to be worried about my daughter's future safety in Europe as a young secular woman?

[rodriguez66]

I have a 6 year old daughter. I can't stop worrying about whether it will be safe for her in Europe in the future as a young woman after the sexual assaults all over Europe. I hate to think that she would not be able to enjoy the freedoms I take for granted as a woman and I do not want her to have to hide her femininity because some men cannot control themselves. I want her to be able to dress how she wants when she is older and be able to speak her mind without being scared. Is this completely irrational? My husband thinks I am worrying too much but obviously he is not a woman.

Being 38 with two youngish children I don't go out that much at night so don't know if this is an increasing threat that is influencing women's behaviour but last night I was out in central London and it was heaving on the tube- men and women alike. I used to regularly visit London for nights out 20 years ago and it was nowhere near as packed- in fact I hated it and couldn't wait to return to Sussex, it was far too busy. In that sense is it making women alter their behaviour? That coupled with the fact that we 'do' have millions of men in this country and other European countries that are in agreement with women. I know three myself - my DH, my brother and my Dad that can get drunk (rarely) and are able to still find sexual harassment, assault and attack morally reprehensible. I'm a Mother to an 8 year old boy that has no notion of female inferiority as I am his Mother and that's how it will be. These are the men of the future that will be the Op's and my 4 year old daughter's peers. I personally think that is very hopeful.

As was mentioned upthread, some other mumsnetters with similar concerns are petitioning the UK government to debate extra measures to uphold women's rights, safety & freedom. Also for the police to plan a response in the event of Cologne-style group sexual assaults.

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/119385

Sign and share people, sign and share...

The problem I have with the Op's position is that it assumes there was nothing to worry about before the events in Germany. I have a daughter and I have always been concerned about the things that could happen to her when she grows up. For example, a large number of my female friends and relatives have experienced sexual harassment in the workplace and if they reported it, it was never properly dealt with. One in four women in the UK will experience domestic violence. I recently watched a BBC drama called 'Murdered by my boyfriend' and it absolutely terrified me. Things aren't hunky dory for women in Britain right now and we need to address those problems because frankly, not enough progress has been made.

Agreed Lauren but that, to me, seems all the more reason to get behind this. Someone on another thread likened it to reporting a burglary and being told that burglaries happen all the time so just forget it.

If we can join together and fire a shot across the bows on this then maybe we can make progress on the other stuff that is wrong.

It's too big a thing to tackle all at once so we have to eat the elephant one bite at a time

Yes calm good point. I will sign the petition Easter has provided the link to

Please share the link too Lauren we need as many signatures as possible.

I think that on entry, our Laws and Attitudes should be taught, towards Women and the Disabled and deportation is a risk of these are contravened.

Is that the official attitudes, or the attitudes newcomers to the country are likely to see on the street, in the pub, outside the nightclub, on social media?

It's hard for a message of "in this country you should respect women and treat them as the equals they are" to be believed, never mind assimilated, when the behaviour of many British men towards women that they'll see/hear/read within their first week here is so demonstrably contrary to that statement.

Yanbu

The fear of upsetting men has always superseded the rights of women. Now we have to add cultural relativism to the very long list of reasons we can't talk about male violence towards women

I couldn't agree more

We are reluctant to address issues we see over and over again within certain immigrant communities we have not prosecuted one person in over 20 years yet still young girls are being sent abroad and mutilated. Whenever it is addressed you will hear calls it's an issue for all classes and all ethnic backgrounds which no one is denying but it is more prevalent in some and the women are not seen until they have bones broken, are suffering terribly with std's and the women are so isolated from others outside their communities

And we never have a discussion about dv that women suffer without the call of men suffer too. Why can we not just talk about the suffering of women and their children

I certainly haven't come across that as being the majoritive view that 'men' have in Britain and are you really arguing that women cannot freely walk down the street in this country without being harassed, that they can't sit amongst male colleagues for a civilised drink after work on a Friday in a 'pub' and not be harassed. My DH is an Architect and will, on occasion, do just that with his female and male colleagues. Equally, before I was a SAHP I did exactly the same and didn't feel this was a 'given' in our society. I was raped by someone I worked with and we worked in a office setting. This was not something anyone would've expected from this man, a newcomer to this country would not have witnessed this criminal activity in a bar or on the street, he wasn't indicative of all British men at all. He was calculating and predatory and devious and was very much responsible for what he did to me- no one else but him. Suggesting that it is something he has learnt from our society takes away his responsibility as a person who decided to commit a crime.

The real issue is that due to ultrasound sex screening leading to abortion and infanticide is that there are now millions of extra men who are by definition brought up in cultures who do not value women.

Also our culture has changed - looking at the 70s school photos on this site this week it was difficult to tell gender whereas nowadays its the fashion for girls to look definitely like girls from pre school age. Also there is a lot more open misogynistic abuse around from the internet and sexting etc.

I think self defence classes for girls are in order

I don't know if YABU, it's hard to say what things will be like for women or for immigrants in 10 years time.

For the people questioning why the perpetrators of the Cologne attacks were released:
something I read on the first Cologne thread which astounded me but didn't seem to be picked up on (well, not for the 100 or so posts after it at least) is that a poster from Germany reported that much of what we consider to be sexual assault in the UK is not against the law in Germany I think the poster said that rape is obviously illegal but that groping or kissing a woman without her consent is not

I don't know if it's true but, if it is, that makes the attitude of the German culture (and by extension probably Western European culture) every bit as worrying as the Arabic/North African cultures doesn't it?

Goldsmiths' Feminist Society are, as this Observer article put it "think it appropriate to ban a vocal opponent of wife-beating, lethal homophobia, apostasy laws and terrorism, while supporting a society that promotes and invites misogynistic and homophobic Islamists.”

www.gspellchecker.com/2015/12/goldsmiths-islamic-and-feminist-societies-are-a-disgrace/

Is free speech in British universities under threat?

gu.com/p/4g26x?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard

much of what we consider to be sexual assault in the UK is not against the law in Germany

I won't believe that German law considers it legal for a man to grope a woman without her consent unless a German lawyer corrects me.

English law is particularly strict on any bodily contact. Simply putting your hand on another person's shoulder without their consent is technically a tort and a crime (I emphasise "technically" - you'd be a wally to sue over it unless the act had some significance). I suspect German law is different in this respect.

"126 young women were gang raped in NYE in Cologne. What happened was awful and the cover-up was reprehensible, but I think exaggerations like this are unhelpful."

Cardi, this is not an exaggeration. 126 women have reported "rape by a group" according to the latest stats released by the German police. The only somewhat reliable source that is reporting this is the daily express. A poster on the other thread who lives in Cologne has said it is true and is being reported in the local papers there.

It is this lack of reporting that I find very sinister. The mainstream media seem desperate to minimize these attacks. There has been little mention of the number of victims since it started to rise into the hundreds.

It was notable that when the number of complaints was well into the hundreds, The Guardian printed an article saying that we mustn't allow 40 complaints to deter us from accepting migrants. Their comments page was full of complaints and they eventually printed a mealy mouthed statement about how German crimes are classified and, only when repeated posts pointed out it was still wrong, revised it to a hundred and something.

It worries me that some people and organisations who profess to support women's rights are so afraid of being called racist or of deviating from their line on race, immigration, etc that they will throw us under the bus.

Sadly being sexist just isnt perceived as being in the same league as being racist.