I get harassed on the street in my neighborhood all the time. I’m talking at least twice daily as I walk to and from train stations or to neighborhood businesses running errands. Whether it’s whispers, someone gawking at me, shouts from across the street or a car or physical contact, it’s constant. The only times it doesn’t happen is when I walk around with my boyfriend. I am used to this but it is obnoxious and disappointing every single time it happens.
This day we were experiencing spring thunderstorms in NYC, so as I walked home from the train station after work I kept my big black umbrella positioned so that I did not have to make eye contact with harassers on the way. Instead of taking this very clear indication that I did not want to be bothered, a guy walking in the opposite direction grabbed then dragged his fingers along my arm to get my attention.
I was immediately furious. How dare he invade my personal space like that? Is my walking down the street really an invitation for you to treat my body like your property to handle whenever you please? I shouted at him, “Why are you touching me?! I don’t know you! You don’t know me!” I dropped a couple of expletives for effect, but he only grinned and walked on.
I was so furious walking the last block home, still stunned from the interaction, only to be whispered at by two guys as I was forced to walk through them (they were standing in a crowd – in the rain – on the sidewalk as many groups such as these are prone to do in my neighborhood). “Hey ma, how you doin’?” “Hey girl, you can’t speak?”
Should I have to speak? Are they saying these things to children who walk around minding their business? How about men? The elderly? Why is it that just because I am a woman I am subjected to this DAILY? WHY?
I spoke to a coworker about this incident. Her solution was that I should find a way to avoid them. “I would walk all the way around the block to avoid them if that’s what I have to do.” This is my NEIGHBORHOOD. I live here. Why should I have to do that? Besides, as I told her, there are more groups just like this on every other surrounding block, too. Nothing is going to change. She shrugged, “Well, that’s the price of being a pretty young woman.”
She told me I must pay for looking the way I do and for being a woman.
It really opened my eyes to how society has cultured men to think these aggressive and invasive behaviors are okay and women to think they must simply deal and hope the whispers don’t escalate into an attack.
– MJ
Location: 146th St. and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd., NYC, NY
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