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?

This makes me sad and furious for my daughters. My eldest daughter has an excellent resting bitch face and a don’t fuck with me attitude. My almost teen daughter has developmental delays and is already very self conscious about her body. She sometimes gets leers even with my large dh by her side.

Tell her to shout loudly "can I have some help please, this man is harassing me" It worked for our daughter.
Shouldnt bloody happen in the first place though.

Serin thank you. We are trying to coach her through situations like these. She tends to freeze and lose her words when she is anxious or frightened..

I wonder where on earth these males ever got the message that this type of behaviour is ok

Apparently we don’t need feminism anymore 🤷‍♀️

YANBU I fear for my daughters.

Just common decency would do, MamaLovesMango. If people make a point of stepping in when they see this shitty behaviour then it would give the message that this isn't ok. Not ok at all.

Hideous. I remember being 14 and walking down a street was like running a gauntlet sometimes. My most memorable was a man shouting out of a car “nice legs, I can imagine them wrapped around my neck”. Absolutely vile

I always thought I was unlucky ..by 14 I had been flashed at 3 times..once on a bus he wanked off sat next to me..once walking my dog .he ran past with it flopping out.and once walking to school.

I think ..sadly a lot of men like 14 yr old girls..I think it's weak mean who aren't able to have mature relationships with women.so they like the power balance of a 14 yr old...that might just be my conclusion after the times I just mentioned..but every time I had my school uniform on....not a coincidence I think

Men not mean

At least with al the MeToo stuff, harassment is largely recognised as unacceptable now.

DD told me she was in a bar, talking to a lad, last week and her friend came off the dance floor in floods of tears after being aggressively groped my a group of men. DD complained to the bouncer and the men were thrown out immediately.

I don’t think that would have happened a few years ago.

YANBU it's awful. This is why we need to teach our daughters to stand up for themselves. My ds's girlfriend (16) was followed by a man in a car, asking her to get in. He only disappeared when she got out her phone to call ds. Afterwards everyone told her she should have told him to bugger off. She said 'I know' but she's so quiet and polite, she wouldn't have dared. We need to train our daughters what to do.

YANBU it's totally depressing and shite. I was shocked at how men started to leer and stare at my DD when she was 11 or 12. Once walked through our town at 10pm with her after a school event and the amount of blokes in groups drinking outside pubs making lewd comments was shocking. She was in her school uniform FFS! Of course I shouted at them that she was only 13 and DD ended up feeling embarrassed of me calling them out -sigh. Was grim and just hope she can assert herself in a safe way.

I can remember taking my youngest on his last family holiday. He was 17. He’s very attractive and therefore attracts a lot if female attraction. Numerous girls, all obvious underage, paraded in front of him in bikinis, giggling as they went past.

A man on holiday with his family told him to get in there because he would get some. He replied erm no their obviously impressional under age girls and he’s not a pervert. He was answered with, but but they look older. My son said yep but you know they’re not. He was called a weirdo and must be gay. Says it all really.

my daughter at 16 held a door open for a group of 'business' men a couple of years ago, and as one of them passed he groped her bum.
The fucking rage I felt when she told me.
Filthy bastards

My advice would be to film them or take a picture and put it on social media.
It is disgusting.
It happened to me constantly as a child and made me very self conscious.
It also happened to me last summer as a not so young woman.
Totally vile.
These vermin need calling out on it, every time.

From the time my daughter was about 14, I began to notice men in their 30s and older checking her out. I like to nail them with with a steely gaze that communicates that they are slime.

At least with al the MeToo stuff, harassment is largely recognised as unacceptable now

You can make it socially unacceptable but they're still thinking the same thing.

Dusgusting isn’t it need. My family got on a zippy bus in Barbados. My daughter was about 13. Now they really pack them in and my son was sat on an old ladies knee much to his disgust. About 10 minutes in from the journey my DD hit a guy with great force across his face. He’d touched her between the legs and her breasts. As he was thrown off the bus the woman who had my son sat at on his knee hit on the face with her fist and
Apologised to me. She said she would have intervened earlier but my son was on her knee and was having trouble moving forward. She also said she’d be having a word with his family. She was really annoyed.

Yes agreed. It makes me very sad that my daughter has already been sexually assaulted at 14 years old. A male "friend" at school grabbed her bottom and breasts during lunch break when noone was looking. She was upset but we talked it over a lot and made sure she understood it was in no way her fault etc. He got in a lot of trouble and was spoken to by the police etc. But in the end her first sexual experience was against her will .

Sorry that sounded wrong. Of course it wasn't her first sexual experience as it wasn't sexual to her. Hopefully you all know what I mean!

Between the ages of 13 and 23, I was harrassed like this multiple times every time I left the house. There'd be beeps, men calling out of their windows, and single and pairs of men stopping and propositioning me every time I walked down the road.

It was so persistent that I developed an expectation that every man I encountered wanted to have sex with me, no matter their age or position - teachers, uncles, friends parents.

Presumably, I was particularly attractive to these sleezebags, because my friends didn't get the same level of harrassment - though they did get some.

I was also sexually assaulted and raped during this time.

I want to think that these men were in a minority and that my expectations at the time were skewed. I tell myself that my experience was an aberration, and after a decade of being very fat and free of the male gaze, this is easier to do. I'm motivated to make excuses and doubt my experience, because when I wonder whether most men are attracted to children it makes me feel nauseous, terrified and hateful.

I think about my own daughter and whether she will experience this. If she does, I've no doubt the delusion will burst. I'm certain that it's not 'all' men, but what if it's most of them? How the fuck am I supposed to deal with the fear and disgust that that knowledge is bound to create?

Reading this thread brings back so many memories of harassment and there must be many more I don't recall right away. From 12 and grown men leering in the street, to boys at school touching me, looking up my skirt on the stairs, hands between my legs in class! To being scarily propositioned as a late teen/early twenties. A manager at a car company I worked for when I was 19 summoned me to go and do reg plate recording with him in his car to a secluded car park. I was so scared he would rape me I kept asking when we were going to record the info and he just sat there with a disgusting look on his face. I was quite bolshy but in that position I felt so vulnerable. He didn't push it and drove us back, he was middle aged and married. Other things like men coming up to me at bus stops at night and telling me what they wanted to do to me. I didn't tell my mother. I was very afraid and pretended to call someone. These things happened a lot. I feel angry that I didn't do more but I felt so vulnerable and almost paralysed with fear.

Now I have a DD who is 5, she is by all accounts a beautiful child. People tell us that wherever we go and I feel ill sometimes. Even now I can feel eyes on her, most people admiring a sweet girl but wtf is it going to be like as she grows up?? It makes me sick with worry to think about.

I am 53. I had this too from around 11 years old. Many incidents. Men are foul. And no, I don't want to reconsider my words.

YANBU

I have been sexually harassed since age 11. Me and my family were driving in London and stuck in traffic during the day, some learing ponce leaned into the back of the car and started making (extremely embarrassing) comments about me. My dad told him I was his 11 year old daughter and to back off, he didn't and then my Dad was trying to get out of the car to deck him with my mum holding him back.

Not a week went by after that (usually a few times a week), I didn't get harassed in some way by leering Men, and it was mostly Men. Beeping, whistling, stopping me in the street, cornering me etc. A group of builders near where I worked in my first job, crowded around me on a bench in a park at lunchtime, very busy park, no one intervened, there were at least 10 Men, I was 16 years old.

This started in the 80's. It hasn't got any better. All girls should get self defense training from age 10.

I have 4 daughters. All under 10. I DREAD this. I was not confident at all as a teenager. I worry a lot about how to prepare them and help them deal with harassment.