To be angry and distressed at the amount of harassment my fourteen year old daughter faces?

[Saggingninja]

A small sample. She's been harassed on a bus by a man in his thirties when she was in her school uniform. Nobody intervened. She was followed slowly down a street by a man in a car, but when she turned to take a photo of his licence plate, he drove off. She was asked for a 'date' by a man who was 'in his fifties'. When she pointed out she was only fourteen he smiled and said 'he didn't mind.' And yesterday on the train with some friends, she noticed this man filming them. When she turned to face him, he stopped and moved away.

My daughter is confident and I've told her not to be afraid of telling anyone harassing her to fuck off or to loudly remind them that she's underage. I put up with so much crap when I was a teenager out of fear of being rude. But I'm so angry and distressed that this happens so often. Nothing has changed has it?

MeAgain, Yes, Ive heard all the excuses, and I'm sure we'll hear them all again now when the NAMALT brigade come along.
I can say Men are Foul because of the men I've met throughout my life, the large percentage of them, in some form or other, have a lack of respect for women. Ranging from sexual abuse to sexual objectification, in some form or other.
No one can tell me otherwise.

Totally out of order. My DS was telling me that his female friend (17) gets harassed by men of all ages even when she's out with him. It sounded quite sinister as well - there would be a certain amount of cat calls and whistling in some situations when I was young but not the explicit comments and literally being grabbed that she has to put up with.

Oh sorry only just back to this.

No, I'm happy with my comment - thanks to all who responded to it :)

*"most men will call it out when they see it, I believe."

You believe wrong.*

This. There are the men that do it, and then the most men that turn a blind eye to it. This behaviour only ever affects girls and women.

Re-reading this comment:

"" It’s fucking outrageous and it’s about time men stood up for their sex and called it out. "

They aren't interested - if they were, it would already have happened.

Hmmm.....Interesting.

That reminds of a thread the other day where a Muslim was saying 'why do white people hold all Muslims accountable for Islamic terror and why should we have to apologise for them? We are constantly told that we, as Muslims, don't do enough to make our feelings clear on the matter and that we should collectively make a stand against extremists to prove that we don't secretly share their ideology.' Or words to that effect.

Same argument from where I'm sitting. Most men don't do this and most men will call it out when they see it, I believe."

Is equivalence REALLY being drawn between

Expecting people in the UK who are muslim to take responsibility for mass murder on the other side of the world

and

Wanting men in general to do something when they see girls being hassled in public eg just saying "Don't so that mate she doesn't like it" or even just a glare to say "I have seen what you are doing" would be enough to make most of them stop.

(Women could do this too but they dont' tend to either).

Yes that is TOTALLY the same thing.

I'm 31 and had this all the time growing up. I had men pull over their cars at bus stops to ask me out, I had a man sit next to me on the last bus home and try and kiss me, I had catcalls, beeping horns, lewd comments, the lot. It ended up with me being raped by a taxi driver at 16 and I put a fuckload of weight on very rapidly after that.

I despair that, should I have a daughter, she would be experiencing the very same things and it fills me with terror that my lovely little boy might one day end up in a crowd of men that do similar.

The catcalling and abuse suffered by girls and young people is heartbreaking. Boys and men think they can say or do anything to them. I remember and hear about so many incidents. Things I've forgotten about have come back to me years later. I always step in if I think a girl is in trouble.

I agree with you Ellenborough

Twll I'm really sorry to hear that.

TheDarkLady I'm glad you step in. One of the most depressing aspects of this is how cowardly bystanders can be. I'm not asking people to physically step in but the stall holder who stuck up for a poster in a market - if only more people would just shout or say something.

My DD has had similar problems and at 20 and now at Uni, still does. During her A levels she did a self defence course which helped her feel in control (and she wouldn’t be afraid to use her skills) and whenever anyone hassles her she takes their photos and tells them she is notifying the police (although I’m not sure she actually does).

I remember age 11, going out shopping with my parents. I was wearing a black and white check cotton dress which was fitted and stopped an inch or two above the knee. It was in style. I am 5’10 now and was still tall then, with legs up to my armpits and big boobs that appeared overnight on my hourglass figure (9 yo dd is clearly going to be the same). I remember my parents taking a hand each and having my Dads coat put round me, whilst my Mum and Dad glared at several men who leered at me. My Mum was sent into a shop to buy me a new outfit and the dress was binned.

I remember feeling guilty for having worn something that made men stare at me. I from then on lived in baggy jumpers and jeans. That was wrong though, my parents should have called out the perverts who thought it ok to leer at an 11 year old girl (and yes I looked 11) instead of making out it was my fault they looked at me because of the way I was dressed!

I think it may have got worse.
Toxic masculinity has become so normalised.

I have 3 lovely DD and it's awful the things they've had said to them, fortunately they call them out, my favourite is 'Fuck off you revolting pervert' very loudly whilst laughing or 'would you like somebody to say that to your daughter?'
We need to always shame them, I'm in my 40s, work in a male dominated job and get comments again I shame them and surprisingly the majority are mortified.
On the other hand my 13 yr old has told me the disgusting attitude of boys in school who think nothing of calling girls slags and being sexually explicit.

Really pleased to see the 2 or 3 posters on this thread who instead of feeling shock and outrage at the everyday treatment of girls and women by men and boys in the UK

Read it and feel shock and outrage that women and girls are angry about this and wonder why men as a group don't / won't do anything about it.

And compare street harassment (an everyday occurance for literally millions upon millions of women and girls all over the world every day) to a comparitivly very rare, very extreme atrocity.

Of course the good news is that seeing it like that means you can get angry with the women adn girls who are victims, and forget about the men and boys who are doing it.

Some men at work brought this up recently.

They said they would never do anything if they saw a girl being accosted as they wouldn't want to get involved. They made vague noises about not wanting to get in fights.

I said but you don't need to get in a fight, if you just make it clear you have noticed, or say leave it out mate she's not interested or something, then that'll be enough vast majority of the time. Men listen to men more than women. Although I do and have intervened a couple of times.

Anyway they said no definitely not. My sense was it was less about fear and more about just not wanting to get involved in other people's business which is common across both men and women and why DV used to be ignored (still is TBH) and so on.

You do need a societal shift if most people see something as unacceptable it really puts off the more casual offenders, leaving only the hardcore which there are much less of.

Anyway these blokes all have DDs.

Men and society in general very much feel that this is "womens business" I think. Something for women and girls to deal with.

Of course we have been trying forever and not got far because it's not in our power to change it because ti's not us who are doing it - but when we say we need some help from men to sort this apparently that's OUTRAGEOUS.

Sexual harassment or even abuse of children does not equal paedophilia. That is a misconception. It is a minority of perpetrators who will do this because their primary sexual attraction is to children. It is more often about other factors: power amd control, self-esteem, cultural pressures etc etc. That is why is is such a widespread problem and so difficult to solve. Actual paedophilia is pretty rare in fact. Abuse and harrassment are sadly not.

I agree that it really isn't that hard to call it out. that banal sexist shite that men talk just takes one to say "not cool" or something similar.

I'm doing this all the time to that low key islamaphobic shite i hear around me and i am not dying from exhaustion doing it.

STEP THE FUCK UP

Stepping up doesn’t have to be a confrontation.

You can position yourself in their eyeline.

You can glare, and catch their eye to say ‘I see you’.

No I very much agree it doesn't and with the men I was talking to it came across very much as an excuse, and one that they were telling themelves was reasonable, because they know it's actually not reasonable to look the other way when a 13yo girl is being harassed by an adult man in a public place and is obviously scared / upset (this was the example talked about).

Bizarrely it was them that started the convo not sure what they were hoping to get out of it.

I know what you mean OP.

I was out with husband, 12 year old, and 14 year old.

12 year old is very well developed. Table next door, there was an older man who was constantly ogling her. Then when she left the table, eyes following, said something to his mate, which I didn't hear, and they both laughed, watching her.

I quietly leaned over and said, 'that is my 12 year old daughter you are ogling you filthy old pervert, and you'd better stop, or I'll be letting management know what you're doing and make damned sure you are removed'.

Their faces were a picture.

DH was in a cafe recently man watching porn on his device. Tables with kids around.

DH said he caught his eye and gave him a WTF look and man looked sheepish and stopped.

No drama.

If I’m not mistaken, watching porn in public leaves you susceptible to being charged with child abuse for exposing a child to porn. I’d be hissing this in his ear too. Vile, but not all that uncommon unfortunately.

theDudesmummy paedophilia is not rare, what is rare is the victims getting intervention and justice; the perpetrators being held accountable. All the people throughout my life who have confided that they were sexually abused as children (and there has been many) only one had intervention, police involvement and a conviction. Only one out of the many. And most of the people who had been sexually abused had or were currently receiving counselling for the abuse. One was going to a support group. And yet despite this they have still not had any support at all in seeking an investigation and a conviction for this crime against them. Even though child sexual abuse is one of those crimes that do not (in my country) have a statute of limitations. It seems to me that for some obscure reason paedophiles are protected. And I must add that all these victims of child sexual abuse faced disbelief, outright denial by people who knew or witnessed the abuse, isolation, pressure/intimidation to keep silent and drop the issue.

The semantics around the word peadophilia

Dictionary definition vs common usage
Actual sexual orientation vs opportunity

Adds nothing to the conversation. It's a distraction.

If a person calls a man who leers at a 14yo girl a paedo, so what. So it should be hebephile. Whatever. We all know what they mean. They mean that a man leering over a 14yo is a fucking dirty old bastard.

If a child is abused does it really matter - from the victims perspective - what the motivation of their abuser was? Of course it doesn't. In conversations about treatment / rehabilitation etc then yes it has a place. In a conversation about victims, it makes no odds.