I brought my dog to work. Naturally, I have to take him out to pee. I have this tiny little park like 2 blocks from the office to which I take him. I work in downtown San Diego, so there are all sorts of people in the area.
As I’m walking back from taking the dog out to pee in the morning and am on the corner to cross the street to go back to my office, this guy walks up to me from behind me on my right and said, “You have no idea how badly I want to play with your boobs.”
I took probably a second to register that YES, HE JUST SAID THAT and then said, “That’s really inappropriate, sir,” in a pretty pissed off, stern voice.
He said, “My bad. My bad. I apologize,” as he sort of walked past me and then off to my left.
I looked him in the eye and said, “Thanks.”
However, he then decided it would be a good idea to tell me, “You should take it as a compliment.”
At that point, the walk sign came on and he was staying on that side of the street. As I was crossing the street, I turned over my left shoulder and yelled back, “That’s NOT a compliment!”
He then decided to give me some bogus explanations about why it was a compliment like “you’re beautiful.”
Although I was shocked and absolutely expecting him to end the sentence with “your dog” and not “your boobs,” I can say that I was prepared because of the prevalence of the street harassment awareness campaigns in the last year or so. I didn’t really feel threatened largely because I was in a public area and there were other people waiting to cross the street. I also don’t really envision exactly what is being said to me, so it has much less of the grossness factor. Instead, I just view it as inappropriate, However, had he said that in a less populated area, I’m sure I would’ve responded the same but felt a lot more threatened.
I can’t even tell my significant other about what happened because I know he’d be very concerned and wouldn’t feel comfortable with me walking around downtown any more than I had to.
Optional: Do you have any suggestions for dealing with harassers and/or ending street harassment in general?
From what I can tell from talking to men about this, most men actually think thoughts about women’s bodies, regardless of whether or not they think street harassment is terrible. If they think it’s bad, they’re not going to say anything. The thoughts are still there, which I blame on the hyper-sexualization of our culture. Anyway, some men are too scared to say anything, but they still think sexual thoughts about women that they see. My only thought on how to stop it is to let the harasser know what he is doing is wrong and unwelcome and that it’s not a compliment in order to help convert him to viewing it as a bad thing.
It would be great if men would also call out other men but they have to view it as a problem first. I think most men think that it is, in fact, a compliment. That mentality needs to change in order to get men to stand up for women they see being harassed. A lot of men would step in if they saw a woman being physically assaulted and they need to view street harassment similarly.
– AM
Location: Downtown San Diego, CA
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