Think B4 You Speak!

This is not a personal story, but one of thousands and thousands of innocents that I am speaking out for. Every day, there are far too many people bullied due to their sexual orientation. What's worse? In addition to bullying, they are subjected to the abuse of the word "gay", a word which these individuals take great pride in.

Hearing slurs like, "That's so gay!" Or even, "Don't be a fag," can horribly break a person down. Most people agree and acknowledge this fact, however, they all continue to abuse these terms.

The reason I am speaking up is because there is a group that is stepping up to STOP the abuse of the word "gay" (and others like it) and to help curb the bullying inflicted on homosexuals, both old and (perhaps more tragically) sad.

This group is named, GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network). Earlier this year they held the "Think B4 You Speak" event, urging people to "find another word" to use instead of "gay" or "fag".

Now, with the help of you, thousands of people have stepped up and vowed to stop the abuse of these words...and we're encouraging all of you who have felt the pain of these (and other) types of attacks on the streets of your own home cities/towns, to step-up and make a vow of your own.

Visit www.GLSEN.org or www.ThinkB4youSpeak.com to find out more and help put an end to this horribly painful, ignorant behavior. With your help, we CAN make a difference.

Thank you for your time...

Sean Carroll

Ukrainian Village Street Harasser with a Camera

I was walking home to Ukrainian Village after going for a jog in Humbolt Park. I was wearing some black leggings from American Apparel, the same thing I always wear when I run. But this wasn't like normal. This time, I was trailed by a man driving a 90s Chrysler minivan, champagne colored. I turned around and realized he was using his camera phone to take a picture of my butt. I yelled, "What are you doing?" and he yells back, "Trying to take a picture of your sexy pants." I said, "What?" because I was having trouble comprehending what was going on... he yells, "I am trying to take a picture of your see-through pants." So I yelled back, "You are fucking disgusting, leave me alone!" and he responds, "You're the fucking pervert! You're wearing see-through pants!" He continued to call me a pervert as he drove away... First, my pants were not see through. They were basically yoga pants. Second, regardless of how form-fitting they were, dude had no right to photograph my ass for his spank material. And then to call me a pervert? Projection, yes? I wanted to throw up. So ladies... if you see this guy in the van with long, greasy grey hair and glasses, get his license number in case he harasses you. Because by the time I realized he was trying to take pictures of my butt, I was too frazzled to get his plate number.

~submitted by Emily

Can you spare some change, sir?

"Can you spare some change, sir?" I asked, as I was looking up at a man I had never seen
before. He was wearing a black suit, a fedora, thick oval framed glasses, looked about 50 years
old, and was carrying one of those large rectangular cases artists carry around.
I was seventeen years old. I had been squatting in an abandoned warehouse in Wicker Park, in
Chicago with a few of my friends. We all had split up that morning to make some money for beer.
"I'm not going to give you any money, said the man, "But we can go to that restaurant over
there and I'll buy you some beer and a cheeseburger."
"Sorry. I'm seventeen and I'm a vegetarian."
He laughed. "Well, sweetie, I have veggie burgers at my house and wine. I live a block away.
I'll make you lunch if you want."
His voice was high-pitched, he had a lisp, looked like an artist, and had neatly groomed
facial hair. In my seventeen year old mind, I felt it was safe to assume he was gay. I felt
comfortable. He held out his hand and helped me up off the ground in front of the Damen Blue Line
El train stop. Friends had told me stories about rich, yuppie artist types who would "adopt" them
and hook them up with all sorts of cool stuff. I felt I had struck a gold mine.
We walked passed the White Hen convenience store on Damen Ave, right across the street from
Wicker Park. He told me to wait outside. He came out of the store with three bottles of Yellow
Tail wine and some Amy's veggie burgers. I was stoked.
His apartment was about two blocks away from the store. It was an old Victorian style building
with a tall black iron gate around the perimeter of the property. He punched a code into a
keypad and the gate opened. When he fumbled with his keys at the front door, I noticed the sticker
on his mailbox that read, "A. Paluciuz" or something like that.
"What's your name anyways, dude?" I felt awkward asking him that, as I was pretty sure he had
already told me at some point between the El train and his home.
"Arthur. And you're Chuck, right?"
I giggled to myself. I found it amusing when people actually believe me when I told them that
was my name.
We climbed up a windy stairwell until we made it ot the third floor. He fumbled with his keys
again, then pushed open the door. There were paintings of naked men kissing on his walls, and on
the easel next to his television was a half finished painting of a naked woman covered in tattoos.
There were piles of books everywhere. I sat down on his brown leather couch and crossed my legs.
"Would you care for a glass of wine?" he asked from the kitchen. I accepted the offer. I liked
drinking.. a lot.
He came back from the kitchen with an expensive looking wine glass filled to the top and a plate
with a veggie burger on it. As I began eating, he sat accross the room from me, staring at me as
I ate. Normally I suppose this would have made me feel uncomfortable, but I had already killed a
few glasses of wine before finishing my food, and I was feeling great.
"You know, when I saw you sitting on the street you looked disgusting and pitiful to me. Now
that I have had time to look at you, I think you're decent looking. Do you want to make some
money modeling for me?" He was leaning forward, polishing the lenses of his glasses. He looked
nervous asking me.
"How much would you give me?" Bits of veggie burger fell out of my mouth as I asked. The left
corner of his lip raised and his eyes popped out a bit. I felt disgusting.
"50 dollars an hour, I guess."
I choked a bit, and then coughed. 50 dollars an hour?! I could hardly believe it. "Hell yeah I
will!" Immediately I began imagining all the cool stuff I could do with 50 dollars- I could buy
falafel from Sultan's Market, drink beer..
"The thing is, you have to go out with me and some friends tonight first. We're going to a
bar, but I can get you in. They're artists, too, and they know the owners. They won't question
your age. All you have to do is drink with us and look pretty."
I agreed. We walked out of his apartment and back to all the shops and restaurants on
Milwaukee Ave. We stopped by a Walgreens and he went inside to buy me a pack of cigarettes, as I
was not old enough to do so myself. As I was waiting outside for him, one of the boys I was
squatting with walked up to me. His name was Danny. He was from Brooklyn, and he liked me an
awful lot. I was having a hard time standing up because I was wasted and he caught me as I was
falling into a bike rack.
"I've been looking for you for hours! Are you okay?" As he was asking this, Arthur walked out
from Walgreens waving around a pack of Marlboro Light 100's. He grabbed my arm and pulled me
toward the sidewalk, away from Danny.
I screamed back to him, "I'm fine. I'm going to a bar! I'll be back later." Danny looked
pissed off and walked away. I was incredibly wasted. I wasn't sure how I got that wasted off of
a few glasses of wine, seeing as at that point in my life I was pounding half gallons of whiskey
to myself daily, but I was so drunk I wasn't really all that concerned.
Arthur waved down a taxi and I passed out. I woke up from him dragging me toward a bar.
Everything was blurry, but I could remember sitting down at a patio area at a table with tall
bar stools. There were two other men. One was a Chicago cop and the other one was a cocaine
dealer. They were both trying to tempt me with drugs and were telling me how pretty I was, but
Arther kept rubbing my thigh and telling them I was his girl. I thought he was just protecting me,
seeing as he was gay. The cop invited me to a dinner with Mayor Daley. I stumbled to the bathroom,
vomited, and then blacked out again. This time I was in a dingy apartment, and Arthur had lines of
cocaine on a mirror. I was snorting it. My nose started bleeding profusely and I heard someone
say, "Get that bitch out of my house. I ain't havin' no overdosing teenager on my fuckin' couch,
man."
Arthur hailed down another taxi, and handed me an open container of alcohol. I woke up in his
apartment naked on his couch. I couldn't move. My mind was hazy, my head was pounding. I noticed
Arthur was taking pictures of me.
"Why are you doing this?" I slurred. I moved my arm to cover up my breasts but it was so hard.
"You promised you were going to model for me," he said, "But I'm going to have to pay you less
because your body is so disgusting."
"Where are my clothes?" I choked. Tears were streaming down my face.
"I washed them, but I had to cover them with bleach because you smell like shit." He put more
lines of coke in my face. In my cloudy mind, I thought that if he drugged me to make me tired,
coke would wake me up and I would feel energized and be able to run.
Another man came in from the hallway. Arther turned to him. "Want some?" he asked, pointing
towards me. The man looked me up and down, shrugged, and walked into another room and shut his
door. I'm assuming it was his bedroom.
I sat up. "I want to leave. My friends are probably worried about me.."
"I didn't get my money's worth!" He screamed and he pulled me on to the floor by my hair. I
was trying to fight back, but I was so weak. My mind was so awake from the coke, but my body was
limp because of whatever he slipped in my drink.
My head was pounding. I was pulled up on to a bed. I felt Arthur tie my wrists to his bed
posts. He had a polariod camera and he was taking more pictures of me. As the pictures were
falling out of the camera, he would throw them at my naked body. "Look how disgusting you are."
Then he would grab his dick, "I can't even get hard because you're so ugly, you fat bitch."
He grabbed me by my hair and slammed it into the bed post. My head split open.
I disappeared. My mind was in another place. I wanted to be home with my mommy. I wanted to
have my grandmother scratch my back and play with my hair like when I was a little girl. I
wanted to watch cartoons and eat spaghetti o's with my sisters.
He got on top of me and tried putting his flacid penis into me. I wasn't wet at all. In
the corner of the room I saw my clothes in a pile. He Kneed me in my vulva and untied me from the
bed. I grabbed my clothes and put them on in the hallway as I was running out the door. They were
ruined with bleach.
I ran down Milwaukee Avenue, my heart pounding faster than it ever had before. I was crying
hysterically. A man grabbed me and I jumped. He handed me a cigarette and walked away. I kept
running. I looked at the clock on a bank and it read 6 a.m. A giant abandoned warehouse never
looked more beautiful to me. I lifted the garage door. Everyone stirred in their sleep and sat
up. I fell to my knees.
"I got raped."

I have seen Arthur several times since this. One time he was taking pictures of a womyn in Wicker Park. A few of my friends and I told the womyn and she thanked us and left. After that, I saw him dining with two wimmin at a Wicker Park restaurant through the window.

He needs to be stopped.

Message from a Reader

Sexual harassment is around us everywhere we go and ignoring it will not make it go away. Neither will brushing it under a rug. Lawmakers and employers are not doing enough to stop this nauseating behavior so most incidents go unreported giving the harasser a false sense their behavior and harassment is acceptable. What is even worse is when someone actually does speak up and reports harassment they often face retaliatory actions from their harasser, employer and others. These retaliatory actions range from personal threats and stalking to the victim losing their job for reporting the behavior and legal actions against them. Feeling the need to help change these issues, I recently started a grass-roots non-profit organization (The Dogwood Project) that provides aid and support to individuals, both men and women alike, who have reported sexual harassment and now face retaliatory actions. I have also just created a facebook page for the organization. Please come join us in the fight against sexual harassment and for women's rights!!

Thanks,

Lucky

Check Out this Piece at Salon.com

Porn in a flash:A troubling surge in creepy "upskirt" photography has lawmakers in a twist -- and the body parts of women posted all over the Internet.

By Tracy Clark-Flory

I am Still Angry Two Years Later

This is a few years late, but I just found your blog. I think it's fantastic and I want to share this story so that if anyone comes across this guy, they know what to do!

In December 2006, I was riding the #77 Belmont bus. I'd hopped it around 9 p.m. at Belmont and Racine and was taking it to the Blue Line at Kimball. The bus was crowded, and I ended up standing. I was wearing plaid tights and knee-high boots. Immediately, a red-faced man between 35-40 struck up a conversation. He was obviously developmentally disabled. He said, "I like your tights. Are those boots comfortable?" I thought he was asking because I'd gotten stuck standing on the bus. Indeed, they were NOT comfortable, so I said, "No, they're not, but sometimes you have to suffer for fashion, haha." He then said, "Do you like to go barefoot?" Honestly, at this point I thought I was being a nice person by engaging with a somewhat slow guy, and there were tons of people on the bus. I do like to go barefoot, so I said "yes." He asked again, "Do you like to go barefoot?" And I said, "Yeah, I like to go barefoot sometimes, in the summer." He asked me to repeat myself. I did, thinking he hadn't heard me. The he said, "You like to do what?" I slowly figured out that he was really trying to get me to say the word "barefoot." At this point I was creeped out, so when a seat toward the middle of the bus opened up, I immediately made a beeline for it. Unfortunately, another seat opened up right across the aisle, and he took it. He kept staring at me, repeating the question, trying to get me to say "barefoot," and I could see that he had an erection and was rubbing it through his jeans. I ignored him. Several of the passengers clearly could see what was happening, and kept giving me sympathetic looks, but no one said anything. Inside my head I was thinking, "Should I get off at my stop, or should I wait for him to get off? How come no one is stopping him?" Finally the bus pulled into Belmont and Kimball, and I got off and ran down the stairs, embarrassed and scared that he would follow me down into the L. He didn't.

The worst part is, the very next day, I walked into the Green Eye bar at Western and Homer to meet my boyfriend at the time, who worked there. The FIRST person I saw when I walked in was...Foot Fetishist Man. I approached my boyfriend and said, "Do you know that guy sitting at the end of the bar, closest to the door?" He said, "Yeah, that's Lenny. He's a regular. A little slow, but he's a cool dude." I said, "Um, that's the guy I called you about. The bus masturbator." My boyfriend freaked out and threatened to beat him up, but I told him to cool it.

Now, though, I wish I'd said something. I felt doubly helpless: the other witnesses made me feel like I was imagining things because they didn't react in any way. And, because the guy was obviously slow, I felt like I shouldn't have said or done anything. Just because he was disabled doesn't make what he did acceptable in any way. I should have loudly and clearly said, "Stop masturbating to me. You are sexually harassing me, it's illegal, and I will call the police." The moral of the story: Ladies, speak up for yourselves. I'm still angry about this two years later. And if you ever find yourself talking a guy named Lenny on the bus or at the Green Eye, excuse yourselves and call the cops if necessary.

~Submitted by Sheila

We CAN Fight Back Against Sexual Harassment

I didn’t have a cellphone with me when this outrageous incident happened but I didn’t need one to cut this slimy guy down to size!

Everyday I have to take the elevator to the 24^th floor where our office is located and most mornings it’s ridiculously crowded. Last Monday, I boarded the elevator and as more people got in, I got pushed way to the back. To my annoyance, I felt the man behind me pushing his private parts into the groove between my buttocks. There was absolutely no room to move forward. As the elevator rose, he quickly developed a definite hard-on.

“Ewww, gross!” I thought. And I turned my head to give him my best angry glare. That’s when I saw who it was: The VP of marketing, one of my bosses. I can’t use his name so let’s just call him Mr. Asswipe. He gives this sheepish smile and a helpless, “Hey, what ya gonna do?” shrug. Well, in this economy, who wants to risk losing their job? So instead of giving him a piece of my mind, I just glanced away and for the next 30 seconds I had to just grit my teeth and bear it.

We all got off on 24 and that would have been it – an embarrassing but forgettable incident - except that at 5 pm when work was over, the asshole tried the very same thing! I don’t know how he did it, but when we all boarded the elevator, Mr. Asswipe managed to position himself right behind me again. This time, the elevator seemed to stop on every floor on the way down and every time, more people crammed on, forcing me back into him. And on this trip, the pig got much raunchier. His penis was not only fully erect, he was grinding it against my backside like some horny teenage boy freak-dancing at the junior prom. Finally I had had enough. I went totally Charlton Heston on him. I elbowed him in the side and snarled, “Get your stinking little prick out of my ass!”

The look on his face was priceless. He turned completely red – and his penis wilted like a wet noodle. He backed off me and looked like he wished he could disappear. Everyone on the elevator was staring at him.

Well, it turned out I didn’t lose my job. The powers that be got wind of what happened and read Mr. Asswipe the riot act. He’s been ordered to attend sensitivity classes and everything. Meanwhile, a coworker told me that the firm can’t fire me anytime in the foreseeable future because they’re terrified that if they do, I’ll sue the pants off them for sexual harassment – which you can bet I would!

Sisters, we CAN fight back against these predators. I hope this story inspires others to do so.

~Submitted by Laura W.