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

I welcome the anonymity of being older. It's like one day I was suddenly invisible to most men and it was a glorious relief.

I'm pretty normal looking. Nothing special and never have been.

When I was 15 I was groped in a swimming pool (several times) by a kid a similar age. I slapped (who I thought it was) but apparently I'd got the wrong guy. Still, it stopped at least.

I was followed in a way I found sinister when I was 19 and 22 by two guys (in the UK). Just got somewhere with lots of people. Similar experiences to you in India as well. Guys followed, making comments.

But most devastatingly, I was raped at 21 (a stranger who grabbed me outside), 24 (by a boyfriend at the time when I was asleep) and 35 (by a colleague when I was blind drunk and possibly drugged).

At 34 I was accidentally copied in on an email by a (then) boss who was suggesting I was only unhappy with some of their (unethical) processes because I was sexually frustrated and one of them should offer to "sort me out".

Then of course the usual stuff. The comments etc. Even had some random guy come up and shout in my face aggressively in London once. I have no doubt he wouldn't have done it if I was a man.

It's hard for me as a result to think that it's possible someone hasn't experienced anything at least on the milder end. I'd imagine that they have but simply haven't noticed. Most friends I know have been groped on a night out or seen someone expose themselves or at least had a sexual experience where they felt uncomfortable enough to have been felt coerced into it where they perhaps see it as more of a grey area than I do (I think that kind of stuff is never excusable. I've never tried to coerce someone into sex and never would.)

From my first year at secondary school to today,I've had unwanted harassment

A classmate would touch/nip me between my legs when he saw me

Bra twanging

Sexual comments

Teachers did fuck all and those boys have grown up to be men doing the same shit to women (or worse,being fathers of dds)

I work in retail

Only yesterday I had some bloke at work (in front of his girlfriend) ask for my number as 'id love to take you out and then fuck you'

The week before I had some bloke lear down my top and tell his very young grandson that 'i love it when women do things for you' (that was the way he said it-it was definitelysaid with sexual undertones but he claimed it was 'innocently meant')

I've been touched up 11 times in 10 years at work alone

One man coming up behind me and grinding his hard cock into my back,while I was bent over a bin (I was changing the bag)

I've had teenagers come up to me and one tried to shove his hand down my trousers and up my top (again at work)

Went into the ladies customer toilet's and some bloke (who was hanging around in there) tried to grab me

Even though it was all on cctv,the police did nothing

A family friend (who id known since I was a baby) tell me (aged 14/15) that 'i love the fact I can see your pubes and nips through that dress' (my mother laughed)

Some bloke tried to chat me up at a bus stop and got arsey when I moved away (thankfully the bus came)

On trains I've had men try and touch me between my legs (with my dp stood next to me)

Catcalled by men in vans/cars as I've just been walking down the street

As teenager,just getting in a taxi to get home safely was met with unwanted comments/'accidentally' touching my knee (more than once)

Men not taking 'no' for an answer when I used to go out with the girls on nights out

Fuck all happened when I reported it

That's the problem-you can get the courage to report them and nothing happens-in a lot of my cases its on cctv but the police refuse to even look at it let alone 'have a word' so they do what they do and nobody pulls them up on it,so they think its ok to carry on but if the woman has a go at them,its the woman who's 'hysterical'

The same woman who was just minding her own business before he started pestering her

I see my age range are commenting quite a bit, I’m almost 60. I did see being wolf whistled at as sexual harassment even way back then but it was more accepted.I don’t think stuff like wolf whistling is quite as prevalent but it still exists. It’s just called out more now and harassment like upskirting has taken its place, they are just sneakier.

Far too many incidences to count but I was born in the 60s when it was a free for all. I honestly thought it had been clamped down on now. You can lose your job if you make inappropriate remarks today. Shocking that men still do this.

I remember being 15, standing at the bus stop in my school uniform and having multiple men yelling out of their vans at me. Being 16 on a train in an empty carriage and looking over at a man and he was masturbating in my direction. Being 17 and walking the long way round just to avoid a building site because I couldn’t walk past without the workmen leering at me.

I had hoped things had got better, but I took my son’s girlfriend (17) to a gig a few weeks ago, just her and I, and men would continuously approach us and wouldn’t leave us alone even after I explained that I was married and she was 17! She said she’s scared to walk through town (Manchester city centre) by herself because men are always trying to talk to her and won’t take no for an answer. She got groped in a supermarket last year, by a man claiming to try and get to the shelf behind her, but did so by grabbing her hips and trying to push himself against her. Gross.

When I was 17 I was mouthy so I’d have screamed, but she’s so shy that she just freezes and doesn’t know how to react. It makes me worry for her, and her parents are fine with her walking home alone in the dark even though it’s clearly dangerous, so I’ve added my Uber account onto her phone and made her promise that she’ll always get a taxi or call us if she’s worried about anything.

Catcalling and comments started when I was 11 and in school uniform.
Only stopped when I got to early 40s.

Careful, your internalised misogyny is showing.

It depends on your definition. I've had several experiences that other people would classify as harassment or even assault but I definitely do not. The me too nonsense has broadened the whole definition to ridiculous lengths to the point that a man blowing his nose in the wrong direction has some bonkers women shouting harassment or assault.

It does a huge disservice to people who have genuinely been harassed or assaulted.

It's a woman's world these days. Guys can't do or say anything without some crazy woman trying to vilify them. Women should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

Iim 52 ime ,things like wolf whistleing and even somone pinching your bum in a night club were often laughed off 20/30years ago.
I have expereince one more serious case of sexual harrassment /assault
A work collegue followed me into the toilets on a work night out and put his hand up my skirt ,i mansged to get away fortunatley.

Whistles. Cat-calls. Early 20s a bloke walking towards me in a S London shopping centre grabbed my crutch. Drunk in a pub at 18 being sick in the sink in the ladies a bloke I’d been talking to came in to see if I was ok and put his hand in my knickers. Aged 20 my driving instructor told me if I was ever going to a fancy dress he could see me dressed as a schoolgirl. Whilst holding my baby son the bloke who’d come to fix my boiler pretended to be interested in the baby and made sure his hand went between the baby and my body. Vile. Fuck off. I’m 64 now. On the odd occasion I get a double take from a white van man, usually when I’m driving.

Now in my mid sixties and when in my teens I endured several gropings and a few flashers too. I say endured because it never occurred to me to report anyone. Being told by more than one work colleague what they'd like to do to me just made me blush because I wasn't the confident and assertive woman I eventually became. A few years later I stupidly accepted a lift home late at night after the public transport had stopped and to save taxi fare I got into the front passenger seat next to a man I'd seen in the bar that evening. My friend lived in the opposite direction to my home so we parted ways.
Now for the horrible part. We chatted on the journey and he seemed okay. I directed him to my road and he parked in a little area just along from my home. I knew at that point he probably wanted a kiss and maybe a grope in return for the lift. I didn't want any of that but he leaned over and I let him kiss me thinking get it over with then say goodnight. Quick as a flash he tipped my seat back and climbed on top of me. He raped me. I was repulsed but didn't struggle because something told me if I'd tried to fight him off I may have come to much greater harm.
This was several decades ago and today is the first time I've shared. I've never forgotten his smell.

Not sure about your “unwitting signals”. Every time it’s happened to me or dd we have been minding our own business walking along the street / sitting on a bus 🙄.

I’ve never really had anything - even though I had low self esteem in my late teens and early 20s and was practically begging for male attention. I wasn’t particularly attractive though, and I always had resting bitch face so I think hostility puts men off from even trying their luck.

I’ve always taught my dds not to give men unwitting signals that they may misinterpret such as giggling (lots of women do that out of nerves) and listening politely and patiently to men’s utterances (men think you find them fascinating).

As it is my two very attractive dds do seem very confident and self assured. They only surround themselves and entertain young men who are gentlemen. Anybody pestering or pushy gets blocked and blanked.

Unfortunately I still think they’ve had their share of unwanted male attention whilst out and about. Grimly, one dd said it happened most to her when she was walking to school. One time a man pulled up and told her aggressively to get in the car. She was terrified. Thankfully saved by other pupils. As an adult she has had her fair share of being deliberately brushed passed closely in bars, pestering, being followed etc. She doesn’t put up with it though - she’ll happily speak to bouncers and get men ejected if they get too much.

Nothing too serious for me, thank goodness, but certainly lots of low level stuff throughout my teens and twenties, in the 80s and 90s. I got my first wolf whistle when I was still at senior school; also regular remarks about my bum from the age of about 14 onwards (these came from adult men, by the way). I had the assistant manager at my Saturday job rub himself up against me in the store cupboard when I was 16, and had my bum groped in nightclubs by strangers on more than one occasion.

I also find it very hard to believe that your friend has not experienced even one incident of sexual harassment. Maybe she's just been oblivious to it 🤔

I'm not especially attractive and used to be quite fat. It didn't stop the middle-aged Italian (I was working abroad on university excavations during my first summer as an undergraduate - this man was associated with the dig) who was giving me a lift to the end of dig dinner from stopping the car in the middle of nowhere and sexually assaulting me.

I agree every woman has been sexually harassed.

I do think a lot of women don't think the lower level stuff like Page 3 pin ups in the workplace, wolf whistles and cat calls, pressing against our bodies unnecessarily on public transport or clubs or passing in the corridor, a pat on the bum, comments about our bodies, being flashed at in public or having some bloke find and excuse to hug or kiss you, etc etc etc...

...as real sexual harassment. And therefore "It's not happened to me." They put the bar high up, with a full on grope or whatever.

But it is all sexual harassment. Would they do the same to a young lad? No. It's sexual harassment.

I find it hard to believe too. Just in the last couple of years, I've been sexually harassed by a colleague and by a client, but over my lifetime, there are simply too many incidents to list. I would say I'm neither attractive nor unattractive.

I started reading and thought how lucky I was never having been sexually assaulted or harassed (I'm not counting catcalls which were normal when I was growing up). Shockingly, I then remembered that I've been flashed at very many times. This is a sex crime of course and I should have reported each incident at the time but I didn't reason like that then. I was living elsewhere in Europe and very obviously not local so I wonder if I stood out as a perhaps more vulnerable or somehow more exotic target.
Once I was on a beach and looked up to see a man wanking next to me. Repulsive.
It was all so unpleasant at the time that I've tried hard to bury the memories.

Agree with this.

I'm age 62. I was flashed at when I was age 8. Age 14 at school one of my male classmates crept up behind me and pressed his erection into my back then there's the usual "erection section" from the 70s where slow dancing always involved an erection being pressed into you. There's loads more over the years but too much to list. Even at my current (old) age there's still the occasional remark. The older I get the more contempt I feel for the male sex. This has been contributed to by my career as a midwife watching men not step up, calling their pregnant partners fat and other derogatory comments. They are not very impressive as a group.

Believe it or not I am happily married.

I'm over 60 and things have changed beyond recognition since I started work in the 80s. Prior to leaving school, the only experience of what is now considered harassment was wolf whistling and it never happened to me when I was in uniform. My memory of the attitude to wolf whistling in those days was that some women liked the attention and some didn't, in general we neither equated it with groping in offensiveness terms nor considered that those who whistled might also grope.

In my first job, there was a major office pest. I was not afraid to resist and give the signal that he could not get away with it with me. Some were, if they confided in their colleagues we'd advise them to stand up for themselves, if they didn't he got away with it.

I went through the rest of my 20s without any other incidents other than seeing a flasher in a bedroom window when I was cycling one day. The attitude to that kind of flasher was amusement/pity.

I'd say by the late 80s and early 90s office pests in well run places if employment were realising they were not going to get away with harassment and would end up reported to HR.

Where I work now, there's not many who would dare to grope even if they thought they could get away with it.

Sunshine it’s got worse. We have had to go to the police twice for incidents with dd2. Not that anything has been done but we felt we needed to do something.

I’m 62 and I can honestly say I’ve never had what I’d refer to as sexual harassment. I remember walking past building sites and getting wolf whistled at. I worked in offices and yes there was banter (on both sides) but no one took offence. I’m not saying more serious stuff didn’t go on, but it’s not something I’d witnessed.