The Cure for Anything

“

…The men eyed her with the automatic mix of curiosity, lust, and aesthetic judgment they always gave women, subject to object, the way you’d stare at an animal. She pretended not to notice. To remind them she was a person was too much effort. Objects bore no guilt.”
― Janet Fitch, Paint it Black

Staring is bad enough (and creepy), but harassment is something else altogether.  I, for one, am sick and tired of it.  Just in the past two weeks I’ve been harassed three times.

Hollaback, a national organization created to end street harassment, defines it as such: Street harassment is a form of sexual harassment that takes place in public spaces. At its core is a power dynamic that constantly reminds historically subordinated groups (women and LGBTQ folks, for example) of their vulnerability to assault in public spaces. Further, it reinforces the ubiquitous sexual objectification of these groups in everyday life.

One woman shares her experiences:

“I do things like put my hair up in a certain way that means it’s hard to be grabbed at or if I’m really scared holding my keys between my fingers […] I wear my headphones with the music turned up in town so I don’t have to hear catcalls. I walk at a certain distance from groups of men in front of me. If they are behind me, I take a different route. This is all just normal to me now. It’s normal for a lot of women I know. It’s everyday.”

Sometimes I find myself not wanting to go out because I just don’t feel like dealing with it. Women should be able to go out alone in public without the fear of being harassed. I notice a huge difference between when I’m alone and when I’m accompanied by a man. It feels like we’re still in the 19th century and a lady needs an escort in public at all times. Is this really where we are in 2015? Forget about “You’ve come a long way, baby”.

Case in point: earlier this week I had to put gas in my car. Normal enough, right? I workout at the gym on my lunchtime, so I just stopped there on the way back to work, still in my gym clothes. Mind you, it’s mid-October and starting to get chilly, so I had on long pants and a pullover. Regardless, it shouldn’t matter what I was wearing. Women can wear whatever we want and that doesn’t give men the right to harass us. I was minding my own business, simply pumping gas in my car when a guy pulled up to the pump next to me. He got out of his car and walked up to the pump but didn’t start pumping gas. Instead he stood there staring at me for a minute, then walks over to me. First, he handed me his business card and said he has a car detailing business and he could clean up my car. Okay, I was good with that. But then he asks me if I’m married, and stupidly honest me says no. So he started in on how I should give him my number and go out with him and he’d treat me so fine, blah, blah, blah. I politely declined,(curse my parents at times like this for teaching me to be polite to a fault) but this guy would not relent. At this point he is literally draped across the trunk of my car.  Then he said, and I quote, “if you just go out to dinner with me, I’ll detail your car for free”. Oh. No. He. Didn’t. Totally wrong thing to say to me. I told him no thanks, I bought my own car, I can buy my own dinner, and if I wanted my car detailed, I can pay for that too.  He had the nerve to tell me that I shouldn’t go out “looking so fine” and I should “learn how to take a compliment”.  I really wanted to tell him to fuck off, but instead I got into my car and drove away.