A Black Woman was hit over the head with a brick for not giving a man her phone number. Why is she being blamed for her wounds?

Whitney Alese
ZORA
Published in
4 min readSep 8, 2023

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Trigger Warning: This is a discussion of violence and assault against women.

Women are told what to do when a man street harasses us to avoid potential harm.

We are told to put our heads down. To keep our headphones on. To keep walking like we have somewhere to go. To not stop. If we are stopped, we are told to smile, be polite, be nice. We are told a lot of things. We do a lot of these things to protect ourselves. But what happens when none of them help?

Roda Osman, who goes by Rho_Reports on TikTok was attacked by a man who threw a brick at her head after she rejected his request for her phone number. Roda shared on her Tiktok Story her account of the horrific incident.

As she recalls, many other men were in the vicinity and none of them did anything to challenge or even stop the man with the brick from harming her.

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Whitney Alese
ZORA

Whitney Alese is an award winning writer & creator featured in WIRED Magazine, I-D Magazine, NBC, & Chalkboard Magazine.