Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

Forty years of street harassment…

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I am a 55 year old woman and I have experienced this kind of harassment since my early teens and still do today. My daughter is 21 and has experienced this kind of harassment since she was 12 years old. We want to know why? What gives certain males the right to tell us what they feel about us as we innocently walk the public highway? I have two sisters, aged 50 and 45 respectively and they too have experienced harrassment from early ages.

The list of types of harassment experienced by just this one family group are as follows:

  1. Being followed whilst walking along – either by a single male i.e around a supermarket in Spain – trying to ‘rub up against’ me from behind as I walked around with my family (I was 14 years old)
  2. As a 16 year old – I was waiting outside my grandma’s house a car pulled up with a single older male inside who asked if I was available for ‘business’ and to get into his car – I was a schoolgirl.
  3. My sisters aged 14 and 9 years were approached as they walked up to my grandma’s house by a group of men in a car and told to ‘get in’ and one even tried to grab my youngest sis to pull her inside.
  4. My daughter, whether she wears skirts, long coats, trousers jeans whatever with or without make-up gets cat called, wolf whistled and jeered whilst walking or waiting at a bus stop. It has come to a point where she is becoming agoraphobic because of this and refuses to go anywhere alone.
  5. I walk home at 9pm most nights and have been subject to shouting from cars packed with young men, being followed twice by two men who stopped me and asked where I was going and even a man in a motorised wheelchair, followed me almost to my street, calling out to me.

It is absolutely unbelievable and only now is there a forum for us to shout about this totally unnerving and bullying offensive behaviour – and I’m sorry but only women understand about this because 99% of the time it is only women who experience this intimidating and invasive behaviour from men.

– S HAY

Location: Happens everywhere in all situations (United Kingdom, Spain)

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“We were told we should not be out at that time of night”

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My Girlfriend and I (we’re lesbian) were walking down the street at midnight in Swansea on a Saturday evening, a male in a car propositions us for sex and makes comments about my legs. in the end I tell him to F**CK off, he then follows us into a car park where my car was park. He only retreats when he sees and hears me call the police.

The police were not one bit interested. In fact we were told we should not be out at that time of night as if it was OUR fault! knowing a bit about how to defend myself as well as my rights, as well as what the police should really be doing I challenged him, he then backtracked and claimed that was his personal opinion.

After complaints to the police, who were still not interested, my persistence and help from my AM Edwina Hart the offender was finally given a warning.

A few weeks later we saw two police officers in a van around about the same location leering at us.. Male police officers are as bad as anyone. Just check out the number of warnings and arrests for prostitution and then the number of men warned or prosecuted for soliciting women for sex… tells you all you want to know about South Wales Police.

– Anonymous

Location: Swansea High Street, South Wales, United Kingdom

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14 block stalker

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I grew up in Queens, NY, and I have a lot of street harassment stories. The most recent one happened one or two summers ago and was so frightening that it still scares me when I think about what could have happened.

I was walking on Avenue B from 14th Street. At one point I passed this big dude who made a comment; I thought nothing of it and passed on. But after a block or two I noticed that, even though I was wearing my ipod headphones, I could hear someone murmuring something. It was the dude and he kept saying “So sexy….so sexy.”

I turned off my ipod but kept the headphones in and kept walking. It was about 3 pm and a nice day with lots of people out. I didn’t want to duck into a store and let him know he’d won (stupid, I know, looking back) so I kept walking, but noticed that I could see his reflection in shop windows that I passed.

Finally, after about 14 blocks of his following me I picked up my phone, turned the corner at E. Houston and called someone. I probably should have called the cops, but I wasn’t thinking straight at that point. I watched him pass me and keep walking. I stood on that corner until all I could see of him was a blue dot representing his full ensemble of blue shirt and pants.

Looking back I would have called the cops once I reached that corner. Looking back, I wouldn’t have even waited until E. Houston and would have ducked into a hair salon or something. Thank goodness it ended the way it did.

– Anonymous

Location: New York City

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“That it happens so much that women and girls just ‘deal with it’ is the most troubling thing”

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About a month ago, i went to visit my friend, who’s a student at Manchester university. We got harassed every single night we went out that week (and once during the day when we were out shopping – a drunk guy staggered over to us and tried to kiss my friend).

The event that sticks in my mind the most is this one: we were returning from a night out – it was about 2 am. We had to catch a bus back to the halls of residence from the town centre. This guy started following us – he looked like he was about 30, and i’m pretty sure he was drunk.

He started yelling really offensive stuff at us (“One of you bitches come over here and give me head”, for example – and no doubt the fact that i can remember it shows how disturbed i was by it), but we just tried to ignore him. Then he got on the same bus that we caught, sitting a couple of seats behind us – fortunately there were quite a few other people on the bus, so he piped down. I’ll admit, i was sort of scared to get off the bus when we reached our stop, in case he started following us again, but fortunately he didn’t.

Like i said, we were getting yelled at every night we went out. But the worse thing about it is, when i spoke to my friend about it, she just said “Yeah, you get a lot of it in Manchester – you just get used to it after a while, and don’t go out by yourself at night.”

The very fact that it happens so much that women and girls just ‘deal with it’ is the most troubling thing.

–  Emily

Location: Manchester city centre, United Kingdom

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Whistling quickly turns into groping

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I was followed as I ignored the whistling from a guy. Then the guy ran after me quickly and grabbed me on my bottom!!! I felt disgusted and I shouted ‘you idiot’ as I was speechless.

– I

Location: Birmingham, United Kingdom

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