The subway incident has spawned a mini-movement of sorts. Inspired by Nguyen [the woman who photographed Hoyt on the subway], a 15-year-old Queens girl used a cell phone to snap her own picture of a man who flashed her on the 7 train on March 3. A group of Nguyen’s East Village fans have started Hollabacknyc.com, a blog that encourages all women to “holla back” at street harassers by taking cell-phone pictures and posting them online. Nguyen “took the leap to say, ‘Uh-uh. This is not okay,’ ” says Hollaback co-founder Emily May. “She’s our princess,” adds another co-founder, Lauren Spees. “He picked the wrong person to do this to,” Nguyen says.

Not surprisingly, Hoyt himself disapproves of such tactics. In his account, the perpetrator is Nguyen, who misread his intentions (he claims he was already mid-masturbation when she stepped onto the train) and then humiliated him by posting his picture on the Web. He says he didn’t even realize he’d been photographed. “Even so, I wouldn’t imagine somebody throwing it up on the Internet for millions of people and destroying your life like that,” he says. “It’s one thing to take it to the police. But on the Internet, I read a lot of people saying, ‘That was not too cool of her. That was really screwed up.’ ”