Hope You Rot in Hell, Jerk!
Walking from the AS steps to go to the lib, I heard someone yell, "Miss, miss." I did not turn around since I was talking to a friend and felt that nothing was hanging from my jacket and that my pants weren't riding down my ass or something. My friend waved goodbye to me and went on his merry way to class and I went down the steps.
As it happened, a truck was passing by at the exact same moment. And one of the guys in the truck was the one yelling "Miss, miss." Normal occurence, but with a twist. He was holding something that looked like a camera. And he was taking pictures of me as I walked across the street.
Naturally, my feminist side flared up. But since there's nothing I can do without being run-over and killed, I put the Finger up. Wow, I bet that hurt him. I bet that that made him think twice about ever doing that again! No of course not. He and his driver friend will just laugh and look for more girls to bother.
All the way to the library I was still seething. All I could think about was how to humiliate that guy. I even went as far as to imagining scenarios that I could've done. I would hold up a sign that says "Kilala mo ba nanay ko? Lagot ka, kasi kilala niya may ari ng kumpanya mo" and "Gusto mong madyaryo?". Yes, most of those scenarios involved me abusing the mom's celebrity and *ahem* power. But the basic idea behind those scenarios was to embarrass the guy. To make him feel guilty for making me feel that I can't walk down the street. To make him feel what I felt.
And what happened to me is already a more benign situation. I have friends who have had worse experiences than that. They've been harrassed all the way to their streets, followed until they get inside a restaurant, stared at hungrily while they're in a car. What happened to me was relatively mild, but it did not make me feel any less violated and unsafe.
We live in a society that seems to think women are just objects to be stared and gawked at. Everything that's being thrown at us is directed in creating a gender specific divide. All this by the way is obvious and has been pointed out time and time again by people much smarter than me. But what is important is that it has to stop. There must be someway that those who feel they can just take pictures of women walking down a street see how wrong their thinking is. They would not allow those things to happen to the women in their lives (assuming that they're not wife-beaters or rapists or child molesters considering that they already are perverts).
As a woman, I have to be doubly careful with where I walk, what I wear, God even with what I say. I would love to live in a city where I can walk down a street wearing a sleeveless top. In a city, in a world where people who follow a girl and keep harrassing her until she gets to a safer place gets his comeuppance. A city where this kind of thing is not a normal occurence, but a rarity. All these are just wishes though. Mere wishes. It takes a whole lot more to make it into an actuality.
As it happened, a truck was passing by at the exact same moment. And one of the guys in the truck was the one yelling "Miss, miss." Normal occurence, but with a twist. He was holding something that looked like a camera. And he was taking pictures of me as I walked across the street.
Naturally, my feminist side flared up. But since there's nothing I can do without being run-over and killed, I put the Finger up. Wow, I bet that hurt him. I bet that that made him think twice about ever doing that again! No of course not. He and his driver friend will just laugh and look for more girls to bother.
All the way to the library I was still seething. All I could think about was how to humiliate that guy. I even went as far as to imagining scenarios that I could've done. I would hold up a sign that says "Kilala mo ba nanay ko? Lagot ka, kasi kilala niya may ari ng kumpanya mo" and "Gusto mong madyaryo?". Yes, most of those scenarios involved me abusing the mom's celebrity and *ahem* power. But the basic idea behind those scenarios was to embarrass the guy. To make him feel guilty for making me feel that I can't walk down the street. To make him feel what I felt.
And what happened to me is already a more benign situation. I have friends who have had worse experiences than that. They've been harrassed all the way to their streets, followed until they get inside a restaurant, stared at hungrily while they're in a car. What happened to me was relatively mild, but it did not make me feel any less violated and unsafe.
We live in a society that seems to think women are just objects to be stared and gawked at. Everything that's being thrown at us is directed in creating a gender specific divide. All this by the way is obvious and has been pointed out time and time again by people much smarter than me. But what is important is that it has to stop. There must be someway that those who feel they can just take pictures of women walking down a street see how wrong their thinking is. They would not allow those things to happen to the women in their lives (assuming that they're not wife-beaters or rapists or child molesters considering that they already are perverts).
As a woman, I have to be doubly careful with where I walk, what I wear, God even with what I say. I would love to live in a city where I can walk down a street wearing a sleeveless top. In a city, in a world where people who follow a girl and keep harrassing her until she gets to a safer place gets his comeuppance. A city where this kind of thing is not a normal occurence, but a rarity. All these are just wishes though. Mere wishes. It takes a whole lot more to make it into an actuality.