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.

I work with 99% men and have a few think sexual comments or touching is a " laugh ". One took it WAY too far....I confided in my union rep and he asked did I want it official or not. I said not official as I was still in shock really. He and his second in command ( both gym freaks we have gyms in our depots , waited for him finishing work at night. They got him by the throat and frightened the living shit out of him. He never touched any of us women again . Maybe not the right way but I think the nasty perv realised how horrid it was to feel so intimidated.....

I have also found this to be more common up north or at least outside london. I've never experienced it in london (where I live) but have seen a lot if it in Yorkshire (where I'm from).

I'm not surprised you're angry OP, they were very out of line. It is sexual assault and aren't we also being warned about so called 'hugger muggers' who behave like this and pick pockets while they are at it.

It's everywhere.

I was in New York when the September 11 attacks happened. We were way north at the time, and we walked downtown towards the wreckage to see for ourselves what had happened. This is in the morning, not long after the second plane hit.

One of my abiding memories of that morning is how quiet and eerie the streets were. There was no traffic, there were lots of people in the streets, but they were so quiet, mostly walking downtown and everyone looking at the huge billowing smoke cloud in the sky.

Except that is, a group of men, who were standing in the street watching people go by and still harassed me and my female friend as we walked by.

WTF?!

No one knew what was happening - was it the beginning of World War 3? Was this the beginning of the end? I was absolutely stunned that despite these circumstances they were more interested in harassing us than the huge cloud of smoke int he sky behind them.

I can't get my head round it at all.

Yes it's a well known fact there are no rapes/ sex attacks in London.

The met police issued a statement in it. Ffs

By harrassed ^^ I mean comments not touching btw, but still

retrorobot I have lived all over the country and I agree with you regarding seeing and experiencing this behavior mainly from the River Trent North. From Stoke-on-Trent, Nottingham and Derby, upwards, through Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Hull, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Glasgow.

Once (a few years ago), after witnessing the death of my father the week before, I was out with a friend, going to a taxi rank after having a meal. A large (10+) group of men walked towards us and without warning, one of them picked me up and carried me across the road. I was grieving so didn't struggle, just cried. He dropped me when he saw my face and apologised. It's a combination of bravado, tom-foolery and lack of any notion of boundries that seems to be rife in some areas. I never saw this when I lived in the South.

Interesting comments from people in the South and London who've been attacked too. I always felt invisible down there.

A quick poll in the office concludes that my female colleagues have been groped/attacked/followed in Bristol, Torquay, Greece and Hamburg. How depressing.

Thank you Theycallmemellowjello and Frostycake. It is good (or maybe bad) to know that I am not alone in finding this behaviour more prevalent in the North. Another poster also noted that she experienced this behaviour much more in England than in Ireland.

To be clear - the behaviour I was referring to involves groups of drunk men on the street in full view of everyone. I'm not talking about lone stalkers/gropers.

Frostycake puts it well when she describes it as "a combination of bravado, tom-foolery and lack of any notion of boundaries that seems to be rife in some areas".

Rather than trying to generalise this problem, women in the sorts of communities where this goes on need to get it addressed. Frankly, it's one of the many reasons why women from London and the south don't want to move to northern towns or cities.

As a teenager growing up in Stoke-on-Trent it was awful. I remember I was about 14/15 year old naïve girl - waiting with my friends in a kids disco line. Really crowded and some older boys behind us. One loud mouth show off put his hands between my legs and shoved his fingers in me. I had never been touched down there before and I could not believe it. I just moved away and didn't say a word. I'm 43 now and it still fucking annoys me - I think if I even said anything in those days it would just be shrugged off.

I still get calls and shouts at 43 when I walk past certain places at work now in Leeds and it pisses me off. Intimidation is not flattering or attractive.

Why precisely is it women who need to address it? Now I'm completely lost.

I8toys So sorry to hear that. IME the Hanley clubs were the worst (The Place & Valentino's spring to mind).

retro I think there are many reasons why women in the South don't want to move North; the culture is just one of them. If I could go back down South I would in a heartbeat. Sadly priced out now.

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?
Yes it did. No they didn't.

The thing is, if a man is with his friends, drunk and a girl/woman/man defends her/himself, in the process showing up the prat that is assaulting her, there's always the worry that things could escalate and the victim could get hurt.

It shouldn't be necessary, but a quick blast of a rape alarm might be a safer option.

It is never the problem of the victim, it's threatening behaviour on the part of the assailant, but that would be cold comfort if you were to be punched in the face by an humiliated drunk.

Frosty, so sorry to hear what happened to you. I would actually start screaming in terror though!

I'm convinced this happens more than say, twenty years ago. It would be interesting to see some stats. maybe I should find a hand held rape alarm.

I was thinking of all the times I've been harassed by random men and only thought of the times I was truly scared or humiliated. The time I went to go to the toilet in a restaurant in Italy and a staff member squeezed in to me against a wall in a narrow corridor and asked if I was alone and how beautiful I was, the time in India when a man stuck his hand up my dress, the time a Tesco employee loudly whistled at me and guffawed with his mates.
When I think about things like what happened the OP, there's been too many to count. Any time I go to the nearest city this shit will happen, drunk men or just creepy thick sober men leering, shouting out, reaching out to you, knocking you out of the way, laughing etc. etc. I was with my husband one time and we went to walk down an alley that had a group of men standing in it. I told him if I was by myself I would have gone the longer way without a second thought, he was surprised. We're all conditioned to walk along trying not to be noticed, avoid the lairy group of men, heart pounding as you walk towards a lone man in an isolated area. And it fucking enrages me. And no, it's not the same for men, women are scared of men in scenarios like this because they're physically stronger than us, statistically more likely to rape and murder us than other women are, and past experience shows that our fear is entirely justified.

Oh ffs, there were paragraphs when I typed it. Don't know where they went!

I'm a London tube driver. I have been on late shifts this week and three things have happened to me (and I've got Friday and Saturday night to work yet so no doubt it'll be ten times worse).

1. Got kerb crawled after stabling my train in the sidings whilst on way to car park at 1am, I was wearing hi Vis and full uniform.
2. Was changing ends at a terminus at midnight and a young man in a posh suit came up behind me and grabbed me round the shoulders. I thought I was being attacked, I was very shocked. I gave him a piece of my mind and he laughed and said "yeah that was bad of me". No explanation given.
3. A female member of station staff asked to join me in the cab late at night as she was nervous of drunks, we had the train cab light on and a gang of young men started making rude gestures at us, and hammering on the cab door to intimidate us.

I can't bloody wait for night tube!!

To be clear, I am not suggesting that harassment/rape/ assault doesn't occur in london, just that I have experienced street harassment many times in Yorkshire and never in london. I also found living in the states that there's far less of a culture of public drunkenness and laddishness. This isn't about suggesting that there is a group of people who are naturally harassers, but I don't think it's fair to attack people for suggesting that harassment may be a cultural issue. Bizarre that it's offensive to suggest that some places are worse than others for women.

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.

I can only speak of the 70s and whilst all sorts was got up to back then, if wanted, I never felt threatened the way I think women can do today when out and about.

And I don't think that's looking back through rose-coloured glasses.