My partner and I have been together for more than 12 years. For a number of reasons (including same-sex marriage now being legal across the USA) we did a civil service to legally marry earlier this month in Las Vegas, Nevada, while my partner was there on business. We got our license, walked a building over for a civil service ceremony and it was all done in an hour. Easy, low-cost.
My uncle lives in Las Vegas and after our ceremony (only attended by our witness, one of my cousins), my partner and I went to a grocery store to get food for dinner at his house. I didn’t wear a “wedding dress” but I was wearing a dress I bought for $25 at TJ Max.
We got back to the car and I had forgotten hummus. I went back inside alone.
On my way out of the store alone, two men told me I looked beautiful. It felt like the lead up to harassment but I thought, give them the benefit of the doubt, “you look beautiful” on it’s own isn’t really harassment (though since men don’t hear that as they walk around, it does reinforce sexism and that women’s value is our looks)… so I smiled and I said thanks… and they immediately launched into loud sexually explicit descriptions of my body as they disappeared into the grocery store. I cringed. I felt violated and dirty. And – because internalized victim blaming is hard to overcome – I thought, why didn’t I change out of my dress before walking around in public alone?
It upsets me that even on a day of happiness with my best friend, I could not escape street harassment. There is NO escape. I’m now in my 30s. I live in the suburbs and mostly work from home and mostly drive places. Compared to a decade ago, I can go days and sometimes weeks without facing street harassment. But there is still no way to permanently escape it. That makes me feel really angry, frustrated, and sometimes defeated.
This incident also reminded me that if it’s not blatant harassment at the onset, it’s hard to know how to deal with it, especially when you have 1 second to decide and can’t formulate a super clever retort. Should I have ignored them? Told them “that’s harassment” for simply saying I was beautiful? I doubt it would have mattered how I responded.
Ultimately it wasn’t about me, it was about them. They probably could care less how I felt or responded…. just like most harassers. They just felt entitled to my attention, my space, for their own reasons. And women are often raised to be polite, so we mostly put up with it, demure, deflect, appease, and avoid, especially when it starts off with something as seemingly innocent as “you look beautiful,” “what are you reading” or “what’s your name?”
This happened more than two weeks ago. I only decided now to write about it after reading this excellent Guardian article by Daisy Buchanan, “I’m tired of being kind to creepy men in order to stay safe.” This is an excerpt:
“We’ve all been bothered by persistent guys who pester us relentlessly, believing themselves to be entitled to our company and more. We’re under pressure to be polite and manage their expectations. Ignored men are angry men, and it’s horrible to sit silently while a man shouts at a packed carriage: “She thinks she’s too good to talk to me!”
When it comes to responding to harassers, you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t – and sometimes it gets to the point when dealing with entitled idiots is so exhausting that you feel safer staying at home…
[We need] to create spaces where all women feel they are safe to look their harasser in the eye and say: “Leave me alone. I do not want to talk to you.” Because I’m tired of being kind to the creeps in order to stay safe. And I don’t want to stay in.”
The full article is worth a read.
This is my message to men: Please think twice before approaching a woman you don’t know in a public space. Think twice before you open your mouth. I don’t care if you’re not a harasser. Too many of you are and every woman has been harassed before. Unless she’s in danger or dropped something, just think twice about it. We don’t owe you our attention nor should we have to be polite to you even if we’ve and you’ve been raised to think that we should.
