Would be very surprised if women walking alone were harassed in affluent midtown NYC (Fifth Ave., Park Ave.), Washington Square Park etc.
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@JoyceCarolOates And the way that we're made invisible is, in and of itself, a form of violence against us. We exist. You erase us. -
And, to be clear, by segregating street harassment to "urban areas,"
@JoyceCarolOates is saying that only men of color harass women. -
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@JoyceCarolOates As if being in the proximity of wealth makes men suddenly unable to harass women. Jesus Christ. That shit hurts. -
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@JoyceCarolOates And I'm going to explain why, in a very personal way that I've never shared publicly. -
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@JoyceCarolOates I visited New York once as a teen—got a free trip to come out here. Parts of it were wonderful. Others, not so much. -
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@JoyceCarolOates What sticks out from that trip has also long been a point of shame for me. I wish it wasn't, but it is. -
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@JoyceCarolOates I was walking on Park Ave in a dress. And an "affluent" white man assumed I was a sex worker. -
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@JoyceCarolOates Because I'd never done sex work, I didn't understand the proposition. He took my confusion to escalate his demand. -
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@JoyceCarolOates Breathe. I'm remembering to breathe through this. This some PTSD shit. -
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@JoyceCarolOates Anyway, turned out he grabbed me by my arm. On Park Avenue. In front of a shit ton of "affluent" people. Who did nothing. -
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@JoyceCarolOates I was pretty hood back then. I punched the dude and started running. He began screaming that he was gonna call the cops. -
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@JoyceCarolOates I ran. And ran. And ran. -
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@JoyceCarolOates And then I ran some more. -
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@JoyceCarolOates The thought that the police would arrest me for trying to defend myself was horrifying. -
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@JoyceCarolOates Even at a young age, I knew I would be cast the perpetrator. I knew that this white man's "affluence" would protect him. -
My presence as a young Latina girl on Park Ave in a cheap dress was a threat to "affluence." The same affluence
@JoyceCarolOates defends. -
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@JoyceCarolOates I was harassed by "affluence" to the point of physical assault. And was petrified that I wouldn't be seen as the victim. -
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@JoyceCarolOates A few hours later, when I told some friends this story in Harlem, they all told me shit like that happened to them. -
The racialized ways in which women of color are harassed are made invisible by people like
@JoyceCarolOates and by orgs like@iHollaback. -
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@JoyceCarolOates And that alone is a form of violence. You, making me and my friends invisible? That's harassment. -
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@JoyceCarolOates You, assuming that me and my friends are always already criminal? That's harassment, too. -
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@JoyceCarolOates I'm back, with two addenda. -
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@JoyceCarolOates wrote that men "freely & without incident." Black and brown men don't. See stop-and-frisk. -
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@JoyceCarolOates Also: I wrote earlier that I didn't understand what the white man was propositioning because I hadn't done sex work. -
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@JoyceCarolOates By writing that I hadn't done sex work, I was low key attaching myself to some kind of respectability. Fuck that. -
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@JoyceCarolOates There's an implicit way in which I was attaching an inherent value to myself because I wasn't a sex worker. -
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@JoyceCarolOates And that inherent value relies on the inherent devaluing of sex workers. And for that, I apologize. -
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@JoyceCarolOates The other thing attached to this: I still found a way to blame myself for this rich white man attacking me on Park Ave. -
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@JoyceCarolOates I wrote "bc I didn't understand..." No. It wasn't up to me understand shit. It was up to that white man to not attack me. -
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@JoyceCarolOates Even in trying to claim and finally make public one of my street harassment stories, I still blamed myself. - 2 more replies
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