissing sound from a silly teenager, or an unwanted comment from a bystander on the sidewalk, Hollaback-SF attempts to collar men for their actions.

Jessica, the moderator of the website, who prefers not to disclose her last name for this article, decided she couldn’t let another day pass where she felt powerless against harassers. She came up with an idea that would not only help her, but also many other women with the same frustrations. She started Hollaback-SF, a blog where women in San Francisco can vent about their encounters with street harassers. “Men think it’s okay to say things like ‘Hey baby,’ but it’s not okay, and Hollaback shows it,” she says.

As a resident of San Francisco, Jessica created a community on Hollaback-SF, where women submit a journal-type entry about their incidents on the streets, and even post photographs of the men who have harassed them, just like the overexposed man on BART. “It’s great that I started a space for the outpouring of women who had pent up anger and emotions about it [street harassment],” Jessica says.

Jessica started the blog in September 2006 when she read about Hollaback-NYC, the first blog founded in New York in August 2005, in a daily news feed. Hollaback-NYC, started by seven friends, was inspired by Thao Nguyen, who photographed a food restaurant owner while he was masturbating on a subway-—an event that caused a sensation in New York. The blog encourages women to photograph men who harass them with their camera phones. Their motto reads “If you can’t slap ’em, snap ’em.”

The most important message Hollaback-SF addresses is the power play between men and women in today’s society. Since sexual harassment has become a norm in public places, it’s difficult to prosecute a man for sexual harassment on the sidewalk, based upon what an individual may find offensive. From a feminist background, Jessica personally believes the street harassment occurs because male-gendered people think they own public spaces. “[Men] think that anyone who is female and not male-gendered—maybe if you’re a transsexual or a feminine gay man—that you don’t own that space,” she says.

The blog has received some criticism, but women have greatly responded to the blogs with their submissions. After Hollaback-NYC began two years ago, the site got 1,500 hits a day and 16 sister sites in other urban areas followed. “It’s a way for women to say something back in retrospect, when in the moment they felt powerless,” Jessica says. “If a guy ends up on there he was probably making a woman feel uncomfortable.”

While some view that the blog is a positive place for woman empowerment and support, others think the blog gives the average man a particularly bad reputation for being perverse. Some men think that the stories on the blog may be exaggerated. “If I saw a picture of myself on the site, I would be pissed,” says Allan Miranda, a 22-year-old San Francisco resident. “If the story was inaccurate and women didn’t talk to me, I would sue the person who wrote the story.”

At the hint of any inaccuracies in the stories published on the web, the glory of the blog may become sour. If a woman on Hollaback paired a recognizable photo with an inaccurate story, she can possibly be sued for defamation.

A disclaimer on the blog says: “Hollaback-SF is not responsible for the accuracy of individual postings. All views and positions expressed in posted submissions are those of individual contributors only.” It is difficult to know who is responsible in a situation where a woman or the blog can be blamed for inaccurate stories. David Greene, the executive director of the First Amendment Project in San Francisco, says that under federal law, Internet hosts have immunity for statements by others that are published on their websites as long as the host plays only a passive role. They must not be involved in editing, creating the context from which the defamatory meaning derives or otherwise authoring the post in any way. “Theoretically, a blog manager could indeed not be responsible for the truth of the statements posted on the blog,” says Greene.

If the blog moderator even slightly altered a story, she could be sued if a man decided to file a claim for defamation. The only editing that the stories on Hollaback-SF undergo are those that contain the personal information or race of the person, since the blog has an anti-racism policy in pursuit of preventing stereotypes among specific groups. “I post every story, but I edit out if they mention race,” Jessica says.

Some men think that forums like Hollaback give another connotation to sexual harassment as a definition. Whether it is strong eye contact or a simple “Hello,” some women will cringe at the gesture. If a man felt that a woman sexually harassed him, he cannot post a photo or story about his incident. In its Question and Answers section, Hollaback states that the blog is a project dedicated to combating a particular form of violence that designates subordinated groups. The blog uses women, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people as examples of groups that are historically subject to the patriarchy of straight men. “It’s clearly a place for women only,” Miranda says, after hearing about the Hollaback. “The last thing they want to hear is a man complaining about being sexually harassed.”

Women are not the only targets for inspiration in Hollaback’s combat against sexual harassment. Jessica hopes that the effect of the stories on the blog will reach the minds of men, educating them about a woman’s true feelings about harassment. “Maybe they never thought about it before,” she says. “But seeing all these stories in one place is really powerful.” In the long term Jessica hopes that both women and men will engage with one another in conversation about sexual harassment, and that woman will be inspired to “holla back.”

Hollaback can be seen in many ways—from a feminist back-lashing blog toward men, to a sanctuary to vent about sexual harassment frustrations. Either way, men may fret about the intentions of the blog and the outcome, but Hollaback-SF has been a place of relief from harassment for women. In a sense, the blog can help interaction between men and women. Men can be aware of what women consider sexual harassment, so that the next time they turn their head to look at a pretty woman, they would have the courtesy to think twice about what they say. “If the blog makes my boy cousin or friend’s brother think again before saying inappropriate things to a girl, then its mission is fulfilled,” Jessica says.