The Hidden Way Women Keep Each Other Safe in Public
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Sometimes, ladies just have to stick together.
A series of viral Tumblr posts about women helping fellow women in crisis drives this point home.
A Facebook user named Hannah Quinn Horr recently gained attention throughout social media for sharing Tumblr screenshots of stories from women who claim that other women have protected them from potential harm in public.
The string of posts appeared to have started with a user who formerly wrote under the username Natnovna (she now posts under the username Saintzitao). She wrote that when she was 14, a group of men started harassing her after she finished work at the mall.
Even when she told them that she was underage, they kept bothering her. Natnovna wrote that a female maintenance worker who apparently struggled with English seemed to recognize that the men were bothering her. The maintenance worker scared the men away and escorted her to the garage to wait for a ride from her mom, according to the post.
Natnovna wrote that this experience showed her that women must stick together in life:
"[T]hat was the moment [I] realized women were the most important beings on this planet and we have to protect each other [because] nobody else is going to, she didn’t even know me, we couldn’t even communicate that well because of the language barrier, she could have lost her job for waiting with me in the parking lot but she looked out for me when she didn’t have to, she had nothing to gain from it, [I'm] 21 now and [I] tell everyone this story even though it happened 7 years ago, what she did that night helped me form and shape lot of my beliefs early on."
Many other women have re-posted Natnova's story alongside similar experiences of their own. A user named ActualGinnyWeasley described in a post feeling uncomfortable around a strange man at a grocery store, noting that a fellow woman at the store seemed to sense that he was trouble as well:
"She and I made eye contact and [I] knew she was scared too. [W]e loaded up our groceries into our cars as fast as possible and I had way more bags than her so she got done faster than me. I panicked because [I] was sure she was going to leave so [I] just hurried faster, shaking a little, and then [I] noticed she sat in her car, watching me and making sure nobody came near. She waited not until all my groceries were loaded, or until my cart was put away, or until I got into my car. No, she didn’t drive away until I drove away. And that was the moment that I realized how much women need other women. That we can’t win this war without each other and we have to be looking out for each other, every second."
You can check out more Tumblr posts about Natnovna's story here, here, and here.
These posts highlight that women often need to have each other's backs
Earlier this month, a YouTube video went viral showing a man getting attacked by multiple women on a bus after he apparently exposed himself to a female passenger.
The video, which has wracked up more than one million views on YouTube, shows the women repeatedly shoving and pushing the man, ultimately forcing him off the bus.
Check out ATTN:'s latest video on the fight against street harassment:
