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“I had just finished work and was taking the train home. It was crowded, but I could see space.”
Twenty-three-year-old Grace is describing one of the occasions she was harassed in Melbourne.
“I asked a man to move, he didn’t say anything, he didn’t move, just stared at me,” she says. “[Then] he started saying things to me; ‘There’s no space for you. You shouldn’t be on this train. You shouldn’t even be in this country.’”
Grace, whose family moved to Australia from China when she was four, says she regularly experiences harassment in public spaces, and it is often of a sexual and racist nature. She was once told words to the effect of “you have a good chest for a Chinese woman” as she walked down a street.