"I Never Feel Safe"

I am a white, 17 year old girl living in the South Side, so you can imagine how much attention I get just for being present. But I can't leave the house without some nasty guy slowing down in his car to holler at me, or some guy on the red line sitting across from me so he can try to look up my skirt.

A couple weeks ago I was walking home. It was late, around midnight. I was listening to my iPod and not paying much attention to my surroundings when I noticed that a car had slowed down next to me and the driver was trying to get my attention. I said "Can I help you?" and he said "Hey girl, you fine as hell. You wanna come home with me tonight?" I promptly told him that I was a lesbian and did not desire his company at any point in my life. He said "You like girls? I like girls too. I got plenty of girls I can share with you. Hot little white girls like yourself." At this point I told him to fuck off and put my earphones back in. After a while he got frustrated and sped off.

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I was walking down my street last summer in the middle of day. I was going to visit a neighbor who lived about three houses down. As soon as I started walking down the sidewalk, two boys started following me. They kept watching my ass and pretending to grab it while saying "hey baby, hey baby." I got sick of it after about 2 seconds and turned around to say "I am not your baby. Get the fuck off my sidewalk." They didn't continue harassing me.

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A couple weeks ago a friend of mine was visiting me. We were on the red line heading downtown. A man was sitting across from us and staring openly. In the beginning I didn't say anything. I get stared at a lot, mostly just because I am out of place. But after a while, this guy tried to start a conversation. My friend and I were polite. We said hi and contributed to his small talk. Then he looked at me and said "So, Velma." (He thought I looked like the character from Scooby-Doo. I was wearing a plaid skirt and thick-rimmed glasses.) I could tell he was trying to look up my skirt and I squeezed my legs shut as tight as possible. "When we gonna kick it?" "Excuse me?" "Come on Velma, you think I'm fly, I think you fly, let's fuck." I grabbed my friends hand and proceeded to tell him we were gay.

I never feel safe.


~Submitted by Tomi

Summer Is Upon Us!

Sorry for the lack of updates this winter. I didn't get very many e-mails and I didn't do much to promote the blog because of my own busy schedule. But summer is quickly upon us and most women know what that means. Skimpier clothes and more street harassment. Now I don't want to suggest that women are not harassed during the winter because they certainly are. I had plenty of stories from friends being harassed in Lakeview and I even experienced a few cat calls while I was wearing my enormous winter parka and, in my opinion, looked pretty gender neutral. Regardless of what we look like, women are always the sex class which means that in the eyes of some people, we are always sexually available. In this way weather, clothing, body type, location, etc do not matter when considering street harassment.

That being said, women certainly exerience more street harassment during the summer. I am going to try to commit myself to maintaining and promoting this blog with more ferocity because we MUST hollar back and end street harassment so that women (and men) can feel safer on their streets.