8th 10/08/11--The Double Nose Pick/Walk-By Harassment,

October 12, 2011

I am again hindered by the fact that this computer doesn’t have earphones on which I can listen to the recording that goes with this post. I think I got the right one, though.

This recording, from October 8, 2011 gives another example of me responding to someone who has just been completely violating to me by using the same kind of language that she used. She wasn’t around by the time I said what I said about her into the recorder; she had committed walk-by harassment and she and her friend were several yards away from me almost as soon as she’d said what she said. I really think that she and her friend stalked me to the corner so that she could say what you hear on the recording.

I try not to respond to the kind of statement that she made with the same kind of statement, and, most of the time, I think I manage not to. I don’t always manage not to get angry; lately, “You’re a dumb b----!” has been replacing my “Bless you!” response to women who cough when they pass by me, for example. I’ve been giving those kinds of profanity-laden responses to men, too, more often. However, from my perspective, the kind of statement that the woman who walked within a few inches of me made in this recording is more harassing and more violating than something like “You dumb b----!” or “You f---ing a---hole, stay the f--- away from me” is when someone has already gone out of his or her way to be violating to you. I’ve always felt that way, since the beginning of this situation; there’s getting angry at someone, losing your temper and saying something less than polite, and then there’s what that woman did, which was premeditated, conscious, completely gratuitous, vicious sexual harassment of me, a total stranger to her.

I don’t think that there’s another, unpublished recording of me, so far, that shows me responding in kind to people who harass me or to other kinds of harassment.

Overall, I thought this recording was funny, despite its terrible subject matter, so I wanted to publish it.  I also wanted to give an explanation for why I made one statement that was like the woman’s unprovoked, repeated statement.

I’m at the Boston Public Library, where the coughing started the second I got here.

Unprovoked; these people are completely unprovoked by me.

Copyright L. Kochman, October 12, 2011 @ 5:05 p.m.