[TW: Rape Culture; TW: Sexual Harassment]
A Documentation
Last week while walking with a friend two men started calling after us about how much they “liked [our] thighs.” We just continued walking.
Today I was walking home from my sister’s at around 10:30 pm when I was approached by an older man. At first I just avoided him by lowering my eyes, and turning my head slightly—enough so that he could see that I was purposefully avoiding him but not enough that he would leave my sight or that he would get offended; body language as self-defense is convoluted. He didn’t take the hint. He walked up to me as I was walking towards him, waved in my face, and said, “Did you hear me earlier?” I stopped a little bit past him, looking at him kind of over my shoulder with my head turned towards him while he was facing me.
I hadn’t heard him earlier. Earlier, while walking to my sister’s place, he and another man had been standing around and talking. I’d had my headphones on so it had been easier to walk past them without incident. Now he was saying to me, “I said I really like the way you look. I want to marry a girl who looks like you.” And I responded with a wide smile and even wider eyes and a vigorous nod, then walked away, not too quickly so it wouldn’t seem like I was running away. He kept calling after me about my appearance and his marriage plans and how I should, “Call him if [I] ever get lonely.”
While on the train a man stepped in front of where I was sitting, grabbed hold of the hand rail that runs down middle of the car’s roof, pulled himself up, and started humping the roof.
The problem I have with all these occurrences, besides the fact that they happened, and with other people around me, too, is my reaction to them. I immediately become more feminine, if I speak my voice goes up and sounds pleasant and accommodating, my eyes widen. And it isn’t until after I’ve walked away that I register my reaction. While I’m smiling, while I’m calculating how fast I should walk away, I never feel that what I’m doing is strange. Where did I learn this? And why is it that when I’m threatened I feel safer acting more traditionally feminine, or, now that I think about it, acting childlike?
