teenagers Archives | Stop Street Harassment

That time I was harassed, cat called, stalked, “complimented”

January 29, 2016 By Contributor

Cross-posted with permission from the author’s blog AccordingtoDes.

Being a female, at almost any age, it is extremely common to be cat called and harassed by men. Though I have been harassed by men on the street more times than I can count, these are the memories that really stick out in my mind. I began writing them down and I will continue to write them down as it happens to me in the future.

Many people say that cat calls are a compliment. I began getting cat called when I was thirteen. I was a child. Grown men on the street should not be “complimenting” a child. Even if many people do believe cat calls are compliments, some of the things that have happened to me are terrifying. I have been chased and groped on the street. Here are some of the times I have been “complimented”.

When I was 13 years old, I was hanging out at a friends house. We decided to go to my house. It was around 8pm and getting dark. My house was a ten block walk away. We were walking and a group of about eight older teenagers/young adults were walking towards us. We couldn’t understand what they were saying but we knew they were talking about us. We both became uncomfortable and without vocalizing any sort of plan, we both turned around to walk in the opposite direction. That’s when we heard people running. We turned around and saw the group of boys were running toward us. We both started running. We passed our school so we ran into the court yard and through an opening in the fence. We ran the entire way to my house. They chased us for three blocks.

I used to walk to school everyday, to middle school and high school. When I was approximately 13 years old, a group of construction workers whistled at me and my friend. This happened everyday until we decided to take a different way to school.

I went to the park to play card games with three of my friends after school. A car pulled up to us and parked. The three men inside were yelling that we were hot and sexy, stuff like that. My friends and I were about 15 years old.

One day when I was walking home from school, a man yelled from across the street, “Hey! Smile, it will get better!” I was really confused because I wasn’t sad or depressed or anything. I was just walking home. I thought he was being nice and wasn’t particularly offended but this bothered me for days and I didn’t know why. I was 15 yrs old.

One day after school my friend and I took a nap at her house. We woke up around 6pm. We were starving. We decided to go to Burger King. We were both in sweat pants and oversized t-shirts. On our 5 block walk to Burger King, numerous men whistled at us and blew kisses at us. We were disgusted.

When I was 17 years old I was taking the bus to my best friend’s apartment. I sat next to the window. This man in his late 50’s sat next to me and started talking to me. He said he was a customer of mine at the Pharmacy where I was a cashier. He kept telling me I was cute and kept asking for my number. I repeatedly said no but he wouldn’t stop pressuring me to give him my number. I was trying to be polite. I didn’t want to be rude to a stranger that recognized me from where I worked. Also, I did not want to cause a commotion on the public city bus. After numerous times of giving my excuse that I don’t give out my number to strangers he said OK then you take my number then. I put his number in my phone just to get him to leave me alone then he kept telling me to text him so he would have my number. I still had over ten minutes on the bus and felt trapped, up against the window with him blocking the isle. I gave in and texted him. He texted me the second I got off the bus but I can’t remember what the text said. I remember being annoyed. I started getting calls and creepy text messages from him in the middle of the night. I would wake up around 3am from my phone buzzing from creepy messages from him saying he was thinking about me and wanted to see me. I told him to stop texting and calling me but he didn’t. I called my phone company to block his number.

My friend and I were at a bus stop waiting for the bus to come. We kept hearing a kissing sound and whistling. We couldn’t tell where it was coming from. We looked up and saw an older man leaning over the railing of the subway station. He was whistling and blowing kisses at us. We hid out of his sight behind the bus stop.

When I was 18 years old, I was walking to my boyfriend’s house at 8am. A fat, shirtless man about 50 years old, maybe older asked me for the time. I told him the time, then he grabbed his crotch, started rubbing it and said, “Do you want to come inside and have some fun?”

When I was 18, I worked as a waitress over summer vacation. One night I was waiting at the bus stop at midnight for a bus to get home from work. A man asked me for the time. I told him. He stayed standing next to me. I moved over a few feet to get some personal space but he moved next to me again. I pretended to walk over to read the schedule on the pole a few feet away. When I saw him walking toward me I decided to walk an avenue ahead to wait at the next bus stop. I heard him following me. When I turned around I saw him walking toward me. I walked faster, then he walked faster. I became very afraid and instinctively started running. The man ran after me. Without even thinking about it, I ran into the street into oncoming traffic. I crossed and turned the corner and hid in bushes. The man ran after me but he didn’t see me. From the bushes I could see him looking around. He walked out of my view. I waited a while to come out. I ended up walking home because I was too scared to go to the bus stop.

I was on phone one day walking to a bus stop. I was going home from my friend’s house. An older man, around 60 years old kept trying to talk to me. He was saying I was beautiful and asked me to sit next to him. I told him to leave me alone and that I was on the phone. He told me I was being rude and told me to hang up the phone. He wouldn’t stop harassing me. I had to walk away and wait at a different bus stop. I was about 19 years old.

I was sitting on the subway, waiting for my stop when I felt someone watching me. I looked around and saw a man staring at me. He was staring at me very intently. He didn’t take his eyes off of me. It was making me very uncomfortable and I felt intimidated.

When I was 21, I was at a bar with my friends. A guy came up behind me, grabbed me and pulled me toward him. I turned around, told him to let me go and shoved him off of me. He said, “I didn’t want to dance with you anyway, bitch.”

At the same bar, my friends and I were dancing. My friend that was facing two of us grabbed us by the arms and pulled us forward. We didn’t know, but their was a guy humping the air right behind us. It was directed at the two of us.

After class, I was standing at the bus stop talking on the phone, waiting to get back to my dorm. A bunch of teenagers walked past me, about six of them. One slapped my butt as he walked by. The rest of them were laughing hysterically. I cursed them out. They started throwing things at me like water bottles and food. I was 21 years old. I went to the campus police and they told me to wait at a different bus stop next time.

When I was 21, I was walking less than a block home from a party with my friend that was a male. My friend, Steve walked into my building first. I was a few feet behind him. I walked into my building and three guys followed me in. They did not live in my building. When they saw Steve they turned around and ran out.

I was dancing at a club with my guy friend. While we were dancing, a guy grabbed my arm and told me to dance with him. My guy friend yelled at him and said we were dancing together, to leave us alone. The guy said, “I don’t care.”

I was at a bar with my friends. My girlfriend was in the bathroom. I was sitting at the bar waiting for her. A guy grabbed my arm and pulled me toward him. I tried to pull my arm away but he held it tightly and twisted it a little. I began punching and shoving him with my other arm. The guy was laughing. He didn’t let go until my guy friend saw this from afar and got in between us.

My friend and I were dancing together one night at a club. A guy came over and began dancing in between us. We backed up from him and tried to walk off together. The guy stayed in between us and wouldn’t let us near each other. We were pushing him and yelling at him but he just laughed. He tried to keep us apart and kept trying to dance on us. My friend ducked under his arm and we ran to the other end of the club.

One night when I was 26 my friends and I were leaving a bar. We were talking about our friend that left earlier because she was so drunk. As we were passing two men that were standing up against a building, I said, “She was so drunk she left her favorite water bottle there.” One of the men followed me and proceeded to mock me. In a whiny exaggerated voice he yelled, “Oh my goddddd, not her water bottle! She forgot her water bottle?”

When I was 27 years old, my girlfriends and I went out to a club to dance. We were dancing in a circle. A guy walked up to my friend and stuck his face up against my friend’s butt. My other friend pushed him away. We got him kicked out by a bouncer but within 15 minutes he was back in the club.

That same night, my friends and I were dancing together when a group of guys came over to us. Each of them put their arms around one of us. The guy that had his arm around my shoulder was holding on tight. I tried to wiggle free. He asked me if I wanted to dance. I said no. He kept saying, “come on, just dance with me. Why not?” I said that I didn’t want to and that I had a boyfriend. The guy accused me of lying. He kept asking me questions about my boyfriend like his name and where he lived. He asked why I was out without my boyfriend. I kept trying to push the guy away and telling him that I didn’t want to dance with him but he wouldn’t stop or let go of me. My two friends were having the same issue. I was finally successful in pushing him off of me. After a while of telling them to leave us alone, they finally walked away to another group of girls.

When I was crossing the street with some friends, a guy held out his arm as if to grab me. He said, “Hey, hey, hey honey. Hold up. Where you going?” Without thinking, I replied, “Away from you.”

Walking to the bus stop, a guy I was walking towards was looking at me. As I walked past him he said “Excuse me?” and tried to grab my arm. I twisted my body and swung my arm backwards out of his reach and kept walking.

I had to run to the mall to pick something up and my boyfriend had to go to the grocery store. After my errand I was waiting for him at our meeting spot. While I was standing there, two guys kept looking at me. One of them said, “Hey, waiting for your ride?” I replied “Yes.” The two guys kept looking at me. I was trying not to look their way but I could feel them watching me. A few minutes later the same guy asked, “Are you waiting for your boyfriend?” I didn’t answer. I pretended not to hear him. They walked a little closer which made me nervous. They kept staring at me and finally walked away after a few minutes.

When I was crossing the street a guy yelled, “Heyyyy baby!” at me from his car.

One day when I was walking to work, I was walking toward three men sitting on a stoop. One of them was staring me up and down. His eyes were completely locked on me. He did not look away. I felt uncomfortable passing them. One of the guys said, “Dude stop staring so hard.” The one that was staring at me looked me in the eye and said, “But I just cant help myself.”

When I was 28 years old, I walked out of my apartment to meet my friend at her car. Her car was parked on the corner of my block. On the opposite corner of my friend’s parked car, three construction workers yelled, “Wooooooooooooooo” at me from across the street.

When I was 27 I was at a club with my friends. My friends and I were walking to a different section. A man I was walking past grabbed my arm and said, “Hey, where are you going? I began screaming at him. I cursed him out and shoved him and told him not to touch me. His friends started yelling at me to calm down. I kept yelling that he grabbed me. They told me to relax. I yelled, “I will not fucking relax. Tell your friend not to fucking grab people.” My friends and I walked to a different section of the club. The group of guys followed us. We walked to a different section of the club. They group of guys followed us again. They wouldn’t leave us alone so we left the club.

I was walking down an aisle at CVS. An older man leaned into me, pushing his body up against me and whispered in my ear as I walked by him, “Gorgeousss.” It was very creepy and gave me the chills.

October, 2015: I was on my way to a job interview. I was outside of the agency when I got whistled at by three different men and a man in a car honked at me. These four incidents were all within ten minutes.

When I was walking home from work, three tweens were yelling to me from across the street. I had my head phones in. I ignored them but they just yelled louder. I took my head phones out, turned to them and yelled, “What?” That’s when the boys pulled their pants down to moon me. I crossed the street and began yelling at them and told them to get their parents. They told me their parents weren’t home and they apologized numerous times.

May, 2015: I was at a music festival with my boyfriend. We parted ways for a little while to get dinner. We wanted different things. I was walking to our meeting spot when a guy yelled, “Excuse me!” I ignored him. He continued, “Hello!…Hello!” I continued to ignore him. He yelled, “OK, well fuck you then!”
- It wasn’t even five minutes later. I was sitting alone, waiting for my boyfriend. I was looking around, taking in all of the music and fun outfits. A guy walking past me says, “Don’t tell me you aren’t having fun.” I responded, “I am.” He insists, “Come on! Have fun!” I said again, “I am.”

June 1, 2015: I was walking home from work. I was less than one block from my apt. When an older man looks me up and down and says, “mmmm, hellooo!”

July 26^th, 2015: When I was walking home from work, two men driving by were hanging out of the car window. They were yelling something but I couldn’t hear because I had my headphones in. The one in the back seat continued to laugh and hang out the window looking back at me as the car passed me.

USA: Teens Educating Teens

October 29, 2015 By Contributor

Our four Safe Public Spaces Mentees are half-way through their projects. This week we are featuring their blog posts about how the projects are going so far. This post is from our team in the USA. Their projects are supported by SSH donors. If you would like to donate to support the 2016 mentees, we would greatly appreciate it!

Hey, I’m Tena, the founder of Me=You: Sexual Violence Awareness (MYSVA for short). My friends Jineth and Ash and I make-up MYSVA. We are a teen activism group that aims to get fellow teenagers talking about and preventing gender- and sexual orientation-based violence.

For the past few months, we have been working on the administration and promotion of MYSVA (setting up social media accounts, partaking in the SPSM program, setting up a bank account, and more). Just this month, I finally secured approval from the Palm Bay (Florida) City Manager to host MYSVA Chalk Day on Sunday, December 6; a day we, our friends, and passersby will write testimonies and anti-street harassment messages in chalk along the sidewalk outside the local library, Degroodt.

A few weeks ago, on October 13, MYSVA presented about violence issues to an audience of 15 teenagers at the Degroodt Library Teen Advisory Group Meeting.

First, via power point slides, we covered different types of sexual violence (street harassment, teen dating violence, domestic violence, etc.) and how to recognized them. Then, we role-played street harassment scenarios, with me as the bystander, Ash as the street harassment sufferer, and Danny (a person from the audience) playing the harasser. The bystander just watched and made excuses for the harasser, like “maybe he is just being nice” or “maybe he knows her”, as the victim was followed and catcalled.

The audience laughed when Danny’s character exclaimed, “Are you a beaver, ‘cuz DAMN!” but we made sure to emphasize how uncomfortable this is for a stranger to hear this from a random being off the street. We brainstormed different ways a bystander can intervene.

Also, we collected surveys on the teen audience’s experiences of harassment (to be analyzed in the near future). All in all, our audience was really receptive and we got positive feedback from them.

Plus, on October 6, I interviewed Ms. Sue Kiley, a licensed counselor and the director of program’s at the Brevard Women’s Center in Melbourne, Florida. I learned lots of new informatiom on the motivations behind harassment, especially stalking, and support available for those who have experienced it. I hope to share my new-found knowledge when we launch our website (coming soon!)

Tena Gordon is a high school student in Florida and the founder of MYSVA.

Day of the Girl 2014

October 11, 2014 By HKearl

Teenlibrarytoolbox — Via Teen Library Toolbox

Today is the 3rd annual International Day of the Girl, an opportunity to reflect on the status of girls in the world and their needs.

I, of course, always think about street harassment. I was harassed as a teenage girl and the older I get, the more outraged I am about my experiences and about the harassment and assault girls and teenagers continue to face today in public spaces. It angers me that the depictions of street harassment in the media would like us to believe it “only” happens to adult women and is no big deal, but the reality is, teenagers are targeted the most — and often by adult men. In fact, our national survey found that most people who are harassed (female and male) begin to experience it before age 17.

You can read stories on our blog showing this too,

Like K in New York shared her story… “I’ll never forget being in middle school and walking around my neighborhood and having these middle-aged men cat calling me. I was a 12-year-old girl, I wanted to dress pretty but the constant stares and whistles from older men made me feel insecure. It felt as if I wasn’t a person just a body with a vagina walking around.

At times I would yell and say you are disgusting but I was afraid that they might chase me down, so I didn’t do it as often. The majority of the time I would look down and walk away quickly. I was in middle school and these men were older and stronger than I was; all the news story scared me of what these men could do.”

Or Anonymous in CA who reflected on a lifetime of harassment…”I started being harassed as a pedestrian the summer I turned nine. A driver honked, catcalled, and threw a penny that hit me. Now I am 39 and I keep thinking I will eventually grow old enough to fall off the radar. Being honked at, whistled at, shouted at, followed, groped, and grabbed makes me angry, shaken up, and stressed out.”

Summer Al-Saleh, a high school senior at Foothill Technology High School in Ventura, California, wrote about street harassment for her school paper this week. She gave me permission to excerpt it:

“Over the past few months, I cannot begin to count how many times I have been harassed when I was by myself or accompanied with friends.

As I was on a run earlier in the summer, two middle-aged men drove by, stared, and whistled at me. They drove away, probably laughing at the fact that they caught me off guard and caused me to jump out of initial shock. They drove away, not even considering that I was on a run, trying to concentrate, existing in such a way that has no relative bearing on their existence, something that is very difficult for street harassers to understand.

When I was walking out of the grocery store two young men started following me into the parking lot, while asking questions and making comments about my appearance. As I briskly walked away they got the satisfaction of knowing that I was angry, disturbed, and threatened. They, just like the other men, did not see me as a person with somewhere to be, something to do, and something on my mind.

While finishing a run with my teammates, two middle-aged men drove by, slowed down to get our attention, yelled something that was incomprehensible and made kissy faces at us. The thing about this specific encounter, the former encounters, and other women’s experiences is that they are all much too similar: each and every act of harassment is steeped in entitlement. So much entitlement that it’s difficult to grasp how someone could do something so inconsiderate, objectifying, and privileged that they won’t even accept or may not even realize that what they’re doing is harassment.

Their over-flowing sense of entitlement coupled with their lack of sensibility creates a situation that makes women feel unsafe and uncomfortable in public spaces. It can and does determine where women choose to go, what we choose to wear, and where we choose to live. Ultimately, it limits our choices and freedom to be safe in public.”

What is different from when I was a teenager is that there is a lot more awareness about this issue. And thanks to social media and sites like mine, I know there are places teenagers can go to for advice, for support and to share their stories. Which is so important.

So today, I honor all the girls who are bravely speaking out and demanding the right to be safe in public spaces!

Harassed on the way to school

September 14, 2009 By HKearl

As the news reminds us almost daily with abduction stories like Jaycee Dugard’s, most Americans realize children are at some risk for abduction from strangers and, as a result, fewer parents allow their young children to go to school alone (though the figure of abductions is smaller than people may realize: 112 children are kidnapped by strangers per year). I don’t think people realize, however, how many girls and young women are followed, verbally harassed, and touched by boys and men as they wait for a school bus, walk, or ride the subway to and from school, particularly once they reach puberty.

Last fall I conducted an informal online survey about people’s experiences with street harassment and over 900 people responded. In an open-ended question where people could share a story, many females mentioned the harassment they had or do receive en route to or from school.

“When I was a freshman in high school a girlfriend and I were followed home by a car of teenage boys who shouted remarks and the occasional lewd comment. We veered off our route and onto the campus of the elementary school where we went to a former teacher’s classroom and asked her if we could stay for a while, until we felt sure those guys were gone.” – 20 -29 year old Anglo American young woman in Murfreesboro, Tennessee

“One day in 8th grade (when I was 13), I was running late. The train was crowded, but I had to get on. As I shoved myself in, a fat man suddenly came out of nowhere and wedged himself in behind me… He started rubbing his crotch against my leg and panting. I was so scared, I didn’t know what to do or say. When the train reached the next stop and a lot of people got off, I tried to get away from him. He followed me and continued rubbing his crotch against my leg … He didn’t stop until more people got off and I finally found a seat.” – 13-19 year old Asian American young woman in New York City

Of the 811 females who took my survey, 22 percent said they were first harassed by men in public when they were ages 0-12, 40 percent said ages 13-15 and 25 percent said ages 16-19.

Unfortunately, harassment of girls on the way to and from school is a global problem, from England to Italy to Brazil to Mexico to Egypt to Mauritius to India to Japan to Canada.

For example, in large cities in Japan, men groping women on the subway is a huge problem. According to a recent article in The Japan Times, last year in Tokyo alone there were 2,000 reported groping cases (and it’s a vastly underreported crime). Most of the attacks occurred during morning rush hour and almost half of the women targeted were in their 20s and more than 30 percent were teenagers. To combat this problem, there are women-only subway cars and PSAs telling men to stop groping.

Another example is in rural areas throughout African. A recent news story detailed how only an estimated 20 percent of children who enter primary school in rural Zambia complete Grade 12, in large part because of the long distances that they must travel (up to 13 miles) which is tiresome and also places them, particularly girls, at risk of assault and rape. To enable more school attendance, Chicago-based World Bicycle Relief is donating bicycles to children in Africa to help them stay safe as they travel to school.

In the U.S., to combat parents’ fear of child abductions, SafeRoutes works to enable children to more safely travel to school by foot or on bus in an effort to reduce traffic congestion, etc.

I think, however, people need to pay more attention to how boys and men are treating older girls going to and from school. My research has shown that street harassment impacts females of all ages but, the harassment of teenage girls upsets me the most because I believe they are the most vulnerable to believing this is how women are supposed to be treated and the least likely to know how to respond or protect themselves.

And it should not be girls’ responsibilities to have to protect themselves; boys and men must stop preying upon and harassing young women. I’m currently writing a book on this topic which will explore ways to accomplish this goal. In the meantime, here are suggested strategies to share with the young women in your life about dealing with harassers and, if you are a parent or in a position to mentor youth, please especially note #7 for ways to help stop harassment overall.

(cross-posted at AAUW’s blog)