In many car-centric cities around the U.S., riding a bike on a city street is equivalent to sticking a target on your back. Being a woman on a bike makes that target 10 times bigger and 10 times brighter.

As much as I love riding my bike, there are times when I feel unsafe and violated, such as when I pull up alongside a bus shelter and a man yells out, “Damn girl. Where you going? You must be riding a lot with an ass like that!” I can’t wait for the light to change so I can get the hell away from this situation.

I never know quite how to respond. A motorist rolls down his window to tell me how lucky my bike is to be ridden by me. I just smile and try to shrug it off, knowing who holds the power in this situation, Often I try to avoid potential situations altogether, changing routes where I know I often get yelled at or not riding at certain times. I once spent a summer as a pedicabber (one of my favorite jobs I ever had), but never took the night shifts after my boss warned me I’d probably be harassed by drunk male college students. Try as I might, street harassment cannot be avoided. A pedestrian once yelled, “I want to cum all over you” on a Sunday afternoon on one of Kansas City’s busiest streets. I didn’t know how to respond other than to break down in tears as I started to climb a hill.

I endure the catcalls on a daily basis and for the most part learn to live with it. But when a few weeks ago, one of my best friends got to work and started crying because a man yelled, “I want to suck your pussy,” on the ride in, I became furious. Words like that are violating and unjust. Too many women are getting hurt.

“No wonder women don’t want to ride bikes,” she said.

It is a well-known fact that women ride bikes at much lower rates than men. In 2009, women accounted for only 24% of all bicycle trips in the U.S. In addition, 24% of women refrain from exercising outdoors in general in order to avoid public sexual harassment and assault, according to the most recent report by Stop Street Harassment. A few bike advocacy groups nationwide have begun to recognize the importance of getting more women on bikes, by hosting forums and summits. For example, the Washington Area Bicycle Association recently hosted a workshop for female cyclists about fighting street harassment.

I do not have a choice when it comes to exercising outdoors as I do not own a car that I can use as a shield from harassment. My bike cannot camouflage the fact that I wear a skirt or a dress every single day–a fact many of my female friends sometimes have a hard time believing. “I try not to wear a skirt when I bike. I seem to attract more negative attention from men,” a friend once told me. I’m not going to let fear stop me from wearing what I want to wear. A woman on a bike is not eye candy for motorists, she is not riding for the attention or the praise. She is riding because she simply loves to ride her bike. She is a cyclist and the road is as much hers as it is yours.

Sexual harassment is not merely a “women’s issue.” It is a mobility issue. If women do not feel safe biking to work or to run simple errands to the grocery store, how can we expect them to pursue alternative modes of transportation? Just as cyclists have the same rights to the roads as motorists, women must have the same rights as cyclists as men.

Heavy traffic, debris in the road, and a lack of bicycle facilities would be enough to deter any woman from riding a bicycle. It is great that cities are beginning to invest more in building bike facilities, such as bike lanes to encourage individuals to use bicycles as a mode of transportation, but the issue of getting more women on bikes extends beyond infrastructure improvements. A bike lane is not going to make a woman feel much safer when she is going to be harassed every day. Without a dramatic change in culture, female cyclists will remain a minority on the landscapes of our streets, their targets still strapped firmly to their backs.

Rachel Krause is a cyclist who is active in the Kansas City bike community. She publishes a feminist bicycling zine called Velo Vixen.

I am 14 years old and heading into high school. I am becoming increasingly harassed on an occasional basis by grown men and older teenagers whenever I walk my dog or I am with my friends. I don’t deserve to be hollered, “Hey Baby!” whenever I walk in my neighborhood by a passing car. I don’t want to threaten to call the police to get them to stop after they cat-call multiple times. I want street harassment to end.

– Anonymous

Location: On the sidewalk normally; Southern FL

Share your street harassment story for the blog.
See the book 50 Stories about Stopping Street Harassers for more ideas

This one might be unusual, but there’s a man who lingers outside the mall, who asks me for a date, out of the blue, with no previous eye contact or “welcoming signal” from me of any kind, each and every time I go to the area he lingers in. I say no, and he departs.

So why do I consider it harassment? Because I can’t escape being targeted by him, because he doesn’t care what I happen to be doing (as long as I am alone) and because I think one “no” should be enough. But when I brought it up to others, they had nothing but sympathy for the man, and told me his actions were “natural.”

Really? I’m sorry, but don’t I get a right to privately eat my lunch/text on my phone/stare off into space/do anything I wish without being “zeroed in on” by a man I’ve repeatedly rejected and never asked to approach me in the first place?

– Erika W

Location: Cambridge, MA

Share your street harassment story for the blog.
See the book 50 Stories about Stopping Street Harassers for more ideas

I was walking to meet my husband at his work for his lunch break. I crossed a busy street to get to his work and noticed a car full of shirtless guys. I was passing their car when the driver started honking at me and yelling “Hey baby” at me. I ignored him for a while but when he did not stop I flashed my left hand (with my wedding ring on it) at him.

I could hear from the open windows the chorus of “OHHHHHH” from his friends as they saw I was taken. After that they left me alone and drove off.

I was very insulted that these young men would have the audacity to continue honk at me and try to grab my attention even when I wasn’t interested. I was later ashamed and disappointed that I had to use my status relative to another man to stop the harassment.

I’m not merely an object. Just because I am with another man shouldn’t change the level of respect I’m given. Even married I belong to no one but myself.

– Anonymous

Location: Provo, Utah

Share your street harassment story for the blog.
See the book 50 Stories about Stopping Street Harassers for more ideas

Sarah Chang, Guest Contributor

I returned home from work on a late afternoon, parked my car on the street, and as I was getting out of my car, a man walking by and said, “Will you suck my dick? as he passed. The words didn’t even register until a few seconds later. He kept walking, and after I realized what he said, I looked in his direction to see who he was. I suddenly realized this man had actually made “suck my dick” comments to me previously, both times on the street by my residence. I felt angry that I was unsafe in my own neighborhood, and paranoid that perhaps this man was targeting me and knew where I lived.

I emailed the residents in my building to inform my neighbors about this person. With my description of the man and incident, another woman in my building said he had also said inappropriate things to her and her sister, and that they had filed a police report. This made me feel better, knowing he wasn’t targeting just me, but obviously it was equally unfortunate that this man felt entitled to indiscriminately harass women all the time. I followed suit and went to the police station to file a report.

At the station, the police took my report but said they could do nothing because I didn’t know the man’s name and could only provide a general physical description. I asked them what I should do the next time it happened. The officer said to call 911, and if possible, follow the man from a safe distance and wait for the police to arrive.

A few months later, I was walking by this same police station and the man that harassed me actually walked out of the police station. I waited for him to leave before walking into the station, letting the officer there know that he was the man I filed the police report on. The officer said that he knew who the man was, said that he was harmless, and said that he’d talk to his parole officer. The officer didn’t seem to take me very seriously.

I then contacted my neighbor to tell her that I had identified the man and asked if she would come down to the police station with me to corroborate and press the issue. My neighbor didn’t want to do much more other than to leave it be and just avoid the man whenever she ran into him.

I am an Asian American woman, and I experience street harassment all the time. Sometimes it’s just the leering, or just the “hey baby”s or the explicit sexual requests like the example above. But more often than not, it turns race-related: “Love me longtime?”, “Sucky sucky, five dollar”, and the “ni-haos” in my face that sound like meowing. The race-related street harassment is a one-two punch because it thinly veils hatred behind sexual subjugation. It’s common and it happens frequently enough that I’m habitually on edge when I walk outside by myself.

My natural defense mechanism against street harassment and unwanted attention is to have a scowl on my face. This scowling defense mechanism affects my day-to-day public interactions. A recent example of this is that my husband, an Asian American man, will often recount all the people he encounters when he is out taking the dog for a walk. These encounters however, consist of friendly hellos to him (and the dog) and remarks about how cute our dog is. Hardly anyone ever greets or tells me how cute my dog is when I take her for a walk. I attribute this difference to my scowl and general “don’t bother me” attitude, which I’m not even aware of. Walking the dog while male and walking the dog while female shows how street harassment makes a deep impact on seemingly trivial activities.

Speak up about and against street harassment. It’s not ok and I’m still going to report it to the police. I’d really like to enjoy a walk my dog sans scowl, the way that it’s supposed to be.

Sarah Chang is a middle and high school math teacher in the Boston Public Schools.  She resides in Boston’s South End and is passionate about education and social justice.