I’ve had many very uncomfortable encounters when out in public in London. Here are a few that I want to share:
I was taking the bus one time and this man loudly starts asking me to sit next to him and refers to me as “darling”. He did this 3 or 4 times. I didn’t want to engage in conversation with him so I ignored him and left that bus at the next stop. He then loudly said “goodbye darling, have a nice day” as I left the bus. The whole encounter made me feel uncomfortable.
Another time on the tube this man who sat across kept staring at me. I thought at first it was just accidental eye contact but I realised it was full on and the whole time he wouldn’t take his eyes off me. He didn’t look zoned out either – he had a menacing look on his face and creeped the hell out of me. I felt so uncomfortable!
Another time on the tube this man starts talking to me and acting flirtatious and quite sexually aggressive. I began talking to him out of politeness and soon regretted it when he got very forward and I felt very uncomfortable. He then began harassing me for my number and I ended up giving him a fake one so I wouldn’t anger him/to get out of the situation.
In every situation it happened out of the blue, when my mind was very much focused on other things and I felt cheap/objectified each time. It also totally goes against this myth of how you dress affects how men act. Each experience in which I’ve been harassed (apart from club harassment stories) have happened when I have been dressed in long skirts with tights/trousers and wearing normal tops (and most of the time had a coat on). It’s ridiculous for people to still believe that how women dress excuses sexual harassment or to victim blame.
Optional: What’s one way you think we can make public places safer for everyone?
We need to tackle men’s attitudes to women. The objectification/hypersexualisation and dehumanisation of women is the real problem here. The woman’s body is viewed as a sexual object rather than part of a person. We need to re-educate men to not think this way and to respect women as people. The voyeurism is partly from pornography but also women’s bodies always being hyper-sexualised in the media.
We need to stop victim-blaming. It shouldn’t matter how someone is dressed. If I dress a certain way when I go out it doesn’t excuse sexually aggressive behaviour. I refuse to accept that dressing a certain way will even stop sexual harassment. From my own experiences it wasn’t enough for me to be dressed conservatively (which I was). Because the fact that I was a woman was enough for these men to feel entitled to treat me in such a way. The problem is men’s entitlement.
– Anonymous
Location: London, UK
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See the book 50 Stories about Stopping Street Harassers for more idea
