Yesterday my ex dropped our dog, Mariano, to me for the rest of the year. Usually I have a rhythm and a system for our routine, and it always includes the final walk of the night around midnight. But yesterday everything was off. My schedule was messy, I was exhausted, and somehow our walk happened at one in the morning instead.
On top of that, I forgot my phone at home. And as I stepped out of the building, a thought flashed through my mind: go get your phone. But then I waved it off, told myself not to be dramatic, and kept walking. Nothing ever happens, I thought.
The streets were full of drunk young men. Maybe it was because it was Friday night. Maybe Christmas season played its part. All I knew was that there were a lot of them. Mariano and I circled the block like we always do, and when we began the path back home, the street narrowed. A man appeared ahead, walking toward me. For a second, everything was normal. Then he looked at me and he grabbed my arm.
I was not scared at first. I was surprised. Everything in my body went still for a moment.
He said, hi.
I said, hi back, automatically.
Then he leaned in, closer, and repeated it, hi.
Call me crazy if you want, but sometimes you just know when a person is not a good person. My body knew. My bones knew. Something inside me said, walk away now. So I freed my arm and started moving fast toward my gate.
Behind me, he began shouting:
"Please, please, let me fuck you tonight. I will fuck you tonight. I will fuck you so good."
The words hit me like a slap. I was shocked, disgusted, and suddenly scared. Because that had never happened to me before. No man has ever sexually threatened or harassed me like that, in public, to my face.
And now I am no longer outside of the statistics, the ones where almost every woman says:
Yes. Something has happened to me.
It makes me sad. Because now I know: I will not walk at night the same way again. I will not feel carefree at one in the morning. I will plan differently. I will choose 11:00 or 11:30 p.m. I will bring my phone. I will avoid the hour when the streets change.
This is not about race or nationality or culture. It is about something very specific. When we look at who is harassing women, grabbing them, threatening them, following them, it is nearly always men. Not women.
So the real question is.
What are men going to do about it?
Women have been adjusting for centuries: keys between fingers, fake phone calls, avoiding certain hours, changing routes, texting "I am home." We already do the work. We already adapt.
What I want, honestly, is for men to talk among themselves. To hold each other accountable. To tell each other, this is not okay. Because this is a problem tied to a sex, tied to a behavior, tied to entitlement.
Spain, as a culture, is one of the safest places I have ever lived. In public, I have never once felt unsafe here. Of course, behind closed doors, every country has its shadows. But outside, Spain has always felt safe. So the fact that this happened here shows how universal the issue is.
Women should be able to walk whenever we want, without calculating time, number of drunk men, or the level of risk. Safety should not be a luxury. It should be normal.
The only thing that helped me soften the moment afterward was being able to come home, sit down, and offload everything into ChatGPT, and receive responses that were silly, calming, and strangely healing. Sometimes a ridiculous joke in the middle of the night is exactly what keeps you from shaking.
So I will leave here two of the funniest lines ChatGPT gave me in response:
"It was giving medieval village idiot doing a mating ritual. The only thing he was missing was a lute and bad tavern breath."
"If Mariano had been slightly bigger, he could’ve growled and chased him away like a tiny knight. But alas — he is the Baby Biscuit Sniffing Companion, sworn protector of snacks, not damsels."
If any man reads this, let this be the one ask:
Next time you see a man behaving inappropriately toward a woman, step up. Say something. Stop him.
Because women should not have to be the only ones who change their behavior just to feel safe.
Oh my gosh, I find this to be so incredibly sad and I empathize with a situation that must be quite terrible for you to accept and deal with.
It saddens me that there's seemingly such a void of human contact in your life that you feel obliged to turn towards a computer to feel a sense of comfort and to feel nurtured. It's so sad and I feel truly sorry for you.
As for being harassed, that's unacceptable but a reality of the modern and careless society we live in. Maybe you'll make different choices about what times you take solo walks around the city and maybe take some self-defense classes to help you find some confidence in your own abilities, some options that may help you. I did exactly that and even though I have a very capable man as a partner it makes me feel safer because relying on, or expecting, the drunk young men in the street to assist seems futile.
Becca 🌷
I need to be very clear about this.
It is not appropriate to call a friend at 1 a.m. to process harassment experienced on the street. That risks waking someone up, disrupting their sleep, and transferring distress onto them at a time when people are most vulnerable to anxiety and spiraling thoughts. That is not fair or responsible.
That is why I chose not to involve other people at that hour. Using a tool to process something privately and immediately is a conscious and respectful choice, not a sign of loneliness or a lack of human connection.
Women should be able to walk in the street at any hour without being harassed. That is the baseline. In Europe, this expectation is normal and reasonable, and it has been my lived reality until now.
I am going to adjust the hours when I walk outside, but I want to be clear that this is a practical response to current conditions, not something I believe should be necessary or acceptable. I am not going to take self defense classes or change my freedom of movement as though the responsibility lies with me.
The issue here is harassment. It is not my coping choices, not my confidence, and not my decision to protect other people’s rest and boundaries.
This used to be the culture when I was growing up. The reason it changed is because so many women didn't want to be defended, didn't want men to do anything for them at other levels of life. Opening a door for a woman became a sin. So, if there isn't a culture of "being there" for women in the small things, when the big things happen, men won't be there.
I’m genuinely confused by this framing.
At no point did women collectively say that men should stop intervening when another man is behaving inappropriately or threateningly in public. That idea is simply false.
Opening a door is a courtesy.
Stopping harassment or assault is basic civic responsibility.
Those two things are not the same category of behavior, and it’s worrying to see them conflated.
Women asked not to be infantilized, controlled, or treated as property under the guise of “protection.” We did not ask men to stop stepping in when someone is being harassed. We asked men to respect agency and consent. Those are not opposing values.
Intervening when a man grabs or threatens a woman does not require chivalry, ownership, gratitude, or permission. It requires recognizing unacceptable behavior and stopping it. Cultures where this is normalized are objectively safer, and Spain is a good example of that.
Suggesting that men stopped intervening because women rejected small acts of gallantry shifts responsibility away from men’s choices and places it onto women’s supposed ingratitude. That is not an honest reflection of reality.
Men are adults. They do not need emotional incentives or cultural rewards to know that harassment is wrong.
Basic safety in public spaces should not be conditional.
You have missed the point. We all learn through many iterations, whether it be to roll, crawl, stand, walk and run, or solving complex maths equations. Most of the foundational experiences required for a man to be willing (and able) to step into the situations you described, are not there for most men - so they don't have the skills. Opening the door might be a courtesy, but all of those little things stand out to create an experience of respecting and looking after women. Expecting men to get punished for all the little things, but then have them step into the big things, is a losing game.
But it does require the man putting himself at risk, doesn't it? We live in a selfish world, and both men and women live selfishly. So why would you expect a man to step into danger for a stranger? The culture required for that to happen no longer exists for most people in the world now. I don't understand why people are so selfish, other than that is what is in their best interest, and that is what people will act on.
No it doesn't. It highlights that cultural habits have changed and when change happens, other changes happen. The changing habits that have changed behaviours in women, has changed a lot of the environment and that will also change the behaviour of men. It is natural. If you build an environment like we have over the last fifty or so years, we should expect exactly what we are seeing happen, because that is what it breeds.
Most of the women I know have faced the majority of their harassment from other women. It takes a different form, but is still harassment. Women are adults too, right?
Should and shouldn't are meaningless. Everything is conditional.