Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

Archives for May 2010

Tired of just writing about street harassment

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Three weeks ago when I was in Oregon, a man harassed me from behind bushes during my run. He scared me and made me feel unsafe as a woman runner, a woman in public, and a woman traveling alone. I blogged about it and then fumed about what else I should have done. Should I have called the police? Yelled at him? Tried to reason with him about the inappropriateness of his behavior? Tee-peed his house? Written up a fake citation and left it in his mailbox?

The truth is, I felt too unsafe to do anything but leave and never go back and I didn’t think the police would care.

So what I did was draw on my strength as a writer and I wrote and submitted an op-ed to the Portland, Oregon, newspaper, the Oregonian. Today they published it.

I’m glad to have my story and the plight of other women runners featured in a prominent newspaper so that hopefully it will raise people’s awareness about  the crap we put up with and how we don’t like it. But I’m also getting tired of just writing about street harassment. (Especially when what I write for online publications only seems to incite ignorance and harassment in the comments section, where men try to justify why they should be allowed to harass women. Aarrgh!!)

So now I’m plotting what my action will be and brainstorming what I can do in addition to writing about street harassment. And I’m glad there are already wonderful anti-street harassment activists (featured in my book) whose projects I can look to for ideas.

Thoughts? What type of action would you like to see happen?

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Safety in numbers

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My roommate and I live in the Fan district in Richmond, Va. It’s all too common to be followed home (either on foot or scarier, in slow moving cars) by random sketchy men. The best thing you can try and do is ignore it, but there’s this primal fear that kicks in when you’re being followed by someone who could easily overpower you. Most of the time they’re not that aggressive, but every now and then you get some real creepers.

Once we were walking to the 7-11 near our apartment in broad daylight when a group of six men circled around us and demanded that we “talk” to them, and they tried to touch my roommate and myself on the shoulder. Then they started moving in closer and tried to convince us to get into their car to go “hang out” with them. I told them no and they moved in closer and tried to grab us. My roommate is a lot more passive than I am and she froze, so I grabbed her by the arm and pushed through two of the men. They followed after us and yelled at us for about a block, then they finally called us frigid bitches and turned around.

More than anything, I’m glad that I was there to look out for my roommate. The whole ordeal was infuriating, but the most important thing I learned from this is that there is safety in numbers. What bothers me the most about this is that it happened during the day with several people around, and no one stepped in to help us even when we were clearly being harassed.

– anonymous

Location: Richmond, VA

Share your street harassment story today and help raise awareness about the problem. Include your location and it will be added to the Street Harassment Map.

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Groped in Cadiz

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Where do I even start? Being in Spain has been out of control in terms of street harassment, but the worst experience I had was at Carnaval in Cádiz. Carnaval is the alcohol-fueled Spanish version of Halloween, in which everyone takes to the streets. My two female friends and I were walking through a relatively crowded alley and took a break when four men approached us. We were standing in a corner, and they surrounded us and trapped us in the corner.

They began to ask us if we had boyfriends (yes), where were they, and explained that if our boyfriends weren’t there then we didn’t have boyfriends. We tried to get them to get away from us and they became more and more persistent.

Finally, one of them grabbed me and started to grope my breasts aggressively through my jacket until I slapped him across the face and started screaming at him (“cabrón” is a very useful word to know in Spain if you want men to leave you alone). It was incredibly frustrating but I’m glad that I reacted quickly and got him and his minions to leave.

– E. S.

Location: Cádiz, Spain

Share your street harassment story today and help raise awareness about the problem. Include your location and it will be added to the Street Harassment Map.

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Gotcha!

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I was walking my dog near my home, and two teenage boys in an SUV whistled and yelled at me as they drove past. My jaw dropped, but as soon as they passed me, they got stuck behind a transit bus that was parked a stop, waiting for someone to load their bike. In that time, I was able to walk down the sidewalk towards them and reprimand them harshly while they couldn’t move. They looked incredibly scared/embarrassed. I told them they should never speak to women that way, that it is disrespectful.

– A. Brown

Location: Fayetteville, AR

Share your street harassment story today and help raise awareness about the problem. Include your location and it will be added to the Street Harassment Map.

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“Hey baby, I want to have your babies”

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A friend and I had visited a museum in Brussels and were on our way walking to the station. Suddenly 3 men were following us, whistling and were saying things like ‘Hey sexy’ and finally ‘Hey baby, I want to have your babies!” I felt relieved when we finally lost them in the crowd.

– anonymous

Location: Brussel, Belgium

Share your street harassment story today and help raise awareness about the problem. Include your location and it will be added to the Street Harassment Map.

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