Assertive retorts to help with unwanted attention

[TheCherries]

Not really an AIBU more how to deal with a situation.

So without outing myself, I attend a weekly event to volunteer for a group of disabled. They have a physical disability not mental, I say this to highlight there are no special needs when it comes to understanding social niceties.

There is one male there who is very sneery, puts down anything I say, is ungrateful for any assistance he is given, although acts in a very entitled way (again I can’t state what without outing myself but just to say he has a benefit allowance specifically to enable him to receive this support he wants from me but he expects me to give up a couple of hours of my time each week in addition to the hours I volunteer there, and when I advise him that I am unable to allocate any further time in which to assist him for free he gets really quite nasty and entitled about it when I suggest he takes the alternative means the rest in the group are taking. Always responding back to me in a sneery ungrateful way).

I enjoy the volunteering I do and the rest of the time I really feel I am making a difference and enjoy it and others there make it really worthwhile helping.

I am just struggling to deal with this man. Today he caught me in a bear hug and tried to kiss me. I turned myself round to get out of the embrace and walked away. The embrace was not an affectionate one, he is quite an unpleasant character and it was in my eyes done to make me feel awkward and uneasy.

I want to avoid this happening again. Given the nature of the group there is no one I can speak with regarding this, it is a very informally set up group. It is also a very close quarters situation which requires me to offer an arm to steady some of them. I don’t for him as he does not have the disability as severely as the others who require it, but I say that as a means to explain it is not easy to just side step him as I often will have someone on my arm.

Any retorts you could arm me with to enable me to be assertive and remaining polite I would be grateful. The only recourse I have is to leave the group and stop volunteering for them, which I really don’t want to do, so please arm me with your polite but firm put downs.

Thanks

Oh, OP. Sounds like an awful situation to be in

“Please don’t do that. You’re upsetting me/making me feel distresed’

Blunt but polite...and hopefully enough to shame him whilst getting others’ attention for safety

With the physical stuff you could firmly sat ‘I am not comfortable with this’ and pull away. Be firm, but not aggressive. That should be clear but still polite.

With the sneery stuff, I always find killing them with kindness works well. I know it might not be as easy as this man makes you feel discomfort, but if someone is rude to me I act like I haven’t noticed and smile. They can’t feed off that because you’re not reacting.

"If you do that again, i will knee you in the bollocks/ stamp on your remaining foot and then i will report you for sexual harrassment. Now keep your hands to yourself, you pathetic little nonce".

OR...

One step towards him, into his space, coldest expression ever, rigid eye contact and something along the lines of "Dont. Do. That. Ever".

Having a physical disability does not stop someone being a nasty gropy arsehole. Why cant you report this lowlife to the group organisers? He should be the one to leave, not you.

Given the nature of the group there is no one I can speak with regarding this, it is a very informally set up group.
I don’t understand what you mean by this, Op? If you are the organiser of the group, then take charge, tell this man his behaviour is inappropriate and he must not attend any further sessions. If you are not the organiser, then you must inform the person/organisation that is, and expect them to address this. You’ve been assaulted by this man, don’t dismiss this behaviour.

Having worked in disability services on a few occasions, I'd say that men with disabilities can be quite unpleasant around women. Being firm and blunt is the only way I ever found to deal with this - it's a behaviour born out of frustration, and a lifetime of "people being ultra-nice to you because you're disabled". You are not going to change this behaviour, so I can only suggest being blunt and truthful, " You are making me feel uncomfortable and I want you to stop "

If he ever grabs you again, do not hesitate to yell "STOP", "Don't touch me!", whatever you need to. His disability does not give him a free pass to assault you. Do not tolerate this for one more second.

Tell him where to go! Having a disability is no excuse for being over familiar or groping. I was once horribly upset by a partially sighted man who sat next to me on a bus, I suppose he thought blindness gave him immunity.

What everyone else has said - good advice.

Tell him to fuck off and if he does it again call the police.

Disabled people are just like able bodied people, some of us are dicks, some of us are dicks at times and some of us hardly ever.

Unless you run the group, there has to be someone, even if it's a council or govt group you report to? Given he is a physical disability and no SEN. I would report to the police next time. Boo e has the right to make you feel uncomfortable

I think he has well and truly crossed the line of being polite in response!!

Grabbing you aggressively and attempting to kiss you is time for police, he needs charging for that.

Please tell me you are actually serious here that you just want to say something polite but firm?!!??!

The words you use to describe him sounds like he's a risk to women. He should no longer be entitled to remain in such a group, with, presumably vulnerable women and their supporters.

He needs to be kicked out

This is a safeguarding issue. The man has sexually assaulted you, and needs to be working with only male volunteers/members of staff. If he is fully conscious of his actions, then the police need to be involved as they would with any other person.

Given he is a physical disability and no SEN.

Nobody IS a physical disability. He has a physical disability.

I wouldn’t go for retorts. Say firmly but calmly “that’s unacceptable, you need to stop”. You need gl talk to someone about this-maybe the volunteers lead.

Re: who to contact- if his funding comes from local government, then somewhere he has a care manager or social worker. You can call the local adult social care team and they will put you in touch with the right person.

‘That’s not appropriate’ ‘let’s have a chat about boundaries’.
I have to say this a lot in my job.

If he’s done it you he may well have done it to others. Make an announcement before the whole group or ask the group leader to do it. Something along the lines of ‘ it’s come to our attention that some people may have been crossing the boundary of being innapropriately physical with group members and volunteers. Can I remind you all of the importance of respecting personal space.’ Then if he tries it again you can pull him up and tell him that is exactly the sort of thing that cannot be accepted.

"Step back, please."

If he can't step back, then you do it. He has a crush of some type on you which he can't or won't articulate, and he would benefit in developing better relationships with the other group members to take his focus off you.

Ban him and threaten him with the police. Creep.

Thanks all. When I say informal group I mean totally that, no organiser, no leader, no funding etc. It literally is people of the same disability coming together once a week. They gather at a venue where they each pay an entrance fee to use a space of a hall and do an assisted sporting event together, assisted by those not afflicted as badly with the disability. Essentially they are empowered by this activity to function without assistance from the outside world.

I go to specifically to support a friend there whose disability is a bit too severe which means due to their aids they would be unable to go if I didn’t attend to help them. Whilst there I have basic interaction with the others.

So there is absolutely no one with authority, it is not an official group. I have just found myself assisting others a little bit whilst I am there in a very informal capacity.

His sneering comments and gestures could very easily be taken by everyone else as being nice. It is only myself who sees them this way and maybe I am reading too much into them, it is difficult to relay here the meanings behind them, you know when you get that feeling.

He turned up uninvited at my friends house when I was assisting my friend with something prior to the event and his constant sneering comments (which he had form for with me already within the group) made me feel very uncomfortable and I later mentioned to my friend that while I was able to help him I was not comfortable offering the same assistance to this person too.

It has resulted in me now not offering this particular assistance for my friend either as this person won’t get the message and just turns up. It is difficult to explain without clearly spelling out what it is. My friend doesn’t see his turning up an issue but it is for me so I have made an excuse so that I don’t offer this particular help any more.

So anyway both now use the funded assistance for this task instead but this man just continues to keep referring back to my decision on the way things now are to be. That clearly my life is too important to offer this additional free assistance, that he will now have to take this alternative funded option, that it doesn’t matter to him if that’s how I choose to live my life ........

There is zero rapport between us and I have always been polite in my responses but that is it there is absolutely no closeness at all and he has never needed my arm.

I don’t feel there is any issue here other than the fact he makes me uncomfortable (I am not a tactile person, the giving of my arm is as close as I get etc) so I don’t feel I give out vibes.

It certainly isn’t an official issue. Just an assertiveness one for me to learn how to handle right.

I think I will just have to say no touching please, thank you, it will just be good to be equipped with a few retorts should that not work out so thank you for your suggestions.

Everyone there is lovely, just this man who I want to avoid if I can.

Thanks again

Today he caught me in a bear hug and tried to kiss me. I turned myself round to get out of the embrace and walked away. The embrace was not an affectionate one, he is quite an unpleasant character and it was in my eyes done to make me feel awkward and uneasy.

Disability is irrelevant to this situation, it seems to me -- this man sexually harassed you, and you should treat him as you would any man you encountered socially who was verbally unpleasant and grabbed you in the same way.

He seems to feel that the fact that you may be physically supporting someone else as you help out entitles him to touch you in a way he might not feel entitled to grab a total stranger outside the supported sport context, and to entitle him to your time -- essentially it's a rather predatory male entitlement exacerbated by a sense that if there's funded assistance available, why shouldn't you do it for free?

Your friend isn't helping the situation by not getting why you don't want this other guy showing up and assuming you're going to help him out too, so it sounds to me as if the friend/carer role is getting slightly confused here -- surely you've talked to your friend and/or he's witnessed for himself, the extent to which this other man harasses you? Why isn't he speaking up for you?

Not your fault, obviously, but I think you should not waste time worrying about being polite -- you sound as if you're afraid of bluntness or confrontation, but this is a situation that needs its boundaries redrawn very firmly.

Say 'Don't touch me', 'Keep your hands off me', 'Do not ever do that again' -- and let it be clear to the group that you're doing this. You are not the problem here, he is. Do it in a loud voice as publicly as possible. And if you are valued by the group in general, and it's clear that this man's behaviour is putting your continued involvement at risk, then they should be supporting you.

Again, this is an inappropriate situation for you to be responding with anything other than reporting.

It's so sad to see so many women trying to be nice in response to an assault such as this. This is very telling in terms of how nice many try to be in the face of massively inappropriate behaviours.

Stop trying to keep the peace and call him out on it. Report him!!

He'll be doing this, and worse, to others, you are in a position to do something about this, others might not be.

Expel him from your group and tell the world what an entitles sicko he is.

Assertive?!?!?!!!

Again, this is an inappropriate situation for you to be responding with anything other than reporting

But I think the OP's issue is that there isn't anyone to 'report' him to.

You might not think there is zero rapport but he thinks differently. The sneering is a childish way of masking that he fancies you, a bit like boys sometimes do to girls at school. He is annoyed that you are spending less time around him. And now he is escalating it to physical contact. If you have no way of reporting it to somebody I think you need to tell him firmly never to touch you again. Could the friend you are helping tell him to back off. Failing that you may have to withdraw your assistance.

I had this with an over familiar elderly man.
"touch me again and I will report you to the police - do I make myself clear" No hint of a smile, slowly and clearly.
Job done.