To think almost every woman in the world has suffered some form of sexual harassment by age 30?

At school I was groped and touched inappropriately repeatedly by the same boy during lessons despite batting his hands off. I was told it was me being disruptive when I told him to stop it loudly.

As an adult I have been upskirted while on a night out, faced unwanted touching and contact on nights out.
During a sexual encounter with someone he started choking me and I had to fight him to get him to stop it. He also hurt me during the sex to the point of me being quite bruised.

These incidents are all in addition to the general catcalling, wolf whistling and unwanted attention.

I agree with you OP, I think most women have had multiple harassment or assault experiences.

I'd be very surprised if there was any woman who had never experienced behaviour that would be considered harassment by another woman. I think where women say its never happened to them, they probably mean that the male behaviour directed at them didn't feel harassing and they didn't suffer. Which is of course their right, but doesn't change the fact the behaviour occurred and may have felt different to another woman.
Perhaps the question would be better phrased as 'have you never experienced any unsolicited male attention directed towards you.' That way you get a sense of the prevelence of the behaviour itself, rather than see it through the filter of individual women's views on how unwelcome it was.

I’ve not really had any experience of what you all mention. I can only think of once where I got groped by an Italian on a French sleeper train when I was Interrailing.

I was skinny with short hair & glasses & braces as a teenager. So that probably helped! Glasses in the 80s weren’t especially cool.

I was averagely attractive in my late teens and 20s & still didn’t get any hassle in clubs or bars or out & about.

So I can see her way of thinking. It’s not been an issue in my teen and adult life either. But I don’t think I would travel to India (or Egypt or anywhere that I might get this happening).

My 27 year old niece said none of these things have happened to her. Her mother on the other hand...

"hullabaloo"

What a great word

Those pesky women, eh? Ruining things for men so they can't just do a grope without those whingy bitches complaining about it. Women should go back to important things like making their husbands dinner and not talking about trivial things like how almost all of us have been sexually harassed, normally for the first time as a child.

Women like you, perhaps, should be ashamed for writing off women as bonkers and crazy for simply no longer putting up with harassment from men.

My earliest was walking to school in the early 80s aged 11 and this particular house we had to walk past always had the bloke who lived there wanking at the bedroom window at us.
Vile.
Continued from there really.

Oh yes, bonkers, crazy, shameful women are always shouting harassment when a man blows his nose. It's an epidemic! In hayfever season it's practically chaos with all the honking and hullabaloo.

I'd say most would, multiple times. When it comes to lower level stuff like catcalling. Then anything from unwanted touch on the hand to full blown rape sadly are widespread.

I suppose some women might not feel like things like catcalling are directly sexual assault or harassment. Often people from the older generation. My Mum was SA'd by a builder as a 12 year old but she doesn't actually see it as such. Strange as that may seem.

Why wasn't she as angry as I was?

Probably because she was socialised to consider male sexual attention as something women were lucky to receive from men - see all the "it's a compliment" or "It's flattering" or the hair pulling in school "means he likes you."

There's even a poster saying she hasn't been sexually harassed and qualifying it with assuring us she isn't ugly.

It's not about looks. It's about sexual dominance. Unfortunately, in our much more sexist recent past, women were told to value themselves by how much men were attracted to them.

Even more unfortunately, there are many men and boys who don't realise things have changed and we don't want their bullshit. Nor their dick pic.

@FloraDora2 I'm so sorry

As to the OP...I think that many women probably brush off sexual harassment and don't consider it such (never mind that men would never do the same thing to another man).

Although surely some women must have escaped even low level sexual harassment. I can't imagine it myself, though.

It seemed so prevalent when I was a teenager in the early 00s, and now it's even worse for my daughter and her friends who are young teenagers, and regularly have boys saying they'll rape them (although small mercies, the boys clearly don't mean it), making other nasty comments, and in a few cases, girls I know of have had deepfake AI porn made, and were so blasé about it that it made me want to cry for them.

Tbh, for a while if asked I’d say ‘no, it never happened to me’. I had just minimised it all and almost deleted from my memory.
But, of course it did -
landlord forcing a kiss on my lips, being flashed on the tube, whistled at - things I’ve just accepted as so trivial to not even remember, especially as my friends had some really terrible stories in comparison.
May be, that’s the case with your friend - about time she redefines s harassment in her head.

Has never happened to me. Not even the low level stuff like catcalling or whistling. Obviously, I know I'm an outlier though.

I think it's pretty off to say you don't believe her.

Interesting the comments from women in their 60s about catcalling being just part of life. My mum always said "oh it's just normal" or "be flattered" but when you're walking home in school uniform and a van of blokes are yelling "show us your tits" is that flattering? Why wasn't she as angry as I was?

Loads of harassment - comments in the street, when out running, in the gym "want to squat over my face", with my baby in the buggy. Unwanted touching on nights out. Had men exposed themselves to me on two different occasions. Comments from older colleagues and managers. We've had builders in the workplace thinking it's ok to make comments about colleagues. I've helped young women with getting men to leave the alone, which usually leads to a barrage of abuse about being old or a lesbian like either of those things are terrible.

Mid-40s and I also find it hard to believe. Though perhaps, as PP have suggested, she's got a higher threshold for harassment.

DD14 has twice reported boys from the neighbouring boys school for verbal harassment on her way home from (her, girls) school. She has to walk past the boys school.

The first time, she arrived home absolutely incensed. I emailed the boys school. To their credit, I got an email back with half an hour and then the head rang me back the next day, said they'd identified the boys on the school's CCTV from DD's description, and would be having words. Coincidentally, they were also scheduled to have an assembly on respect a few days later. Head was great and took it very seriously.

I can't remember exactly what the event was, maybe the first week of autumn term, but she'd been wearing a hi-vis or something so new Y7s could identify her as someone who would help them if they got lost or had a problem or something. The comments were all about how the boys liked a girl in uniform and how they wanted the add her on Snapchat.

Based on the way the uniform works and what they were wearing, the boys were probably in the Y8/9/10 range. It's possible they thought they were being cheeky and charming, but there were four of them and she was on her own and she found it really intimidating. They followed her along the slip road from the schools up to the main road (takes a few minutes on foot) continuing their "banter".

The second time something similar happened, DD turned around, walked back to her school and reported it to the receptionist immediately.

When I was 14 (late 80’s) and standing at a bus stop a man tried to get me to go with him as he said “he had something special to show me.” My DM wasn’t remotely interested when I told her.

Aside from the above I have never experienced any other sexual harassment. I grew up in another country and came to the UK in my late 20’s and have been here ever since and not experienced this in either country. I do think as I’ve got older that I have a ‘don’t f@!k with me’ face,’ plus being overweight has always given me a cloak of invisibility in many aspects of my life.

I posted on a similar thread a few years ago and someone told me I had low standards and that I was a liar - I am neither, and fellow women not believing that everyone can have different experiences, irrespective of what that is, is pretty abhorrent. If you want to be believed then you have to be prepared to listen to others and respect what they say their experiences are.

I never have, similar age to you. Don’t know why, I’m not hugely ugly but I’m not particularly attractive either.

Although of course some women probably feel that way as they don’t view what they experienced as “harassment”.

I don’t think you can deny her own experience. I agree most women have experienced some form of harassment but “most” is not “all”.

I think I went invisible during Covid and I absolutely love it. Only one cat called since from a white van man. When I mentioned it on a local Facebook group I got laughing emojis from men. And that is the problem because those men will be sexually harassing my DDs.

I was groped at a work event. The man did not return to work on Monday. It was taken seriously but it still happened. My nearing retirement boss in another job made comments about my bottom whilst up a ladder.

That's in addition to cat calling, wolf whistling, night club/pub groping of which I've lost count.

Oh and on the not noticing stuff?

I had something recently where a guy at work gave me a hug. I thought nothing of it, I'm a hugger as a rule. It was only when another guy came up to me and asked if I was ok that I realised that it wasn't appropriate.

I think sometimes, if you're a pleasant and open person, that some men take advantage of that and see how far they can push. It made me sad though that despite all of my history I'd been so trusting again.