Photo: TikTok
Not only was she the victim of his creepy behavior, she is now being told she was supposed to do more to stop him.
By John Sundholm — Written on Apr 29, 2023
It's no secret that women essentially can't go anywhere nowadays without running the risk of being harassed, or worse. One woman on TikTok recently posted her experience with this phenomenon while she was just trying to go for a run—a run she ended up having to end early because a man wouldn't leave her alone.
Now she's sounding warnings for other women, and it's left many of them feeling like they need to protect themselves.
A woman on TikTok caught a man on video following her through a park.
"I'm just making this video so that women are a little bit more aware," Lacie, known as @lacie_kraatz on TikTok, said in her video. She was out for her usual run in the park by her house when she noticed a man who seemed to be tracking her throughout the park.
The man followed her every move, even changing directions when she tried to evade him.
Thankfully, the man kept a healthy distance, but that did little to assuage Lacie's fears. "This gentleman was ahead of me at one point," she said, "and he was going the opposite way of me. Now, as you can see, he's behind me." She described how, at the beginning of her run, he was "in front of me, and he just keeps doing a peek...behind him over and over again."
She said she tried to "give him the benefit of the doubt" by going down a different trail to get away from him. It didn't work. Even when she illegally crossed the street against a red light, the man followed her anyway. "I started running," she said, "and this man is speeding up behind me."
She even did a test on-camera to see if he'd pick up his pace if she did. "I'm going to run real quick to see if he starts running," she said, breaking into a jog. And sure enough—"Oh, yeah, he's running. There he goes." In the end, Lacie had to cut her run short. "I wanted to do 3 miles, but no. Creepy men. Just had to be creepy fu-king men today," she said.
She closed her video with a warning for women to always trust their guts. "If for a minute you feel like someone's following you, odds are it's probably happening."
Some people criticized the woman for how she handled being followed.
Lacie got so much pushback she turned off comments on her video. People felt she should have "made a ruckus," fought back, or called the police so that the man could have been apprehended and kept away from other women. In a follow-up video, Lacie pointedly addressed these criticisms.
She felt the idea that she should have made a scene was ridiculous. "I didn't know what this man was gonna do if I confronted him!" she said. "I'm just gonna bring violence to him? Y'all are absolutely insane."
In another follow-up, she addressed the criticisms that she should have called the cops, and shared an all too common experience among women.
"Yes, I probably should have called the cops," Lacie said. But she said she got multiple messages from people who said they too have been followed by the same guy at the same park—and police didn't do anything about it. "The cops have been called multiple times," she said. "And I'm not dissing the cops or anything, but...there's no actual evidence that he put hands on me. He's just basically walking behind me," Lacie went on to say. "Honestly, what are the cops going to do other than tell him to go away?"
The woman's video had many people saying women should arm themselves.
The last thing we need in America is more guns. But women also need to keep themselves safe. What are they supposed to do? For many people on TikTok, it wasn't even a question.
One man suggested women carry pepper spray and a personal alarm with them at all times, even if they are already carrying a gun.
"I find it so depressing," one woman wrote in response to his suggestions, "but it's necessary to have these things." Another woman who saw Lacie's video said she never goes for a run without carrying a knife after one too many run-ins with men following her through parks, even in the middle of the night.
One man on TikTok had the real solution, however—he urged men to "make society safe for women, p.o.c, LGBTQIA+ community and all other marginalized groups" and to take it upon themselves to keep an eye on people's surroundings and being willing to intervene when necessary.
That's all well and good, of course, but what are women supposed to do until society—and men in particular—change? The man got to the heart of this in his TikTok too. After asking his daughter if there is anything he can do as a man to let other women and other marginalized people know he is a "safe" person they can trust in dangerous situations, her answer was simple and sobering. "There isn't," she told him.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.