Editor’s Note: This story was transcribed and translated from Romanian by the woman’s daughter. The mom’s story is the text outside of the brackets and the daughter’s comments are in brackets.

_______________________________________

In Bucharest, Romania, Boulevard 6 Martie had a large portion in which many movie theaters were close together. Trolleys passed through the center, and it was very busy. [This was about 40 years ago during the Communist era.]

I was wearing high heels and carrying a very large, elegant purse in my hand. I was walking along, very proud of my appearance, my youth, and the way my long legs looked in their attractive black patent leather heels. A dark-skinned male gypsy [Rom] appeared close by at a crosswalk, and suddenly grabbed one of my breasts and squeezed it so hard I saw stars of pain. I screamed at the top of my lungs and began running after him, beating him in the head with my large purse, swearing and yelling at him.

People were laughing, because they knew he must have done something to me, but nobody helped or got involved. At some point I kicked off my heels because it would be easier to run after him that way. At the time, shoes were extremely expensive and hard to find, and I was sure I would have lost them forever. However, a nice elderly gentleman gathered them up and brought them to me and I thanked him from my heart.

[The fact that the man is a Rom is significant, and I left that in because it shows a few important things. First, if he had been a white Romanian man, people might not have been so tolerant of my mom running after him and beating him. I can’t know this for sure, but most people have a bias toward a “respectable” appearance and have a harder time believing those people did anything wrong.

Second, in Romania, anti-Rom discrimination is among the worst in Europe and is still ongoing. When a group of people are oppressed, sometimes men in that group try hard to live up to some standard of masculinity and spread the oppression around to make themselves feel less helpless and emasculated. It’s part of a huge messy culture where people can both be victims and oppressors. In this case, my mom was a victim, and one who had every right to fight back and defend herself. However, I can’t help but think how people might have reacted if she was a Rom, and her harasser was white, and if she would even feel like it was ok to defend herself at all then.

My mom feels some shame because she used violence and swore at him. I told her she was entirely justified and that men are responsible for their own actions, so if they assault her, they have to deal with the consequences. I think a lot of the shame is due to feeling that fighting and swearing is somehow immoral or low when women do it.]

Location: Bucharest, Romania

Share your street harassment story today and help raise awareness about the problem.
Find suggestions for what YOU can do about this human rights issue.

It was a beastly morning at work. First Monday of the month, and it is Christmas season too, so it was hard. At lunchtime I clock out and decide to go to the Riverwalk to de-stress and get some fresh air with a side helping of peace and quiet before going back to the chaos (and chaos it was, since 5 minutes after I clocked back in the phones were ringing off the hook…yep it was a Monday).

The Riverwalk is several yards down the street from my building. It is an approximately 2.5 (well that’s what they claim but I swear it’s longer) stretch of concrete winding it’s way through some forestry alongside the Flint River. I can usually go down and count on a good hour of solitude while I walk and work off my temper.

Today solitude was not to be, at least until I opened my mouth and got really nasty.

A few yards down I became aware of footsteps sounding behind me. Didn’t think too much of it at first until I really listened…the footsteps were matched exactly to my pace, step by step. I slowed down and lifted my phone as to check my text messages and turned to look. It was a guy dressed in a white t-shirt and the barely-hanging-on-his-butt jeans that a lot of the guys around here favor and as soon as he noticed me stopping he ventured off to go check something in the woods…or at least pretended to.

This repeated itself for another quarter of a mile and I finally stopped, sat at a bench, and proceeded to pretend to check something on my phone while the guy walked off only to veer off the trail again and go hang out by the water. I noticed he kept looking back at me and at one point when he did I took my cellphone and snapped his picture to forward to the cops or post on Holla Back at the very least.

Finally I guess he decided I wasn’t going to budge and he finally made his move. So he comes up and starts to open his mouth. “What’s your–”

“My name is Married Woman and I am here to enjoy some peace and quiet on my lunch break. I’m in a bitchy mood and if I wanted to get hit on I would have gone to a bar. Now go away before I forward your picture to the cops, whom I have on speed dial, and file charges for harassment.”

He left. Quickly. Good.

But WTF?!!

*********************

After telling this story on my own personal blog I responded to a comment made by a friend with this passage that everyone thought I should repost here:

The stuff is serious because it is evidence of a larger societal problem and a huge degree of sexism and misogyny in particular…that women exist solely for the amusement and gratification of men and that we don’t own ourselves, our bodies, our looks, or the right to exist in public in peace and have our personal space respected. These guys don’t see a woman and think of someone they can get into a long-lasting meaningful relationship with, they see pair of breasts and buttocks and feel entitled to our attention and affections on the sole qualification of having a penis.

And that’s what makes me angry, that guys who do this sort of stuff don’t see you and I as people with our own feelings and desires. They see us as trophies, potential possessions for them to win and own and show off.

It is ultimately dehumanizing and even monstrous. So people who don’t think this is such a big deal can kiss my pale butt. It is a huge deal.

– Tracy Nichols

Location: Georgia

Share your street harassment story today and help raise awareness about the problem.
Find suggestions for what YOU can do about this human rights issue.

I was harassed by this man in my early teens. I don’t know his name, I don’t know where he lived and I don’t know what he wanted from me and why was he after me….. He followed me to school in the morning, he followed me back home everyday after school.  He followed me when I went for my math classes in the evening. He followed me everywhere…. He was always stationed outside my house day or night, rain or shine. He contacted my friends and classmates and asked them to request me that I be his friend. He followed my sister to her classes and told her classmates that he is my friend. When my father went to him and scolded him he told everyone that my father likes him. He started to match his clothes to mine. He wrote my name on the walls everywhere. He spoke to everybody in my neigbourhood about me.

No one knows, what I went went through in those three years of my life. The trauma is only mine. It became so bad that my near and dear ones started to tease me and make fun of me because of him.

And then later on I came to know that he was doing the same with one other girl from a different neighbourhood. He stopped stalking me only when he found another girl as his latest victim.

I was put to shame because of him. What was my fault, I ask?

Now, I am a grown up woman with kids and family. Till this date, I don’t step out of my house alone, I don’t go anywhere alone unless until my husband accompanies me.

– Anonymous

Location: Sahibabad, Distt. Ghaziabad U.P., New Delhi, India

Share your street harassment story today and help raise awareness about the problem.
Find suggestions for what YOU can do about this human rights issue.

My mom and I live alone together. Our apartment is in the back of the building, so we face the back of another building. My mom was going to get dressed, so she went to draw the blinds and I heard her scream, “OH MY GOD!!!!”

“What?” I asked her, pretty blase, since she often freaks out when she encounters pretty innocuous things.

“There’s a guy – in the building next to us – OH MY GOD – he was, you know…” After spluttering and freaking out for another minute or two, I finally got it out of her that she had seen a man masturbating in the next building, right in front of the window, so that anyone could see him.

The experience really disturbed my mom, and it really bothered me, too. While she was glad that she had been subjected to that sight rather than me, I was really mad that she had been exposed to it. The two of us have talked about it a lot and that’s made us feel better, but we haven’t really done anything concrete like reporting him.

This is SUCH a frustrating experience!

– Anonymous

Location: East 72 Street btw 1st and York Avenue, New York NY 10021

Share your street harassment story today and help raise awareness about the problem.
Find suggestions for what YOU can do about this human rights issue.