The Shame & Blame Game: Fighting City Street Harassment [International Anti-Street Harassment Day] #antistreetharassmentday

Image credit: Marjane Satrapi (from Persepolis)

One morning, as I was rushing to meet my friends at our neighborhood coffee shop, I had to walk past a small group of men.

As I passed, these men—who all appeared old enough to be my father—started whistling and licking their lips. I narrowed my eyes and continued to walk as fast as possible. One of the men started following me down the block, yelling behind me, “Shake it girl,” and some other obscenities I’d rather not repeat, as his friends continued to whistle and laugh.

Some other pedestrians on the street stared. Others kept walking, completely oblivious. But no one, including me, said anything to the men. Although the man only followed me for about half a block, my heart was pounding. Partly because I was furious, partly because I was scared, partly because I was embarrassed—”just how badly do my hips shake when I walk fast?” I thought to myself. By the time I got to the light, where I had to stop to cross the street, I finally allowed myself to look back to make sure he still wasn’t behind me.

Luckily, he’d already given up whatever game he was playing with me. He, and the rest of the group, had clearly already forgotten about me, and continued to loiter underneath the train tracks. I, however, couldn’t forget about it that quickly. As I stood and waited for the light to change, I glared back at them as they stood there and laughed.

I started to cross the street, feeling increasingly furious. I walked faster, thinking about all of the obscenities I wanted to yell back at them, but hadn’t, because I was scared to confront them and didn’t want to make the situation worse. I thought about how I might embarrass them—what if I had simply stopped, and asked them if they had a daughter, or a wife, how they would feel if men were treating her this way? All these thoughts raced through my head, even as I grew increasingly mad, not just at these men, but at myself, for allowing them to affect me in any way.

As I turned the corner, I heard loud honking. Now, when I’m on the sidewalk, I ignore all honking and continue to stare straight ahead, because if it’s a man trying to get my attention, I don’t want to accidentally make eye contact. However, I was in the middle of the street, so I turned toward the sound.

A man in a white van who was stopped at the light honked again, leaned out the window, and—rather unoriginally, considering what had just happened—whistled, pointed at me, and started pounding on the side of his door.

By the time I stormed into the coffee shop, I was furious. In less than five minutes, I had been harassed, intimidated, and embarrassed. When I vented to my girlfriend, she shook her head knowingly.

After commiserating for a few minutes with someone who sympathized and understood firsthand what I’d just gone through, I soon moved on and went about my day.

But this situation didn’t happen yesterday. It didn’t happen last week. It happened months ago, and I still remember how angry and powerless it made me feel.

As a female living in a city, this scenario is, sadly, not an unusual circumstance. In fact, since I’ve started a job that requires I take public transit to commute across the city on a daily basis, some variation of street harassment is now also something I deal with on a daily basis. This story is just one of many I could share. Some days it’s a whistle, and some days it’s a man muttering under his breath and staring at my breasts. Then there’s my personal favorite, the morning a man looked me up and down when we made eye contact, then purposely walked closely past me, then leaned in and grunted at me.

That time, I actually laughed. It was too ridiculous: Here I am, at 9 a.m., rushing to work, and this grown man is grunting at me. Grunting!

Sometimes, I feel like the only thing to do is laugh it off.

But what makes it less funny is when you tell someone else about these situations, and a variation of the following questions are asked, or statements are made:

“What were you wearing?”

“Did you provoke eye contact?”

“Why would you smile at him?”

“Maybe you should just take it as a compliment.”

“Some women would love to get that kind of attention.”

Both men and women have asked or said every single one of these questions or statements to me. I’ve told an ex-boyfriend about getting stared at on the train for so long that I was scared the man was going to follow me, and he responded by saying, “You’re a good looking girl. What do you expect?”

Today marks the first International Anti-Street Harassment Day. According to the press release for the event, “more than 80 percent of women worldwide face catcalls, groping, stalking, and other forms of gender-based street harassment, especially when they are alone in public.

Despite the evidence that street harassment is a global problem and one that reduces women’s mobility and limits their access to resources, it’s often dismissed as a trivial problem, a compliment, or women’s fault.”

That means that if you’re a woman reading this post, no matter where you live, no matter what you look like, no matter how you dress, you have most likely not only experienced street harassment, you have been blamed—in one way or the other—for it.

Fortunately, my personal experiences with street harassment have for the most part, been annoyances, not an actual threat to my safety. That doesn’t stop me from feeling afraid or powerless every single time this happens, though.

So what can we do?

Stop Street Harassment’s site offers ten ideas for how to act, ranging from something as simple as tweeting or sharing your personal story to holding an anti-harassment rally.

However you decide to act, remember that you’re not alone, and you have a right to feel safe, whether you’re taking the train home from work after dark, protesting in Tahrir Square, or you’re walking down the block to a coffee shop in broad daylight.

Let’s stop victim blaming, and instead educate each other on how to stop street harassment.

And while you’re at it, invest in some pepper spray.

Click here to view Alison Hamm’s bio.

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