On Catcalling

If you are a female and reading this, I'm willing to bet that at least once in your life you have been catcalled at. And for most women, it has nothing to do with what you wear or how you act, and there is almost no way of avoiding street harassment in daily life.

Street harassment ranges from the lewd guy screaming "SHOW ME YOUR TITTIES BABY!" out of his car as he zooms past to some guy masturbating on a subway while he grinds himself against you. To them it's all about control. And I fucking hate them.

Last year I was walking to my car in a parking lot at night when some drunk asshole shouts out of his parked car window as I walk past, "HEY SLUT COME SUCK MY DICK!" or something to that effect. Me, tired and not taking any more shit from any jerks screams back at him, "Fuck you, you fucking asshole!" while I flip the bird at him and continue to my car. Now of course, since street harassers have to have the last word and hate it whenever people just accept that they're being jerks and ignore it, he gets out of his car and starts stomping toward me. I was with one of my friends, who tried to get him to go away but the jerk just started trying to punch him. So naturally I jumped in and we had a pretty nasty fight and we eventually left after he stopped trying to hit us while he was on the floor. I got away with just a black eye and my friend with his glasses broken and shirt ripped off, but I realize it could have gotten a lot worse if I was alone.

Nowadays I don't really curse back at them, since my previous experience has been being attacked for saying something back. What I do now is if they're close enough to me I'll start talking to them about how it's rude and how it makes me feel when they say things like that to me and other women. Usually they just look at me stupidly and try to ignore me, but someone has to say something to them.

I would LOVE to go out one day and be able to just walk outside on the street and have no one shout vulgar things at me or have to fear for my own personal safety. I wish that it would be NORMAL to live like that and not expect men to act like scumbags who think they have the right to harass me.

Luckily I've found this great blog called Hollaback NYC where people take pictures or descriptions of the street harassers and post it to the blog for everyone else to see. There are also similar ones of other major cities too, so look for yours on the sidebar of their blog if you're not from NYC! It's nice to take some power back after being harassed and treated like a piece of meat and spreads awareness! Yay!