Melissa’s story: a street harassment solution!
I finally gave out my first card tonight. The first month and a half I had these made nothing really happened, I honestly didn’t get harassed for almost a month, it was strange; now that I was prepared for it, nothing came.
Then one day I was walking close to a building on my right and as I was walking I was walking as close as possible to it so I didn’t have to walk around people, they would just walk to my left. But this one guy is doing the same thing, and I just assume oh he’s looks like a normal person he will move out of the way, but he doesn’t, he crashes into me, almost knocks me over, tries to kiss me and then says “you were walking right toward me I though you loved me and wanted a kiss.” It all happened so fast all I could do was elbow him in the chest and say: get the fuck off of me, you’re fucking disgusting. In situations like that there is no time to had a jerk off like that a fucking card.
But tonight, was more of the usual harassment I get on a daily basis. I could see them coming from a block away, there were two. When it’s more then one I always know to expect worse, they just egg each other on. They support each other in their harassment.
As I look straight past them, one of them said, ‘Hey beautiful’ and as I walk past one says “Ay man, I think she was looking at you” with a laugh and a smile. So I stop, I think if now is not the perfect time to hand out this card, I don’t know when is. And when I stop almost like clockwork he walks over to me and repeats what he said before and I look at him and say “this is for you” and hand him the card. I walk away. I don’t wait for a reaction. I will actually never wait for a reaction, because as proven through history men don’t react well to rejection. And in this city i’ve learned to assume everyone is crazy, and not to talk shit or try to start shit. It won’t end well.
I just want to get my message across as clear as possible. And maybe he read it and immediately threw away the card or maybe he showed his friend and they laughed, but I hope he put it in his pocket, and he forgets about it and he finds it again and again and again.
8 Responses
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I’d like to have you permission to translate this text to Portuguese and publish it on my blog. I have a page on Facebook about street harassement and I’m sure this will help a lot.
Love it! I’d love to order some
We need an online version of this for forums and chat rooms… you can say something.. but they just don’t get it.. then you get to sit there and be called everything but a child of God… and the “men” in the room never even speak up to stop them. I can never get to the ignore button fast enough, I swear…
Publish the document so we can all print them!
Love this. I am a white woman living in Peru.
I need to get these translated into Spanish and, assuming that you are stateside, I need to have triple the number printed… at least.
Good for her. But – she is making the huge assumption that these toads are literate.
http://fugees-and-funyuns.tumblr.com/post/40536643952/im-posting-this-again-because-a-lot-of-people
Here is the post with the original document, print away!
Absolutely brilliant!