Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Only the apps you allow.

Meet the Other Phone.
Only the apps you allow.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

Had a blazing row with friend at Gay Pride

233 replies

Havingarethink · 07/07/2019 01:42

I have name changed in case I'm being a precious arse.

Me, oldest friend and his BF were at Pride in London today and were having a jolly old time, drinking, making friends with like minded people and having a right old laugh.
As the day wore on and the 3 of us were getting a bit too oiled, my friend and his partner would compliment large breasted ladies on their clevege, such as 'nice tits or' nice pair', while I cringed and stepped away.
Most of the complimentees laughed and thanked them (thank fuck for drugs and /or alcohol) but one particular girl said in a - not very serious tone- 'I'm only 15'. Omg.

As I walked ahead dying of shame, I heard my friends say to the girl and all her friends, that they were gay and to calm down Shock.

I, in a very gentle way advised them that comments like that could potentially land them in trouble. Well I was told in about 18 different ways that I was being utterly rediculous, because 1. They are gay, so not a threat, 2. She wore a very low top, so should expect comments - yeah I know and 3.She looked older than 15 and therefore should know better????!!!.

Neither of them thought they did wrong and I tried to give them hypothetical examples of how none of those facts would matter if parents happened to have heard /seen it or if she was filming on her phone.

I begged them to drop it in the end as they took it very personally, refused to listen to me and we went round in circles. I said I would post here and show them the thread (if I'm right Grin).

For context my friend is late 40s like me.
So am I talking rubbish?

OP posts:
Loopytiles · 07/07/2019 01:46

They were being sexist, harassing twats.

OMGLongVac · 07/07/2019 01:47

Yeah, your friends are inconsiderate, misogynistic boors.

SkintAsASkintThing · 07/07/2019 01:48

Well they sound like knobheads........just because they're gay it doesn't give them the right to potentially intimidate young girls. Or women of any age.

They need to work on their social skills, that kind of banter may be ok within their social group but will have a very different effect on random strangers. Who may have suffered sexual assault, bullying or harrasment in the.past....,...in fact a gay man in the town I live.in landed himself in court recently because he.took it upon himself to lean over, grab a womans breast and make a honking noise. All in jest........sadly for them the victim wasn't amused. 💁

YetAnotherThing · 07/07/2019 01:50

Ugh. Male privilege suggest they think they can say what they like to young girls. What does it matter that they are gay? That’s just a smokescreen to being as vile as any other (straight) middle aged guy leering at a teenage child.

DramaAlpaca · 07/07/2019 01:51

Your friends are seriously unpleasant, misogynistic men.

Illstartexercisingtomorrow · 07/07/2019 01:51

Being gay does not stop you from being misogynistic or sexist, as your friends have proved.

Incredibly inappropriate to make those kinds of comments at any woman.

LightDrizzle · 07/07/2019 01:51

YANBU!
Being gay doesn’t give men a free pass to objectify women and make inappropriate comments about or to them.
Being gay doesn’t mean you can’t be a bigot.
Some straight people are twats, some gay people are twats. Your friends may not be twats on balance, but their behaviour was shit.
Well done for calling them out on it.
My brother was gay (dead now, not swapped sides) and some of his [gay] friends were deeply misogynistic and particularly vile about lesbians weirdly. I was shocked. This was back in the 80s and 90s though.

Tavannach · 07/07/2019 01:52

The fact that they're gay doesn't excuse them being sexist bellends.

HappyNOTdriving · 07/07/2019 01:53

We get fucking enough of that from men anyway without adding more from men who don't want to shag us too!

Mayborn · 07/07/2019 01:53

There’s no defence of that, we all live by the same values, you were right.

PerspicaciaTick · 07/07/2019 02:03

They were being creepy misogynists.

If they are reading this, I have to ask them

  1. Why they thought it was OK to behave like that?
  2. Did they consider for a moment,or even care, how the women they harnessed would feel?
  3. When asked to stop, why that did not give them pause to reconsider their behaviour?
  4. What is it about being gay that they feel means they have a green light to harass women?
PapayaCoconut · 07/07/2019 02:05

My sisters friend does this. He thinks he can say whatever the hell he wants just because he's gay. He also calls himself a 'girl' (not in terms of being trans but as in 'I'm not a prosecco girl myself'), but as I've pointed out to him, 'girls' don't say that kind of kind of shit to other women either.

PapayaCoconut · 07/07/2019 02:07

(He's very nice in other ways though and I really don't think he's sexist, it's like it just doesn't cross his mind.)

BoomBoomsCousin · 07/07/2019 02:08

They appear to have forgotten that being gay does not mean that they have no male privilege or that such comments, whoever they are from - male or female, gay or straight - reinforce objectification of women.

WipeYourFeetOnTheRhythmRug · 07/07/2019 02:22

When strangers have commented on my tits in the past I could not have cared less about their orientation. Still made me feel uncomfortable and vulnerable.

Your friend is gross. Why are you spending time with someone like that?

WhereYouLeftIt · 07/07/2019 02:29

"1. They are gay, so not a threat."
And why would the women they were 'complimenting' would not feel threatened? Because who is more likely to be looking at your cleavage and saying 'nice tits', a gay man or a straight man? And an unknown man who is has already broken a boundary by commenting on my tits, why should I not be wary of him breaking another boundary, like say, grabbing my nice tits? Had I been on the receiving end of this, I would have felt they were straight pretending to be gay to lull me into a false sense of security. It's classic predatory behaviour.

"2. She wore a very low top, so should expect comments."
Wow, victim-blaming! No, she should not expect comments!

^"3.She looked older than 15 and therefore should know better????!!!
Bloody hell! They might as well have said 'So what if she's a child she's still asking for it'.

Just because they weren't actually sexually interested in the women, they still felt entitled to objectify them and, frankly, to look down their noses at them. All that low top/should have known better - - they're trying to make the women/girls responsible for THEIR OWN poor behaviour!

So yes, sexist misogynist knobs, the pair of them.

BatShite · 07/07/2019 02:30

Gay or not, the behaviour was misogynistic and basically..wrong. Especially carrying on after a girl sad she was only 15. 'I am gay and not as threat' means absolutely fuck all when being sexually harassed by older men IMO.

SlipperyWhenWatery · 07/07/2019 02:36

Utterly disgusted.

I was up Pride during the day for the parade with my daughter. She came out a few months ago. She is nearly 12 and still looks very much like a little kid but she won't look like a kid forever and it's cunts like your friends who I worry about. Anyone can hide behind something if they want to. Gay or not, their comments were unasked for, inappropriate, misogynistic harassment. Way to ruin a space for women. Your friends should be ashamed. Thank you for calling them out on it. They need to read this thread.

ohfourfoxache · 07/07/2019 02:36

Being gay and being misogynistic arsewipes are not mutually exclusive

MyShinyWhiteTeeth · 07/07/2019 02:38

I had a gropey gay friend who was forever grabbing women's boobs. He seems to think it very humorous. I don't ever have platonic women friends do this. Just because he's gay is supposed to make it acceptable? Maybe he wants his balls grabbed in response?

He's been slapped a few times and had drinks tipped over him but it's not seemed to stop him.

overnightangel · 07/07/2019 02:41

Pair of dickheads

ThumbWitchesAbroad · 07/07/2019 02:50

It doesn't matter if they're gay, they were objectifying the women and girl, reducing them to nothing more than the size of their breasts.
No one "deserves" negative attention - that's victim blaming of the highest order and they're just abusing their male privilege.

They can't hide behind being gay and therefore not being sexually attracted to the women - their behaviour was very bad and they should both own it and feel ashamed of themselves, not try to get out of it.

ThumbWitchesAbroad · 07/07/2019 02:53

AND, if they do read this and refute it on the grounds that all answers are from a bunch of women, then it just PROVES their misogyny and you should probably dump them because they're NOT actually friends.

Greensleeves · 07/07/2019 02:56

Being gay is immaterial. This type of predatory leering has nothing to do with sexual attraction, it's about power and the pleasure of making women and girls feel small and uncomfortable.

Your friend is a vile misogynistic bully.

AverageMummy · 07/07/2019 02:57

Misogynistic/ aggressive / harassing behaviour
It’s happened to me & it makes me feel just as awful & self conscious

You did the right thing

Assuming this isn’t a DM journo creating a fake story to discredit pride....