And then I debated whether or not to put it on Tumblr…but I decided it was important. Because in my own way, I can (unfortunately) point out exactly what is wrong with men when they don’t realize how hard it is to be a woman. How we do not have equal opportunities and freedoms in everyday life. How most men, even good caring men, have no clue what we go through on a daily basis just trying to live our lives.
So here goes.
I often ride the Metro when I commute from North Hollywood to Long Beach in order to save money. I bring a book, pointedly wear a ring on my ring finger to imply I’m married (I’m not) and keep to myself.
Without fail, I am aggressively approached by men on at least half of these commutes. The most common approach is to walk up to where I am sitting with body language that practically screams LEAVE ME ALONE and sit down next to me or as close to me as possible, when the train is not crowded and there are many empty rows. Sometimes an overly friendly arm is draped over the railing behind me, or they attempt to lean in close to talk to me as if we are old friends. Without fail, the man or boy in question will lean to close and ask me
What are you reading?
Is that a good book?
What’s that book about?
This serves the double purpose of getting my attention and trapping me in a conversation. If I stop reading the book I enjoy to talk to you, random stranger, you hit on me or just stay way too close to me. If I tell you to leave me alone, you get mad at me. Because I somehow, as a woman, owe you conversation.Tonight when I boarded the train in Long Beach at 10:30pm, it started up right away. I was not on the train more than three minutes before three boys who looked eighteen sat in the row behind me and leaned over the seats into my personal space, close enough to breathe on me. The one with his arm draped over onto the back of my seat asked me–surprise– “what are you reading?” I went through my usual routine. I told them loudly and firmly that I wanted to be left alone to read my book. They got angry. I was told “Why are you going to be like that? I just wanted to talk!” His friends start laughing at me and they don’t move, telling me come on! and why are you gonna be like that? until I tell them to leave me the fuck alone, stand up, and move to the front of the car near the three other people on the train, a couple and a business man in a suit. They spend the next two stops shouting at me from the back of the car, alternating between trying to sound flirtatious and making fun of me, shouting “I bet she’s reading Stephanie Meyer! I bet she’s reading Twilight or some shit! You reading Twilight or some shit?”
They exit the train at the next stop, and I’m relieved. The train is going out of service at the next station, so we all exit to board a new train to Los Angeles. As we board, the business man steps aside to let me go through the door first and asks me if those guys were bothering me. I say yes, that it happens all the time, and he tells he’ll beat them up for me if they come back. He is a nice person who talks to me like I’m a human being instead of a walking pair of tits, and I make a mental note: This is how a real man talks to a woman on a train.
The business man and the couple exit our new Blue Line train an exit or so later, and I think my night is ending on a good note. A seemingly normal man enters the train with his bicycle. At this point I am three rows from the front of the car, another man was sitting near the back of the car, and the rest of the car is empty. Bicycle Man walks halfway down the row, and settles into the seat directly opposite me. Perfect, I think. Twice in one night.
It’s not the first time I’ve been bothered multiple times. As such, I’m still amped from the teenagers on the first train. So when this man leans across the aisle into my personal space and asks me, yes, what are you reading, I assertively but calmly tell him to please leave me alone, I am reading. The man stands up, moving to the front and muttering angrily over his shoulder that it isn’t his fault I’m pretty.
Yes. Exactly that. I am the bad person in this situation because somehow this is all my fault. I started this by being attractive. I am making a mental note to bitch about this to my friends later. I go so far as to write it down so I know I’m remembering it properly.
It is at this exact moment I realize Bicycle Man is not taking it well. The seemingly annoying but normal man a moment before is now talking to himself, becoming agitated. In my years of being bothered by total strangers, I have learned how to hold a book and seem to be reading while taking in everything around me. He is glaring at me, and says out loud in an angry baby talk voice “PLEASELEAVEMEALONEI’MREADING. PLEASE LEAVE ME ALOOOONE.”
Then he’s up out of his seat and things go from bad to worse. He begins pacing back and forth in front of his bike, alternating between screaming something about his mother being dead and calling me a slut, a hoe, a bitch. I am frozen in place. There is one other person in the car, and I’m not sure if trying to change seats will draw more attention to me or less. I trust my instincts and show no fear, doing my best to appear to be calmly reading my book, never once looking up to acknowledge the abuse he’s hurling at me. There are four stops left until we reach the main downtown station where there are lights and security officers. Those four stops are virtually abandoned, and I have no guarantee that leaving to wait for another train won’t motivate him to leave the train as well, leaving us potentially alone at a metro station platform just outside of Compton. I’m frozen in place, trying to plan what I’m going to do if he decides to take all this rage directly to me. I’m ready to kick him, scream, make enough noise that he panics and flees.
At this point he’s punching the walls and doors of the train, screaming at me. He stares me full in the face and screams
SUCK MY DICK, BITCH
YOU BITCH
YOU STUPID BITCH
YOU GODDAMN HO
IF I HAD A GUN I’D SHOOT YOU
I WOULD FUCKING KILL YOU BITCH
This went on for two stops. No one came to see what was happening. The man in the last row was as frozen as I was. I’m not angry he didn’t come to my defense. He was smaller, older, and frailer-looking than I was. Again, I was worried if I got up, I would be turning my back on him to walk down the aisle. In the state he was in, I had no guarantee it wouldn’t get physical, and I had more physical strength with my back to the window and feet in kicking position where I was. If he had chosen to assault me, I would only be making it easier for him by standing up and putting myself directly in his path. On and on, over and over, he screamed at me, screamed at his dead mother, screamed at me again.
The moment we reached the downtown station, I was out the door and down the stairs. I still had to catch a connecting train to North Hollywood, and made sure there was no sign of Bicycle Man before I entered the car. That’s when I finally starting shaking, and almost threw up. By the time I exited the Red Line and reached my car I could barely breathe and my heart was pounding out of my chest. Even now, in my own home, my hands are still shaking and for some reason the stress has made my back muscles feel cold and numb. From all the tension, I can only assume. I can’t eat anything, I still feel like I’m going to vomit, and I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t cried so much, so hard I still have the headache.
So when people (men) want to talk about “legitimate” forms of assault, tell girls they should be nice to strangers and give men the benefit of a doubt, tell them to consider it a compliment, tell them to ignore the bad behavior of men, I want them to be forced to feel, for even one minute, what it feels like to have so much verbal hatred and physical intimidation thrown at them for nothing more than being female and not wanting to share.
I just wanted to read my book.
It’s not my fault I’m pretty.
This shit happens every time I take public transportation and whenever I wait for the bus I hope the people I’m surrounded by or the people that sit next to me aren’t creeps. Old men, young dude bros, trying to make conversation or eye contact. It’s gross af. And not to take away from OP’s post, but street harassment isn’t just about “being pretty”. It’s about power, dominace, entitlement, and misogyny. The phrase “it’s not my fault I’m pretty” is problematic because it implies that people who aren’t seen as “conventionally attractive” should be thankful that they’re being harassed, cause someone found them pretty.
Hi there,
OP here. This post is several years old and I am still overwhelmed with pride at the courage of those sharing their own stories and support, and also sadness at the hate that continues to be leveled at those who oppose street harassment. The fact that this post stays alive is both beautiful for solidarity and sad because it remains an issue that so many are facing.
I do need to point something out, as I do occasionally when people are genuine in their misunderstanding of it…this might be a little wordy, but bear with me:
For some framework, keep in mind that this was written less than 30 minutes after I made it home from said train events. Also keep in mind that at the time I only had fifteen followers on tumblr, all of them my friends, and this post was made simply to share my story with them and not overload facebook. I went to bed shaken but happy to have “written it out” and woke up to my new role as a national news story. I had gone massively viral in under twelve hours. By the time I got home from rehearsal the next night my story had gone GLOBAL. It was terrifying, bewildering, and also meant that I was not able to clarify as much as I would have liked if I had known the scope of attention my attack would receive.
Let’s dive into this:
“It’s not my fault I’m pretty.”
1. These words have been interpreted by hundreds in various ways. Some have openly used them as weapons against me, to discredit me as a shallow privileged white girl who EWWWWW was hit on by someone toootally not hot enough for me.
In one particularly horrific incident, Dennis Romero of LA Weekly posted an op-ed attempting to eviscerate me for this phrase. He used my naively public Facebook photos in a smear piece tailored around my callback of “pretty”. He chose a photo of me that I can only assume looked the least attractive to him to indicate his own ranking of my looks, as well as a photo of myself posing with a group of close male friends. In this photo, we are clowning around. A male friend is comically pretending to gawk at my chest. This photo was used to…what? Indicate my love of attention from the RIGHT kind of men? Imply promiscuity? Another man in that photo is a friend of mine who died tragically soon after. Dennis Romero used a photo of my dead friend to impugn me. That photo has not been removed in spite of multiple pleas by myself to LA Weekly to do so. I have given up on seeing that happen. I look forward to the day I’m given the opportunity to meet Dennis Romero, the human dumpster fire who penned that “opinion”. That’s going to be a very fun day. I’m a much angrier person than I was before all of this started. I won’t deny that.
2. My use of the words “It’s not my fault I’m pretty” are not intended to present myself as better looking than anyone. It is a callback intended to turn my attacker’s excuse against him. To state clearly that his attraction to me was not my responsibility. That his actions were not excused by his desire for a total stranger’s body and attention. I am well aware from many heartbreaking letters and messages that people of all shapes and sizes experience harassment and sexual assault simply for being female. For not submitting to unwanted sexual attention. We are all beautiful. We all deserve better. This is not a “pretty people” problem. This is a human problem. A social disease. A major goddamn issue.
The secondary meaning behind this callback of my attacker’s words is to call out the twisted logic of his lust and need for control by accusing ME of enticing him by existing as I do. If I am considered by those who bother me when I want to be left alone to be attractive, it is not because I have set out a trap to lure men in. I am just being me. And if the kind of people who treat women like objects think I am attractive, the same way someone might think a sandwich looks appetizing or a diamond watch looks valuable, I must point out that those things DO NOT BELONG TO THEM any more than I do.
My intention was to state for the men who think social harassment is okay that if I look like something you want, it’s not my “fault”. If I look like something you want, I do not consent. Bear the responsibility for your behavior like a real man would. Don’t blame scared girls for what you want to do to them.
If I had a time machine, to return to the moment I hit “submit” that night, I would change that last line. I would change it to the words I saw onscreen last year that altered my life forever. That were written by someone who understood what we’re all about, all of us fighting this fight for our sisters. I would change them to this…
WE
ARE
NOT
THINGS
I debated whether or not to share this story.
Published
Thoughtfulfangirling 