1. 447
    16
    Jul

    mystreetmybodymyright:

    I’m fourteen, running late for Global Studies. Breakfastless, I bolt out the door to catch the six. Instead of turning right as usual at Lexington Avenue, I take the shortcut to the station. They’re sitting at the front stoops again, right where the houses end and the deli begins. It’s humid, but I’ve put on my baggiest sweatpants and a long-sleeved shirt, so maybe today they won’t say anything. I look down at my feet and try to look preoccupied, or sad, or unapproachable, or something. And I walk faster. But they turn around and stare, all of them together, and don’t move, blocking the sidewalk. They make me push through them. I can feel them, bigger, older men, looking down at me as I approach. My entire body is tensing up, dreading an unwanted touch, a crude word. I want to crawl into a hole.“Hey, come back, China doll,” one says. Something in his voice makes my stomach turn. I wish I had simply woken up on time.

    I’m fifteen and sweating under the June sun. The subway ride home was sweltering, and the ice cream truck beckons. Naturally, I order a vanilla milkshake. Then—a touch to my back, an ugly whisper: “you’re so sexy, baby.” I freeze. Was that someone’s breath on my ear, or just the heat? I turn around and see a fat, balding man strolling away into the crowd. As though he had done nothing wrong. My skin is crawling everywhere. Instinctively, uselessly, I am rubbing my ear, but I cannot get rid of his awful, lingering presence. He’s taking his time walking away, and I know that he knows I am watching him and that I am too scared to say anything. I hate myself for being a coward. I hate myself for being scared. Families around me chatter and laugh, enjoying the beautiful day. The ice cream truck lady leans out. “That’ll be $2.25.”

    I’m seventeen and plastic bags of bai cai are killing my arms. My mom and I speed-hobble downstairs at the Flushing station, only to find that the train isn’t leaving for ten minutes. Dropping our groceries in an empty car, my mom pulls out the weekend World Journal and I turn to my copy of Life of Pi. A man boards and sits across from us. He immediately begins staring at me. Intently. Willing my mom not to notice, I read. And he stares. He stares and doesn’t stop and I’m trying to muster the courage just to look him in the eye, but I’m afraid. What if that encourages him to do something else? What if my mother sees? I wish that he would just look away, even for one second. But he doesn’t. After a few minutes, I put down my book and look up at his face. He is old, older than even my father. I expect him to put his hand on his crotch, to grin obscenely, or to lick his lips, or maybe all three. Instead he just stares. Should I be relieved? People start filtering into the car. Eventually, he looks away.

    I’m eighteen and refreshed from an afternoon run in Central Park. I’m calling my boyfriend to let him know I’m coming over. The man walking across the street towards me is leering pointedly in my direction, but I figure he won’t say anything since I’m on the phone. I’m wrong. He makes a point of brushing past my arm and sneers: “I like the way you show off them legs.” For once, I react quickly. “No, it’s just hot.” I’m walking away as fast as I can, trying to put distance between us, when he yells, “fuck you, bitch.” I turn around. He looks angry, surprised, embarrassed. I should be angry also, but all I can feel is satisfaction, an unfamiliar and fervent satisfaction. “Say it louder!” I scream across the street. “I don’t give a fuck.”  I’m aware of how stupid I look and everyone is staring at me, but it’s true.

    Finally, I just don’t give a fuck anymore.

    How many leers, how many unwanted comments and touches does it take to take away your right to walk on the same sidewalk, to ride the same subway, as anyone else? How many times must you watch the smile on a stranger’s face widen in perverse excitement at your revulsion? Once a month? A week? More? If my experiences were limited to the above encounters, perhaps I would know.

    I was sexually harassed on a regular basis from the year I turned fourteen until the year I left for college. I tried so hard, every day, to ignore it. But I couldn’t. It changed me. The irrepressible nervousness when a stranger approached. Being afraid to look any man on the street in the eyes. Worrying I was being followed. Not wanting to leave my house unless I had to. Crying. Not crying until I got home, then crying. Hating myself for crying. Playing the faces of dozens of men back in my mind—I remember them all. Wondering what would have happened if I had bumped into them in a deserted area. The rape nightmares.

    But the worst part was how it warped my own view of myself. Maybe it was my fault, I thought. Maybe I was asking for it. It was because I was small and weak, I thought. I hated myself for my own helplessness. Hated myself every time the snappy retort, the “leave me alone,” the “stop,” bubbled up furiously in my heart only to wilt in my throat. The tiny, illogical, and unshakable fear that no matter how hard I worked, I would never amount to anything more than a body. That my feelings—my disgust, the anger and loathing written all over my face—would deter no one because they simply did not matter. That it would only get worse as I grew older. That my only worth was sexual. That I was less than human. That I was nothing.

    I have never shared my full experience with sexual harassment before. I didn’t tell my parents because I didn’t want to burden them. I didn’t tell my friends because I didn’t think they would understand. And I didn’t tell anyone else because I didn’t think they cared. As a result, I believed that I was alone in how I felt, that I was “overreacting” to normal, socially accepted behavior. 

    I am sharing my personal experiences now as part of the first-ever International Anti-Street Harassment Week in the hopes that it can inspire people I know, and people of my generation as a whole. As a child, I felt completely helpless about my own situation. I hope that today, I am at least able to encourage others to treat sexual harassment in public as a serious issue, and to take action to protect themselves and those around them. 

    If you are a woman, especially a young woman, who has had similar or worse experiences, know that you are not alone. Do not keep your problems to yourself. Reach out and talk to loved ones. There are many resources and organizations which offer better advice than I can; they are listed below. The movement to report, protest, and ultimately end sexual harassment in the public sphere is springing up all over the world. 

    If you are someone who is unfamiliar with this subject, thank you for reading. If you support safe streets for women and children, please share this link or comment below. I’d be happy if I could reach just one person with this message.

    Further Resources:

    Got Stared At
    Stop Street Harassment
    Hollaback!
    Men Can Stop Rape
    The Pixel Project
    Slutwalk Toronto 
    Make Delhi Safe (India)
    Harassmap (Egypt) 
    Young Women for Change (Afghanistan)
    Collective Action for Safe Spaces (Washington, D.C.)
    RightRides (NYC)

    Facebook pages: SlutWalk, Freeze the Tease, Zero Tolerance Campaign, New Yorkers for Safe Transit, L.A.S.H. (London Anti Street Harassment) Campaign


    Alice Xie is a a New York City native. She is currently a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania.

  2. 2
    27
    Jun

    God, why can’t you just make all of the men in the world disappear? I hate them. I hate almost all of them. 

    I sometimes even wonder why you ever created such a self-absorbed, rude, vain, entitled species.

    If I see that taxi driver or that man on the subway or those landscape workers or that chauffeur service CEO again I want to stop playing nice. I want to march up to them, put a knife to their throat, and ask them if they still think I’m pretty now. 

    Because maybe if I can kill them, I can forget about how humiliated and violated I felt and still feel. I’m not exactly completely innocent, but at least that previous innocence was lost with my foreknowledge and consent. I’m not exactly against flirting or getting hit on, but only when I’ve given tacit consent by being in a setting in which that kind of behavior is expected. I’m not against being told I’m attractive or being asked out, but not by men significantly older than I am and especially not by men who are no where near my level of achievement (academic or otherwise). 

    Don’t humiliate me by assuming that your attentions and flirtation are tolerable, not to mention even remotely welcome. If I smile and tell you thanks but no thanks, that’s because we’re on a metro and I don’t want to cause a scene, or we’re in a cab together late at night and I’m honestly afraid that if I cause a scene, you will cause me harm. If this were Wellesley College’s campus, I would’ve already kicked you in the shins, slapped you, kicked you again, possibly drawn a knife and blown a rape whistle … or at least called the campus police and my friends. 

    But this isn’t Wellesley, where I feel safe and protected (and I’m only beginning to realize how safe and how protected). I’m a young girl (even though I’m 21, I still FEEL young) alone in an unfamiliar city living with strangers. I don’t want to feel like I have to hide myself behind messy hair, glasses, and sneakers in order to protect myself from unwanted attention. I don’t want to have to first humiliate myself (by making myself look as unattractive as possible) in order to protect my dignity.

    This isn’t FAIR. This isn’t RIGHT. I know that there are people who will tell me to wear longer skirts and shorter heels and that there are other people who will tell me to get over it and stop overreacting. But I don’t think that anyone should have to feel the way I do. 

    So if I end up stabbing one of you men, oops, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know that you would end up bleeding to death from that wound. It was really just a compliment, honest.

  3. 14
    May

    "This honest irreverence has led me to certain conclusions about myself: that I cannot and will not ever be able to accept infinite punishment for finite sin as justice. Nor can I accept that only those who have made some sort of cognitive assent to a particular narrative as the exclusive recipients of redemption and restoration. It seems to me there is an underlying theme to religion that life is just a game of Russian roulette – hoping to beat the odds, hoping you were born into the right religion or right culture, hoping that you hold the right theology"

    - If I Told You
  4. 8
    May
  5. 7825
    27
    Mar
  6. 6
    17
    Mar

    "It is easy to be judgmental when you grow up with wealth. The children of privilege aren’t allowed to fail."

    - Fairly Legal
  7. 19
    14
    Mar
  8. 5
    13
    Mar
  9. 3
    12
    Mar

    “Women’s rights ARE human rights,” Hillary Clinton —- so proud to have her as an alum

  10. 64
    12
    Mar

    lizdexia:

    “The archetype of the perfect girl for guys I see all around me is, I think, best understood by taking a look at the character of Pam from NBC’s The Office. Pam started out on that show as a wry receptionist with a conspiritorial half-smile and wavy hair the color of milk chocolate that looks like it was wet when she left her place and air-dried on her way to work. She’s portrayed by the gorgeous and funny actress Jenna Fischer, who puts herself in the hands of makeup and wardrobe people who are responsible for making her look like less of a knockout than she is. And indeed, Pam is not supposed to be the kind of beauty that turns heads in a room. As a romantic pursuit, she’s a slow burn: the kind of girl who will only sleep with you after months or even years of wearing down with flirty jokes and one-of-the-boys style teasing. The men in her office — most of them — pretend she’s sexually invisible. Her boss puts her down as a frump, an underdog. Pam’s equivalent from the British version of The Office, Dawn, was a different kind of girl entirely. Both could land a joke. Both could melt the camera with al small smile. But Pam is bland, unassuming; faded wallpaper. And Dawn was a coquette in corporate casual. If Dawn was Ginger, Pam is Mary-Ann’s cousin — the one who can’t even get her hair into pigtails, so she just lets it hang. I’ve met a lot of guys my age who have crushes on Pam that are so intense, it says more about what they want than who this character is supposed to be. They don’t just like her; they relate to her. They’re underdogs too. And what they want is who they are. Pam is not intimidating, like one of those women who wears makeup and tailored clothes and has a good job that she enjoys and confidence and an adult woman’s sexuality. There is nothing scary about Pam, because there’s no mysery: she’s just like the boys who like her; mousy and shy. The ultimate emo-boy fantasy is to meet a nerdy, cute girl just like him, and nobody else will realize she’s pretty. And she’ll melt when she sees his record collection because it’s just like hers, and she’ll swoon when he plays her the song he wrote on his guitar, and she’ll never want to go out to a party for which he’ll be forced to comb his hair, or buy grown-up shoes or tie a tie, or demonstrate a hearty handshake, or to basically act like a man.”

    —

    Julie Klausner, I Don’t Care About Your Band

    This is one of my favorite passages from any book I’ve read in the past year. Just think about it for a while.

avatar_96
Because Wellesley looks like Hogwarts & has a workload like the Chateau d'If.

A lot of things make me happy -- like chocolate -- and dancing -- and stuffed animals <3
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