Woman gets relentlessly harassed while riding public transportation, hits back: 'Leave me alone'

Public spaces are inaccessible to women because men make it so, and a woman from Los Angeles reminds us why, yet again. In a video posted to her TikTok account, she can be seen waiting to take public transport and then traveling in it, but not a moment goes by without a man intruding into her space and harassing her. She can be seen harassed by men who refuse to take no for an answer. They continued pestering her even after she told them she was underage, reported DailyDot. Adina (@adinaaaa18) said she and her roommate were on their way back from a concert when a group of men started catcalling them and saying inappropriate things as they waited for the train. The video was viewed more than 5.6 million times and garnered 933k likes. "All within the first 10 minutes. Be safe out there ladies, get sum pepper spray," she captioned the video.

Adina and her friend moved away from the men to a different part of the platform but they followed them and continued to harass them. Adina made it clear that she was ignoring them before they got more and more aggressive. "Ignoring didn't work and one of them said something about hitting me if I didn’t pay attention to them," she recalled in the comments section. She started recording them after one of the men threatened to slap her for ignoring them.  

Adina, who is 18, even told them she was 16 in the hope that it would deter them but it did not. After they kept hitting on her, she finally snapped back and told them in no uncertain terms to get away from her and her friend. "I'm f*cking 16-years-old, leave me the f*ck alone," she told them, before reiterating, "I told you I'm underage, but you don't listen." As they continued, she interrupted them and said, "I’m sorry, you expect me to put up with your shit right now?” 

They continued to harass her and labeled her angry. "God damn, you're so aggressive," said one man. They then went on the defensive and claimed they only wanted to compliment her. “We didn’t do nothing to you. We just complimented you, saying you were beautiful women. Ain’t nothing wrong with that,” said one man, and she replied, "And I said I’m not in the mood, so please don’t.” They even blamed her for 'inviting' comments by being “half-dressed.” Adina added that they had gone out of their way to lose the men and got into the last train car to avoid them but all four of them followed them and continued harassing them. 

She added that no one in the vicinity really stepped up to stop the men. "The train was full, the platform was full," she said, before adding that after the four men left, some of the men asked her if she was okay. “Where was that when they were in person, harassing me?” she asked. “You could have spoken up, you could have said something.”

Many TikTok users could relate to Adina's experience. “They really feel like because we’re OUTSIDE that we owe them a conversation,” commented one person. Another added, "Good for you for sticking up for yourself. It’s such a scary and difficult thing to either be nice and try to stay away so they don’t use force and standing your ground so they f off.” After a few people said she was rude to them only because they were Black, she replied, "Stop making racial generalizations from this video. it has nothing to do with race and everything to do with misogyny."