How Many Women Hate Street Harassment?

Many, many women, in fact I was so surprised by the amount of women polled who said it was a problem I decided to post it here to raise awareness of this issue.

http://www.alternet.org/gender/6-contortions-women-perform-avoid-street-harassment

(Source: http://issuu.com/hollaback/docs/hollaback_resultsusa/13?e=4099169/12340791)

You know....I really don't mind it so long as it stays on their corner of the street. Heck sometimes Ill even play along with it. Smile, wink, sway my hips. All in good fun and it gets those folks laughing with self conscious. It's all fun and games until the girl plays back, then they clam right up :laugh: Most Street Harassers Harass you because they know you wont like it and will huff and puff about it. They like that reaction. Give them the opposet and it takes the winds out of their sails It becomes my joke instead of their's haha

It's when they follow that it becomes a problem. And the worst part is....People these days are unfriendly to strangers in need of help. I was walking home from work one day. It was cold, I was bundled up in a coat, my feet were soaked from tromping in snow and I was in no mood....I seen this truck drive past me on the highway a bit slower then highway standard then speed up. I thought it was odd but he was on the highway and I was on a far off road he couldn't reach so whatever. The guy was determined though and figured out some way to drive around and began to harass me on the road from his truck window. Asking if I needed a ride, told me I was pretty, wondered where I was going. I knew right from the get go this guy was serious trouble and I wasn't in a location to seek help. All the buildings around me were business related and closed, not even a cleaning crew to flag down so I had to grit my teeth and keep walking, constantly telling him I was fine and didn't need his "Generous" help. he would drive ahead, turn around and follow again. Eventually I found a actual house during one of these moments of him turning his truck around, I seriously think he was trying to find a spot where he could snatch me. I knocked on the door and asked if I could seek refuge in their house and use their phone to call my husband. They almost turned me down until I pointed out the guy in the truck and begged for help. The guy in the truck was waiting for me to pass a nearby church....I have no doubts that the church was his chosen snatch spot.

Most street Harasser's are harmless. I think folks need to lighten up some lol, I know so many women who are just plain old stuck up and nasty towards people because oh my god...how dare you think Im pretty!

But.....at the same time....there are very dangerous people out there as well. Sometimes...it is hard to tell the harmless one's from the harmful ones.

Whoa I never thought being spoken to was such a huge issue for women. Went through all 6 of these by age 10, although in my case it was all about avoiding the pedos, addicts who'd do anything for pennies, and people who just enjoy stabbing other people. Shit I never played in a sandpit as a kid because of all the seringes in it. What a joke. Maybe that's why, whenever I go out and despite being fat and hairy with a gigantic wedding ring on my finger, I don't feel harrassed when random birds who aren't even mashed grab my crotch or pester me for my underwear.

I really, really don't like it.

I've not gone to the extents laid out in the article (I don't think I've experienced it frequently enough to make it hard to go about daily life, although I've heard that this is generally a lot more common in the States?) but I find it invasive and intimidating.

I think most street harassment is not founded from a position of "I want to make this girl feel special" - it's generally a lot more selfish than that. For example, if someone came up to me in the street and quietly said, in total seriousness, "I think you're really beautiful", I would probably take it as a compliment. It might make me feel good about myself. Wolf-whistles, honking horns and general lad-ish behaviour, not so much.

Whether there's any sense in this, I don't know, but when I'm out alone it makes me feel vulnerable and even...frightened, I guess. Some men seem to think that all women like attention, but some of us are introverted people with extreme hang ups about how we look and have absolutely no idea how to respond in such a situation. My automatic assumption is that I'm being made fun of, which isn't a nice feeling. For people who internalise everything, one word from someone on the street can make you feel off-kilter for the rest of the day. In my mind, that behaviour involves entering my personal (mental) space, and if someone is happy to do that, it makes me worry that they might enter my personal physical space as well. As someone who is relatively small and defenceless, having that lack of personal boundaries and self-control displayed towards me is scary.

I think that people who call out in the street have to try to understand that whilst some girls might not mind it, some girls (lots of girls, according to the article) find it quite alarming, and as one can never tell just by looking a girl how she might react, it's better just not to do it at all.

There exists out there the absurd notion that street harassment is a form of flattery. That women should – and even secretly do – love having strangers yell uninvited commentary on their looks and bodies.

I won't lie, I have had this thought. I know it's wrong, but I still thought it. I think men think this because women are less likely to be as forward in their advances as men are, so men don't have to experience being street harassed as much. Men feel like they, not receiving this attention, must be undeserving and are thus unattractive. Some men think that they would love to be in a situation where random women on the street called out to them telling them they're "hot." I wonder, though, if many men would like it if it happened regularly.

Interestingly it may have to do with where our perception of how we look comes from.

For example, my fiance seems to only value her own opinion of how she looks. If she doesn't think she looks good there is no one that can convince her otherwise. Her perception of her looks is totally internal, therefore the catcalls on the street can't be seen as compliments because she views them as a lie.

I, on the other hand, am rather vain and easily swayed by flattery (which has gotten me into a lot of trouble in the past LOL) meaning that if random women show even the slightest trace of finding me attractive it makes my day, sometimes my whole week. This means that I (and many men I know who fit this same category) don't understand how it's not a compliment. It's a position we would love to be in, to be desired and wanted. I mean, intellectually we understand, but on a deeper more primal level we don't get it. Like the poor kid listening to the rich kid complain about things he'd love to have.

All that said, people (not generalizing here) need to be more sensitive to things like that and understand that if people don't want that kind of attention people shouldn't be giving it.

on the one hand i would echo Kits comment about "how dare you think im pretty!"

sometimes the complaints ARE stuck up and are made by people who just complain in general (a phenomena which i complain about all the time! lol)

and by people who i think would feel even more offended if they went a month or two and WERENT noticed by men anywhere

i mean if you did have to choose between being admired to the point of it being irritating on the one hand and simply not even being noticed or appreciated by men at all, on the other - ?

also some of it is fear

i can see how its sometimes frightening just to be acknowledged by someone you dont know in a way that reflects some kind of evaluation, even if the evaluation is ostensibly positive

the underlying motive is unkown - is it an appreciation which associates the physical being with the psychological PERSON inside of the body?

its dehumanizing to be seen as an impersonal means to someone elses gratification

while i respect this sentiment i would posit that fear is not the best or healthiest foundation for personal interpretation of and/or reaction to life in general

i mean that respectfully - im not attacking and im not judging

the idea i want to get across here is just that to automatically enter the fear state without makng a deliberate inventory of the situation is, as a general rule, not appropriate

also, i know for a fact that many women enjoy being noticed and intentionally solicit the attention because they feel a sense of empowerment in being physically built in such a way that they affect men so quickly and are themselves psychologically prepared to capitalize on that

also, sometimes women only complain when its like a smelly homeless person - or basically a "creepy" "other"

(different race, different economic class, different social status ect) but if it were their estimation of an attractive, desirable man, or even if they were just in a different mood in some cases, the exact same moment would elicit a different internal response

a part of me wants to say "dont be so afraid and especially dont be such a snob - youre attractive and people want to express that to you and its not always easy or comfortable to do that, so if it comes out akward or even overly bold sometimes just get over it and take it for the compliment it is"

and theres truth to this

i saw a lecture recently which said that about 15% of men are sexually effective with women and 85% of men are not

i would expect the women here can validate or refute this themselves

i know it to be true because i see it everywhere i go

so id like to point out that sometimes its the understanding or just the feeling that he probably would fail her evaluation standard to begin with plays a huge role in the way many men initiate such moments

imo a LOT of male aggression towards women - generally - is actually a response to the feeling of inadequacy which the rejection experience produces

and theres no way (for women) to reconcile that - its up men to understand what makes us attractive and what doesnt and if we fall short to MAN UP and make the appropriate changes in attitude and health and status - in one way or another those are the criteria by which women evaluate men, and i would say that these all represent functionally accurate markers of developmental maturity anyway

but that evaluation process is threatening and sometimes imasculating for men until we reach the point where we are generally on the up side of it

and many men are just not there, and have no idea of how to GET there

which often translates into sense of preemptive contempt and dismisiveness

which i think most men arent fully aware of and would actually rather NOT express if they knew about it

and in these instances its less about the woman than it is about his self image as being (or NOT being) an enticing sexual candidate

there have been situations ive seen personally where men were clearly out of line and NOT respectful where imo this was the underlying cause

then theres instances which appear to be for the exact opposite reason - that they really think they make the grade and present themselves almost in a the way of "let me do you the favor of priveledging you with my sexual prowess"

leading us back into a previous point; that the same woman/women will respond differently depending on how this presentation is made and how attractive they perceive the man to be

and depending on the mindstate they are in when it happens

so we get the idea "if she likes you its flirting, if she doesnt its harrasment" lol

which seems like a double standard, and it is, but its also a pretty good feedback mechanism for reaching an understanding of how to be romantically or just sexually effective with women

and this approach actually works very well if you know you can back it up and if you have the social acuity and confidence to use it in such a way that its comfortable for her, which usually will generate a pleasureable response even in the situations where its not an affirmative one

but again, the development of that acuity is a process which involves a fair amount of miscalculation

so for men theres that feedbaack mechanism; if its not working then change it

but we can only know what works by trying and that gets interpreted in different ways

sometimes (a lot of times really) guys step over the line without knowing it or meaning to - they/we just really havent developed that acuity

and in these cases theres no harm meant and the situation is not inherently dangerous

its more an issue of men not being experienced or good at taking cues and recognising the effect that we/they have

so they/we push ahead and actually make their situation worse lol

to make all of this even more complicated and crappy for everyone, theres always the moments like what you shared Kit, where it really is creepy and very likely dangerous

i hate these guys
everyone hates these guys
they hate themselves im sure

i would stress that i think that these are the rarest of all of the "catcall" moments that women experience, even if it does usually FEEL threatening to you, mostly its not

these dudes are not the norm and the vast majority of men want them permanently behind bars, where they belong

i guess in conclusion i would advise men not to randomly holler at women and women not to be automatically afraid of every man that.does

sorry for how long this is
thanks to those who made it lol

I object to the title of the article in the word contortions
The six items are all options for alternate behavior.
They are tools, rather than contortions.

For city living it is life on life's terms . . .

In response to the whistlers and hey baby driver-bys . . my sister-in-law used to stick her finger up her nose.
It worked very well for that type of of disturbance.

Kitsu Tails wrote: I know so many women who are just plain old stuck up and nasty towards people because oh my god...how dare you think Im pretty!

yeah, . . . i have heard woman say this about woman . . but it is interesting that I never met one who actually thought it

How much does culture play into this?

What if its in our culture to dislike it?

I was once admonished by a woman from Ecuador because I did not "harass" her or comment on her beauty. She wondered if I thought she was ugly or something else was wrong. What I wrong for not commenting on her beauty? Based on her culture I was and based on the culture I was in, I was accurate not to. So who is right? What is accurate?

Since I am not a women, and I am not famous, (in general) I appreciate people when they acknowledge something about me that inspires them enough to comment. I would appreciate a little more of it. Now if I got it all the time and it prevented me from flowing through life, I would dislike it.

I have also talked to older women who miss it because they know it means that they are old. People dislike it when its happening and miss it when its gone.

Street comments can be a from of appreciate all the way to actually physical harassment. I do want to live in a world were people can share their appreciate for each other in creative, affirmative, and respectful ways. When it crosses a line, I feel that people should be allowed to talk about that line and find a creative "middle ground".

As a teenager I was harrassed (different type of harrassment) by a kid from another school who lived on the same road as me.

I ended up walking miles out of my way to avoid the bus route, and changed my way home every single day for months. I even confronted the kid on numerous occassions only for it to get worse.

It is NOT fun feeling like you can't even walk home without being bothered by someone. The person doing the harrassing might think it's fun, but if you're not enjoying it it wears you down.

You think a woman is beautiful, fine, but perhaps keep it to yourself...