five: What To Do If You’re Being Harassed

Harassment can make you feel scared, frustrated, angry, embarrassed, isolated, or all of the above. It can also make you feel very much alone. The truth is, though, however much it might feel otherwise at the time, you are not alone. In 2014, Stop Street Harassment commissioned a 2,000-­person nationally representative survey in the United States.40 The survey found that 65 percent of all women had experienced street harassment. Among all women, 23 percent had been sexually touched, 20 percent had been followed, and 9 percent had been forced to do something sexual.

Anecdotally, most people would say those numbers are low—and we do know that most incidents of sexual assault go unreported, so we can reasonably expect that reticence carries over into surveys. In addition, while the statistics on other forms of harassment and identity-based violence are often lacking, it’s a safe bet that comparable figures hold true for racial, transphobic, homophobic, classist, Islamophobic, and ability-based harassment. We do know, for instance, that 47 percent of transgender people are sexually assaulted at some point in their lifetime.41 And 61 percent of Muslim Americans say they have experienced discrimination based on their religion in the past year.42 We also know that levels of harassment and assault across the board are consistently higher for people of color and that the forms specifically designated as hate crimes have been on the rise.

So you are not alone in your experience of harassment, and you are probably not alone in the confusion and self-doubt you experience when trying to decide how to respond to it. Harassment is such a direct violation and diminishment of your very being that those of us who experience it often don’t feel confident in the way we respond. We question ourselves in the moment and after the fact. But there’s one important thing you should keep in mind: there is no perfect response to harassment. Each instance is unique enough that trying to respond in the exact “right way” each and every time will only add to your frustration. So let’s reduce the stress and talk about some immediate responses that might work for you.

In The Moment

First of all, ignoring it is a response, and it’s a completely valid one. There’s no reason to woulda/coulda/shoulda yourself after being harassed. You did not fail yourself, all womankind, or the queer community by walking away. Like anyone else, you deserve to go about your business as you please, and you do not owe anyone your time. So cut yourself some slack and reframe the act of ignoring someone as a power move.

Of course, sometimes ignoring it doesn’t feel like the right thing to do, and you want to say something back. The problem is that the harassment itself can catch us off guard—no matter how many times it has happened in the past. That’s why it’s a good idea to plan a go-to response for such occasions. You don’t have to use it, but it’s nice to keep on hand. Simple statements like “Not interested” or “That’s harassment” are good because they will work in a number of situations. They require almost no thought and, hey, why should you be wasting thought on someone who thinks harassment is okay?

Don’t judge your reaction. We’re trained from birth to be understanding and polite, especially to members of social groups with more social power, but it’s important to realize that it’s okay for you to make someone feel uncomfortable by telling them they are making you feel uncomfortable. You don’t owe them your tolerance or sympathy. Stop prioritizing the feelings of someone using offensive language or gestures around you. They certainly weren’t prioritizing your feelings when they said or did those things.

Stay calm. If we’re on guard all of the time, it’s easy for our brains to overload when a real instance of harassment occurs. “Is this the one that will turn violent?” Staying calm will not only help prevent the situation from escalating, it could also help you take a last minute emergency action if necessary. So take some deep breaths, take a moment to clear your head, and decide your next move. Your safety is paramount, so take care of yourself.

You decide when you are done, when the interaction is over. You don’t owe strangers anything. Not your time, your attention, or your patience. It’s not your job to cater to their expectations of what someone like you is supposed to do in this or any situation. If you have attempted to calmly let someone know how their comments make you feel, but they aren’t letting up, it’s fine to cut your losses and walk away. They may try to derail and redirect the conversation. They might become increasingly argumentative or even aggressive. Your physical safety and mental health are more precious than your harasser’s feelings.

Relatedly, there’s no need for you to argue or debate. If you feel like saying something then say your piece and move on. You are not likely to convince someone who’s harassing you to see the error of their ways in that moment anyway. Most people with backward views are more likely to listen to and learn from someone who looks like them. They have already demonstrated a lack of respect for you—your opinions aren’t any more likely to matter to them. And if they do take it to heart, it will likely be after your interaction is over, after some introspection. Focus on your own well-being and survival. Hopefully books like this and social movements like #MeToo will inspire more allies to make themselves known and take on these often frustrating conversations for you. Assuming that women and people of color are responsible for educating their oppressors is just another layer of oppression.

Delegate. Remember the Five D’s of Bystander Intervention in chapter 2? Well, this D works if you are a victim or a bystander. Ask the people around you to notice what is happening. Call it out specifically and directly: “This person has followed me for a block and is harassing me. They keep using homophobic slurs.” Sometimes for a creep, knowing that others can see what they are doing is enough to get them off your back. But keep in mind: the people around you might want to help but not know how. So tell them. Again, be specific. Look someone in the eye and say “Can you record this lady yelling at me?” or “Can I stand next to you until that person leaves?” Even asking rhetorically “Can someone get this guy to leave me alone?” could inspire or encourage someone in hearing distance to come up with their own spontaneous intervention. If the person harassing you is with a friend or someone who is not participating in the harassment, delegate to them. You can say, “Hey, your friend is drunk and bothering me, can you walk them over there?” or “Get them out of my face before I tell security.” Make it their problem. They are more likely to hold their friend accountable for any bad behavior if it affects them directly, so give them a job to do: move their friend away, get their keys, get them a ride home, or simply try to avoid making a scene.

It’s the Behavior, Not the Person

Okay, here’s where it gets a little complicated.

I’ve just told you that you don’t owe your harasser much consideration or much of anything. But let’s not confuse that with having a blank check to respond in ways that reproduce the same sorts of fucked-up biases and hierarchies that lead to other forms of harassment. We definitely do have a responsibility to avoid that.

Harassment is painful. It’s frightening. There are many potential responses to feeling hurt or scared. Some people clam up. They refuse to think about it and may need a little extra help processing what happened to them, as well as help making sure they don’t bottle up those feelings, letting them fester and perhaps cause more hurt in the long run. Others absorb the hateful messages, believing what society says about them being worthless or less-than. Working on a healthy self-image, building up your self-esteem, and setting good boundaries can help with these things, but there’s no denying that the feelings involved can be ugly and that our responses might arise out of anger.

If your immediate instinct is to lash out, it’s important that the coping skills you have developed do not involve the harassment or abuse of others. No matter what someone has said to you, it does not warrant using sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, Islamophobic, sizest, or classist language to insult or embarrass them. Their behavior toward you should be embarrassing enough: focus on that. To call someone out, to holla back at them, to name their behavior, to ask for help from bystanders—none of this should resemble harassment.

None of us lead “single-issue lives.” As feminists of color have been pointing out for a long time, the laundry list of oppressions I often refer to in this book are intersectional, meaning they cross, combine, and compound one another, so that someone who is oppressed by one measure could be in a position of power by another.43 That means you might have some power in a situation based on one identity while someone is trying to disempower you based on another. If you find yourself being more judgmental of your harassers when they don’t look like you, or more forgiving when they do, it’s important that you take a step back and analyze your responses. Are you letting the messaging of a white supremacist, patriarchal society influence how you perceive the actions of others?

Anyone can be a victim of harassment, just as anyone can be a harasser. But if you are reacting to the person harassing you more than to the harassment itself (if your knee-jerk reactions seem to be saying more about you than them), you might want to take the opportunity to unlearn your internal biases. Talk with a willing confidant, join an ally group, or read a few books that explain the struggles of other communities. Ultimately we’re stronger when we’re united, when our movements are as intersectional as our oppressions. Working to end one form of harassment can have a ripple effect as long as we don’t let our unconscious biases undercut our positive efforts.

Victims and bystanders can have different roles when it comes to responding to harassment. Or at least bystanders often have the luxury of more distance. Victims are under no obligation to educate or be patient with someone causing them harm, while bystanders should feel that obligation. If you are a bystander and not directly affected, and you’ve chosen to speak frankly with someone exhibiting problematic behavior, then talk about the behavior and its effects. Don’t insinuate that they are a bad person at their core. One clear reason for this is that, when people feel unredeemable, they don’t feel inspired to change! What’s the point if they supposedly can’t? So, instead of saying “You’re a racist!” or even “Wow! That is so transphobic,” you might try telling them that what they said was racist or letting them know that trans people generally find a particular word offensive, while offering them a better option.

Obviously, this only applies to times you consider it worth having a conversation—but I challenge you to reconsider what you find worth it. The key to effective communication is getting our point across, which means sometimes we alter our delivery depending on who we are talking to. This might be because we want to use words they will understand better, because we want to appeal to their better nature, or because we know we need to personalize an issue for them to care about it. You can even continue to think someone is a fucking racist while you work on getting them to be better at keeping it to themselves. This serves two purposes: it let’s them know that not everyone who looks like them is okay with what they are doing or saying, and it can help prevent them from doing or saying those things around someone who would be directly offended, someone in the oppressed group that this person is prejudiced against. This might seem like a small victory, but we should take our victories where we can get them. Sure, there might be more glory in the big victories (“I just single-handedly shut down the Westboro Baptist Church thanks to my fact-based arguments, good looks, and charm!”), but that’s not usually how change occurs. It happens incrementally on the individual level. Every time we get someone to take another step toward tolerance, they get that much closer to becoming a true ally. It’s also good practice. Having these conversations when the (personal) stakes are low better prepares us for talking with our close friends and family.

Planning for Safety and Peace of Mind

Taking some control in a situation in which you feel helpless can help you process what you are going through faster and more fully. When you feel there is a pattern of anticipated or regular harassment, get out the pen and paper. Start making a list of all the things you can do, no matter how small, in the face of someone’s shitty behavior. This is your safety plan.

It might, for instance, include all the logistics of avoiding the harassment in the first place. In real life, you could decide to change routes or the times you travel. Your virtual self might consider logging out of certain accounts for a some length of time, long enough for you to recover and reset. List the things you can get help with and the people you could ask to give it. Who can be your walking buddy? Who do you know in a position of authority who could make an announcement or otherwise use their platform? Who is good at organization and might help you avoid running into someone by (un)coordinating schedules?

Sometimes the help you need involves the upsetting task of documenting and processing instances of harassment. For online ugliness, you can get a friend to go through your messages for you and/or help you decide if you want to save, delete, or screen capture specific examples. You can also enlist the help of HeartMob, a Hollaback! project that offers private logs of online abuse, replies to the original harasser to call out the behavior, and/or gives support in the form of mobilizing other people online who can drown out any negative messages with positives ones.

When there are patterns of abuse or harassment, you don’t have to decide right away how you want to handle it. Until you know if you just want it to stop or, for instance, will be taking it up with Human Resources, just start with documentation. A friend can also help by letting you email them all the details, including the date, time, and facts of situation, in order to establish a date stamp if you ever need proof or corroboration.

Another writing project would be to come up with what you see as the best possible outcome for your specific situation, no matter how outlandish it might be. Dig deep to figure out what it is you really want. Do you want to be removed from the situation? Do you want a public apology? For them to go to counseling? Or some other way to demonstrate they understand their behavior is wrong? Now figure out which elements on your wish list are achievable. Work toward what you can actually do, with or without the help of a friend. And when something positive does happen—even if it’s just a coworker believing you when they are not in a position to help—celebrate that.

Sanity comes with action. Pen and paper help us organize our thoughts, but it’s when we work to make ourselves and others safer that we start to feel relief and strength. I find that when I step up and intervene on other marginalized people’s behalf, I feel empowered. It almost makes up for the many times I couldn’t speak up for myself. So be an ally! It’s good for your mental health and reminds you that you are not helpless.

More Creative Responses

Anyone who deals with harassment even semi-regularly has had plenty of experience gauging just how dangerous these situations can become. Being harassed is never your fault, and it’s not on you to predict how aggressive or physical someone might be. There will be times when you know the best option is to get away as fast as possible. Trust your gut.

There will also be those times when you are not as worried about your physical safety and you’re up for playing with this mouse like a cat. Those times may be few and far between, so feel free to have fun! You deserve a laugh. So when someone is acting a fool, act a fool right back. One cool thing about the anti-street-harassment community is how many badass, empowering, and just plain funny responses people have come up with to deal with harassment. A Google search is sure to provide more inspiration, but here are a few to get you started:

Creativity-wise, there are also endless, somewhat more artistic things you can try:

There are so many ways women/femmes and nonbinary folks are harassed in the streets. Below are a few examples and how I handle each.

  1. “Hey, Beautiful/ [Sexy, or some other unsolicited compliment].” This may seem benign, but it is not. The fact that the “Hey” (a normal salutation) is followed by a comment on your appearance is not okay! It also can easily escalate because the person already feels entitled to comment on your physical appearance. The best way to handle this is to simply pretend they do not exist. The real dangerous people will respond to your silence with “Bitch” or “You are not so pretty anyway.” This shows you that this was not just a friendly hello!
  2. “Smile.” This also seems friendly but, again, the person is telling me what to do with my face. Usually I just start barking or twitching. It’s way more entertaining than smiling anyhow!
  3. Aggressive sexual language that is not solicited. I try to make eye contact with other people on the street and also, if need be, say out loud: “I do not know him.” Many people will not get involved if they think it is a domestic issue, but if they know you are being harassed they will step in. If there is no one on the street, I try to walk in the path of the light and pull out my phone and call someone so the harasser knows they will be held accountable for their behavior (i.e., there is a witness).

One time, when I was performing, I hopped into the aud­ience, and a man grabbed my ass. I looked at him and loudly said, “Do not touch me without my permission.” If I feel safe (I did because I was in a huge crowd), I call them out directly. They need to know that touching someone without their permission is never acceptable. And also: public shaming works. Most of the time these men behave this way because they do not feel they will be held accountable for their behavior.

—Shanthony Exum, aka Miss Eaves,
rapper extraordinaire

When You’re Harassed in a Venue

In earlier chapters, I addressed venues directly, telling them how to respond when someone has been harassed in their space. I’ve also touched on what audiences and bystanders can do. What about when you are personally harassed in a venue? What can you do?

Asking that question isn’t about giving the venue a pass, especially if their policies (or lack thereof) have contributed to the situation or even made it worse, but anyone can make a mistake. Even well-intentioned people who want to help might draw a blank when trying to imagine how. You can’t control their response, but you can control your behavior. Here are a few tips that might help reporting harassment in a venue go a little more smoothly.

If a venue has signage suggesting they care about safer spaces, you should feel comfortable talking to anyone about what you just experienced. Unless their policy specifically states who to tell, it doesn’t hurt to ask a staff person, “Who’s the best person here tonight to talk to about some harassment I just experienced?” This allows them an out if they are too distracted or untrained to help you. You want them to have an out if they aren’t able to deal effectively; this can lessen your overall trauma in the long run by reducing the chance of them making things worse.

Once you find a friendly ear, calmly tell them what happened, where, by whom, and what you need to feel safer in that moment. Maybe you just need to sit near security, maybe you need an escort to your car, maybe you need them to kick the harasser out, maybe you just want them to talk to the creep or keep an eye on them. Whatever it is, tell them. It might be tough to do this, to clearly express your needs to a stranger, but even people who want to do the right thing—including those who have gone through training and “done the right thing” before—are human, imperfect, and can misstep. As best you can, be clear about what you need. Don’t take offense if they didn’t offer it first. No one’s a mind reader. In the moment, if you are too flustered to even know what you need, don’t sweat it! Don’t add self-criticism to your problems. Confusion is a natural response to harassment, and it’s acceptable to say just that: “I’m overwhelmed right now, can I just stand here?” Take your time, let them bring you back to the present with grounding techniques if that’s what you need, and give them a chance to make the situation right.

It’s understandable that if you’re harassed in a venue that does not claim to be a safer space or has no obvious signage to suggest they are, you might not trust them to help you. Frankly, that is why I co-created the Safer Spaces Program in Baltimore: we knew that people who live with the constant threat of violence are not always able or willing to speak up during an incident. But it’s also important to understand that you’re not obligated to! If you want to leave, that is perfectly reasonable. I suggest that after some time passes and you feel calm about the situation, reach out to the club—tell them what happened, and that you didn’t know who you should tell, and see what their response is. Maybe they’ll prove to you that they can’t handle your truth, but maybe they’ll surprise you. If they seem shocked at what occurred, apologetic, and encourage you to report next time, you can help them improve their response for the next person harassed by suggesting they put up obvious signage and post their policies publicly. You don’t have to do the work for them, but any time we help an individual or group become more victim-centered in their responses, we help future victims. Remember, helping others is empowering. And sometimes easier than helping ourselves. It’s a way to pay positivity forward, to build trust in the community. Trust is reciprocal, and keeping the communication open is the best way for people to actually hear suggestions on how they can improve without feeling defensive and shutting down.

If you’ve tried to communicate directly with the venue (tried to find the right person to talk to, clearly communicated what happened and what needs to happen in response), but they seem totally unapologetic or dismissive, then you hereby have my permission to go the public shaming route. Tag them or tweet at them, keep it factual, and either end it with a reasonable ask, or, if you’re done and never want to go back and don’t even care if they change their ways at this point, then leave it as a warning to others who might not want to spend their money there. A couple things to note: there is a difference between a venue that did not respond well to your complaint of harassment and a venue that encouraged or participated in your harassment. You can feel as angry as you want at either situation, but your public response might need to be tailored appropriately. Enlisting the help of all your followers and publicly calling for a ban of a venue before trying to talk directly with them? Let’s save that for the venues with sexist or racist imagery all over their walls, stupid signage on the tip jars, staff that directly harassed you, and management that shrugs it all off—not the venue that usually tries their best but maybe didn’t perfectly respond to you on a busy night. Not because you don’t deserve to feel safe or get justice. You do. But getting people to change and improve begins by acknowledging that they are capable of just that. Just wanting to let the world know “this place sucks” changes nothing. I don’t think you’re that kind of person, though, if you’ve gotten this far into this book.

Responding to Harassment Online

“Don’t feed the trolls” might be a good personal mantra for dealing with online harassment, but it’s not necessarily great advice for everyone. Online harassment sits on the continuum of identity-based violence and its effects. According to the HeartMob website:

Online harassment includes a wide range of targeted behaviors, including threats, repeated hateful or discriminatory messages, publishing personal information (doxxing), DDoS attacks, swatting, non-consensual sharing of intimate images (“revenge porn”), defamation, and even directly promoting harm. Online harassment can target—or come from—a group or individual. It often has the expressed purpose of forcing the target to abandon the internet or take down their content. While there is space for debate and discussion online (as well as conflicting ideas!), what separates online harassment from healthy discourse is the focus on harm: including publishing personal information, sending threats with the intention to scare or harm, and even directly promoting harm against a person or organization.44

In a world where staying offline is not really an option, marginalized people are going to come across some online hate no matter how curated their feeds are. The idea that you can somehow avoid online harassment by staying off your device is just as silly as the idea that you can simply avoid street harassment by staying home. You have the right to live your life, online and off. But just because you can expect harassment doesn’t mean you have to accept it. And you’re not alone. HeartMob refers to a Pew Research Center survey that found that 40 percent of people have been harassed online and 66 percent had witnessed someone else being harassed online.45 Fifty-eight percent of these incidents happened on a “social networking site or app.”46 As with all forms of harassment, we know that the online sort is widespread, but that women, people of color, and LGBTQIA folks experience more of it, especially when it comes to actual threats. But whether you are a victim of online harassment or a bystander, you have options.

It’s always a good idea to document any instance of abuse or harassment. You never know when you’ll need it, so take screenshots of everything and put them away in a folder you don’t have to look at all the time. This includes personal or public messages, as well as any time you have told someone about the harassment. Build that paper trail—in the virtual and the real world. If you ever decide that going to the cops is the right course of action for you, have a printed version of all your screen grabs in addition to a USB key or hard drive with all the information. Considering how slow the law is to catch up with technology, and the variations in laws by state, the more you can help your case, the better.

Proactive steps to online safety include enabling two-step verification, strengthening passwords, searching for yourself on “people finder” websites (and requesting they remove any sensitive information), and limiting what you share in the first place. When you’re being harassed, online or off, it is not your fault, and you can respond however you like. You can just ignore it, you can engage the harasser(s) by standing your ground or explaining why what they are doing is hurtful, you can block them or report them to the site you’re using, and you can expose them by reposting those screen grabs to put the lens back on their bad behavior where it belongs. Whatever you decide to do, it’s your choice, and you can disengage whenever you want.

Bystanders to online harassment will usually have the most impact not with the original harasser but with other bystanders who might not perceive the person’s abusive behavior for what it is. The more you can demonstrate for the crowd that a racist or transphobic comment is not cool, the better. You’re not only letting others know that not everyone agrees with this jerk, you’re also showing victims that they’re not alone and that someone has their back. That’s huge. So don’t ignore it: state your case and try to persuade where you can. If they’re just not giving you an inch, then you can expose them (by reposting their comments), report them, and then block them.

There’s a lot of information out there about protecting yourself, so to better learn about all your options, read up on HeartMob and Crash Override. HeartMob is a platform that provides real-time support to individuals experiencing online harassment while empowering bystanders to act. It lets you report and document harassment across platforms and get the kind of help you want from the community, because victims can ask for exactly what they need, when they need it. The goal is to reduce trauma for people being harassed online by giving them what they feel will aid them the most in weathering the storm.47 Crash Override, in their own words, “is a crisis helpline, advocacy group, and resource center for people who are experiencing online abuse. We are a network of experts and survivors who work directly with victims, tech companies, lawmakers, media, security experts, and law enforcement to educate and provide direct assistance working to eliminate the causes of online abuse.”48

Self-Care

“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” This quote from Audre Lorde is well known for a reason: it resonates. Maybe you are stretched too thin taking caring for your kids, an elderly parent, or a sick loved one. Maybe you have too many jobs and not enough money, or your activism and local community work occupy all your free time. Or perhaps you have experienced abuse or violence and need to heal from that trauma. Whatever your situation, you are no good to anybody if you aren’t healthy. So think of taking time for yourself. You’re not quitting or abandoning your team but rather taking the bench for a little while, as long as you need. Rest up, let the other players get some field time, and come back ready to kick some ass yourself.

“Self-care” is one of those terms whose meaning has been watered down a lot in this internet age. While it’s common these days to say that buying yourself that pumpkin spice latte is self-care, that’s not the original intent of the phrase (and this is coming from a die-hard PSL fan, so you know I’m serious). Self-care is not an excuse to be a selfish jerk to other people. Sure, sometimes you might need to cancel plans to take care of yourself, but self-care does not mean you get to be flaky or late all the time. It’s a mindful practice for health and well-being, not an excuse.

Sometimes a drink to take the edge off is a form of self-care (hello, 2016 election!), but sometimes it’s recognizing and doing something about the fact that your drinking is interfering with your life and preventing you from being your best self. Sometimes self-care is cutting a toxic person out of your life, and sometimes it’s learning how to deal with difficult people. Sometimes it’s telling the people closest to you how they can help you through this rough time, but sometimes it’s getting structured or professional help to ensure you don’t burden those you love unnecessarily or more often than they can handle. Self-care is not a product you can buy on the capitalist market; it’s not a neurotic self-improvement pro­ject. It is about taking a break from what breaks you, nourishing your mind and body, unplugging and recharging, and preparing yourself to reenter the world.

Get out that pen and paper again. What are your favorite self-care practices? Write them down here for easy reference the next time you need them:

40 Holly Kearl, Unsafe and Harassed in Public Spaces: A National Street Harassment Report (Reston, VA: Stop Street Harassment, 2014).

41 National Center for Transgender Equality, Report of the US Transgender Survey, 2015 (Washington, DC: NCTE, 2015), 15.

42 Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, American Muslim Poll 2018: Pride and Prejudice (Washington, DC: ISPU, 2018), 15.

43 The concept of intersectionality came out of the work of the Combahee River Collective in the 1970s. For more on them, see Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective (Chicago: Haymarket, 2017).

44 “Social Media Safety Guides,” HeartMob, https://iheartmob.org/resources/safety_guides.

45 Maeve Duggan, Online Harassment 2017 (Pew Research Center, 2017), 3.

46 Ibid., 81.

47 Heart Mob, https://iheartmob.org.

48 Crash Override, http://www.crashoverridenetwork.com.