Street harassment. It’s gross, sexist, sometimes homophobic, and horrible to experience, yet unfortunately, it has happened to most women that I know. I have been a part of many long conversations where my friends and I recount the many, many stories that we have about street harassment—bonding over an experience we should’ve never had.
People tend to think that street harassment just happens in large cities like London or New York, but that’s simply not true. It happens everywhere. I live in a very small city in the south of England, where street harassment occurs quite frequently. I decided to use my social media to ask if anyone from my hometown has experienced street harassment and was willing to talk about it, to share their stories. Within a few hours, I had already had messages from multiple people.
Maddie’s* first experience happened when she was only sixteen. “I was once walking through town with my friend, and a man approached us and started shouting at us intelligibly, but most of it was directed at me. He then turned to my friend and, with him presuming we were a couple, asked my friend if I squashed him when we had sex. This happened when I was 16. Luckily, it didn’t have any negative impacts on how I viewed myself, though if it had happened a couple of years before, I might have let that random stranger’s words affect me.”
Again, Abi’s experience happened to her when she was very young. “I remember my first time being catcalled was on public transport on my way home from high school and a group of guys, probably in their mid-twenties, shouted that I had ‘sexy legs’. I didn’t know what to think at the time, but looking back, I was underage (probably thirteen or fourteen) and in school uniform. I was in an environment where I should’ve felt safe. Their comments made me freeze and I was so grateful to be getting off at the stop.” While school uniforms are often chosen by school administration to help students feel comfortable and united with their peers, this story highlights the fact that it isn’t the clothes you wear that changes the way you’re treated—harassment stems from a desire to exert power and a sheer disregard for women as equal human beings.
Abi continues with the theme of street harassment as objectification, explaining, “My least favourite experience happened during the day when I was walking to college and a man in his thirties approached me and said what could’ve been a friendly ‘Good morning’ but after that he looked me up and down and said ‘Wow’ and continued to say it multiple times even as he walked away. That was my worst experience because it made me feel so objectified and nobody (including myself) was going to do anything about it. It was busy and people around me heard and saw. The man catcalled me in broad daylight and nobody cared but me”.
Rowan’s multiple experiences demonstrate that street harassment isn’t just a one time. “A group of boys surrounded me and offered to pay me to suck their dick. I just kept walking, they yelled after me but luckily didn’t follow. [Another time,] a twenty-one-year-old man sat very close to me and kept asking whether I would date him even after I said no. Eventually, I told him that I had a girlfriend because I was scared that he was going to follow me home. [Also,] a man was extremely creepy to me and my friend at the train station with nobody around. He kept coming closer while saying that he ‘couldn’t hurt us because there were cameras everywhere’, which is a very unnerving thing to say! It’s awful because I’ve never learned how to deal with that and when people start a conversation, even if I’m uncomfortable, I feel like I need to be polite. I don’t feel confident enough to tell them to go away and it makes me nervous to lie. It’s ridiculous because you don’t owe anyone politeness. However, it’s always half out of fear of making them angry and half out of fear to make a scene.”
Alexandra* describes her street harassment as not only misogynistic but also racially charged. “I was walking through town and these men started to catcall me, saying “Hey Mami” and that they “like a Mexican girl”. I’m not even Mexican. Then, they started making kissing noises. I felt so embarrassed and violated. No one around me did anything either. I went and bought a jumper to cover up. It was 25 °C outside. Another time, a car pulled up next to me and these guys started shouting at me. I’m not sure what they were saying but they drove next to me for a while until I started walking back the other way. It was fucking scary. I froze up. I wanted to shout at them but all I could do was keep walking and look ahead. A boy once smacked my arse as well when I was in year 10/11 and, again, no one did anything!”
Tom’s* experience shows that street harassment is not something that only affects women. Often times, homophobia is the reason behind street harassment. “I was walking with some friends down a street late and night and this car zoomed past us and some woman shouted ‘Fucking queers’ at us. It made me feel horrible because even though I’m not visibly part of the LGBTQ community, it was just disgusting how somebody could say that as some kind of throwaway insult. It’s just messed up how some people can feel the need to use straight-up hate speech casually. They probably felt pretty good about it but it left me and my friends shocked even though it was over pretty quickly.”
Kylie’s* experiences show that even small comments to her in the street have impacted her negatively. She explains, “For me, I have luckily never experienced serious or threatening harassment however I have experienced smaller things, mainly passing comments that have made me feel uncomfortable. Additionally, I find it hard to define harassment so some of these things might not be classified under that term. The most prominent instances for me was when I had a couple of comments made to me about my appearance at work. The comments were made by an older gentleman and initially he entered the shop and made a lot of glances and stared at me which made me wary but I thought he maybe just needed some help. He didn’t spend long in the shop but he purposely stopped on the way out to speak to me, he said “You’re very attractive for a tall girl” and didn’t wait for my reply as he left. This made me feel very self-conscious but also offended by the fact that he was clearly insinuating tall women are usually unattractive. Other instances occurred whilst walking home at night, one man was walking behind me for a good ten minutes and when I went a different way from him, he said “Yo nice butt” and grabbed my arse. I didn’t react because I was younger and too scared and wanted to get out of the situation. Another time, there was a guy on a bike who rode up next to me and started chatting with me, I tried to make it seem like I was in a rush. He then proceeded to ask me out for coffee and I said no politely. He then asked for my number so we could meet another time, I again said no and that I had work (which is a lie), He continued to ride next to me, trying to get my number and calling “pretty” and “sexy”. I knew I couldn’t outrun a bike, and I didn’t want him to know where I lived, so I walked to a local shop near where I lived and stayed there until he left. I think that was when I was most terrified as I had no clue what to do. From now on, I always try to walk home through very public streets and that incidence had made me very aware of the people around me at night.”
These stories reveal that street harassment does not only affect major cities and more importantly, that street harassment is something that affects many women and members of the LGBTQ+ community. In no situation are they “asking” to be harassed, no matter what they are wearing or doing. In many of these stories, people witnessed the incident of harassment but merely walked by it, avoiding any confrontation. However, to combat street harassment, we, as onlookers, need to verbally do something about it in the moment, especially when those being harassed are powerless and caught off guard. If we don’t speak up about it, the harasser thinks what they’ve done is okay and that they can easily get away with it next time. If you ever see someone getting harassed, then it’s crucial that if you’re safe to do something, do and say something.
*Names have been changed for privacy reasons.
