Washington DC Archives | Page 8 of 8 | Stop Street Harassment

I haven’t been street harassed in a while but I got harassed a few times this past week and I let myself down in how I reacted.

Last Sunday I was on vacation in Utah with my family. My partner was flying in that evening from a conference to spend the last few days of the vacation with us. I had been wearing running clothes the whole time but thought I’d wear some nicer clothes to get him at the airport and maybe they accentuated my “lady parts.” Before going to the airport, I stopped at a gas station to fill up the gas tank and clean the car an uncle was letting me borrow. My credit card wasn’t working at the pump so I had to go inside to see the cashier. You would have thought I walked in there naked or something – all these men inside stopped what they were doing and leered at me. I felt sooo uncomfortable. Then when I was vacuuming the car, a car full of guys at a red light near by were hooting and hollaring out of their windows at me. When I looked up they got louder and I quickly looked away and walked to the other side of the car. I later cried about these instances because I felt so humiliated and also so mad at myself for not doing anything – even though I’ve read, written, talked, blogged about street harassment so many times and know plenty of ways I could have reacted. I also hated that in the back of my mind I was thinking how if I had stayed wearing my running clothes maybe I wouldn’t have gotten harassed even though in the past I’ve gotten harassed the most while running in running clothes.

Then yesterday I got harassed when I was walking from my office to the metro on my way home from work. A couple of guys were sitting together in a park I had to pass and one of them said, “Hey, smile, you’re beautiful” and then when I didn’t make eye contact or say anything, he said, “okay, frown then.” Of course this is pretty benign, but it’s still an invasion of my space and a way to mark me out as a sexual object. Again I did nothing and was just fuming when I got to the metro at the men and again at myself. And again, I thought, geez, I wear a tight shirt to work and look what happens. Even after all I’ve learned about street harassment, that still went through my brain!!

Anyway, I’ve resolved to create my own business cards to hand out to harassing men because confrontations are so hard for me but I think I could be brave enough to hand them a card that says don’t harass women and maybe in time I can get up the courage to tell them.

– holly

Location: Salt Lake City, UT and Washington, DC

The wonderful anti-street harassment activists in India over at the Blank Noise are holding a special survey/discussion on their site through August 15th about being a spectator of street harassment. Of their website visitors who take their poll, 13% reported being a spectator of street harassment.

This is what they ask: “Blank Noise Spectators Special asks members of the public, both men and women, to share what they witnessed. What was your first reaction? Was it to intervene? Was it to ignore? What did you do? What would you rather have done? Can you share your thoughts about being a spectator. If you have been a ‘special spectator’ , that is, intervened in the situation, please tell us how! Was it with wit and humor? Or did you physically assault the ‘perpetrator’? Did you walk away? Or call the cops? Or gather a crowd? Or see another spectator take charge of the situation and participate in any way?”

I admit I’m not much of a confrontational person and it’s something I’m working on but there was one time I almost did say something. I was on the Washington, DC metro (I live in the DC area and take it to/from work etc) on a weekend and it was crowded and there were two young women standing near me dressed to impress and on my other side were a bunch of young men pointing and whispering crude things about the women. The women had their backs to the men and seemed oblivious of what was happening and that is what kept me from intervening. I think if the women had noticed I might have intervened. However, I wish I had anyway because they were being extremely crude and just talking about the women like they only consisted of body parts etc.

Anyway, check out Blank Noise and also feel free to leave your comments on this blog if you’re so inclined 🙂