I face street harassment on a daily basis, whether it’s overt or just being looked at like a piece of meat. My friend never believed me because he is a man, until he went to visit me and I said, “Walk half a block behind me so that they don’t think we’re together.”
He lasted half a block before he caught up to me, stating that men were horrible.
I live in the Bronx, I haven’t had a date in 15 years nor tried to. I can’t afford to live anywhere nice, because the city is so unaffordable no single people can afford to live anywhere nice. I can’t afford to have cab fare to my home every time I would go out on a date, I have heard horror stories of the arguments my girlfriends get into with dates when they insist they want to take the subway and yes, they do it all the time, it’s safe “enough”. Which it generally is, late at night, ironically, it’s the stepping out on a date, or even to work looking like a woman, before the sun goes down, that is the major problem. I wore a dress exactly once in my neighborhood in broad daylight and I’d rather be shot than do it again.
You can’t get a yellow cab driver to go to my neighborhood, I’ve heard the same thing from women who live in Inwood, Kew Gardens, even Astoria. If they will acquiesce, they ask for directions. I don’t drive but have gleaned 2 sets of perfectly adequate directions by taking buses, I once had a willing cab driver shake his head to both sets of my directions. I’ve probably taken about a dozen cabs over the past 10 years and 65% of those cabdrivers have hit on me. One of them thought it was cute to keep repeatedly hitting the “lock” and “unlock” buttons on all the car doors after I’d refused to buy the book he was hawking and snubbed his “charming” conversation.
I’m already dressing in the most nondescript/dowdy business clothes I can get and eschewing all makeup 95% of the time, I could stand to lose 30 pounds, but nothing stops the harassers from talking to me – just the nice men. Approximately 2 human-seeming men speak to me on the streets of Manhattan per year (unfortunately most are tourists so no great dating potential). The rest, I fear, have learned the lesson we need the harassers to learn. They seem scared to look at me, and it’s to the point where I’m starting to develop a literal complex.
Optional: Do you have any suggestions for dealing with harassers and/or ending street harassment in general?
1. Send the education to the outer boroughs. Men in Manhattan have, by and large, learned the lesson – too well.
2. Better training for cabdrivers. The amount of cabdrivers who haven’t learned they can’t refuse fares and shouldn’t be hitting on their passengers seems astounding.
3. Make street loitering a misdemeanor and arrest people. Don’t just give lip service to it, patrol and arrest them. (Considering that some days I wish I could shoot them, this is actually a good deal for the loiterers.) No one needs to live their lives on the street. Anything decent (conversation), you can get the same effect by inviting your friends to come and sit in your living room.
Because I don’t care about a Starbucks, or an art gallery, or an H&M, or a neighborhood bar, though all those things are nice. I’m not proud. I don’t care what my neighbors are doing inside their apartments as long as it doesn’t affect me. I can go to all those places in other neighborhoods – if I can bear the walk to get on the subway. Sweep the streets of the “hey babys”, and single women in the city would become a lot more adventuresome in their housing choices.
– Anonymous
Location: Bronx/New York City
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