Archives for June 2013

I am 14 years old and I live in southern Wisconsin. I was grocery shopping with my mom. This was a couple months ago… This was my first time getting harassed.

So I was wearing some really skinny leggings. And I felt confident, then my mother told me to get milk. So I was walking towards the milk and there was a whole bunch of people. As I was walking I got these weird stares and I felt uncomfortable. Suddenly I felt a light finger touch my butt. I was really shocked and I wanted to cry. I turned around and a man said, “Oh sorry”.

I wanted to claw his face but I thought I could get in trouble. So I let him go free. Nobody saw!!!! I was so mad!!! I am scared of men now. Even my own uncles and father!! I told my family and they took it as a joke and laughed away the serious conversation.

I need some real help!! Can anyone suggest something’s that can help me? I am very depressed and terrified of even looking my best for anything! I sometimes cry myself to sleep. Help!! Oh and people honk at me when I walk around my block.

Do you have any suggestions for dealing with harassers and/or ending street harassment in general?

– Anonymous

Location: A grocery store in Wisconsin

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Trigger Warning

My walk home today was 15 minutes. In that 15 minutes, a car full of men drove by and yelled out the window, “You better run and lose some weight, you fat bitch!!”

I yelled back “F*** you, asshole!”

They then drove around the block to come back and yell, “I bet you’d beg me to rape your whale sized pussy.”

– Bridget

Location: South Bend, IN

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Two weeks ago, when I was followed home after working, was not the first time someone followed me through the tangled streets of Jerusalem. Sadly, I’m sure it won’t be the last.

I walked back from a catering event, beer in hand (the manager is a friend of mine, and generally snags me drinks at the weddings we work together), on the phone with a girlfriend.

I walk past a garden, next to a small neighborhood bar. I notice a Charedi (Ultra-Orthodox) man, holding two beer bottles in his left hand, one green and one brown, stop and watch me as I pass. I see him take in my exposed knees, the beer bottle in my hand, and what he thought was my lack of awareness due to my phone conversation.

I stop laughing. My voice gets low, as low as it can, as I say to my friend, “I think I’m being followed. I’m on Shilo street, next the market.”

I go to stand under a street lamp, my back against the wall, relieved by the presence of several tourists and another young woman in the immediate area. I’m talking loudly again, making my existence known to everyone, hoping he’ll see the other people as well and give up. I watch him as he passes me, head down. I see him turn down a side street. I breathe a sigh of relief.

I continue on, glancing to my left as I pass his turn, making sure he can’t see me walking past, all the while narrating everything to my friend, hoping that all I’m saying is unnecessary, that it’s in my head, that I’ve shaken him.

I breathe a sigh of relief as I see only his back heading away. I read the end of the street, it’s 3 flickering streetlights are the most safety I’ll get for a few blocks. I tell her I’m turning around, just to make sure he’s gone. He isn’t. He’s back behind me, his pace still steady, but faster.

I’m trying to keep calm, I say to my friend- “I’m glad I’m in a neighborhood I recognize. I’ll shake him the alleys, twist and turn around.” I walk faster, turning right and then left and then right again, thanking my love of wandering through the neighborhood during daylight hours.

I’m trotting now, a fast and efficient shuffle, the adrenaline erasing the pain of my weak ankle and still-healing knee. I bless my ankle brace, my practical shoes, and break into a run, still narrating on the phone, still trying to shake him. I make a final turn, hoping please please please let the construction be finished, let the street be open, please please please I’ll go to my friends’ house, they’re a bunch of guys, I’m yelling in the phone now, my bag slams against the metal sheeting around my recently re-opened escape path. I don’t have to turn around anymore, behind my hyperventilation, behind the smack of my sneakers on the cobblestone road, I can hear him behind me, hear him catching up.

I reach my friends’ building, run up the one flight of stairs to their floor. I pound on the door, screaming, Open up! Open up! My phone has gone dead, there’s no service in their stupid stairwell.

“Who is it?” comes a voice from behind the door.

“It’s Deb,” I scream, “It’s Deb, please let me in, just open the door!”
“Who?!”
I can’t blame him for not opening the door at 11pm for someone pounding and screaming.
“Deb!!”
Apparently my hysterics makes my voice less clear, I keep pounding, he finally opens after 3 or 4 more exchanges of “who?” what?”
I fall into the apartment,  relief that he finally opened.
“What, what’s going on?”
“This guy… following me… running when I sped up…” I manage.
“Who, that guy?” He points to a figure walking up the stairs.
I freeze.
It’s another roommate.
Now I cry, I haven’t been followed up the stairs, at least.

“Oh yeah,” he says after I explain why the sight of him made me freeze and then cry, “That guy was hanging outside the apartment when I walked up, pretending to be on his phone.”

They gather another roommate, we walk outside to look for him, to make sure he knows following women around is unacceptable. He’s gone. We search a few more side streets nearby, nothing.

I’m shaking still, crying, shaking for a half hour until I can finally stop, and I get walked home.

Two weeks ago, when I was followed home after working, was not the first time someone followed me through the tangled streets of Jerusalem. It’s not the first time I’ve gone into what I call “defense mode,” where I do everything not to walk alone at night, and never leave the house without my pepper spray and brass knuckles, where my friends know where I am if I leave the house after dark.

Two weeks since, my anxiety levels have been higher than they have been in years, two weeks since I can’t lay next to my partner at night without a tshirt and underwear, brutal in the Jerusalem summer. Two weeks of every man on the street a potential threat, two weeks of tossing and turning in my sleep, two weeks of awful dreams, two weeks of nonstop triggers and flashbacks, of thinking of nothing but street harassment and rape and dead women in alleys.

Maybe this time the aftershock will only last a month. Maybe only two. If I’m lucky, maybe I’ll hit my head on the cobbles and forget the whole thing.

It’s not the first time I’ve been followed home, and I know it won’t be the last.

deborah kadishelby, 26, is originally from Illinois and currently resides in Jerusalem where she works with youth-at-risk and regularly gets into screaming matches with guys who comment on her ass.

I was walking through downtown Vancouver to meet my boyfriend for a date. He works in the rough part of downtown, but I usually walk through the ‘hood without incident. I was dressed up a bit, wearing a nice red skirt and heels, not that that should make a difference.

A young-ish man started following me yelling at me about how nice my ass looked in my skirt. I decided to ignore him and just walk a bit faster, hoping he’d get the message and go away. Three blocks later, he was still shouting rude comments about my body. I passed a couple of homeless men who said hi and told me I looked really nice. I said thanks and kept walking.

The harasser swooped in next to me and said, “See, it’s not just me who thinks so!”

At that point, I turned to face him and said “You know, I could really do without the commentary.”

“Well, then you shouldn’t wear a skirt that makes your ass look so good.”

At that point, I was shaking with anger. I am a tall woman who has studied martial arts, so I knew I could hold my own if things got physical. Before I could think, I told him to fuck off and flipped the bird at him. He walked away after that without saying another word.

Right in front of me, a man and woman were walking and ignoring the entire situation.

– M

Location: Vancouver, BC

I was maybe 10. 11? I don’t remember. What I do recall is that I really wanted to see the Human Spider, a “freak” sideshow at the New Mexico State Fair. I gave the attendant my ticket and went through the curtained door into a dark room. In the middle, a badly costumed “spider woman.” She had a wedding ring on one of her “spider legs.” Even at that age, even in the darkness, I could tell how fake it all was. But what I couldn’t do was this: confront the man who came up behind me in the burgeoning crowd to rub his erection on my hand. I froze. My vision narrowed to that bored “spider lady,” her strange wedding ring, the musty darkness of the exhibit.  When I finally walked out into the sunlight once again, I was a different person.

Many years later, I was sitting in my mother’s living room talking with my mom, a friend, my husband…I think my kids were nearby…I don’t recall. It was night, and I was facing the big picture window that looked out on the street. What we were talking about…I don’t know anymore. But I remember seeing movement just beyond the short wall and the pine tree. It distracted me and I squinted to see what was moving beneath the dim streetlight. It took a moment for the reality to register–a man in a white baseball cap was there on the sidewalk, masturbating and staring right at me. The look of horror on my face shocked my husband who leaped up and rushed outside, not even knowing what it was that I saw. The man took off, and was gone. A few weeks later, a man was caught in a nearby park trying to grab a passing jogger. He had a white baseball cap on.

– Ana June

Location: Both happened in New Mexico–The first in Albuquerque, the second in Santa Fe.

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