Walking Home

I found this video over at First Fig--a beautiful website by a beautiful woman who is a co-blogger with me over at Exponent.

I recently returned from a little getaway to NYC. I try to return to the city I was educated in and love so much at least four times a year. I stay with friends in Harlem. And while I love that place, I can say that when I walk down the street--I have these experiences about 95% of the time. Men telling me to smile, wondering if I could handle all of them, asking for sex, demanding sex, commenting on my ass, commenting on my hair, commenting on anything and everything. I had to learn, after my first few months of living in Harlem, to block it out. Yet, at the same time, deep anger wells up inside of me that I have condition myself to block it out. Walking down the street shouldn't be such a task.

In mraynes' own words, "If men really knew how this feels, really understood what we have to do in our minds to make this ok, they would never say another disrespectful thing. I think this video does a beautiful job of showing this."