to be fucking RAGING

[CherryBonBon]

that I and other women have to put up with this shit.

Was out in town tonight. Walking to my bus stop and was about to pass a group of drunk lairy lads when one of them started walking quickly towards me with his arms out.

I turned my body away from him and tried to keep walking but he side stepped and put his arms around me. I shoved him as hard as I could off me and told him to get the fuck off me.

I walked away to a barrage of laughter and being called a 'stuck up cunt'.

Why do some men think this is acceptable behaviour? It's so fucking depressing.

You should have knee'd him.

Yanbu

Ive taken to committing a crime when men do this to me.

I HATE this shit!!
At some point you'll probably be told it was "just a laugh" and you shouldn't have used aggressive language, but why the fuck do people need to invade others' personal space like this?!

Firm grip on the windpipe

Palm to the nose

Knee in the balls or grab them and twist and yank if it's quicker

I fuckin hate that shit! It's assault plain and simple and you can you what you deem to be reasonable force to disable your threat.

Fuckin bastard ????

Sorry for so many expletives. I just really can't stand this behaviour and the apologists

It is assault isn't it.

I hadn't even made eye contact with him. It's just because I was a woman walking on my own.

Makes me fear for what DD will have to put up with when she gets older. I'm seriously going to look for a localself defence class tomorrow morning..

Works both ways. I've seen gangs of drunk women do similar to lone young men, or young men in smaller groups. Sometimes women who look old enough to have children the same age as their victim.
Either way it's an assault and should not be tolerated but I guess it's hard to stick up for yourself if you're outnumbered.

I actually get a bit scared in these situations. Groups of lads especially drunk can be so unpredictable and they get angry quickly when you (funnily enough) don't want to be groped in the street. I just get my head down and move really fast.

I wonder if this sort of thing happened in the 1950s and 60s. I don't recall hearing about it. I reckon then the police would have taking it seriously - would they now? Did you report it? Unfortunately, it reflects today's culture of street-drunkeness among British men, especially "up north".

I don't think this sort of thing necessarily happened in the 50s and 60s but the 'hand on the bum' or 'unwanted draping of the arm round the shoulders' thing definitely did, as my 80 year old mum and I were just talking about it recently. My poor old naive 80 year old dad was horrified to sit in a room with his female relatives aged from teenagers through to his 80 year old wife and hear that not a single one of us had escaped being touched inappropriately by a stranger.

Also, from what my mum said, the police most certainly wouldn't have taken this sort of thing seriously 50 years ago, because there would have been an underlying feeling that a 'respectable' female wouldn't have put herself in a position where strange men could approach her

I really don't like the comparison there, Harriet.
I have also seen drunken older women shriekingly grab onto younger random men in the street and it's not a pretty sight. However, I don't believe the males in this situation feel the same fear women do. I just don't. I accept it's not pleasant for them, and possibly humiliating and completely undeserved, but I don't think there's the real heart-in-throat fear women feel in a similar situation.

Retro, if a woman was out late at night in the 50's and 60's, she would of Ben seen as bringing it on herself, because she was out after dark.

Look at Fred Wests etc early victims, the judge has blamed them for their rape/assault/kidnap.

The men, then knew how to pick their victim carefully, they knew there was no comeback of the picked on a Black woman, for instance.

YANBU! and I disagree with CamelHump - while I wouldn't let their tossiness ruin the rest of your day, I wouldn't just brush it off either. Definitely recommend enrolment in a good karate class for your daughter but there's no reason you can't train with her. There are some excellent moves which are designed to throw someone off if their arms are around you (elbows are particularly useful in this).

This has never happened to me - either in the UK or NZ - but I think it's absolutely outrageous. You have the right to walk to your bus stop without being molested by drunken louts. You should have the right to use physical force to throw them from you without being insulted (although I don't actually know if UK law allows this). I would quite possibly land someone in hospital if they tried that with me (although I would always try to find a way not to use self defence techniques on the street if I could, obviously).

Grrr this behaviour gets my coat too. I hate it when you are in a crowded pub and some male feels they have to touch you up to walk past. No actually you could just tap me on the shoulder and say excuse me please. I feel sick whenever things like this happen as you never know how far someone will go.

I too feel intimidated walking past groups of males, esp drunk ones as you simply don't know what they are capable of as another poster said. It is even worse when you are on a late night train. I've seen a girl pestered on a tube train once by a gang of youths and nobody helped. She just kept quie t reading her book until her stop came. Thankfully they got off before her but it was humiliating and scary. I admit I did not say anything to them for fear of making it worse, for both of us. I have no idea what I would have done had they assaulted her or done something. I was just grateful it never got that far.

Men (or women) will never see that this behaviour can traumatise their victim, even with just a bit of verbal.

I wish there were more police on the streets or bring back those Guardian Angel guys x

That's really shit - and frustratingly an everyday reality for so many women. Men need to start standing up and objecting when they see other men to this. It is definitely assault and you're right to be fucking raging.

And frankly, although I wholeheartedly disapprove of women behaving in similar ways towards men, it just isn't the same. Not remotely.

gets my goat too x

CtrlAltDelicious: Since you have never been one of the young men to which Harriet refers, isn't it a bit presumptuous of you to believe that you can decide that those men don't feel the fear that women feel?

I don't believe that there was a culture of public drunkeness in the U.K. in the 1950s and 60s in the way that there is now.

This is more common up north Retro?

ctrlalt are you being serious?
This scenario is indeed assault no matter if it happens to a man or a woman. things like this do happen to men and its attitudes like yours that makes accessing help and support for themselves even harder than it is for women. I hope you're proud of yourself.

Actually, Ctrlalt I think they do feel that fear. But try getting a young lad to report it to the police - they'd get a very different reaction to a young woman reporting she'd been grabbed by a group of older men.

As I said earlier, either way it's an assault and shouldn't be tolerated. I hate seeing idiots, drunk or sober, impose themselves on people they perceive to be weaker than them.

The5DayChicken: In my experience, very much so. I live in London and never see this here (at least not in zones 1-4). I have also lived in Oxford and never saw it. On the other hand whenever I go to York, Leeds or any large town or city north of the Trent I see it any time I go out.

I wonder if this sort of thing happened in the 1950s and 60s. I don't recall hearing about it. I reckon then the police would have taking it seriously - would they now? Did you report it?

You are joking, aren't you? Have you not heard of the child abuse scandals that go back that far? And how do you imagine they have been buried until now without police co-operation?