I was walking home after work yesterday. My journey always takes me through a small square with a few shops and a pub. Outside the pub was a group of about 6 or 7 men. I hadn’t noticed them at all when they started calling out “”titties”” and “”hot titties”” and other offensive sexual remarks in a very aggressive manner. I looked around and could see they were staring at me. I walked away at first but it made me so angry that I decided to confront them about it. All they did was to deny they were talking about me but every time I walked away they started shouting it again and were always looking at me when they did so. I told them I found it offensive and abusive. There must have been a part of them that recognised they had done something wrong because they denied it.
After the confrontation I felt incredibly vulnerable and shaken. I couldn’t stop myself from crying even while I bought my dinner in the shop. When I got home I called the police to ask if it was possible to report it as a crime, was it even a crime to begin with? I was given a crime reference number and two police officers were sent round to see me. They took as much detail as possible although they warned me that there might not be anything they could do. But they did say they would go round to the pub and talk to them if they were still there or even talk to the pub owner.
After seeing the video of the woman who secretly videoed her street harasser and posted it on the internet I tried to do the same thing. However in my shaken state I only took their picture but it did allow me to show this to the police. They told me that this behaviour used to be illegal but wasn’t any longer but in some cases they could be charged with anti-social behaviour.
I am not by nature a confrontational person, so for me, going up to a group of middle aged men was very intimidating and left me more shaken and upset than perhaps I would have been if I’d just walked by. However I would have been more frustrated with myself had I tried to ignore them and not stand up for myself. I just felt this knot of injustice in my stomach at the way they felt they had the right to speak to people like that. At how they targeted a woman on her own, probably assuming I would try and just walk away from them.
I am not ashamed to say that had it been the middle of the night without anyone else around my self preservation would have kicked in and I may just have tried to ignore it. But I now know that calling the police is an option even if they can’t do that much to help and if it had been the middle of the night, this behaviour might have been considered more threatening.
I still feel angry and upset about what happened but I’ve had so much support from my friends saying that it was brave of me to stick up for myself that I feel slightly more vindicated.
Thank you
Madeleine
Location: Hampton (London), UK
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