Today, I was walking on the sidewalk when a man on the opposite sidewalk started yelling at me in a nasty tone of voice. I ignored him and continued walking. However, he became more aggressive saying stuff like, “Yo girl! Over here!!” His violent tone scared me to death. And for once, I did not feel safe around my neighborhood.

-Anonomous
Location: Sunnyvale, CA

A number of years ago, a man harassed me at my home. I don’t know how long he was watching me before he made contact, but he eventually got to the point where he would stand on the street and masturbate at me while I was sitting inside my apartment, or on my balcony. It was as if he just materialized out of nowhere; one minute I would be alone reading on the balcony, and the next minute he would be standing there with his pants around his ankles.

This happened every few months…for two years. Repeated calls to 911 made no difference, the man would simply vanish as quickly as he had appeared. I became very paranoid. Every man on the street would seem to have his face. I stopped using my balcony altogether, and started keeping the curtains closed at all times. I tried to avoid walking in my own neighborhood alone or after dark. Even these many years later, and living in a new city, I can’t bring myself to go out on the balcony for extended periods of time, and the curtains in my living room are never opened.

– Anonymous

Location: Burnaby, BC, Canada

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I was walking home one night and there is this street where there is a broken street light. Unfortunately there were also a bunch of people (mostly men) who were partying and taking up the whole block & street by blocking it with their cars. It was so annoying. All i wanted to do was go home. I had a sudden urge to just run home. Because if i walked then one or all of the men would try to literally stop me and try to grab me and/or try to talk to me.

So I took a chance and ran like hell. One car actually tried to back up and get in my way. I could here one of the men yell, “Where you runnin? Stop running I wanna talk to you! It’s like that?”

This pissed me off so much because it was in my own neighborhood. I am always scared and pissed off because I don’t want to get hurt over some dumb shit like getting assaulted because I didn’t give my phone number to a stranger. It’s situations like that that make me loath being around people. Luckily, I made it home. But it was another reason why I hate my neighborhood and leaving/going home.

– Anonymous

Location: Oakland, CA

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To me, street harassment isn’t a joke and it is a very big deal. In fact, it changed my life in the most horrible of ways.

It began when I was 11 and entering middle school. A boy in my neighborhood liked me. I didn’t like him back, which made him mad. To get back at me, he told the whole school that I, at 11 years old, had sex with him over the summer. This gradually evolved into a rumor that we had sex multiple times. Another boy claimed not only that he also had sex with me over the summer, but he also got me pregnant. He told everyone, “She had an abortion because she didn’t take responsibility for her actions.”

For six months several boys would go out of their way to harass me on my way home from the bus stop. “Show us your tits!” one would say. When I would say, “No,” and, “Leave me alone,” it made it worse. They’d say to each other, “She won’t do it because she stuffs her bra.” I was then harassed every day for stuffing my bra. Eventually, I was worn down. When they trapped me in an alley, I was so ashamed that I just wanted to go home, so I flashed them. I would then go into school and be called a slut.

It was so bad that I was harassed into my first kiss and every sexual experience thereafter, including fellatio and sex. They continued to turn around and blame me. Others would trap me and say, “You did x with y, so you really don’t have a reason not to do it with me.”

At one point, I was harassed into not fighting back when a boy groped my breast. I was twelve. In a note to a friend I did the most I could to control the damage. I said that I eventually said yes. Nothing was more humiliating than the harassment I would face if I said it wasn’t my choice. My friend’s mom found the note and turned it into the principal. I was suspended for 3 days– longer than the boys who assaulted me. The school’s justification was that if I really didn’t want it to happen I would have done something about it, such as hitting them. The only problem was, had I hit them, I also would have been suspended because of a zero tolerance policy.

I could go on and on. I want to be clear: sexual harassment, including that at work, in schools, or on the street negatively effects the self esteem of those subjected to it. It ruined my self-esteem, made me think it was my fault when I was raped, and has caused me to suffer PTSD to this day.

I wish I could say this happened a long time ago. I was harassed daily from 1997-2004.

I also wish I could say this no longer happens in our schools, but that would be a lie. Ultimately, as a teacher from 2008-2011, I watched my female students be harassed every day. Despite my best efforts to report the harassment and associated bullying I was repeatedly told my my administration that “boys will be boys” and I was being “overly sensitive.”

Don’t fool yourself. Nothing has changed.

– AS

Location: Bristol Township, PA

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One evening I was walking over to a friend’s house who lives about 10 minutes from my house. It was winter so although it was only 7 pm it was rather dark. I stuck to the main street but ended up passing about three men in their early twenties. They were all climbing into a truck when they saw me walking by. They began to shout at me, saying things like, “You’re hot!” and, “You should come hang out with us!” One of them began to approach me and I began to walk faster. As soon as I turned the corner he stopped following me. The whole thing was rather terrifying but infuriating at the same time because I have the right to feel safe in my own neighbourhood.

– Anonymous

Location: Prince Rupert, BC, Canada

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