hollaback is such a great website! this kind of harassment (and assault actually-although i never used that word to desribe it until this website) has happened to me around 3 times. this gives the power back!

(1) Discrete? He was a particle physicist?

(2) Gentlemen: I have perfected the world's first pair of wraparound State Trooper mirrored shades to go along with your mesh hats and inexplicable wrist sweatbands.

(3) And New York appears to be too crowded and that Bloomberg's initiative to release Crazy Groping Gas into the general population doesn't appear to be working as originally envisioned.

I think Holla Back is doing great work. As a teenager growing up in NY, especially one who went to Catholic School (something about those uniforms turns men into bumbling idiots) I'm all too familar with street harassment. On guy even had to nerve to call out something dirty to me from a truck while i was standing at a corner with my MOTHER AND GRANDMOTHER!! I was only 15 at the time. I gave him the bird and he threatened to "break off my finger and shove it up my ass" as he was driving away.....man if only I had a camera phone back then

Public humiliation of the creep is always satisfying. I remember walking down the street once with my sister who was in that early adolescent stage where your body has changed drastically but your psyche hasn't, so she was still wearing kid clothing even though her body was less kid-like than it had been--in this case short shorts. I noticed this ass across the street learing at her, and also that she was becoming really, really uncomfortable. I have quite a loud voice, and I boomed out with:

"Hey! You ought to be ashamed of yourself! This is my little sister, and she is THIRTEEN YEARS OLD! That's right, she's a kid! Yeah, you! That's right, you oughtta hide your face, buddy!"

The guy in question looked mortified. My poor little sister was also a little embarrassed, I should confess, but she seemed happier without the leering, and then she borrowed a long skirt from me to walk home in.

I think that the whole concept of HollaBack is great, and my heart goes out to the woman who was physically groped when walking down the street. I can't imagine the sense of violation that must have created in her.

I have a hard time feeling any empathy for the first woman you quote in the post, though. She went out of the way to accentuate her phyisicalness by dressing up for her interview, when it is to her benefit, but when someone outside of the person she wanted to impress noticed her, she gets upset.

Catcalls and harrassment are rude and sometime illegal activities, but if we get to the point where men are admonished for looking at a womam, I don't know if we can ever come to a basic understanding of one another.

She went out of the way to accentuate her phyisicalness by dressing up for her interview, when it is to her benefit,

Are you fucking kidding, or are you Ann Althouse?

Most men look really good in suits, but I don't walk down the street leering at men heading home from work. How dare they try to accentuate their physicalness for their benefit?

I'm going to take a guess and assume that you're NOT a woman, because if you were, you would know that men are not admonished for simply looking at women. We can tell from that visceral reaction in our guts which men are looking, and which men are mentally undressing us.

In response to your post prairielily, I agree. We should feeling like we're asking for street harrassment just because we choose to dress up, whatever the occasion may be.

equityforbothgenders is using the oldest misogynist trick in the book...first claiming that harassment is so terrible and he's so sorry for what the groping victim had to go through in a poor attempt to appear like a decent person. but then right into the nitty gritty: women deserve to be harassed because of the way they dress. please, how predictable.

While being ogled isn't harassment, being groped goes beyond harrasment. Harrasment is some jack ass screaming shit at you or getting in your. some guy sticking his hand up your pants is assault.

That's really the problem with conflating A) with C). C) isn't simply harassment, but also sexual assault. A isn't only legal, it's only of questionable morality. Creepy, but not necessarily dangerous.

B) is a entitled prick who thinks he's being forward thinking. He's not C), but he seems to think he has some divine right over other people, and that is potentiely dangerous behaviour.

Men shouldn't be admonished for 'simply looking at women'. Leering isn't a simple look, it's not giving someone the once over and deciding where to go from there. Men do it, Women do it, and if you don't you should try it. And no, you don't always know when people are looking at you. Women don't have magic or psychic powers. women's intuition is bullshit. You can only tell when someone is looking at you if you look at their faces and follow their eyes.

This is where conflating A) which is only creepy, with c) which is a form of sexual assault, and is both illegal and dangerous, get's dicey. They aren't differences in degrees, one is a violation of sacred personal space, the other isn't. It makes A look more dangerous than it is (by giving the impression of gateway behaviour) and it makes C) look less dangerous.

Wow, equityforbothgenders, that was impressive- not only do you bring back the old "why would women dress nice if they don't want to be leered at"- you're extending this to a situation where she wasn't dressed for a bar (where that old comeback is usually brought up)- she was dressed for an *interview*. That probably means she was dressed professionally. That would be like saying that when I wear my nice fitted suit to work I'm asking my colleagues to look at my boobs. Besides, it's one thing to admire a man or woman for looking nice- maybe to smile, say hello. it's another thing to STARE for 15 minutes. Geez. That would make anyone feel icky.

I get driveby-harrased ocassionally...I feel weird about it like sort of guilty, I'm not used to that kind of attention, it's novel and somewhat exciting, but it also feels dirty. The harrasers don't know who I am, they don't know my identity they don't know I'm commited to my gf.

I would really consider reporting them...but I can't submit to hollaback because

1. They are in a moving vehicle
2. I Don't have a camera.
3. I Don't live in a big city.
4. My sex deligitimizes what happens.

(sorry, if this get's misinterpreted, given some of the other comments, I'm not at all like the "she asked for it for dressing like that" poster and I'm also not a "think of the men" faux righteous indignation loudmouth)

a_human, many of the posts on HollaBack are just descriptions of experiences with street harassment with no accompanying photo. a majority of the experiences are in bigger cities (where women are more likely to be walking on the street), but there's nothing saying you can't email about something that happened to you in a smaller town. and as far as your sex goes, i don't think the site says it's only committed to exposing harassment of women, so much as street/sexual harassment in general.

you can email them here.

a_human: I agree with Ann, and would also add that my s.o. is a pretty good looking guy and gets that from men and women both... even though I don't think it happens to men as often, it's disturbing to many men when it does. But my s.o. will keep bringing it up for days. I guess the cumulative effects of being demeaned have hardened me to the leers and catcalls a little, although the stalking and touching I will never get used to or be flattered by. Also, I would point out that at least to me, the drive-by comments are less threatening that some guy standing three feet away from me looking at me like he's going to jump me.

equityforbothgenders, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you're just misunderstanding, because there was a time when I had similar thoughts, back when I was just starting to gain some awareness of feminism, and wasn't really sure yet how I, as a man, could fit in- basically, was there a right way for a guy to look at a girl he finds attractive?

The short answer: Of course there is.

The long answer: Looking and leering aren't the same. It took one trip out to the mall with a friend to whom I'd shared my concern for her to be able to show me the difference.

Read the post again- it's not that a guy noticed that she was attractive that was the problem. It was the way he handled it. If you're "looking at a girl" you don't leer at her for 20 minutes even after it's clear that she's not interested. Nobody is complaining about people looking at one another. I strongly suggest that you go out and observe people for a little while. The difference between people who are checking each other out, and the people who are leering at women should be pretty blatant if you're looking for it.

And it doesn't matter how she's dressed. The fact that she dressed up for an interview has nothing to do with some asshat leering at her 20 minutes, mentally undressing her, or just generally making her uncomfortable. Would it have been easier for you to understand her feeling of violation if she'd been wearing scrubs and he'd done the same thing?
A creep is a creep, regardless of what his target is wearing, and blaming it on the way she was dressed completely misses the point (and, I suspect, isn't going to win you any friends around here).

soullite, what the hell?

No one here has claimed women have some "magical" powers of intuition. It's simply been said, truthfully, that women (who are subjected to this shit every fucking day) know when it's happening to them. How do we know? Again, because it happens Every Fucking Day.

When I was sixteen, I couldn't have told you the difference, necessarily -- sometimes I even though catcalls were genuinely complimentary. I was young and naive and ignorant.

Similarly, someone who isn't subjected to it every day (this probable describe most men, with exceptions like very good-looking men who live in predominantly gay neighborhoods) might have a harder time telling the difference.

However, soullite, since I'm guessing you're a man, try to step into our shoes for just a second. Imagine you were in a gay club and had no realistic way of leaving. Imagine that just walking around the place, men started whistling at you, making kissy noises at you, following you with their eyes, etc. You seriously think there's nothing wrong with those kinds of unwanted come-ons? That that's just "looking"?

Give me a fucking break. Until you've had a strange man grab your ass in public and expect no repurcussions for it, you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

Okay, it took a couple years of harassment on the streets in New York to evolve an effective way of dealing with it.

Ignoring whistles or cat calls or come ons only gives the asshole the excuse to continue, repetitiously, because you apparently haven't heard him.

Screaming abuse back, gave one creep the excuse to get even angrier, and follow me for blocks shouting "I can say anything I want to you, bitch!"

However, once I made the situation that of "manners", the creeps had nowhere to go.

For every man who approached trying to get to "know" me, I said, "I terribly sorry, but I never speak to strangers on the street."

Rinse and repeat, it stops them dead in their tracks: they can't pretend I didn't hear them, I've been "polite" so they have no excuse to be angry, or continue.

And to outrageous questions or suggestions, such as, "You wanna suck my dick?" "I wanna eat your pussy." -- again, a "polite" response in a neutral tone, flummoxes them and ends the "conversation" -- "No, thank you."

With the added bonus, that if they are with friends, or if there are other people around, they laugh at your harasser, who gets embarrassed, and scuttles off.

Men who offer rides, are also stopped by the neutrally polite, "No, thank you," and it also destroys their little urban fantasy that you might be a hooker.

For men who followed me, there were two approaches that worked best.

If there were people around, I'd cross the block in the middle and say loudly, "That man is following me, please watch him."

They'd have no option but to slink off in the opposite direction.

If I was alone and it was at night, I'd get frightened, and then righteously be angry at whoever caused my fright, and that righteousness indignation, combined with making it a matter of manners, worked to make them go away.

Confronting him -- "Do you know how rude it is to follow me and frighten me?" -- has had drunken oafs backing off and apologizing at 2 a.m. on a deserted block.

And it also translates outside New York: once, walking home in "Beverly Hills Adjacent" a white guy in a sports car followed me for a block at about 5:30 at night.

When he pulled up and asked me if I wanted a ride, I said "No, thank you," but he continued following me for another block.

I turned around said in my best schoolmarm voice, "I said, 'No, thank, you!'"

But the asshole continued to follow me in his car, which first frightened me, and then as it always had, made me angry that he had the nerve to frighten me, and prompted five foot tall, 100 pound me to look him in the eye and say, "Listen buddy, don't fuck with me -- I'm from New York!"

Whether or not you want to be polite to these creeps, if you make about manners, it usually stumps 'em. But if they continue, they know you have good cause to be righteously angry, and for some reason they get the hell out of Dodge.

Don't know why this method works, but after using it for eight years in New York City, and 20 in Los Angeles, I can attest that it does.

Oh, and I forgot to add, that it also works to go directly to the righteous indignation when groped (especially if you question his mental facilities at the same time.)

Some idiot grabbed the back of my leg while we were on a escalator.

"Are you insane?!!" I asked incredulously, and he backed down a moving escalator to escape me(even though there were no witnesses.)

I strongly suggest that you go out and observe people for a little while.

Be sure not to leer, though.

Seriously. If you can't pick up on the signals that people give when they're being genuinely leered at, whether it be the uncomfortable way leerers make their subjects squirm, or the way the avoid eye contact with you after the first 5 minutes of your staring at them, or the dirty looks the subjects shoot back that scream "stop gawking!" ... perhaps you should just stay home.

It's a bit discouraging to realize that I'm 56 years old and still had to employ one of these tactics to deal with a harasser in the last year, even though I live in Los Angeles, which is less of a walk city, so street harassment is less frequent than that of New York. And I'm fucking 56 years old!

How old do I have to be --70, 80? -- before men who are assholes no longer consider me public property, simply because I'm a woman?

And for the idiot guy who didn't see what was wrong with "just looking" -- I got news for you, buddy: if you've been harassed for years on end, or decades even, you can tell the difference between a glance, and invasive ogling.

And I wouldn't wish on you the years of strangers feeling free to impose their sexual desires on you, simply because you had the nerve to walk down the street.

And no, you don't always know when people are looking at you. Women don't have magic or psychic powers. women's intuition is bullshit. You can only tell when someone is looking at you if you look at their faces and follow their eyes.

Well you must be a guy because women's intuition exists for this reason. We have to be vigilant in public and even in our homes. I always know when someone's staring. All I have to do is turn and there is he, staring.

I've never understood the whole street harassment thing. Just hearing about it makes my skin crawl. When I see it happenning for real, it makes me so uncomfortable I feel like crawling under a rock. I mean, what is the thought process? Sure, I have been guilty of checking someone out a beat or two too long, but what does someone hope to accomplish by leering or making lewd comments? I assume no one is stupid enough to think the woman is going to be attracted to this. Is it just a case of men picking on women who are out of their league and trying to make them uncomfortable as revenge?

I live in a small city, and I do my fair share of walking my car-less ass around it. That also means that I get a fair amount of leers and shouts from men in cars driving by me. and it DRIVES ME CRAZY.
One day, I was walking up the street and a car full of young guys, about my age, were coming down the road towards me, about 5 of them packed into a little Volkswagen. Even from far away, I could see them getting ready to do something. One guy in the back rolls down his window and screamed "I WANNA COME ON YOUR TITS!"
I felt totally degraded and embarassed. My immediate, knee-jerk reaction was one of guilt. I thought "My shirt is too tight." Mere seconds later, the feminist in me took over, and I started the break the situation down.

That, obviously, wasn't my fault. In fact, I don't think it even had to do with me at all. That incident was entirely about a group of guys getting all hyped up and trying to out-man each other, or whatever a car full of fratboys is apt to do.

If you think about it, when it comes to drive-by-degrading, has it EVER happened to you when the guy was alone? It's not about you. It's about them.

I think these men are truly uncomfortable with women, who are confident in public spaces. I had a couple of old guys come talk to me in a curling club. They were not threatening in the way the hollaback writers report (although I've had those experiences too), but they just could not stand a young (to them) woman sitting alone and not looking worried. They felt a need to "chat me up" in order to reestablish their understanding of how the world works, which is that men handle the public world *for* women. The harasssment and assaults are an extension (perversion?) of that need to control women in public spaces.

As a hetero dude who enjoys what some women look like, I really want to understand the difference between looking and leering. I'm reasonably sure I've never leered at a woman in public, but I'm also pretty sure I'm not the one who gets to make that determination.

If there's a woman on the other side of the coffeeshop, and I glance at her more than once, does that constitute leering? What about more than twice? Of course there probably aren't any hard and fast rules, but I'd really like to make sure I'm not hurting anyone.

hi fi parasol:

Are you trying to make someone uncomfortable? If not, you are probably not leering. Are you ignoring signals that she is, in fact, uncomfortable? If not, you may not be leering. Are you conflating your appreciation with a need to dominate? If not, then you probably are not leering.

Good luck

hi fi, I think mirm is partly right -- get a handle on what you're *really* thinking/feeling... maybe a helpful tool would be to imagine your mother/sister in the room, and someone looking at her the way you're looking at the stranger. Or, hell, imagine it's a gay coffeeshop and a guy is looking at you that way. It's one thing not to reciprocate interest; but does he make you genuinely uncomfortable, or just vaguely flattered but unmoved? If you would be comfortable with a strange man looking at you or your mother/sister the way you're looking at the woman across the room, then chances are you're not leering.

Also, if you "glance" at her a few times, I really doubt that's leering. Hell, I'll sneak a few extra glances when I see a beautiful man nearby. Again, appreciating human beauty is not the same as objectifying someone. So long as you're not doing something you'd be uncomfortable having done to you or your close family, you're probably okay.

hi fi parasol -

Here's some wise advice I got from an old gf.

1. Make eye contact when you can.

If they break eye contact quickly, they're probably uncomfortable. 'Nuff said.

2. If they hold your eye contact for a heartbeat, smile at 'em.

3. The moment they stop smiling back, or give any contrary indication, you're already leering.

4. Remember, the world full of fun things to look at. Look too long at any one thing, you'll miss two or three others.

Thanks for the advice. I'm reasonably certain I've never leered at anyone, but I am a little concerned at the idea presented upthread that women "just know" when they're being leered at. That gets me to thinking that the line between innocent and harassing is variable, which is kind of a shitty situation for everyone.

I know this sounds kinda stupid, because the REAL issue here is that women are made to feel threatened in public places, and that's inexcusable. But it is a concern for me.

Jochre - thanks for the suggestions.

I've gotten catcalled a lot in DC... most of it fairly innocent ("Hey, pretty lady!" or "I like the red hair!") and some of it more... creepy.

What really bothers me is the men who solicit me for sex. I've been asked to go home with men whom I don't even know. (For the record, I dress like the utter prude that I am.) When a bartender or some random guy at a small party asks for sex, what can you say? Am I supposed to be utterly snippy to everyone I meet, less someone think I'm eager to jump into bed?

HiFiParasol - it's easy to avoid this situation - just don't ask women for sex when you don't know them.

Hifi Parasol, I don't think I need to add to the advice that was given to you upthread. All great ideas. Personally, though, I thank you for your concern. Probably sounds cheesy, but your comments here have really warmed my heart. Good luck to you!

hi fi:

If you're solicited for sex, again, simply reply with a neutral 'polite,' "No, thank you."

For some reason it stops them dead -- and embarrasses them (Which is preferable to you going home wondering what in the hell makes creeps bother you.)

They deserve snippy, it's true, but who wants to raise their emotions and get into an argument in public? Not you, probably.

Practice your neutral toned, "No, thank you" to any outrageous request.

If they persist and make you repeat it again, they know they've earned your then righteous indignation, and back off fast -- even apologize.

As for Paul Brown, I think it's telling that his big concern is an imaginary affront, that someday some woman might accuse him of leering.

And for him that's secondary to the daily actual harassment women experience -- notice he begins and ends with the "concern" about how an imaginary affront might affect him, him, him.

This is the same sort of reasoning that once made rape convictions even more difficult to pursue legally: the fear that some man, somewhere might be accused wrongly was given bigger weight, than the actual assaults on women.

jochre, i don't doubt that politeness is a very effective way to shut down this sort of street harassment. but honestly, i'm not sure if i'd able to suppress the anger i feel when someone does this to me, and simply turn and say something polite. i usually make very unfriendly eye contact (the same "shut down" look i use for harassing dudes in bars), and that seems to work. if i open my mouth to say anything, it's usually something obscene. can't help it.

As an ugly person, I can't relate to this at all.

Incidentally:

He actually told her he "likes the authentically dykey ones the best, next to the trannies."

I don't get it. Would it have been less of an insult if he'd said that he likes the really attractive ones best?

You don't have to say "something polite" in a cheery or happy tone.

Train yourself to say "No thank you" or "I'm terribly sorry, but I never speak to strangers on the street" in either a neutral or bored tone -- it's not only more effective -- usually makes them stop dead, embarressed -- but it doesn't give satisfaction to those who wanted to upset you, which I suspect is sometimes the goal, a revenge on a woman who would normally have nothing to do with the creep.

If the jerk persists after you're "polite" response(and notice that's in quotes, which means it may sound polite, but you're actually putting the guy down) then he has given you "permission" to be righteously angry, and at that point that works to stop, or make him run away.

Notice that after I'd said "No thank you" twice to the jerk who offered me a ride, but continued to follow me, I turned on him with an obscenity and a threat, "Listen buddy, don't fuck with me, I'm from New York."

Even though he was bigger and in a car, he left skid marks he peeled out so fast.

Glad I could make your day a little brighter, JD.

Overall, for me, this is one of those situations where my male hormones and my partriarchal, priveleged-status upbringing collide with my feminism. I like to scope out the ladies, and I don't think there's anything wrong with looking -- but it falls annoyingly close to objectification sometimes. I'm generally pretty realistic about things, in that I remember that the woman I'm looking at is a person and not some fantasy (a person who, given the chance, might choose to reject or accept any politely phrased advances on my part) (not that I ever have the guts to make them) (and anyway, I'm not single).

I guess what scares me is the real sense of anger and bile on the part of the Hollaback posters. Not that I can't understand where it comes from; some of those guys deserve a lot more than simply having their picture taken. But I hate the idea that I might be lumped in with them because I sometimes engage in some light ogling.

Glad I could make your day a little brighter, JD.

Overall, for me, this is one of those situations where my male hormones and my partriarchal, priveleged-status upbringing collide with my feminism. I like to scope out the ladies, and I don't think there's anything wrong with looking -- but it falls annoyingly close to objectification sometimes. I'm generally pretty realistic about things, in that I remember that the woman I'm looking at is a person and not some fantasy (a person who, given the chance, might choose to reject or accept any politely phrased advances on my part) (not that I ever have the guts to make them) (and anyway, I'm not single).

I guess what scares me is the real sense of anger and bile on the part of the Hollaback posters. Not that I can't understand where it comes from; some of those guys deserve a lot more than simply having their picture taken. But I hate the idea that I might be lumped in with them because I sometimes engage in some light ogling.