Location: Columbia Ave in Adams Morgan
Time: Evening Rush Hour (3:30pm-7:30pm)

I was on a jog today – in bright daylight on a busy street in a nice part of town (columbia road in adams morgan for DC folk) and 2 adult men in a delivery truck (big) start hollering at me from 4 blocks away. They flip a U and start to follow me, pull up next to me and cat call. I tell them (not ask) to stop three or four times before they start taunting me and saying things like “i’m a human! i can say what I want!” and actually slow the truck down and start honking as they follow me down the street. I too am a human, and I have the right to feel safe and comfortable in my own neighborhood in broad daylight – and in any other neighborhood and at night too. I don’t want to be sexually harassed – I didn’t ask for it, I didn’t egg them on, all I did was be me. In my hometown.

How can we talk about women having it all when the law doesn’t even protect women against daily subjugation to harassment, taunting, sexual advances, and glaring from men on their own streets? Until we as a society can admit that women aren’t even treated like humans in the most subtle, basic ways – with the respect to be left alone – nothing will ever get better.

Submitted on 9/8/12 by Micha R.