Here are some examples of street harassment submitted to the Hollaback campaign groups in Scotland:
GLASGOW
1 I was walking in a busy street around 5pm, two guys walked passed me, one squeezed my bum as he went passed, when I turned around he laughed. I was furious and in complete shock, I didn't know how to react, I just felt so angry, I looked around and no one had seen it. I felt like I had to do something, so I turned around and shouted at him to f**k off and how dare he. I was shaking with rage, people were around but no-one saw what he did, they just saw me shouting at him, no one did anything and just looked embarrassed by it. The perpetrator did however seemed shocked about a retaliation, he stood around looking at me and then walked off with his friend.
2 A couple of weeks ago I was walking along Sauchiehall Street when I was approached by a couple of boys who couldn't have been more than 12. One of them yelled, "p***y" at me and started making kissy faces. Then he sidled over to me and said, "how much?". I nearly vomited in my mouth from the implied sexual attention from such a young boy...I was too shocked to even fully respond - what could I say to a couple of kids? It's scary to think that this is what kids think it means to be cool.
EDINBURGH
1 In the past two months on the ten minute walk between my home and my office random men have come up to me and said: 'Hello. What are you?'. 'Nice P****'. 'Where are you from?' - 'Here' - 'But you have an Asian face?' These are all the first things they said to me. They did not happen in a conversation, this is literally me leaving my house to go to my 9 - 5 job and men coming up to me, so close they're nearly touching me, and sharing their racism/sexism/prejudice with me. If I extend the time scale to the past six months, or the location to my entire city rather than a small stretch of street, I'd have enough stories for a chapter of a book. If I extended it to my life so far, I'd have a whole encyclopaedia.
2 Waiting for the midnight bus at Haymarket, a 'friendly' drunk guy, in no particular order:
"Come here baby"
"What's your name?"
"Where you going?"
And when I don't respond:
"She's a cold bitch"
"You're a horrible person"
And finally shouting to passers-by and other folk waiting on the bus:
"Kick her when you walk past, go on kick her in the c**t"
I waited it out until the bus came. Wish I'd had some kind of response.
3 Every time I walk past this building where I think there's some work going on on my way to work, I get wolf-whistled and 'wooo'd'. It's like a f*****g celebration because someone female is walking past. The worst thing is, is that I can't actually see the guys making the noise, so every time I tell them where to stick it, or give a two fingered salute, I'm never sure if I'm aiming in the right direction... and I probably look kinda weird...
To all the folk who try to tell women that they only get harassed because they are out at a time or in a place or in an outfit that somehow provokes it, you're dead wrong. I was walking down a residential road, at 8.45am, wearing a knee length dress, leggings, ankle boots, scarf and denim jacket, hardly any make up, and my hair in a plain plait. It's nothing to do with my behaviour.
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