Picture this: a girl is walking around the city at night with two friends. The girl is not drunk, she is not wearing promiscuous clothing, and she just wants to get home after a long night. While standing in a very public and crowded area, a man approaches her and her friends. Oh, you know the type! Tall, dark, and creepy? With a low, husky, homicidal voice? So this guy approaches the girl and tells her that he is "looking for a remedial date for the night." Out of a combination of shock, fear, and embarrassment the girl turns away and meekly replies, "Well I'm not." And get this, the guy actually asks what she's looking for!
As she grabs her friends to walk away from the guy, she wishes she'd had the audacity to say or do something far more threatening than "Well I'm not." A few minutes later as they walk toward the subway, a car full of college age guys start yelling out their window "Hey girls! You want free drinks?" among other things. Finally, the girls make their way into the subway station. Another guy approaches them. Wary of being approached so late at night especially by guys who give off bad vibes (girls have instincts, after all) the girl is not so eager to strike up a conversation with this new one. Guy Number Three. The girl is getting a seriously creepy, weird feeling from him but she doesn't want to seem impolite (which is ridiculous) so she gives him her name when he asks. So does her friend.
The conversation carries on for ten minutes -- ten minutes longer than she wanted it to. And she sees another young man a few feet away eyeing the whole situation, assessing if he should step in or not. The girl almost wishes he would. The girl eventually musters up the courage to tell the guy talking to her that she is tired and would very much like to be left alone, she is as polite as possible. Instead of taking the cue, the guy actually argues with her! He says that the three friends must have gone out to socialize and that is all he is trying to do. He says that the girls must not have had a fun night because they were the ones being loners and no fun.
He asks the girl if the reason she is asking him to leave her alone is because he's black. "Is it because I'm black? Are you racist?" He says these things with a serious face, and she knows he isn't joking. This is what the girl was afraid of, she was afraid if she asked him to leave her alone, even politely, he would find a way to blame her. He further tells the girl that he is not going to leave, she has to leave if she doesn't want to stand near him despite the fact that he approached her. So the girl grabs her friends and walks away, only to be met with a "Ha I WON" from the creepy guy who wouldn't walk away himself.
I was the girl, I am that girl, and all of this is true and happened only two weeks ago. I was appalled at the gall these men had in saying the things that were said. Creepy Guy Number One came out of nowhere and I had no idea what to do in that situation. I didn't say much, which I regretted later on. He had no right to make me feel that uncomfortable by explicitly asking me for something I was never going to give.
The Creepy Car of Guys were typical drunken college guys, and I will never understand the concept of asking random girls on the street to get into your car. Do you really think we're that dumb? Free drinks, cool. Free roofies, not cool. And maybe the notion of getting drugged is more far fetched than true, but it's what we as girls deal with. That's what we worry about when going out, the first rule our mothers taught us was to never accept an open drink from a stranger. So saying things like that among other creepy come ons is pure stupidity on your part and you need to stop.
By the time Creepy Guy Number Three came along, I'd already been leered at by two other creeps so I had a little more nerve to say something about it. But then I was accused of being a racist. I get it, I must be a racist since the idea that maybe HE was the problem is such an obscure concept! After all, I am white and blonde and the natural assumption is that I'm a heartless racist b*#!h, right? But if the guy approaching me in the subway had been white, or purple, or polka dotted, but had the same characteristics and vibes I would have felt the same exact way and would have asked him to leave me alone just as politely.
If you're a guy reading this and have ever done anything similar to the things mentioned above, you need to STOP (is that word in your vocabulary?) and maybe get some help. If you're a guy reading this and have ever seen this go on, you might want to consider stepping in especially since even the most confident girls can feel uncomfortably stuck in situations like these. If you're a girl facing this situation, say something dammit! I know it's easier said than done, but if this happens again I know I'll try to get past the immediate shock and give the guy a piece of my mind. Because we have minds, we have brains, and we're more than what these jerks say to us when just looking at our body and we don't deserve to be degraded like that.
I doubt the things I did muster the courage to say back are enough to keep them from saying similar things to the next girl, but maybe if I say something with a louder more self empowering message next time it just might be enough to get through to them.
