Keep Your Compliments To Yourself
It’s 10 pm and I’m standing at 30th Street Station in Philadelphia waiting for my train back to suburbia. An older man in his late forties/early fifties walks up to me and just stares, so I give him an awkward...

Keep Your Compliments To Yourself

It’s 10 pm and I’m standing at 30th Street Station in Philadelphia waiting for my train back to suburbia. An older man in his late forties/early fifties walks up to me and just stares, so I give him an awkward half-smile. He takes this as an invitation to initiate conversation and asks me, “Why do you American women smile at people you don’t even know?”. Based off of his accent, I assume he’s Russian. I respond, “Good question”.

“I would tell you that you’re beautiful, but all of you women consider that street harassment. Why is that? When all I want to do is compliment you,” he mocks.

I ignore him and hop onto the train that has just pulled up. I enter the empty train and grab a seat, and almost instantly this man pops into the train and sits directly next to me.

“I’m saving this seat for a friend that’s coming in two stops,” I tell him.

He ignores me, smiles and sits down. I repeat my previous statement, and he continues to ignore it. After a few minutes he turns to me and says, “I don’t believe you, you know. You sound like you’re lying. There is no friend coming.”

I reassure him, and again politely ask him to move. After a few unresponsive moments, he reaches out to try and shake my hand, gets up and moves. Two stops later a familiar voice startles me out of my drowsy, half-sleeping daze. The voice sounds irritated.

“You’re a liar”, he hisses. “Your friend never came on the train, you liar. You shouldn’t lie, you’re not very good at it”.

I explain to him that I’m tired and would like to be left alone, but he takes that as an invitation to keep speaking. At this point, I finally begin to get uncomfortable.

“Please, leave me alone. I don’t want to talk, I don’t care that you caught me in a lie, I’d like to be left alone”.

He scoffs at that and continues to talk about what stop he’s getting off at, and also peppers in some comments about why I shouldn’t have lied. At this point I get up, move to the other end of the car, and sit down next to a man with his headphones on.

To my horror I can still see the creepy man’s reflection. He stands up and slowly walks to the back of the train to stand behind my seat. I ignore him until I’m forced to stand up because the guy sitting next to me has to get off on the next stop. The train is empty again and the creepy man pops his head over the seat.

“You really shouldn’t lie, you know”.

I ignore him.

“What’s wrong? You don’t like Russian men?”

No response. We then pull up at what appears to be his stop and he leans into the seat.

“This is my stop. I want you to remember what I say next – I’m am never going to forget your face. Don’t forget that.”

And with a creepy wink to accompany this unsettling statement, he walks off of the train.

Thinking back, I should have grabbed the conductor, I should have had pepper-spray with me, I should have punched this asshole in the face, but I was scared, and for good reason. I’ve had my fair share of street harassers who have yelled obscenities and even tried to grab my arm on a few occasions, but this was by far the worst, because this guy was menacing. He wanted to scare me, and he did. I even had the lingering fear that he got back on the train and was going to follow me back to my house.

This is what street harassment does to women. It instills fear, and while many people tell us women to “fight back” or that it’s “not a big deal”, it’s not that simple. Just look at the recent case of Mary Spears.

Ms. Spears was leaving a funeral this past weekend when a man on the street asked her out. She declined, but the man would not take no for an answer. After continuing to pester and harass her, security guards had to step in but as they pulled him away the man repeatedly hit Spears and then pulled out a gun and shot her multiple times, also hitting her family and friends. Spears died that day, just because she wouldn’t give a man her phone number.

Street harassment is not a joke. Women should not have to fear for their lives after turning down advances from a man. This story is every woman’s nightmare. This is not okay. For the men out there who are constantly questioning why women get so offended/scared when you yell “compliments” to them and try to “pick them up”, this story should answer those questions. And for all of you men out there who think otherwise, I want YOU to remember this – you’re not entitled to anything. Don’t forget that.

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