Forty years of street harassment…

I am a 55 year old woman and I have experienced this kind of harassment since my early teens and still do today. My daughter is 21 and has experienced this kind of harassment since she was 12 years old. We want to know why? What gives certain males the right to tell us what they feel about us as we innocently walk the public highway? I have two sisters, aged 50 and 45 respectively and they too have experienced harrassment from early ages.

The list of types of harassment experienced by just this one family group are as follows:

1. Being followed whilst walking along – either by a single male i.e around a supermarket in Spain – trying to ‘rub up against’ me from behind as I walked around with my family (I was 14 years old)
2. As a 16 year old – I was waiting outside my grandma’s house a car pulled up with a single older male inside who asked if I was available for ‘business’ and to get into his car – I was a schoolgirl.
3. My sisters aged 14 and 9 years were approached as they walked up to my grandma’s house by a group of men in a car and told to ‘get in’ and one even tried to grab my youngest sis to pull her inside.
4. My daughter, whether she wears skirts, long coats, trousers jeans whatever with or without make-up gets cat called, wolf whistled and jeered whilst walking or waiting at a bus stop. It has come to a point where she is becoming agoraphobic because of this and refuses to go anywhere alone.
5. I walk home at 9pm most nights and have been subject to shouting from cars packed with young men, being followed twice by two men who stopped me and asked where I was going and even a man in a motorised wheelchair, followed me almost to my street, calling out to me.

It is absolutely unbelievable and only now is there a forum for us to shout about this totally unnerving and bullying offensive behaviour – and I’m sorry but only women understand about this because 99% of the time it is only women who experience this intimidating and invasive behaviour from men.

– S HAY

Location: Happens everywhere in all situations (United Kingdom, Spain)

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