my 12 year old DD and unwanted male attention

[crispandcheesesandwichplease]

I've posted before about my DD getting unwanted attention form adult men. She's 12, she's developing but doesn't wear make up or skimpy clothes. She doesn't look particularly older than she is.

Today we're down by the riverside having a picnic. She's wearing jeans and a t-shirt. We were sat reading and other people are around. A bloke, in his 40's I'd say, and 2 younger kids come and sit near us. The bloke immediately starts leering at my daughter. He sees me watching him look at her, I give him the Paddington bear hard stare. The kids he is with are messing about by the water and he's sorting them out with sun cream etc. He keeps looking over at my DD then at me, he knows I'm watching him.

After about 20 mins or so they gather their stuff to leave, he still keeps glancing at my daughter then at me. DD is oblivious to this, lost in her book. As they walk off I continue watching him, and he keeps turning round to look at my DD. Then, just before they disappear round the corner he turns to me and sticks his two fingers up at me!

Part of me was amused at his cheek but another part of me was furious. He was clearly letching at her and knew I'd clocked it, then he does that! What goes on in some men's head ffs???

Bruffin I'm genuinely very glad to hear that your 19 year old hasn't experienced it.

Just to throw out a general thought - surely this isn't the sort of issue where people take a position on one side or the other though?

I never automatically assume that some men are doing this and I'm recounting my own individual experiences and those of my daughter on here, which are real.

Certain posters seem to be inferring that we are making these things up to fulfill some sort of feminist agenda. It's simply not true. We are reporting what has happened to us and our teens (in London and elsewhere). It's crap not to be believed.

SleepFreeZone shocked by this...you loved this sort of attention? Can't say in all my years I've ever heard that! I've known friends who could brush it off easily and be fairly "meh" about it but never known anyone to ENJOY it.

Maybe she looks a lot older for her age but as her mum OP is immune and can't tell. At 12 I looked like an 18 year old - had a womanly figure. It's natural instinct to check out a person you fancy even if it's just to give them a quick once over, you shouldn't read into that because strangers don't know your dd from Adam. For all they know she's a grown woman. Next time it happens tell them she's 12, and you'll find they won't be able to look away fast enough.

If you look at research people are spectacularly bad at interpreting facial expressions. We make judgements of peoples feelings and intentions nearly entirely based on the context of the situation.
The fact that men leering at teens happens doesn't mean that was what was happening on this occasion. It's not about believing or disbelieving the op. I think it's clear that the op firmly believes that her dd was being leered at.
What people may or may not be thinking when looking at someone isn't a crime - quite rightly as it's impossible to know. One persons leery might be another persons squinting into the sun.
I do find it sad though that when I'm out with dh and my children at the park and we might watch a cute toddler playing nearby some people probably think my dh is a paedophile.

I can't believe he gave you two fingers! The cheek of it!

The older I get, the more I feel that this kind of leering is utterly invasive. Some men do it habitually, and it's completely disrespectful, doubly so when the object is a young girl. Sometimes they even do it when their partner is standing right there alongside them. Bleurgh.

TheRealPollTroll

"I do find it sad though that when I'm out with dh and my children at the park and we might watch a cute toddler playing nearby some people probably think my dh is a paedophile."

Totally agree with you there! In fact that is what is so sad, that the wayward few always spoil it for the decent majority.

TheReal

Perhaps OP has misjudged his facial expression and he truly was just being friendly/interested in her book/whatever. We don't know, we weren't there.

What we do know from this thread is that many many women have experienced this sort of thing as a child and it is nowhere near as uncommon as one would hope it is and nothing seems to be changing. I'm 23 and experienced the same sort of shit that women much older than me have experienced. My 13 year old sister is now the victim of the same sort of attention except she doesn't just get whistled at or beeped she gets grown men try to message her on Facebook wanting to send her pictures of their dicks too.

I don't believe there is a peado on every corner and I'm saddened that men are often thought of as such just for being in the vicinity of a child, but I've also experienced this unwanted attention myself as a child and recognise it as the massive fucking problem it is and feel that people downplaying these incidents and trying to explain them away (in this case based on fuck all, OP was the only one here to see the look) is one of the main reasons why it's still happening.

I don't think men at the park are paedophiles but then I remember a random bloke in the chip shop kissed my baby dd and I was rather horrified :o
There are a certain core of men who think oggling at young teen girls is fair game. I imagine they are the same kind of men who would give a knuckle sandwich to any bloke oggling their own daughter though that's an assumption...

God Alice, that vile 're Facebook :(

I really don't feel I need to consider that some people walk round in a daze

If they are making me feel uncomfortable then that is all I need to consider not how they feel or how observant they are

The reason it can happen is that looking at someone (in any way) isn't a crime. The op may have thought the man was looking at her or her dd with murderous intentions. It's subjective.

I think it's fairly obvious when men are leering, rather than just staring blankly ahead. Some teens do genuinely look older than they are, but when a man quite blatantly gasps at a girl who is obviously only around 12 years old then he's not just a perve he's a pedophile.

I've had it with my eldest who is ten. She's not developed a bust yet but she looks older than she is. Very slim long legs long blonde hair. I've seen older teen boys eye her up from behind and then disappear when she turned around and saw she's not as old as they thought. It's disgusting :(. I know she's a pretty girl. But she's still just a kid

I don't think this is 'just a look', though. I mean, we might not have a precise language for it, but we do inhabit a world of gesture and embodied movements and gazes that are full of meaning. Say that hypothetically you have two men, one gazes absent-mindedly, the other gives a full-on leer. I'm guessing most women subjected to each would recognise a distinction between the two. The very fact that the word 'leer' has a meaning that is different from the word 'gaze' or the word 'inspect' or the word 'watch' or the word 'gape' suggests that we realise some kind of nuance about the way that we look. I have never looked at a bloke in the park just watching kids and thought "paedophile". I mostly think "modern Dad". I would, however, immediately be concerned by someone leering at children. There's a world of difference to all but the slightly paranoid!

My ex was the kind of bloke who would stare at another woman, while I was right there. I was aware of it, out of the corner of my eye, all of the time. He would also do it to me - he'd take bits of clothing off me, or pull away a towel as I got out of the shower, and I always felt a bit humiliated by this so-called 'admiration'. It was objectifying and I disliked the opportunistic nature of it. But I just thought men were 'like that', because almost every man I met when I was younger did it. My DH, however, has never, ever done either of those things to me. The way he looks at me grants me my full personhood, all of the time.

When I was 11/12 I got honked at and cat called by men in a car. I was wearing shorts but was one of the smallest at my school and an a cup bra. No way on earth those men didn't know I was a child.

But the fact is if you show someone video footage of a leering expression without any context people won't be able to distinguish it from a number of other expressions from disgust to thoughtful etc. I have no doubt that a woman for eg doing the exact same looking with the exact same expression wouldn't be considered to be leering.
People are using the existence of paedophiles as proof of this mans intentons and ignoring the fact that most men aren't paedophiles and there are much more likely scenarios for a man looking at a child.
Putting myself in the mans position I may think I recognised the child, I might like their outfit and wonder where it's from to get for my niece, I might be wondering if they are out alone as there is seemingly no adult with them and look around to see if I can see who they're with, I might be wondering what they are reading and if it's something my dd might like, I might like the look of their mum (if I was single) and be wondering how to start a conversation, I might be interested in something in the middle distance over their shoulder. And as a woman I'm sure no-one would think anything else of it. As a man in my 40's/50's from the first look I am 'leering'.

It's not from the first look, though - there is a narrative here. The mother made it clear that she didn't appreciate the way he was looking at her daughter. Any decent guy who was genuinely innocent would have backed off at that point. He would move elsewhere, or simply turn his back to make it clear that he had no intention to leer. A guy who continues to stare in spite of a mother's watchful eye, causing further discomfort, then who flicks a V of defiance when leaving, is demonstrating an over-investment in another family, to say the least.

(This is also what makes this completely different from a psychology experiment on expressions undertaken in context-free lab conditions. That bears no relation at all to what is being described here - it is contextually and temporally different).

Happened to me from age 8 onwards. I used to find it terrifying.

So far as hijab goes, the girls who this is happening to are too young to wear hijab everyday, they are not young women they are children.

my friends daughter loved wearing hijab to copy her mum and would get leered at more when she was wearing it. From a really young age, beautiful girl but clearly a child.The problem is men feeling entitled to do this, not women's clothing.

All of you telling the op she didn't understand what she saw and ignoring all the comments from people like me who experienced this are a joke. I find it very insulting. You don't ignore your instincts and common sense when a man presents as a sexual predator in case you got it wrong. That's dangerous behaviour .

I was always tall and well developed for my age, so could pass for 15/16 when I was 12. However I've also noticed men looking at DD1 who at 12 is 4'11" and has not started to develop breasts. Urgh.

TheRealPooTroll, how interesting that you are a man. As a woman, I can tell you that women know the difference between leering, and gazing into the distance.

People are using the existence of paedophiles as proof of this mans intentons and ignoring the fact that most men aren't paedophiles

And you're using the existence of men who aren't pedophiles as proof of this mans intentions and ignoring the fact that whilst most men aren't pedophiles, most young girls DO experience this type of shit at one time or another, or indeed even regularly.

Sorry, PooTroll, I think I misread, and you're not a man! You're just a wee bit defensive of men- I really can tell the difference between a leer, and a normal look.