Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Protection built in.

Meet the Other Phone.
Protection built in.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

Men looking at my 13year old daughter

387 replies

marmitenot · 21/10/2013 12:21

I went out with my 13 yr old dd yesterday and a couple of her friends. My daughter, although very pretty (doesn't get it from me!), is clearly a young teen and yet men (old and young) were leering over her and distinctly 'checking her out'.

The looks they were giving my daughter made me extremely uncomfortable and really cross.

AIBU to expect men to control themselves around children?

OP posts:
SomethingOnce · 22/10/2013 17:34

Indeed, Bela.

My liberal reflex makes me a bit uncomfortable passing comment on non-Western countries, without being critical of places closer to home/more culturally similar but seriously, what our Egyptian sisters are having to deal with is fucking outrageous.

blondieminx · 22/10/2013 18:01

My SIL was horrified by similar leering at her DD who was 14 at the time it started. My niece was beeped at and some white van man yelled he'd "give her one". All quite intimidating and nasty for a youngster of 14 to face. Sad

specialsubject · 22/10/2013 18:07

shocking, but the way to look at it is that it helps identify the tossers. Might also be worth your daughter learning some moderately rude gestures. If she doesn't already know them....

decent, worthwhile men don't do this - they probably look but they don't yell and catcall. One day it will be bred out.

kerala · 22/10/2013 18:09

Dont start me on Egypt. Went there in my early twenties with a female friend - bad idea. It ended up with us reading in our hotel room because literally couldnt leave the hotel because the level of abuse we received just for walking down the street was so bad. And we dressed conservatively and were both dark haired.

FreudiansSlipper · 22/10/2013 19:18

sadly in many countries western women are seen as fair game, the idea that a women would travel on her own or even want to is alien and many believe it is because she is wanting to find a man

this level of harassment would never be accepted to women from their own culture

Zoway · 22/10/2013 19:23

Yeah, went to turkey years ago, three couples, turkish men were all very nice to us, even making me a home made turkush cold remedy. Really decent. THEN ...... i went to my bodrum market with one other woman on our own no men and we were horrified. Disgusted. We saw how vile the turkish men are too foreign women.... so it wasnt me they respected or my female friend but rather the men that owned us. Grrr

Zoway · 22/10/2013 19:30

Somethingonce, i know what you mean and dont want to criticise whole nations' male populations, there is awful sexism at home too i know. Seems bad here til i remember having my breasts grabbed and being pulled in to shops. I was so shocked i twisted the perp's ear until he yelped in pain.

BlingBang · 22/10/2013 19:48

I'd had plenty unpleasant experiences in the UK, the experiences elsewhere eg, Turkey were of a different level and potentially very dangerous. Doesn't excuse the bad behaviour in the UK one bit.

costumething · 22/10/2013 20:03

Its interesting the number of posters who mentioned that wearing glasses seems to discourage the letching. It can't be because they aren't as attractive - many people who wear glasses are attractive and letches don't exclusively target attractive women anyway.
I wonder if it is because glasses inhibit eye contact. Possibly the men who do this want to see the reaction on the women's faces and they can't clearly see if the woman has noticed them and/or if she's intimidated.

TheGhostofAmandaClarke · 22/10/2013 21:26

"Girls in glasses don't get passes"
Is that true?

2tired4internets · 22/10/2013 21:37

Unfortunately not in this case.
I wore glasses age 10-15 and still got harassed by random men.

2tiredtoScare · 22/10/2013 21:50

My DD1 wears glasses and is beautiful

curlew · 22/10/2013 21:56

Not in my glasses wearing dd's case either....

FreudiansSlipper · 22/10/2013 22:12

wearing dark sunglasses sometimes has helped with getting less hassle, especially when travelling in other countries, as i am not giving any eye contact, which to some men is a signal i want them to harass me Hmm

ColderThanAWitchsTitty · 22/10/2013 22:13

They were looking.... What do you mean by 'control themselves'?

Teenage girls arent zoo animals who need to feel uncomfortable about walking out in public. Staring is not controlling yourself

ColderThanAWitchsTitty · 22/10/2013 22:22

Well, perhaps all males should be TAUGHT how to 'look', with sever punishment if they get it wrong. Let's start the lessons at primary school, shall we?

Exactly flap lets just keep telling girls from primary school age how to avoid being looked at. Why fucking teach men to behave like humans,.

curlew · 22/10/2013 22:31

It's simple. Men seem to be able to walk down the street without checking out other men's crotches. If they just used the same technique with women, everything would be fine.

StainlessSteelBegonia · 22/10/2013 22:33

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Boaby · 22/10/2013 22:34

This happens a lot to my 15 year old daughter. We were in a pub once & she went to the bar with my (6ft 4 very well built) dh to order food, while they were waiting a man in his 40s came over & stood really close to her & said 'what you drinking gorgeous' my dh sent her back to me at the table & told the bloke 'get tae f*ck ya dirty pervert' & the bloke actually asked my h if he would mind if he had a crack of that whip?!

Bloke was lucky to leave the pub.

MrsLion · 22/10/2013 23:03

I was subjected to men leering and letching at me from about the age of 12. And to be honest it's actually only stopped in my late 20s.

When I was younger and I was almost always 'looked' at wherever I went. The looks came from women, children, other teenagers, old people, men- all sorts. Whilst sometimes annoying, this was not threatening.

However, I knew from a very young age, about 13 or so when the 'looking' was in fact sexual and I was being leered at. There is a huge difference. It was hideous, I felt threatened, intimidated and vulnerable. It is revolting, inexcusable behaviour. And yes it is actually a matter of men controlling themselves, or their inability to do so.

YY to men in other European/African countries being even more vile and letcherous.

I have two DDs and I'm dreading them going through the same thing.

I'm not sure what can be done about it, other than teaching the DDs how to respond/ignore appropriately though- doesn't seem like men are going to change in much of a hurry.

youretoastmildred · 22/10/2013 23:16

Louis CK did a fabulous bit on this (stand up) which I can't find now. It was about the burden of going through life with the knowledge of how men want to fuck you and metaphorical jizz splatting in your face everywhere you go. He has two daughters.

LawofAverages · 22/10/2013 23:21

I honestly cannot believe some of the replies on this thread denying the experience of millions of girls of feeling disgusted/terrified when a man (or worse a group of men) stares at you in an overtly sexual way, making you feel extremely uncomfortable, scared for your safety, worried as to whether they might approach you and in some way feeling dirty yourself, even though you have done absolutely nothing to 'provoke' the behaviour other than walk down the street/wait at the bus stop. It is irrelevant whether the girl is pretty or not, men doing this are not doing it to appreciate a 'pretty picture' but are doing it for the kick of knowing the power they have to look at a girl for as long as they want in whatever way they want because the girl will be weaker and afraid and therefore powerless to stop them.

Please can we not return to the 1950s way of thinking that this is ok and that girls should accept that they will feel nervous when passing groups of men in the street.

Judging by some of the responses here, I think MumsnetHQ need to run a new campaign on understanding street harassment in the UK and what it entails. Looking is NOT the same as leering.

Devora · 22/10/2013 23:25

I too am amazed at how many posters doubt the prevalence of grown men leching at pubescent girls on the grounds that 'there aren't that many paedophiles around'.

I remember very clearly how it felt like open season as soon as I hit my teens: suddenly being stared at, commented on, preyed upon, all long before I had the confidence and sophistication to handle it. Even within my own home, family friends suddenly started saying inappropriate things - I remember one, a father of young children himself, who used to corner me on my own and show me pictures of Page 3, asking if I liked them, if they turned me on. (I remember muttering, blushing furiously, "Well, er, I'm 12...").

My experience was that this stuff was absolutely endemic. If others don't share that experience, it does make me wonder what makes the difference (location? I was in a roughish part of London).

Teenage girls are at the borderline between childhood (when adult sexual attention is hugely frowned upon) and adulthood (when women are expected to put up with all sorts) and that makes them very vulnerable. Remember the Rochdale case and others where the general comment seemed to be that these victimised girls were treated as adult women when they should have been treated as children... We polarise the two, and of course there has to be a borderline, so those who inhabit that borderline are massively vulnerable.

I worry for my daughters, too.

youretoastmildred · 22/10/2013 23:25

I hope some of the people on here are just contrarians but I don't really believe it; and even if they are, peddling this crap in public is pernicious

BasilBabyEater · 22/10/2013 23:35

I agree with whoever said tht so many women live with or love or know such shitty men, that they have to convince themselves that those men are normal.

Rationalisation, innit?