On a very hot summer day, my friend and I (both female) went for iced coffee, and sat on the patio of the cute restaurant we were visiting. I was wearing a cute shorter skirt. In the 30 minutes we spent on the patio, two different men driving by yelled catcalls at us. It was very uncomfortable.

Later that evening, I relayed the story to another (female) friend. “Were you wearing that skirt?” she asked. When I replied that yes, I had been wearing the same skirt, she scoffed, “Well no wonder.” I felt embarrassed, self conscious of my long legs, and responsible for attracting the catcalls.

This is a classic case of blaming the victim.

– Anonymous

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Walking home by myself at 3 a.m. in the centre of Cambridge, UK, a group of drunk boys at a bus stop start catcalling me, and one says, “Ah you’d better run away now love or that one will try and rape you,” gesturing to his friend.

Another says, “Good thing you’ve got glasses on, this way he can wank in your face.” (The idea being that the cum wouldn’t go in my eyes, I guess?).

– Anonymous

Location: Cambridge, UK

I had dressed up for an interview and was wearing a bight colored dress. I walked past these two men on the street and one said, “Wow, you are really beautiful.” The other one followed it up with a whistle.

I wasn’t in the mood to talk or argue, so I smiled and continued to walk by. It was only a few steps after that I heard one of them yell, “What, you can’t say thank you?”

That’s when it dawned on me. Why was I obligated to say thank you? He had payed me a compliment, but had I asked him to look me up and down a evaluate me?

For a moment I felt almost naked and a little awkward. Then I felt angry that a man expected me to be grateful that I passed his expectations of what is beautiful.

I turned to him and asked, ‘Why do I need to thank you? Did you do me a favor? Did you help me?”

He looked a little surprised. “You don’t have to be so uptight,” he said.

“I didn’t ask you to look at me. In fact, I wish you wouldn’t.” I then quickly turned around and quickly walked in to the nearest apartment building entrance I could find, scared and hoping they wouldn’t follow. Thank goodness they didn’t.

I’m a happy, confident woman and I consider myself to be pretty. Sometimes I like to wear nice clothes and dress up. But sometimes I feel like I can’t because some one is going to assume I’m doing it to get attention. That I ‘want it’ be it a compliment or sex. I think that’s incredibly assumptive.

Has it ever dawned on these harassers that maybe a person likes to dress up for themselves? That it makes them feel good to look nice. That they could have other things on their mind than ‘getting some’, when they dress up?

It feels like a lose/lose. I’m either pretty and ‘wanting it’, or I’m a stuck up B because I ‘can’t take a compliment’.

Do you have any suggestions for dealing with harassers and/or ending street harassment in general?

Educate your male friends. Yes I know women do it too, but I have to say that from my point of view it comes from men more.

Give them examples of ‘harmless’ comments and explain to them why a women might feel uncomfortable with it. It’s all subjective after all.

– Frustrated Fem

Location: Downtown Hamilton

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I had an experience with harassment not too long ago. I was about to get on the Metro, so I took the escalator up to the waiting area. I bought my fare-card, then walked towards the slot where I had to insert it. Ahead of me walked an extremely attractive woman who was heading in the same direction. There were not many people in the area, and I saw two of the guards looking at her too long. I knew she was going to get harassed. I could not hear what the guard said to her, but she was disconcerted. She cringed, and walked away quickly. I would have said something, but she was too far away by the time I was at the fare-card slot. Then one of the guards said to me, “Let’s see a SMILE on that pretty face.”

I made eye contact with him and told him firmly (without smiling, of course), “Mind your business.”

He giggled nervously, but did not say anything else. I walked away.

I was disgusted that he was using his time searching for opportunities to make women uncomfortable. Passengers need to be aware that public transportation employees, not just other passengers, abuse their time by making women uneasy.

Do you have any suggestions for dealing with harassers and/or ending street harassment in general?

– Anonymous

Location: Franconia, Springfield, VA

[Note: SSH works with the DC Transit Authority on addressing sexual harassment. Anyone who experiences or witnesses it is encouraged to complete this online form to describe what happened. It will help WMATA with their trainings of their employees and their handling of harassment on the system.]

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Trigger Warning

I had a class that ends at 9 p.m., but my friend wanted to leave a little early, so she asked me to walk her to her car -that was parked a few blocks away- because she felt unsafe to go alone .

As we were walking down the dark desert street a group of men showed up, they started screaming obscenities. “I wanna f**k you so hard” “I’m gonna rape you” “Hey don’t go” we were really terrified so we started running .

One of the men followed us …

I can’t tell you how fast we ran that night to reach the car and lock ourselves . I felt very scared and very disgusted. As soon as my friend left I started crying.

I usually stand up to my harassers, I either give them the finger, tell them to shut up or scream at them. But that time I felt really unsafe, and I knew the best thing I could have done was to run.

That night, I had nightmares.

– Anonymous

Location: Lebanon

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