Penis in the Park with Pierre [International Anti-Street Harassment Day] #antistreetharassmentday

This post is a part of the First Annual Anti-Street Harassment Day and is written by Anna Lekas-Miller. To learn more about how to stop street harassment and other ways you can take action, click here.

If you are a woman, you have most likely experienced uncomfortable or unsolicited catcalls, sexually explicit or sexist comments, leering, vulgar gestures, or even assault. If you have not, you have most likely been hesitant about walking alone at night or avoided certain neighborhoods, cities, or parts of town because you are a woman. Either way, you have most likely either directly or indirectly been affected by street harassment.

Street harassment is often dismissed as a minor annoyance, a consequence of womanhood, or even a compliment. In reality, it is a serious social disease that actively conditions women to believe that the public space is exclusively male territory. As long as women are forced to alter and inconvenience their lives in an effort to combat or negotiate harassment, there will never be complete gender equality.

Today, March 20th, 2011 is the first International Anti-Street Harassment Day. Women and men from around the world will participate by attending empowering and educatioinal events in their communities, conducting surveys and audits to evaluate harassment in their communities, and sharing their stories both online and in person. You can find ways to participate by clicking here or following the hashtag #antistreetharassmentday on Twitter.

Since street harassment is a personal experience with global consequences, I decided to get personal and share one of my own stories.

Like all women, I am circumscribed by my body. I am a very petite twenty-year old female with a famously “large” personality. Though I exhibited feisty, sassy behavior long before I knew to justify my actions as responses to the patriarchy, I reached a point where I doubtlessly began to hone these personality traits in response to the constant reminders of my vulnerability and fragility. As I am sure my short, sassy sisters can attest, my life has been filled with, “You’re too little to be talkin’ like that!” and “oooh short girl’s got some sass!” But these are my other, much more daily stories.

This particular instance happened at the end of last year while I was spending a semester abroad in Paris. On this particular day, I was walking (alone) through the Bois de Boulogne in the western part of the city. It was broad daylight and I was dressed modestly, but attractively. These things shouldn’t matter, but as we all know, they do.

Or maybe they don’t because sometimes it seems like harassment will happen regardless even if you run around wearing a trash bag.

Some serious curves on this trashbag. Clearly she was asking for it. Image credit: Ryan McKibbin. Click on image for original source.

I was leaving the park when a man approached me. He wasn’t particularly attractive, but he wasn’t particularly unattractive. Once again, this shouldn’t matter when discussing the effects of street harassment, but somehow it does. He asked me where I was going, and I told him that I was leaving. I repeatedly rejected his offers of “walking with him” until his insistence that I obviously was not in a hurry made me finally gave in.

It would only be a few minutes. There were people around. There were children around. It was broad daylight. I could practice French. He seemed relatively normal. I had done sketchier things and had turned out fine. I had talked to strangers before and turned out fine. Besides, isn’t it kind of rude and prudish to assume that everyone is sketchy? I was going to prove that women could, in fact, walk through the park alone and have a nice, normal experience talking to a stranger.

Fail.

We started talking and it came out that we were both Lebanese and we were both in journalism. Though I thought we had plenty to talk about right here, he immediately interjected, Moi, j’adore faire l’amour (I like to have sex). I quickly started discussing my boyfriend (real at the time, though I have been known to wax even more eloquently on my fictional ones), and he seemed surprised to learn that I had stayed in a committed relationship despite moving from New York to Paris. But how do you faire l’amour?

Well, I don’t. Not right now, anyway. That is kind of the point of being in a (long distance) committed relationship. You don’t really faire l’amour with strange dudes in parks. But that’s beside the point.

I wanted to leave the park, but I could not see the way out. So there I was, trapped with a strange man who wanted to faire l’amour in a park in broad daylight. This was my effort to prove that young women were perfectly capable of having a normal, non-creepy conversation with a stranger.

After expressing in exasperated French that I was in love with my boyfriend and frustrated and finished with this conversation, he asked me whether I preferred le grand sexe ou le petit sexe. At the time, I did not know what that meant. I knew that I did not want to respond to that question and was finished with this conversation. I told him this, to which he asked me, would you like to see un grand sexe?

Oh. That’s what that means. Um. No.

Pourquoi pas? (Why not), he asked me.

Because I don’t want to see your dick.

But, why not? You need to take advantage of this experience.

Listen, I don’t want to see your dick.

Oh, do you have something, you know, wrong with your body?

(And then my famous line where I completely lost it while screaming in French) Non! Je suis fucking fantastique!

Oh, very good, very very good, he said, putting his hands around my hips and pulling my body in towards his.

I immediately and instinctively slapped him. He seemed very surprised.

Can I see your pussy?

NO!

So nothing is going to happen with you and I today in the park?

NO!

Okay, goodbye.

And he just walked away. I got so lucky.

I was livid. I was livid that he had gotten away, that nothing was going to stop him from strolling through the park, asking more women if they would like to see his grand sexe. I was livid that I had not punched him, screamed and called for more attention. I was livid that even if I had done this, and dragged his bleeding, misogynistic body to the nearest police station, there are no sexual harassment laws in France. They would have probably looked at me and said, Bahhh non, madamoiselle, why did you punch this poor man in the face?

Or worse, what people actually said to me, See? Maybe you shouldn’t talk to strangers next time.

Maybe strangers shouldn’t talk to me next time. Maybe strangers shouldn’t talk to me and offer to show me their dick next time. Maybe it’s the perpetrators’ fault that street harassment exists in the first place and the more people that negotiate this problem by saying, Don’t walk alone at night or Don’t talk to strangers the more these social spaces and circumstances are legitimated as, “street harassment friendly.”

It is difficult to look at a place the same way after experiencing harassment. I love Paris, but Bois de Boulogne will always be that park where a strange pervert tried to show me his dick in broad daylight. Many women’s experiences traveling are colored and punctuated by stories of street harassment that must be either ignored or overcome in order to reevaluate, and sometimes even enjoy their experiences. It is not cultural and it is not a compliment. It is one more hurdle that separates women from men, making daily life and false notions of gender equality that much more infuriating.

I want to live in a world where my eyes do not get stuck from rolling at catcalls. I want to live in a world where I do not have to cultivate sass or instinctively slap men in order to combat the patriarchy. I want to live in a world where I do not resent men for being able to navigate their lives without the ever-present fear of harassment or assault. I want to live in a world where I can walk alone at night without thinking, If I get raped or assaulted it was my fault for being by myself. I want to live in a world where I can talk to strangers. I want to live in a world where I am not blamed for “asking for it.”

So let’s make this world happen.

Anna Lekas Miller has lived between Paris, New York City, and California over the past year, but remains an advocate of global justice, revolution, and really cool socks across borders.

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