Walking down 14th one evening to meet friends, I passed a group of men headed in the opposite direction. I could feel them looking at me before crossing paths, and had already braced myself for an inappropriate comment. You know how you can tell when the way someone is looking at you is inappropriate and threatening before he even opens his mouth?

Anyway, as expected, one of the men did turn out to be a verbal harasser, and said “girl, i wanna taste that little ______.”

What I didn’t expect, was that one of the other men would intentionally bump into me. The verbal harassment, coupled with this physical touch, was really unsettling. To make matters worse, I was audibly and visually disgusted by both the comment and the contact, and the man who originally verbally harassed me appeared to be offended and became even more threatening by shouting back at me, “I could, too!”

I took this as a serious threat, and was pretty jarred by it. The man’s words hurt, not just because of their offensive nature, but because they reminded me of the last time someone had taken something from me just because he “could.”

I’m a survivor of a previous sexual assault and have had to really work on healing to get to a point where I even feel like I can walk around the street by myself and not have anxiety. These guys set me back. Again.

Submitted by ALH on 1/10

Location: 4th and V, NW

Time of Harassment: Night (7:30P-12A)