Archives for May 2014

All I wanted to do was get pizza, not deal with a random guy who wouldn’t leave me alone!

I went to The Italian Store after work to get some slices of pizza for dinner. Usually this is something I do with little fanfare. But this loud, obnoxious guy was there who wouldn’t leave me alone.

I was very tired during this interaction. (I’d just woken up from my bus ride minutes before arriving at the store and was somewhat somnolent.) These things were on my mind:

*My shoes hurt my feet and I can’t wait to take them off
*My upcoming doctor’s appointment
*I’m hungry and I wonder what slices I’ll get

None of my thoughts were, “Gee, I hope some random man bugs me!”

As I look at the slices on display, this guy, another customer, says, “Whaddup, ma?” at me.

“Don’t call me ‘ma’,” I said. This guy reacts overdramatically, throwing his arms in the air and backing up in this “Gee, what’s wrong with you?” manner.

“Long day?” he asks.

I give a curt “Mm-hmm,” not looking at him.

“Well, it’s over,” he said. Then he makes a comment about me needing to enjoy my day. Since when was he designated the keeper of my moods?

“Do you know what you want?” he asks, referencing the pizza.

I said, “Mm-hmm” again, once again not looking at him, and he goes on about, “I don’t need to talk to you, because you know what you want!”

This guy would not stop attempting to chat me up and wouldn’t leave me alone, and made comments about how I was having a “bad day” which he thought I should’ve gotten over.

“Well, did you have a nice Mother’s Day?” he asked. “Are you a mother?”

“Does it look like I’m a mother?!” I said, clearly irritated. (Looking back, I realize that my comment was offensive, since there’s no one way to “look like a mother.” My being annoyed with this guy was no excuse to make comments like that.)

“You’re clearly not from around here,” he said.

“Got that right!” I said. People working behind the counter started looking over my way with this air that read, “Oh, drama!”

“Well, I’m from the South,” this guy says, being overdramatic with his gestures again. “I’m friendly. I like to talk to people.”

I assumed that this guy was talking to me in a tone that was more familiar than I was comfortable with coming from a stranger because we’re both black, and I asked, “If I were a white woman, would you talk to me like this?” That caught him off guard.

“Would you approach a white woman and say, ‘Whaddup, ma’?” I asked.

“You need to loosen up, baby,” he said. Then, under his breath, “Would I talk to a white woman that way [scoffs].”

“Yeah, you approached me in a way that is too friendly and familiar with me,” I said. “I was standing here minding my business and I want to be left alone. And don’t call me ‘baby’ either.”

He repeated that I needed to “loosen up,” and claimed that he’d leave me alone, but he once again tried to engage me when I made my order and he claimed that I “stole” one of the slices he wanted. He was invisible to me at that point. I was never so glad for him to get his order and leave.

This guy was acting like he was in a romcom. He acted like the goofy guy who keeps bugging the “cold” woman with an attitude until she loosened up and fell for him. Well, my life is not a romcom, and I was not going to “loosen up” for some random guy who, when I said I wanted to be left alone, continued to bug me and put me down because I wasn’t going to cater to his whims.

This guy appeared to be wearing a delivery service uniform, but I didn’t get the name of the company he worked for. If this is his “friendly” approach with women, then he needs to reconsider it, especially when he’s on the clock.

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

For this situation: Men, don’t approach women with corny slang and lame lines. Say “hello.” If the woman appears interested, you can talk to her, but if she appears disinterested, LEAVE HER ALONE. Don’t push it! Women have lives outside of being hit on and pestered by random men!

– Anonymous

Location: The Italian Store, 3123 Lee Highway, Arlington, VA

Cross-posted with permission from the blog 10/365

Two weeks ago, I was able to run again after 6 months on the DL. On my second run, I felt so powerful that I ended the hour doing sprints past cacti, wildflowers, University of Texas cross country runners (seated… I’m not that fast), and the houses in my neighborhood. The freedom was overwhelming.

As I walked back to my house, I was dripping sweat, shaking, and completely triumphant. I was about to turn onto my own street, when a jalopy I had noticed riding slowly behind me pulled up next to me, and I looked into its front window, expecting someone to ask me for directions. I recognized him and his car from the park where I was running. What I saw was a man looking me dead in the eyes, clearly indicating to me that he was masturbating, and exposing himself to me. He wanted me to see what he was doing, and for me to know.

Horrified, I turned the corner, and so did he.

Notoriously bad at thinking on my feet, I was so shocked I couldn’t even scream. The man continued as I sped up, and a car turned down the block, causing him to speed away. I got half of his license plate and called the police from my apartment, only after calling my parents. I am defiantly, sometimes cartoonishly independent (see: I live in Texas after being raised by liberal Chicago suburbanites). Struck dumb to the core, I could think of nothing to do but to call the people who took care of me for 18 years. I asked my father if this was an emergency. He told me to hang up and call 911.

I have tried to write and speak about this as much as I can, but have struggled. My initial thoughts were these:

1. Why don’t schools, parents, churches, anyone teach us how to deal with street harassment? It is a part of daily life that is never addressed explicitly and with much urgency by the institutions that teach us how to be people. Why do I know how to give CPR to a baby but I have to ask my dad whether or not being sexually harassed and followed is an emergency? Why do I know about wolf packs and hydroplaning when I don’t drive? So many questions.
2. Why does society keep producing men who actively seek strange women to intimidate, to humiliate, and to threaten?
3. I wish I owned a gun.
4. Why haven’t women started militant movements, when violence is perpetrated on us regularly and systematically?
5. Guns are horrible, please think better thoughts. Buy New Pepper Spray.
6. How can millions of women continue to live in a world where even their most powerful moments are subject to perversion, disrespect, and victimization?

What happened next was almost more disheartening.

I am in graduate school, and most of the people I spend my days with are smart, educated, liberal, adults with similar interests, media input, and backgrounds. In an attempt to warn my neighbors, to shed light on a situation all too common and kept quiet, I told anyone and everyone I saw. Having experienced a scare worse than this while in college, and not speaking about it and dealing with it until recently, I spoke up doubly. Here were the reactions I received:

1. Laughter. From men and women. From close friends and strangers. My brother, a true hero on that day, explained that laughing from men was a) inexcusable but b) was the reaction he thought he would have if the same thing had happened to him, as a person who is not afraid of sexual assault.

2. “What were you wearing?” Rape culture isn’t real, right? What if I looked like Heidi Klum while I was running. Is that okay? Assume that I did, because of course I did.

3. “Are you sure?” The overwhelming rage that I feel when questioned about my powers of perception, when I am the only person protecting myself in this world, is boundless. The amount of time women spend having to explain and justify their own observations and experiences, it’s a wonder that we now outperform men in so many arenas (including higher education – hi haters).

4. The explaining away of my emotional reaction: “You’re freaking out” or “Women think they see these things.” Speaking from my own experience with trauma, and from the experiences of my friends, there is nothing good that comes of alleging sexual harassment, assault, or general mistreatment. Even under the best circumstances, you are made to feel responsible, stupid, irrational, at least on some level. There is no “good attention” that you get from this. It feels awful, and talking about it is often retraumatizing.

Very luckily for me, my transamerican big sisters circled the wagon. Katrin, a ballsy, ruthless comedian and feminist, and her safe corner of the internet, gave me a place to be pissed and emotional and to hear what others had to say. Katrin later shared with us the following, from Allan G. Johnson’s book, The Gender Knot:

“For women, getting angry is socially unacceptable, even when the anger is over violence, discrimination, misogyny, and other forms of oppression. Anger is unacceptable because angry women are women in touch with their passion and power . . .. It’s unacceptable because it forces men to confront the reality of male privilege and women’s oppression and their involvement in it, even if only as passive beneficiaries. Women’s anger challenges men to acknowledge attempts to trivialize oppression with “I was only kidding.” . . .. When women are less than gracious and good-humored about their own oppression, men often feel uncomfortable, embarrassed, at a loss, and therefore vulnerable.”

The important part, the take away, from this experience and your diligent reading:

Feminism persists because of this bizarre assumption that, because women and men drink at the same water fountains, we are equal. Equal despite the fact that I cannot leave my house without worrying about being harassed, or worse, in places that are considered “safe” – my childhood suburb, my quiet Austin neighborhood, even in the hallways of a public building. For half of our population, this is laughable. For the other half, it is a needling part of our every minute.

What you can do to help:

1. Do you believe that what I just described is unfair, repugnant, or at least not the kind of society of which you want to be an active member? Identify yourself as a feminist, and say it with pride.

In a crowd full of acquaintances and friends, only one spoke on my behalf, if timidly. It is more acceptable to ask a female trauma victim if they’re “sure” something happened to them than it is for women to say, “Ya, this is not right.” This is the first step to supporting women, to changing the tides.

2. Mothers and fathers: raise your children to know that street harassment is a crime, and what to do if they experience it or see someone experience it. This means calling the police. It is a crime to sexually harass someone, even if it’s at a bus stop instead of the water cooler.

I was lucky enough to have, respectfully, the baddest bitch of a mom anyone has ever had. I am not scared to talk about things that aren’t right because of this. To my mom and all moms: thank you for teaching us to stick up for ourselves. You are feminists. Be proud. There is a reason this generation is vocal and organized about our convictions.

3. Stand up for the injustices you see. Just say something. It’s easy. You open your mouth and let the good sense that is in your head be recognized by the people around you. There are more good, caring people in this world than otherwise, and the balance can shift with the weight of your openness, your thoughts, your words. Apply this to nearly every situation in your life. Feel better about what you’re doing to shape the way people treat each other.

I hope you will share this, talk about this, think about this. At this moment, there are women in Nigeria being stolen and sold, with little aggressive intervention, and there are starlets telling a generation of young women, I’m not a feminist because I don’t think women should have more power than men. Set the record straight on what it means to support women and to make this world safe for us to live in.

– Emma Marie Martin

Location: 32nd and Duval, Austin, TX 78705

I am a Canadian girl who lived in France for a semester. In that time, I developed anxiety about going outside, even three minutes away to the grocery store. I could not leave the house without feeling threatened by leering, cat-calling men, usually middle-aged, yelling sexually vulgar remarks or in several cases, grabbing parts of my body. I was in shock and disbelief at the sexism and misogyny I discovered, specifically in Paris.

I began to wear different clothes and felt a change in my attitude – normally a happy-go-lucky, positive person, I became withdrawn, anxious, and angry. Angry I could no longer express myself without being made to feel as though it was a cry for attention, that I was ASKING for their commentary and harassment.

The peak of this issue was one evening by a canal in Paris, when a man tried to join my conversation with a friend. We politely declined several times and he grew angry. He ripped my headband off my head, threw my belongings in the river, took my cigarettes and I feared he would hit me, or push me in the canal too. I was shaken, shocked and most of all astonished that NO ONE came to help – even though it was in a busy area.

I booked a flight home several weeks earlier than planned.

– Anonymous

Location: Paris, France