A woman’s TikTok video describing what she said was sexual harassment by a stranger at a T.J. Maxx store has drawn widespread attention online, renewing discussion about how women are treated in public spaces.
“I was just sexually harassed at a T.J. Maxx,” Mackenzie Rencher said at the start of the video. “I would love to give you guys some insight of what it’s like to be a woman.”
Rencher said she was shopping when the man approached her.
“I’m just minding my business, shopping for my toddlers, and a man comes up to me, and he’s wearing a Clemson shirt,” she said. “My husband is playing for Clemson. So I’m thinking he’s coming up to me just to be like, oh, like, I know your husband, or, like, whatever.”
That was not the case, she said.
“Since he started talking, I knew that’s not where I was headed,” Rencher said.
She said the man told her, “My friends won’t let me in the car until I tell you.” Rencher declined to repeat what he said next.
“I’m not even gonna say what he said to me because it actually makes me feel disgusting,” she said. “But made a very strange sexual remark towards me.”
Rencher said she considers herself capable of responding in such situations.
“I am not a shy person. Do a good job sticking up for myself and not being shy,” she said. “And I literally just, like, looked at him, and I was like, you did not need to come up and tell me that. You’re a grown man.”
She said the man had suggested he was acting under pressure from others, telling her, “My friends are making me say this.” He then said, “I’m actually 19 years old,” according to Rencher.
“I blacked out. I don’t even remember what he said,” she said. “I just said, OK, you can get away from me now.”
Responses came to her only afterward, she said.
“After he walked away, I thought of, like, 50,000 things that I wanted to say to him,” Rencher said. “I was just going, going, going, and I really just want him to get away from me. It’s like insane to me that this is where we’re at still as a society that people feel comfortable doing things like this.”
Rencher said the encounter left her uneasy for the rest of her time in the store.
“I, like, just kept walking around the store looking for him because I felt so uncomfortable, and I was like, I don’t want him to approach me,” she said. “I was walking out of the store and was looking around me, scared that, like, him and his friends were waiting. Like, I don’t know. It was just a very strange.”
She said she reported the encounter to a store employee.
“I ended up letting someone at the front desk know, cause I’m like, you cannot be in someone’s store sexually harassing women and making them feel uncomfortable and, like, making them scared to walk out,” she said.
Rencher said she was frustrated with her own response in the moment.
“I’m mad at myself when it’s happening. Like, I literally just, like, blocked out,” she said. “I feel really discouraged in moments like this that I’m raising kids in this world.”
She said she found some encouragement in her role as a parent.
“And then I remember I get to raise my son to look at women with respect,” Rencher said. “I can make a change on the way that my children see the world and see people and treat people. Society in general just is not gonna do a good job teaching men to honor and respect women.”
She closed the video by describing how the encounter left her feeling.
“I feel so, like, nasty and icky and uncomfortable, and it makes me sad that women are treated like this and looked at like this,” she said. “I’m like, grossed out.”
@makenzie.rencher ♬ original sound – Makenzie Rencher
