Archives for June 2013

Just TODAY some guy walking by me said, “YOU SHOULDN’T BE SO SAD! SMILE!!” I was deep in thought going over my to do list for a work event tomorrow that I’m organizing. no big deal, just the Grand Opening for my new office.

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

If I have the time or am not in thought, I will ask the man if they are a rapist. This usually stops them in their tracks. I then inform them that “Verbal power play’s to women on the street is the step just before a physical power play such as rape.” and then point out the nearest police officer asking if we should go get their opinion. Some tell me obscenities, others blush and walk away.

– HC

Location: Downtown Seattle, WA

Share your street harassment story for the blog.

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

Share your street harassment story for the blog.

There came an age in every recently hit-puberty-age of a teenage girl’s life in my hometown – and in many parts of the country – when you get your first taste of the car horn + whistle + ‘compliment’ combo.

And what a day it is! You may be 14 and feeling down as you’re socially outcast because you do not go to parties and drink vodka and sugary syrupy mixes on your Saturday night. Instead you’re limited to a movie and hot chocolate at a cafe. Albeit, the coolest cafe in town. What could spice this night up?! Why, an overload of street harassment of course!

Boy racers we called them back then. Recently drivers licensed guys racing around the ‘square’ in the city centre tooting their car horns at teenage girls. They’d wolf whistle and yell out things like, “Wanna come for a drive sexy?” “My friend has a big cock!” (Followed by laughing) Often it would just be lots of tooting and inarticulate yelling. Remember, these were only young teenage boys, not all could truly express themselves emotionally yet.

Now we all do ‘dumb stuff’ when we’re a young teen, right? (I thought if I cut my eye lashes off they’d grow back longer and thicker, thereby making me more attractive to guys) so I get that a 15 or 16 year old might think street harassment is genuinely a great idea, particularly as everyone else does it, and there are no consequences for doing so from their peers, parents, or society. They even think that if the girl yells back to tell them where to go, or signs a rude gesture, that this is all part of the game. The thrill of the chase! Girls like to be wooed, and love telling guys where ‘to shove it.’ We can all go home to mum and dad in time for the 11 p.m. curfew happy. Right?

No. The teenage boys like these ones somehow manage to grow up in other ways but not in this department. This is why street harassment shouldn’t be condoned as ‘ah well, boys will be boys’ because at some point these boys will become men who’ve grown up to think this behaviour is all okay with no real understanding of what respect is. Respect doesn’t have to wait until you’re in your late 30s, and settled down with a wife and baby daughter, reminiscing on those silly ‘regrettable’ teenage days, where hohohoho, you hilariously drove around harassing women.

Recently when walking home on a near winter evening at 11.30 p.m. down a busy main road in the city centre I had two separate groups harass me. The first one was a car driving by tooting with guys leaning out the window yelling out to me and wolf whistling. When I ignored them (being the bigger person that I am) what do I get? More yelling, with the addition of laughter. They thought it was hilarious to yell at me. I could no longer be the bigger person so I turned around and said ‘f*** off.’

It was then I came across group number two. Returning to my walking, I get, “Ooooohh, cold.” “Don’t be like that…smile…” I told my flatmate the next day how infuriating this was. Was I scared, or hurt, or afraid for my safety? No, but was it annoying and frustrating? Yes.

I know that my incident is nowhere near the same league as others who have gone through horrific experiences, so I’m not asking for any sympathy here. It feels like society is told that things like this should be accepted in general life as ‘just one of those things.’ No one died so no big deal.

Whilst I typically subscribe to that philosophy, it shouldn’t be applied in situations like this because guys don’t need to harass women from their cars, on the street.

I wasn’t “asking for it.” There was no sign on my long winter coat saying ,“Toot and yell if you think I’m attractive.”

At what point do you think it becomes wrong, guys? What’s the acceptable amount of harassment? Pray, do tell.

– Anonymous

Location: New Zealand

Share your street harassment story for the blog.

On an unusually hot afternoon I headed to a local market in Whitechapel to pick up some fabric from one of the stalls. Because of the weather I was wearing a strap top and long loose fitting trousers, with a tiny bit of midriff on show.

The abuse I received seemed to get worse as the day went on. The first man to harass me said, ‘Thank you’, to which instinctively I responded ‘For what?’, his reply, ‘For lighting up my day with your beauty’. Though for some women this might seem “sweet” or a “compliment”, I resent the fact that the way I look overrides my the person I am.

As I walked from Liverpool Street to Whitechapel, various men whistles and beeped their car horns at me, some I passed in the street whispering, “Alright gorgeous,” under their breath in voices that made my skin crawl.

But when one white van passed me I felt like I was about to burst out in tears. One man leered out, shouting at me, “You alright love you look all aroused – I can see your nips.”

On the busy street everyone turned round to look at me and I felt shamed for choosing to wear the clothes I had put on that morning.

This has to stop. My body is my own.

– Anonymous

Location: London, UK

Share your street harassment story for the blog.