Niya here: In reading Kiini Ibura Salaam’s “How Sexual Harassment Slaughtered, then Saved Me”, Salaam recounts her days growing up in New Orleans where the majority of her femininity and sexuality was defined by her relationship with male strangers on the street. Catcalling, or as she described it the loud, yet silent, declarations of sexual advances often shouted at her became the bane of her social existence. This “bizarre training ground where predatory men taught me that […] no part of me was safe from comment” (Salaam, p326) caused her to form a set of unwritten laws to protect herself.
Her self-imposed rules, which covered basic ways to avoid male groups on the street or to favor olden men than younger, in her mind kept her safe from sexual harassment throughout her adolescence. It was not until her college study-abroad experience in the Dominican Republic when Salaam for the first time began to accept and even emphasis her own body. This newfound sexual freedom, however, was short-lived until Salaam experiences a string of sexual assault from male strangers. This experience morphed the slightly timid young woman into an angry and bitter woman.
The anger Salaam expressed throughout her story ultimately reflects back to the issue of pleasure. A male catcalling on the streets is not something unique to the New Orleans. Historically, it can be traced to many of the cultural ideals that males dominate the public sphere and women the private, or the home. For those rare women who do enter the public sphere, they are subject to the male gaze. These notion still hold true, although somewhat subconsciously, throughout Salaam’s argument. She felt herself as an intruder in on the male dominated street corners, and thus tried to become invisible. It is only through the most traumatizing events that Salaam can assert her place in the public sphere, even challenging men on the street and finding herself as a visible (and possibly sexual) person.
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