I did not mean to write so much about this, but it just happened, and my deepest apologies to anyone who tries to read it:
I have mixed feelings about the harassment thing. On one hand, I get that "hello" and the like is pretty innocuous and sometimes the person saying it is just genuinely friendly, and I love those guys. And my mother, who was all about flirting and friendliness and southern charm, taught me early to smile and say thank you to compliments and then keep moving. So that's what I do.
But at the same time, I will have a ton of men stop me and say hi, how are you, or compliment me when I'm walking alone. If I'm walking with a girl, we might both get something like, "How're you ladies doing today?" or "Where are you off to?" If I'm walking with a guy, suddenly no one wants to be friendly. I'm pretty sure most guys here, like most men I know, have actually
not had the same experience as that male model strolling through NYC, and can attest to the fact that a man can usually walk from place to place or go grocery shopping or get a coffee by himself without running into all these really friendly guys who really want to say hello as they pass on the street and ask how they're doing.
So all of that leads me to the conclusion that most men who are friendly to me in public are not doing it because they're just friendly guys, but because I am a woman walking alone or with another woman. And, again, that's not a huge issue. I can smile and say thank you and keep walking. But sometimes, that's backfired.
The most extreme example of it backfiring was probably when I was walking to school in Maui, and a man was sitting on the hood of his car and greeted me as I walked by, and I turned and smiled and said hello, and kept walking. He jumped up and strolled alongside me, complimenting me, and obviously emboldened by my polite reception of him, kept going. He asked me if I would like to meet up with him again sometime, and I said that I was sorry, I had so much school work, and this wasn't firm enough of a no, so again, he kept going.
About a full mile down the road, while I was walking in front of an abandoned storefront, he actually moved in front of me and stopped me and demanded that I give him my cellphone. He promised he'd return it, that he just wants to get my number, and then he'll let me go to school, but he has to let me call him sometime because I'm so sweet and we get along great and he wants to take me on vacation to the Philippines and he'll pay for everything and I'll be spoiled and we'll have a lot of fun. I figured the best thing to do was hand over my phone, and he used it to call himself and saved his number under the name "Bamboo," and then, true to his word, he let me go.
And while that was probably the weirdest experience I'd had humoring a heckler, there have been a ton of other bad examples, including one time where I was outright threatened by a man after I stopped and acknowledged him but then politely made some excuse as to why I couldn't spare him a moment and sit down with him on the park bench. As I was leaving, he said that he really regretted stopping me and that I should regret it, too, and said, "You parked in the parking garage, right? Just making sure." And after work my boss had to escort me back to said parking garage just in case.
There's something I really do resent when I watch the video and read comments about how terribly rude she was or how everyone was just being nice. For some of those guys, sure, they're being friendly. For others, friendliness wasn't the intention, and when they were ignored, suddenly the action was altruistic and pure and she's a total asshole for not acknowledging one of the endless encounters she had gotten just trying to walk around.
I've unwittingly been her, too, a few times. I remember once I was walking to my car from my apartment building, and I passed a man with his phone to his ear who said, "Hey," when I got near, but I wasn't sure if he was talking to me or the person on the phone. So I smiled at him and kept walking. When he was some ways behind me, I heard him say, "No? Too good to stop and talk to me? Stuck-up bitch."
I actually felt kind of bad, so I turned around, still smiling, and cried, "Sorry! I thought you were talking to the person on the phone." Obviously not expecting I'd respond, he kind of just froze, and I think he said something like, "Oh," or "Okay," and I got in the car and left.
It's something about the constant barrage of encounters. It's something about the obligation to act sincerely flattered and appreciative of each person who demands a piece of your time. It's also something about being expected to accept that it is all friendliness, when you fucking know better, but you ought not to make assumptions, because then you're just being inconsiderate and rude. I do remember the first time I sat in the balcony of a masjid with the other women and knew not a single man was around to look at me, and I felt like a burden or some anxiety I'd never acknowledged was gone immediately.
Topic: 10 hours of walking with hijab in NYC