As a person who is trans feminine I am no stranger to street harassment. More often than not, a lot of harassment comes in the form of dirty looks, whispers, finger pointing, giggles, rude comments, invasive questions about my gender and genitalia, and the daily occurrence of just generally people eying up every part of my body.
At least the direct verbal assaults haven’t been too bad. In the past year I have only been yelled at on 3 occasions by somebody in a passing vehicle. The first time was in a Walmart parking lot as two young men yelled a homophobic slur at me. The second incident occurred on my way to giving a presentation on sexual and gender diversity at the public library, when a few teenagers in a passing vehicle yelled “what the hell is that?” then called me a variety of names (such as “freak”) as they drove off. Most recently, just today (a couple of hours prior to me writing this), I was walking down main street when a gentleman peeked his head out his truck window and told me to “eat **** and die” (as far as I could make it out over other sounds).
It’s awful. It makes me feel vulnerable, scared, hyper vigilant of my surroundings, extremely anxious, depressed, violated, and just generally disrespected.
I really wish people would stand up for me and speak out when these things happened. Instead, people just stand by, watching, staring, sometimes even laughing and/or smiling along with everyone else (which makes it all the more hurtful). Every morning I have to talk myself into even leaving the house.
Do you have any suggestions for dealing with harassers and/or ending street harassment in general?
I wouldn’t even know where to begin. Like with bullying behaviors, I believe the motivations behind street harassment are influenced by such major, ingrained social issues and belief systems that we really need to be discussing the root causes to enact change. Sexism, homophobia, transphobia, racism, ableism, etc. Those are the core issues behind harassment, bullying, intimidation, and imbalanced power dynamics; and they need to be a part of dialogue on the behavioral problems.
– Anonymous
Location: Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan
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See the book 50 Stories about Stopping Street Harassers for more idea
Nadi G says
Unfortunately ignorant people share the space we live in and lack common sense to know the impact of their behaviour. This must be extremely difficult for you and if you were with me I would give you a big hug. People can be absolute jerks, but rest assured there are still others who are kind and compassionate and should I witness you being harassed, I would be like a momma bear and all over them. There are people who do care. We are still trying to find a way to educate and get people to stop this senseless bullying. If it takes readjusting the law to do so, so be it. I can fight for that as well. I want you to know your blog came up because I am trying to find some law to stop people hollering terrible things from cars. Say it to my face – coward is the best I can do at this time. So you know, I am white (but appear ethnic), in my 50’s, professional, educated and female – I am hollered at on a weekly basis and it is not nice what is said. But I know, and I can tell this about you as well, that we are good people who are kind and care about others and would not wish this kind of treatment on them. Thank you for saying what this does to you because it made a difference to me and I don’t feel so alone in this province.