23 Women Confess Their Scariest Encounters With Street Harassment

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I once dated a guy that proclaimed that “cat calling” wasn’t a part of the patriarchy. HAHAHAHA — OKAY DUDE (we broke up shortly thereafter). When girls start going through puberty and walk down the street just as any regular human being would, men start harassing them with a disgusting fervor. It’s an assertion of power and dominance and it really needs to f*cking stop.

Ask any woman that you know and she’ll be able to recount the times she was leered at, gawked at, yelled at from car windows, followed home, was told to smile, had kisses blown to her with d*cks flopped out of pant zippers. If a man’s really feeling aggressive — she will tell you of the times she was groped, pinched, or even worse.

Street harassment is scary — if you’ve never feared for you life or safety while walking down the street, then I am extremely jealous of you. Society tells us that it’s just a part of life, that you should ignore it, and keep your head down. Well I say, f*ck that. We need to teach boys and men alike to respect women even if they aren’t your mother or daughter or sister. We need to provoke societies to stop making such disgusting behaviors “acceptable” and let women feel like they can walk down the street without feeling sick to their stomach.

These 23 women confess the scariest encounters they’ve ever had with street harassment and it will shock you to your core:


1.

Probably the men who tried to drag me into their car after the blizzard in London in January,1982. A man and his dog were the main reason I wasn’t forced in their car. A very close second was the cab driver who stopped me in front of my house and told me he followed me every single day on my way to secondary school. He said knew which house was mine and I was so beautiful and wouldn’t I give him my number and be his girlfriend? That was worse than the blokes trying to abduct me, because I was having panic attacks for weeks and all cabs look alike. Every time I saw a cab, I was panicking for a month and my mother just pooh-pointed it. I never saw him again, to the best of my knowledge.

2.

One time two guys followed a friend and I for like 6 blocks asking for our numbers. We were both mid-teens, they were at least in their twenties and extremely persistent.

3.

I was walking to work, early in the morning, and my route took me along a canal (which was really lovely!). I saw a guy walking two HUGE dogs coming towards me and he just has this horrible expression so I do my usual and stare at the ground and hope for the best. The dogs and the man though are blocking the path. So I say “excuse me” but he doesn’t move. So I try to move round the dogs and him. “They don’t bite,” he said. And then he followed that up with “kill!” I knew he was joking but I was completely terrified right then and practically ran away from him, angry and crying.

4.

It’s a tie between the 50-year-old man who approached 14-year-old me on the street to ramble to me about how beautiful I was and finished with “see you soon” – and the construction worker who, as I passed by, dropped his work and followed me for three blocks to my workplace (a women’s clothing store that has no products for men) to similarly ramble about my supposed beauty and give me his phone number. I took a different route to work for the next few weeks, until construction ended on that road.

5.

Fortunately street harassment is generally pretty tame here in Australia but when I was maybe 15 or 16 I walked past a construction site, some workers having lunch by the fence yelled out that they were going to drag me in there to ‘have some fun whether you like it or not’. They thought it was hilarious, I had to walk past there every day to go to school (yes I was in uniform) and when I wasn’t with my brother they’d catcall and make kissy noises. I called the construction company to complain but they didn’t take me very seriously.

Written by Laura McNairy

Laura is a freelance writer for TFLN. She likes to write about what she knows best — dating, sex, and being awkward, but usually in the opposite order. She is the Assistant Editor and videographer for Peach Fuzz, a sex-positive nudie magazine in ATX.