“Excuse me beautiful, can I talk to you for a minute?”
“Hey girl!”
“You got a boyfriend?”
All a girl wants to do is get to her destination without being harassed, young women say. But nowadays, they say, they can’t even go to the corner store without being heckled. The taunting takes place in many neighborhoods, teens say, and can grow more belligerent in areas near liquor stores.
“Being approached by a guy on the streets can really be a turnoff and I consider it to be creepy,” says La`Neece Byrd, a senior at Boston Community Leadership Academy. “I much rather be left alone.”
Byrd says that when she ignores the hooting, some men become more verbally aggressive.
Some guys have progressed to touching. Shayla Carranza, 16, from BCLA, says she was walking one day when she felt someone grab her elbow while trying to hit on her.
“I felt so uncomfortable,” she says. “I told the dude, ‘Can you not?’ I had to raise my voice because I felt so creeped out.”
Ivana Guity, 16, from Boston Arts Academy, says that she doesn’t respond to the come-ons.
“I don’t say anything back,” she says, “because if I do I would…make guys believe I’m easy.”
Instead, she says, she puts on her headphones and keeps walking.
“I just want to go where I’m headed,” she says.
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