I am no stranger to street harassment. When I was only 9 years old, some middle-aged pervert hanging out at his parents’ house next to my bus stop would wait for me to get off the bus and follow me home every day after school. (This guy was a convicted rapist and it seemed he had his eye on me.) This experience left me constantly on guard whenever walking anywhere.
When I was 11, I was walking home from school, and he pulled his car alongside me, stopping just a little bit ahead of me and asked if I wanted a ride. I just kept walking and thankfully he didn’t follow me home that time. My parents called the cops but they didn’t seem to take it seriously, and didn’t even bother notifying the school that a creeper had tried to pick up one of their students. (That guy is now serving a lengthy prison sentence for raping someone else.)
This sort of thing continued over the years. When I was around 19 years old, I was walking home from the bus stop at the end of my street after a long day at the local junior college, and an older guy pulled up alongside me and offered me a ride. I shook my head and kept walking…and he kept driving really slow alongside me, trying to persuade me to get in. He claimed he was crippled and had to return a DVD to Walmart, but didn’t know where Walmart was (then how the hell did he buy something from there in the first place?) When that approach didn’t work, he tried to lure me by saying he had weed. He followed me all the way to my house, even though I was walking as fast as I could and kept ignoring him. Finally he sped away once I ran up my driveway, but I was paranoid for a long time after that because now he knew where I lived. Thankfully he never turned up again, but I shudder to think what he would have done had I been foolish enough to get in the car with him!
But the worst case of street harassment I ever encountered was about four years ago. By my late 20s I was struggling with severe anxiety and depression, and I rarely left my apartment because of it. Because of this, I put on some weight. It took me a long time to motivate myself to start going for walks to try to lose some of the weight. The day I finally worked up the nerve to go for a walk, I invited my boyfriend’s half-sister (who was staying with us) to go with me. We were only about a block away from the apartment when a car full of young thugs pulled up alongside us and the driver screamed out the window: “Oh my god, what a fat ugly bitch!” I knew he was talking to me because my boyfriend’s sister wasn’t fat. I was so livid. My heart was pounding and before I could stop myself, I yelled back “F**k you!”
This angered the driver and his friends, and he started cussing and screaming at me about how he was going to tie me to the back of his car by my hair and drag me to my death! I was so scared I was shaking. There were even witnesses around on the side of the streets and nobody stepped up and said anything! Finally the car drove away, and my boyfriend’s sister and I turned around and hurried home, terrified that they would turn around and follow us back to the apartment. I felt physically sick and wanted to die. I could not stop crying or shaking once I was back home, and I have not gone for a walk in my neighborhood since. Which has been problematic as far as losing weight, but I am terrified that I will be assaulted or harassed again.
– S.B.
Location: Yuba City, California
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See the book 50 Stories about Stopping Street Harassers for more ideas.
