The other night me and my girlfriend went to a party. It was in a suburb in the north of Paris, where I would never normally go as I know it can be dangerous, especially for women. We got out of the metro at about 8 p.m. and walked to the party which was a fifteen minute walk. It was typical of the area with groups of men hanging around in the streets. It made me very uneasy and I was then nervous about leaving the party and getting to the next party we had to get to further inside Paris.
When we went to leave at about 11 p.m. we asked the girl who lived there and she assured us she’d never had any problems walking to the station. We got almost to the station (criss-crossing the street to avoid groups of men) when a car with two young guys in it slowed down and drove next to us slowly. I ignored them, and my girlfriend did what she normally does in harassment situations and made crazy-looking faces at them.
Eventually I looked at them. They were making comments about us and pretending to masturbate. I told them they were ugly, and they said, “like you” and laughed. I knew that it could get serious, and that no one would help us if it did, so I pulled out my phone and pointed it right at the guys face and took a picture. He stopped laughing and sped off very quickly. We were worried they would be waiting for us somewhere so we ran across the road and into a little grocery store.
A man in there asked what had happened and we told him two nasty guys had harassed us. He then went into an aggressive and angry speech about how women always pretend to be harassed to get attention and how it is all lies. My girlfriend argued back talking about women getting raped and he was getting in her face and aggressive and saying things like women ask for it etc, and that we were lesbians so who would rape us anyway? Eventually he left and we walked really quickly down into the metro and onto the train. Not a fun way to start our night out.
Do you have any suggestions for dealing with harassers and/or ending street harassment in general?
After having very dangerous and serious harassment experiences in Paris, this is the first time I have ever taken out my phone and taken a picture of the harasser. It obviously wouldn’t work in every circumstance but it scared this guy and made him leave us alone quickly. I felt very empowered and would definitely use this approach again to be left alone.
– GracieParis
Location: Paris suburbs
