I Noticed A Male Stranger on Public Transportation Trying to Discreetly Photograph Me and It’s Messing With Me
This is an unusual post for me because I hardly make any. I am a 19-year-old female who commutes for school.
I hardly encounter anything offensive or actively dangerous, but I felt very disturbed today after a man tried to subtly take photos of me. I know it happens, but I watched it happen out of my peripheral vision.
He straightened his posture for a better view, twisted in my direction, and held his phone weirdly vertically in his lap. He was looking down at his screen and trying to frame me. I know it. Before he could look back at me, I was staring back at him then.
Coincidentally, the train became stationary at a stop that wasn’t mine, and I left out of the door.
I can’t get past the fear of my insecurities. Was I looking weird?
Am I making a monster of him?
If he was sexualizing me, how could he do that when I was wearing baggy sweatpants and a baggier hoodie? How could he be attracted to me if I look underage? It’s just so gross that you don’t have to be in revealing clothes to be sexualized, and you don’t even have to be an adult
. I sat at my stop and felt the tears coming, I felt the “I wish I would’ve stood up for myself at the moment” setting in. I felt the “I’m tired of being constantly on guard. I’m tired of trying to look strong.”
It’s making me cry as I type it. I’ve never experienced this before. I told my mom and boyfriend and they shrug it off. My worst feeling is that I’m overthinking it, and that this is just something I have to get used to. Why do I let such little things bother me?
I just really hate being perceived as a female sometimes, and sometimes even at all