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?

In my local authority this guy was cleared and even sued the council.
Just shows

3 women’s voices < 1 mans voice

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/ex-chief-superintendent-charged-sex-99078.amp

My dd is now 19 but has had to put up with this sort of stuff since she was 11 or less. Same for me back in the 60s. I did think things were getting better since the 70s but it doesn't look like they are

I'm incredibly proud of dd, who isn't afraid to call these skanks out.

Nice to see someone who's articulate enough to not just revert to the usual "fuck off". I can't believe people are happy to teach their children to swear, yet on other threads bemoan the bad language of the young.

Just fuck right off now please.

This happened to me constantly as a young teenager! I would walk down the main road and have cars beeping their horns, old men trying to chat me up! In fact, I remember going to to the doctors when I was 15 and I walked past this old man in his van. As I came out the doctors I walked past him again and he got out and followed me all the way home. I was too scared to go home incase he followed me in! I kept walking and looked behind me and he shouted that he wanted to talk to me. He asked me for my phone number!! I gave him a fake number and once he walked off ran into my home. 😩🤢

I remember this happening when my daughter was around 14yrs, lot of men around 30 thought it okay to eye her up. One time when visiting friends in Wimbledon in the evening a car load of guys around late 20's/early 30's were shouting leering comments to her, I yelled back at them that she was only 14 and to fuck off. People around sitting in pavement cafes/restaurants looked at me as if I was the one being unreasonable.

Fast foward to age 22yrs she started working at a famous celeb nightclub newly opened in Manchester and she was told to except guys to grope her by the other staff training her, which they duly did, that made me sick. She felt she had no other choice as she had no other income as student to pay her rent/bills etc.

I got the same attention when I was of the same age and this was 10 years ago! Tbh I think it’s getting worse

www.betty.me/life/what-to-do-if-you-are-sexually-harassed-in-public/

Maybe some of these tips will help?

I grew up in the seventies, I thought all the harassment stuff had pretty much stopped these days. Obviously not, it's just the same and it's awful.

Totally appalling. Very sorry, I think these men are utter shit!

Just to put a slightly different spin on this, I get abuse from men as an adult because I'm fat. I've had builders near my home wolf whistle just to get my attention to call me a fat cunt.

One spectacular twat felt the best way to insult me was to tell i would never get married .

I've had a man lean out of his car and call me similar and spit at me.

When I was a teenager I got the sexual harassment and now it's evolved into insults. Just because they can.

I've never had anyone around me challenge it, men or women.

Some forty years ago, the adult son of the couple next door used to follow me in his car saying the most disgusting stuff. He was a married man! I was 13! I had hit puberty early and had a large chest by the time I was 13.
My mum phoned the police, who said there was nothing they could do until he actually touched me!
One day, he pulled up outside his parents house as I was going out of my parents gate, he started saying disgusting stuff again, but got a Hell of a fucking shock when my burly miner father shot up from behind the hedge and gave him a pasting.

I won't take any shit from a man now because I never want to feel like that again.

I have a 27 year old daughter who would probably have kneed him in the bollocks and kicked him in the mouth for good measure if he or anyone else had said half of what he did to her.
It made me so determined that she would be able to look after herself and take no shit that as soon as she was old enough I enrolled her into judo classes, and then later into taekwondo.

My son's have been brought up by both me and their father to respect women as human beings, which they do. They and their father would be the first to call out men who spoke or behaved in such a disgusting way to females.

I won't say all men are the same, because they're not. I'm old enough and wise enough to understand that, it would be unfair of me to think that they are. My father and brothers certainly have a great respect for females.

I'm glad that the laws have changed in that direction, so now it is a crime to carry out or verbalise certain acts. It has been a long time coming.

Anyone who thinks that a child is responsible for an adults actions has got serious rational thinking problems. I remember a few years ago when a man got off with sexually abusing a six year old girl, because the judge proclaimed that she had ' led him on '. What the actual Hell? How in God's name can a six year old lead a bloody grown man on??? Fucking disgusting. That judge should have been stripped of his silks for that!

Unfortunately, and I mean unfortunately, we still have many young women who play on their sexuality to men, which obviously is detrimental towards females. We have music videos of half naked women dancing in a sexual way. Unfortunately, sex still sells.
Until ALL women make a stand then unfortunately this behaviour will continue. That stand needs to be for women to stop playing on their sexuality and for women to teach their son's from the cradle that women aren't cattle.

My dd and two friends were laying sunbathing in our front garden. They were 12 at the time. Its in a quiet location in a cul de sac. Three boys two aged 8 and one aged 7 were wolf whistling and oggling through the hedges. Their mothers read them the riot act. We need to be telling boys at an early age to respect women and not laughing and saying ‘oh those cheeky lads!’

unfortunately doesnt sound like things have changed op-i got this with my friends alot when we were in school uniform

cant repeat what we said to them as it was sometimes a bit racist but we always held our own-imo they deserved it

These males are grotesque. From 70s and 80s can anyone recall the style of school uniform for girls. There seems to be a marked difference from then and now and I admit I find it hard to gage the age of both sexes these days even when in uniform. False eyelashes, false nails, make up on the girls and beards on the boys. Please don't think I am condoning the sex pests and the glaring/Unauthorised photography by adult males but perhaps some males also mis-judge ages.

My Dd is 11. She’s very quiet but I want her to know she has a voice is she needs to use it. I don’t want to scare her by saying all boys and men are cunts (because her dad & Ds aren’t!) but how do I have the conversation with her that she needs to stand up for herself and always tell me?

I despair. Yanbu

My first experience of sexual assault was 8 or 9, in a public place, no one stopped him. It started in earnest in the last year of primary school - when boobs started to develop. By the time I was 14 I couldn't walk a quarter mile down the road without the obligatory 'show us your tits you slag' comment, usually oft repeated. My dd is now 8. I am terrified for her. I spent years not wanting kids because of this, and I wish I'd stuck with that.

In my case I didn't shout at them because I expected them to turn violent, or to follow me home. I never told my parents because if they knew how frequent it was I would never have been allowed out of the house. Why the fuck isn't it men that aren't allowed out until they can treat the other half of the human race with a bit of respect? Men wouldn't put up with this level of regular assault and aggression.

I'm now 40-odd btw, this was in the 80s.

Does anyone read everydaysexism.com/ ?

Sadly, the stories are essentially the same, repeat over and over, in different places with different women.

My dh gets a small insight into it being a cyclist. They also attract a lot of abuse.

This is exactly why I'm going to start paying for my stepdaughter to do some sort of self defence class. Shes 10 now so has a couple of years to practice. I personally think self defence and street safety should be taught in schools as part of physical education. I believe it would also help to eliminate bullying if they were to focus on getting all kids to the same level, it would improve confidence and not have any one person looked at as more of a pushover by knowing they're all able to defend themselves it would deter one kid from thinking they're physically above the rest.
But how do I go about pitching this to school boards? 🤔

Yes, rosenylund!

Also I recently listened to this (very funny) episode of the Guilty Feminist podcast where Laura Bates from the Everyday Sexism project is interviewed and suggests things you or your daughter can say when sexually harassed. One woman was called vile, explicit things by a builder on a roof, so she moved his ladder away!

guiltyfeminist.libsyn.com/88-innovation-with-shaolan-and-laura-bates

It's depressing. Sounds like my life as teenager. I lost count of the number of times I was flashed at.

SkaterGrrrrl I'll listen to that, my greatest regret after my builder incident was that I did not move the ladder

Most men don't do this and most men will call it out when they see it, I believe.

Even the good men don't really see it. Because they don't have to. They grow up oblivious to what girls go through.

My dh is a good guy that has stood up for women irl many times. But he was still so shocked when it happened to his 12 year old daughter, right in front of him. He thought it was some weird experience of an unusual pervert. He came home with a lighthearted story of 'this odd thing that happened' and was surprised by my reaction. All the years of me and my female friends telling him our everyday experiences and he still struggled to internalize that what he saw that day was our normal. That our formative years and self esteem were soaked in daily harassment like that. That our oblivious 12 year old had her 6ft 3 father to defend her that day, but that this was only the beginning...