Introduction and First Post

First off, I'm a Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies major at the University of Minnesota. Minneapolis is my life. I love the city, and, as a suburb-born girl, I can't imagine going back any time soon. I'm shortly moving into my first apartment with a friend, and as such, have been thinking more recently about street harassment and how to deal with it when it happens to me. I'm not the type of person to think up witty things on the spot, so that wasn't really a possibility...Then I stumbled upon HollaBackNYC, and the rest of the HollaBack world. And hence, HollaBackMinn was created.


As I sit here thinking about what would be the best incident to write as a first post, I am slightly shocked to realize that I have more to choose from than I initially thought. Which just kind of goes to show that we may just live in a society that normalizes harassment in such a way that offensive moments on the street are easily forgotten.

Anyway, here we go:

Last summer, I was out with a friend of mine in Uptown. It was a really nice summer day, and we were both wearing cute sundresses. We were walking down Hennipen (near St. Sabrina's), when we had to stop in order to wait for us to be able to cross at the stoplight. And, of course, who pulls up along side us but a couple of drunken pervs. We stood there, blatantly trying to ignore them, and their calls offering us 'a good, quick fuck.' When the light stop turned green, and the walk signal lit up, we started walking quickly, trying to get away from them. They followed us for a good two blocks before they realized they weren't getting anywhere and sped off to harass some other girls.