Body, Healing, Honesty, Loving Kindness, Practice

Reframing: Street Harassment & Healing

March 23, 2016

It is a beautiful day in Philadelphia, and I decided to walk the mile-and-a-half home from the regional rail station through North Philly, instead of taking the subway. I had every intention of using the time to mentally prepare to get home and edit writing I had already done so that I could share it, and instead, I was inspired to consider and write about something new. I don’t have a car. And I’m afraid to bike on the city streets. So, I get around on foot and by using public transportation. And it’s worth mentioning right off the bat that I am new to city life. Sexual harassment is an every day occurrence for me. And one that I can’t help but notice and process. Sidebar: If you have found this and it is hard for you to understand why street harassment is not an acceptable way to interact with others, perhaps you are thinking what’s the big deal, anyways? Or, how do you even define street harassment? I encourage you to seek the wealth of both experiential and research-based information on this problematic behavior. Or, reach out to me individually. It is not my goal in this piece of writing to address this multi-faceted issue in great depth, but I hope you choose to explore it and form your own opinions. Here are my thoughts on street harassment today…. At the start of recovery from my sexual assault, everyone I passed – especially men, especially in uncrowded areas – registered as a predator to me. I was afraid of everything and everyone. It was a visceral, survival-based, gut-wrenching experience of fear. Even passing someone who looked at me, who did nothing more than witness my physical form, felt like harassment. If someone were to catcall me, or comment on my appearance, it would just about always end in panic, and usually tears. I felt no ownership over my body. I hadn’t confronted the reality of my story, my shadow, and I felt helplessly weak. At this time I was living in the suburbs… I can’t even imagine how I would have recovered my sanity if I had lived in the city then. Years of healing later, and months ago… When I first moved to the city, harassment was much more triggering for me than it is now. I was in the process of uprooting and re-grounding my life, and as I have found my roots here my sensitivity has decreased. I’d like to think this isn’t just because I’m becoming jaded, though I’m sure that plays its part. As a woman… a young woman** living in Philadelphia, there is no way to avoid street harassment. Not only are there simply more people in the city, but this kind of harassment is also culturally accepted here. And the more time you spend on foot, particularly in neighborhoods outside of the Center City District, the more you will be exposed to it. When I moved to the city this fall, I was prepared to brace myself and just ignore the calls and comments that I knew were inevitable. Easier said than done. In my case, I couldn’t help having a physical reaction to harassment – a little jump, increase in heart rate, nervous sweat… It wasn’t nearly as intense as it was years ago, but definitely jarring. I’ll just put my headphones in and listen to music instead, I thought. Then I realized how much more unsafe I felt (and was) when I was unable to hear my surroundings. So I started putting in my headphones but not playing any music. Maybe men won’t harass me if they think I can’t hear them. Wrong. Now they weren’t always talking directly to me, I just got to hear the disgusting ways they objectified my body out loud to themselves and their friends. Next, I found ways to avoid areas/times that I discovered I was more likely to be called out. This was a reasonable solution, but sometimes meant taking a cab or uber… a pricey solution to avoiding fear. (It’s worth noting here that I am not talking about avoiding actual danger, in which case, YES I would always pay for a ride and take measures to stay safe. I have never felt that I was in a truly unsafe area or situation, just unpleasant and uncomfortable). Over the past several months, I have made it a practice to confront the fear of walking alone and being the object of harassment. I confront this fear not just out of necessity to function and get around the city, but for the sake of confronting it. Today, as I walked through North Philadelphia, I noticed a real change in my experience with street harassment. I ~~felt~~ was fearless, but aware. I had no bodily reaction to the men who addressed me in an unwelcome and inappropriate way. I didn’t feel a noose of anxiety closing around me, or hear the voice in my head that used to tell me all the ways another person might be about to harm me. Why? Here’s what I think has shifted for me… I am in control of my body. I feel ownership over my body. It no longer feels like my body, because of its size, shape, sex, gender, race, or any other projected quality is powerless. This is a new normal. Maybe this is where becoming jaded comes in. Or maybe, it’s just learning to self-regulate in a new environment. I am able to see the good in others. I don’t see predators walking towards me down the sidewalk. I see beings capable of Truth, Love, and Kindness. I see people whom I want to know, even if only through a moment of eye contact or a smile, not people I want to run from. I recognize that in my fear I was projecting negative assumptions on others – and while sometimes warranted, at their root these assumptions were still unfair. So today I walked past the unwelcome commentary with Fearlessness, open ears, a high head, and no waver in my stride. And with those who addressed me with Kindness, I connected through Love. **I believe that factors such as sex, gender, age, race, appearance, etc. play into this narrative, but am not prepared to discuss their role in a educated and informed way. If anyone reading this post would like to engage in constructive conversation surrounding diversity and street harassment in a large city, I encourage you to reach out to me personally via the contact section of my site. I would welcome and appreciate an appropriate forum to explore this topic.