Brace yourselves, folks. This one is going to be long.

I’ve known for the last few days that my blog tonight was going to be about sexual harassment. My current project at work is addressing the issue at a NYC high school, and we experience it plenty on the city streets, so it seemed to be appropriate.

Then, about an hour ago, I experienced the worst harassment since I’ve been in the Big Apple, and I’m practically exploding with angst, anger, frustration, and (sadly) fear.

It’s the fear that I’m most surprised about. It’s the fear that’s most troubling – I’ve felt annoyed, irritated, inconvenienced before – but never scared, until just now.

I was sitting in Union Square Park, trying to enjoy a nice night while getting some Moxie readings done. It was about 11 PM, but the park was still bustling with people. Guys on skateboards, couples sneaking in kisses, groups of friends laughing loudly, and solitary individuals like myself listening to music. It was a lively place to be, and I didn’t feel unsafe in the slightest.

A man, maybe around 27 or 28 years old, came and sat down a couple of feet away from me on the steps. I had looked up when he approached me, which apparently was an invitation for him to make me pull out my headphones and engage in conversation. “Is that your real hair, or are those extensions?” he asked me, pointing to my auburn tips with the same finger he’d used to pantomime to get my attention in the first place. I told him they were real, and tried to put my headphones back in and get back to my reading, but he kept talking to me. First, he brought up Elvis Presley (whose natural hair was blonde, apparently. Who knew?), asked for advice on giving a gift to his friend’s new girlfriend, and then finally, asked me if I was old enough to smoke. At this point, I had gone from vaguely annoyed, to uncomfortable, to actually worried. When I looked down at my phone to check a  text from my mom, asking if I was home, he snidely commented, “Wow, can’t check your messages and listen to me at the same time, can you?” I found myself apologizing – not because I was in the wrong, but because I didn’t want to upset him. I deflected the question about my age, and joked that I was young enough for my parents to still check up on what time I’d make it home. When I refused to give him my number but politely told him to have a nice night, he snapped at me and said I shouldn’t tell him what to do. I’d already stood up and grabbed my stuff at this point, and felt brave enough to retort, “Alright, it’s your choice. Nice meeting you,” to which “Have a nice night!” was his final response – whether he meant it sincerely or sarcastically, I was too frazzled to register.

The whole interaction lasted all of 5 minutes, but managed to ruin my evening. I walked home nervous and paranoid, jumping at every human being who came up behind me because I was scared he had followed me. When I called my mom and told her about the incident, she pleaded with me to stop going out at night so I could avoid these kinds of scary situations. There are few things I love more than New York City in the evening with its millions of lights and streets teeming with people, but now I’m compelled to listen to her, sacrificing one of my greatest pleasures just in order to maintain my own safety.

Now, let me tell you what’s wrong with this situation:

EVERYTHING.

• This man walked up and started talking to me when I was reading an essay and had headphones in my ears. I showed no interest in engaging with him, and yet he demanded my attention. What I wanted – to read, and to listen to my music – was irrelevant. Would he have walked up to a man in my posture and tried to pull him away from what he was doing? Doubtful. When I got distracted, he was offended – despite the fact that he interrupted me in the first place, I’m now obligated to focus on him. As a young woman, I’m hardly capable of making my own decisions, right?? It’s what he thinks I should be doing – talking to him – that takes precedence over my own preferences or needs.
• He asked me if I was old enough to smoke. Whether this was a sly way to gauge if I was legal, or if he was offering me a smoke, I can’t be sure, but it’s inappropriate regardless. I was obviously hovering around the adult line – whether I was above it or below shouldn’t matter. 18 isn’t some magic age at which females become sexual creatures, ready for men to prey on. I’m not saying it’s in any way okay for an adult to pursue a minor – but it’s not okay to pursue an adult woman either, if she’s obviously unwilling and uninterested.
  

  I might look a little older than her, but still

• When I rejected his advances, he got angry. Went from cheerful and pleasant to rude and bitter in seconds, as soon as I made it clear I wouldn’t play along. This isn’t because he’s actually sad at a potential missed connection here – he hardly knows me – but because I hurt his ego. Sexual harassment, as I’ve been researching at GGE, isn’t ever about the woman. It’s about overt displays of masculinity, it’s about showing off your manliness, and it’s about feeling powerful. My rejection skewed that power dynamic, and he wasn’t happy about it. Yelling at me for wishing him a good night is the perfect illustration: even in niceties, I can’t have any sort of power or control over him.
  

  Masculinity is so fragile

• My mom (understandably) wishes I wouldn’t go out by myself in the evening, because I’m likely to get harassed. I’d gotten cat-called a couple of times tonight before this incident, but that’s so routine, it hardly felt worth stressing about. The other night, I spent almost 40 minutes walking home from Chelsea around 10 PM, and spent the entire time on the phone with my parents, which served as a great strategy to keep men from hollering at me – I got the occasional whistle or up-down, but apparently being occupied by somebody else is a valid reason to be left alone. That night, I walked down a couple of streets that were mostly empty, and after tonight, I feel so incredibly lucky to have been incident free, because if a man had decided to come after me then, I really don’t know what I would have done. Being surrounded by people didn’t keep me from being bothered, but it kept my physical body safe, and kept the situation from escalating. As much as I adore taking leisurely nighttime walks, I’m not so sure I can keep doing it – despite the fact that this is just as much my space as anybody else’s, the public sphere (especially at night) is not made for young women to enjoy. We either stay inside, or we pay the price of unwanted attention.

The scariest part is that I doubt that man saw any of that as harassment. He was simply trying to get my number, what’s the harm in that? Inviting yourself into my space and then getting angry when I don’t embrace your presence is just as bad, if not worse, than hollering at me from an alleyway. He thinks he’s just a “good guy” who unfairly got rejected by me for absolutely no reason (as if my lack of interest requires justification). Truth be told, he was friendly (even charming) at the beginning, so he’s probably a very “good guy” in the eyes of his friends and family too. Guys who harass women aren’t evil guys with 0 redeeming qualities. They’re not total creeps whose sole intentions are to make women as scared and uncomfortable as possible. They’re just normal guys who mistakenly think that “being a man” means women owe them something – sexual pleasure, affection, attention, a date, or their number – simply because they wanted it.

Sexual harassment may not seem like a “big deal” – it’s just flirting, it’s casual, it’s part of every day life, it’s just boys being boys, it’s a host of excuses that point to the same conclusion – that women must simply accept that harassment is part of their lot in life, because why should men stop? Simply because women ask them to? Please. We don’t know what we’re talking about. We’re hysterical. We’re irrational. We’re overreacting. We’re probably at fault.

I didn’t get harassed because of what I was wearing, or where I was, or what I was doing – it wasn’t about me. It was about that man, and his assertion of control onto me. He wanted to flirt with me, and whether or not I was interested was irrelevant. The common theme in every issue here is entitlement. Entitlement to my space, to my attention, to my phone number, to my acceptance, to my body. This is a world in which men are taught to express their masculinity by conquering females. When women reject that notion, and they reject the men who attempt to enforce that notion, we are met with anger and violence. I’m blessed to have never been subjected to physical violence for my femininity, but this is purely a matter of luck. Many women are not so fortunate. A culture that disempowers women (and oversexualizes our bodies while simultaneously judging us for our sexual choices) is going to lead to harassment, and a culture that accepts harassment is never going to stop sexual assaults, and is never going to end rape. We need be allowed to own our bodies. We are entitled to our own damn space.