It was 3:30AM.
My gal pals and I were chatting tiredly as we were on our way back home after spending nearly 6 hours out and about in NY celebrating one of our friend’s birthday. We’re walking down the street wearing jeans and fancy tops. Everyone is sober and waiting to just hit the bed. We’re the only ones on the street. As we turned a corner, a man in his big black SUV rolls down his window and makes the sound “mmmmmmm” as if he had just been given a bowl of Maggi noodles. Objectification can be as simple as this: the need to make such a sound as he saw us implied that he practically equated our worth to a bowl of food.
That’s not the end of it, though.
We ignored his stupidity and continued walking. I want to note here that that is exactly what we’ve been conditioned to do. When a man does or says something to us, it’s best to walk away because we can’t win.
We had 2 more blocks to walk, totaling to about 5 more minutes. While waiting at the intersection, there was another man standing at the other side. He was wearing a green hoodie and baggy jeans. His hands remained in his pocket. We’ll name this guy ‘Green Hoodie.’
Confident that nothing can happen considering the fact that there was a group of us, we all continued to cross the intersection and ignored Green Hoodie’s comment. At this point, we picked up our walking pace as we didn’t want to engage with a stranger on the street, let alone a man, at 4:00 in the morning. Again, this fear was etched into our souls from a young age.
Then, one girl panicked and started running, so the rest of us followed. Another girl asked someone to turn around and see if Green Hoodie is following us. All of us assumed that he wasn’t because why would he?
That’s when one of the girls shrieked.
Then, I heard the man’s voice. He made those weird noises we hear when we go to a Haunted House during Halloween season. It was terrifying. My soul felt like it left my body.
We were now running for our life.
I turned to see how far away he was from us. He was just a few steps behind and his hands remained in his pockets.
I screamed to the girls near me, “Should I call them?” Collectively, they responded, “Yes!”
That’s when I dialed 9-1-1, for the first time. My hands were shaking. My bag was weighing me down. My heart was beating too fast. He got closer.
One of us even stood in the middle of the street and screamed, hoping that some neighbor would come out. No one did. Another one of us demanded him to stop. He didn’t.
As we were all continuing to run for our life, Green Hoodie had the audacity to yell back at us and ask, “Why are you guys running?” with a smirk on his face. Why else would a group of girls be running in the middle of the night?
Finally, as we approached the entrance of the apartment building, one girl yelled one more time “STOP!” That somehow seemed to have triggered something in him, and he, very casually, turned around and walked away.
That’s it. He didn’t ask for money. He didn’t touch us. He didn’t shoot. He simply wanted to feed off of our fear.
Where were the patrol cars? Where were the emergency alert buttons? What if the man had a gun (America does have a sickening gun problem after all)?
Green Hoodie probably went back to his 4am business with absolutely no care in the world. Meanwhile, us girls went back to the apartment and practically shivered in fear internally, and were traumatized to the point where we decided we couldn’t walk anywhere anymore.
To the people who might be reading this and question, “But why were you walking so late at night?”
Respectfully, get the hell out of here.
We have the right to walk, and that too, safely. We are not the problem. Hyper masculinity is the problem. The way we teach and ingrain gender is the problem.
Every girl and woman I know is always told to never walk the streets alone at night, to wear proper clothes if we’re going to be amongst other men, to never take someone else’s drink at a party, to carry pepper spray, etc.. The fear has been inculcated in us from a young age. It’s implicitly telling us that ‘boys will be boys, so you take the necessary precautions to keep yourself safe.‘
For example, I was at a club in NYC last week. I was, once again, with a group of my girl and guy friends. As I was dancing with them, I felt two arms suddenly creep around my waist. Gross. Another day, I was walking down the street at 11:00am, wearing a summer dress. I was cat called and practically followed by two men, in BROAD DAYLIGHT.
In both instances it will be easy for people to claim that I could have done something differently to have avoided those men. People may say, “Well you shouldn’t have been dancing so close to that man if you didn’t want him to touch you.” I’m sorry, where else do you want me to stand and bop in a crowded club? In the bathroom?
Such instances are so normalized that we’ve become desensitized to them. We rarely stop to acknowledge that this isn’t normal. It shouldn’t be normal, and it shouldn’t be something that we just deal with.
When a man touches a woman without any sort of consent or permission, he literally sees that woman as being less than – as being an object and something that doesn’t need permission to be touched or used. It’s disgusting. I don’t even let my close friends touch me without my permission, so imagine how triggering and traumatizing it is for women to have to face this every single goddamn day.
The solution?
There are plenty, but here are a few ideas.
For starters, let’s maybe have more safety features in neighborhoods? More emergency alert buttons, a neighborhood watch group, or literally anything that can result in fast actions. At least until we manage to create a world that is safe for all.
Secondly, we need to recognize that gender socialization is a massive part of the problem. Such conversations are making it to the forefront only within privileged communities. We need to provide access to this information and awareness to ALL communities.
Thirdly, as a society, we must stop blaming the women for dressing the way we want, walking where we want, being the way we want. Nothing justifies the harassment, objectification, and even the rapes. Instead of policing the already oppressed people’s freedom and control, it’s much more effective to spend that energy on educating the oppressors. Some may change, others might not.
Esha Kode 