The other day I saw ahead of me a girl walking by a guy sitting on a bicycle, and as she passed he seemed to turn toward her, but she didn’t acknowledge him, she just kept walking briskly. He yelled after her, “I love you!” and as I got closer to him I heard him say, “And that ass too.”

As I passed him I said to him, “Bad manners!” He proceeded to yell at me as I kept walking, screaming at me that wasn’t talking to me, letting out a string of obscenities, calling me all kinds of misogynistic names and threatening to pull my hair. All this because I said he had bad manners.

To be honest, I thought it was pretty funny, because now anyone walking by was looking at him as a crazy person screaming on the street, hanging around on his bike outside the NYU dormitories (he was clearly way too old to be a student).

I have told a few men that they have bad manners when I’ve either witnessed or been the target of street harassment. Some have said, “I love you too,” some get angry and spit venom, some are fly-by harassing and already walking away so I have no idea how they react.

Is it effective? I have no idea. But at least they get to know what it’s like to be evaluated by a stranger on the street for one second.

- Athena

Location: 14th Street near 3rd Ave, Manhattan, NY

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