USA: Men’s Experiences with Street Harassment

Kathleen Moyer, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, SSH Blog Correspondent

When most people hear the term street harassment, they probably picture of a man whistling at a woman walking down the street, or a man catcalling a woman as he drives by in his car. After all, women make up the majority of street harassment victims and men are most commonly the harassers. According to Stop Street Harassment’s 2014 National Report, 65% of women reported that they had experienced street harassment at some point, and 70% of those respondents said that they had been harassed by one man, while 38% reported being harassed by two or more men. Therefore, I’d be willing to bet that most people don’t picture a man harassing another man or a woman harassing a man when they think about street harassment.

Recently, I posed the following question to my male Facebook friends: Have any of you ever experienced street harassment? I received 9 responses from men stating that they have experienced street harassment before. To put that into perspective, that’s about 13.5% of my male Facebook friends. This is a smaller percentage than the 25% of men who reported that they had experienced street harassment in the 2014 National Report on Street Harassment. However, it is possible that some of my friends who experienced harassment didn’t want to share it, or simply hadn’t seen my question.

Because I hear men’s accounts of street harassment far less frequently than women’s, I wanted to learn more about the experiences of those who responded to my questions. In order to do this, I interviewed most of the men who responded to my question. In conducting these interviews I noticed a few trends.

 

Every man I interviewed reported being harassed on more than one occasion.

One man I talked to told me that he was harassed twice in the same day – first by teenage girls who yelled, “Hey we wanna suck your dick!” out of their car as he was walking down the street, and later by a man who yelled, “Nice hair, faggot!” at him.

The second experience is also notable because my friend is gay, and the 2014 National Report found that homosexual men are more likely to experience street harassment than heterosexual men, and homophobic slurs were reported to be the most common form of harassment that they experienced.

When I asked another man how often he experiences street harassment, he responded, “A lot. It’s almost commonplace for me so I’ve honestly lost count.”

Therefore, not only do many men experience street harassment, but some experience it on a regular basis.

 

Many of the men I talked to experienced harassment under circumstances that prevented them from responding sternly, if they had the chance to respond at all.

As I mentioned earlier, one man was harassed twice by people speeding by in cars. Another man, said that he experiences the same thing about once a month when he is outside walking with his girlfriend.

“We’ll be waiting for the light to change and a car will pull up and some teenagers will shout something…a lot of times though, we can’t really tell what they’re saying.”

That same man works in a public place, and described two times that he was harassed while at work. One time, he was bent down sweeping, and a woman walking behind him flirtatiously said, “You can sweep the floor at my house any day.” Because this took place at work, it would be difficult for him to respond assertively.

I believe that people who harass men may choose opportunities like this either because they are more afraid of how a man may respond to harassment, or simply because they enjoy the dominant feeling of being able to harass someone when they are unable to respond.

 

They experienced both verbal and physical harassment, almost equally.

Although most of the experiences I’ve mentioned so far have been verbal, the men I talked to did share quite a few experiences with physical harassment. One person told me about when he was groped at a restaurant.

“I was at the entrance to a restaurant…and I just felt someone grab my right butt cheek and I thought it was one of my friends messing around, so when I turned around to say stop messing with me right now, I found this girl laughing and asking me if I wanted to dance with her.”

Although he said no, the girl insisted that he dance with her, calling him cute. He walked away from her, but a few minutes later, while he was at an ATM, she approached him again.

“She was like ‘Hey, can I get you a drink?’ and added ‘if you know what I mean…’.”

When he again refused, she called him a “snobby person.”

Another person I talked to shared an experience in which a girl fondled him.

“I was sitting having lunch with a co-worker…one of the girls that works at the ice cream parlor at the local food court stops by to chit chat…Then, I noticed how she began eyeing me up. Next were the comments about me like ‘Damn, boy…,’ followed by her rubbing on my arms and back.”

Fortunately, the girl immediately stopped when he glared at her, but the experience made him very uncomfortable. Which brings me to my final, somewhat obvious, conclusion from the interviews.

 

Street harassment can make anyone feel violated or annoyed, regardless of their gender or the gender of their harasser.

After each person shared his experiences with me, I asked him how it made him feel. Below are some of the responses.

“Well, confused for sure…it’s just like…why would people say these types of things?”

“It’s more annoying than anything else.”

“Well surprised at the beginning, and she was cute, but she was still a stranger and the whole touching thing was just weird and uncalled for.”

“Awkward and annoyed.”

“Like a piece of eye candy that someone thought they could enjoy. It’s strange being objectified.”

“Highly annoyed.”

“Angry. I wish he got out of his car so he could say that to my face.”

“Grossed out.”

Although women are statistically more often the targets of street harassment, these responses make it clear that the harassment of men is also a serious problem. It is never okay to leer at, verbally objectify, fondle, or otherwise disrespect others, no matter what gender they are. In order to bring more attention to the experiences of both male and female victims, I want to encourage everyone to share their stories on the Stop Street Harassment blog via this Google Form. I believe that discussing these experiences, and listening to all victims, can help the issue of street harassment become more widely acknowledged and hopefully encourage a culture of mutual respect among all.

Kathleen is a full-time graduate student studying professional and business communication. She plans initiatives to increase awareness of sexual assault, domestic violence, and other related issues through her university’s anti-sexual violence group, Explorers Against Sexual Violence.