I was sitting in the car with my girlfriend, when a teenage boy walked past and shouted, “Hey, you two girls are sexy. It’s a pity you’re lesbians.”

I jumped out of the car and confronted him (I am a woman in my early 30’s and was appalled that a teenage boy felt entitled to make such a brazen remark to two women twice his age).

He ignored me and I followed him, repeatedly asking him if he thought his behaviour was OK and whether he would speak to his mother that way. I then threatened to follow him home and tell his mother about his appalling behaviour. At this point he became physically aggressive (clearly frighten by the threat of parental intervention). He was bigger than me and it was with relief that eventually a friend of his stepped between us (at this point, things could likely have come to blows). What was quite revealing: not a single person, man or woman, on the busy beach front road stopped to ask what was going on, or to intervene when he physically took hold of me.

How it made me feel: furious enough to take on someone who, though younger, was quite capable of inflicting physical harm.

– Anonymous

Location: Camps Bay, Cape Town, South Africa

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