Is there any woman who hasn’t experienced male harrassment

[Twintub]

I was thinking about this and was initially thinking things have massively improved since I was young in the 80’s. I experienced flashers, a teacher tried to kiss me in high school he was married baby on the way, a pub boss whose girlfriend worked with him tried to kiss and grope me and another middle aged boss in my late 20s that pulled my trousers down at a night away for work. There were many more. Now I’m in my 40s I thought I don’t get bothered much but then I remembered 2 other pre covid instances. One late night train a drunk guy tried to chat to friend she politely said she wasn't interested and he got Aggressive calling her a speccy lesbian. Another instance my friend and I in a pub and a middle aged drunk man obviously on a business trip chatted up my friend she wasn’t interested I very nicely said we are just having a chat he turned on me and called me an ugly bitch He wasn’t talk h to me and I wasn’t a patch on her etc etc his work mates dragged him away.

What amazes me is men behave like this bit raise daughters who in turn get treated like this.

Off topic but worth stating it can go other ways...Ds who is blond went to UAE...dubai...sharjah etc to visit friends when he was about 24 years old....was groped constantly by other men and even had an attempted rape at the youth hostel..woke up to find a huge man trying to rape him in his bed...no locks on the doors etc...ended up barricading the door with a wardrobe...rang me in tears...I told him to get out fast and book a hotel and put it on my credit card....

@Roussette My "she" comment related to the abhorrent Guardjan front page from yesterday. Izzard "upgraded to she" above a load of pictures of women murdered by men.

It makes me question their motives when they publish anything pro-women nowadays.

Ok thanks.

My mum was sexually assaulted on the bus recently, she is in her 60s!! She managed to take a picture of the man and when she reported it to the police, they asked her if she did anything to encourage him 😕

@Givemeabreak88

My mum was sexually assaulted on the bus recently, she is in her 60s!! She managed to take a picture of the man and when she reported it to the police, they asked her if she did anything to encourage him 😕

That’s awful. Sorry your mum went though that.

The police are useless. Once a man followed me for 2 hours across trains and was intensely staring at me. Prior to this, he had approached me and starting going on about my appearance, where I told him to leave me alone. Reported to police where the officer said “so nothing actually happened, he was just looking at you?”

They rung me back the next day to say they identified the guy as he was previously arrested for sexually assaulting girls on trains!

I can believe that some women have not been exposed to any sexual abuse etc. However you must have seen it on other women or girls? Even at school I can remember the girls with breasts being constantly teased, bra strap pinging, elbow touching. At university I can remember boys calling one of the students “melons” rather than use her name. At running club a group of mixed sex runners and van driver shouts to some of the younger girls “hey sexy”. I can go on and on and I’ve not even started with pubs and clubs.

I've been pretty lucky and not experienced anything particularly awful and now I'm middle aged and invisible. But when younger I've been followed by a young man on his bike, shouted at from cars several times, had a subtle squeeze/stroke from a manager when I was minuting a meeting, and had a few creepy men be rather pushy and intimidating. Plus a couple of men getting stroppy with me and a friend as we weren't interested in them.

As a younger single woman I often socialised in groups with more men than women, and they were always walking me home and looking out for me, so I probably was protected. Not that I should have had to deal with it.

I’ve just thought of a couple of things that hadn’t even really registered. In my twenties, a friend of my now husband asking what I was like in bed. Someone at my wedding who was the boyfriend of a friend remarking on my breasts. Another friend of my husband saying ‘ I bet she’s got great tits.’

I’ve been groped numerous times in pubs/clubs.

Lucky enough to have only experienced relatively low level harassment, albeit by both men and women.

Also just remembered when I was a young teenager a local taxi driver used to slow down and stare at me every time he drove past me. Very creepy.

This is heartbreaking to read through - and then to realise that these things happened to me.
FIrst boyfriend :- if you loved me you'd give me a blowjob. Same guy coaxed me into sex in the same way - even though I was not comfortable with it at all.
A neighbour walked me home from a club one night, then proceeded to kiss me and grind against me until he came " Look what you made me do"
A manager in work when I was leaving a night out and hugging people turned his head and kissed me on the lips.
Guys playing breast cricket in a club - I saw him coming and tipped his beer over him. I was kicked out of the club by security.

I worked in a male environment for a long time - I almost became immune to the comments. So much so that a few years ago I was at an event with 2 guys - one told me I had a "great arse" and the other called him out on it. My immediate response was to dismiss the second guy's concern.

It's scary to think that I dismissed those as things that just happen - and I had a very stable father figure who taught me to not take any crap. Just goes to show.

I once met a lad on a night out who was a friend of one of my male friends. They told me he was housesitting for a family member and was having a party there after the club. Told me friends were going, had already set off, so I walked with this lad back to his family members house, nobody else was there. I felt very uncomfortable and ended up having sex with him. I felt like I couldn’t say no, it was very strange and I was upset afterwards. They had obviously plotted for him to get me on my own.

I have been harrassed several times. Mostly small incidents where men yelling out of cars, trying too hard in clubs when drunk, touching my bum when walking past.

My main story though was a work colleague who I actually got sacked 8 years ago. I was 17 and this particular colleague was friendly at first but overtime started getting more creepy with things such as getting my number off someone and sending multiple texts, following me around at work, making inappropriate comments saying I was good looking, had a nice arse etc. Because of my age I just accepted it as he was 8 years older than me and kind of felt awkward to bring it up to management but it took a step too far when he made a comment saying how he would tell people he raped me. That shift I asked to leave early because he was offering to walk with me for me to catch my bus home and this walk is very dark and scary as it is. I was on shift with him (and others) the next day and told the duty manager to not leave him alone with me. This comment I made sparked a formal meeting with me to see what had happened, and he was suspended then sacked for sexual harassment.

I did have an awful few months where he reappeared and managed to overturn the dismissal as I wasn’t made aware that he was reappearing and was invited to what I was told just a ‘team’ meeting on the phone and was actually a meeting for his appeal to get my side again so I didn’t turn up with any witnesses, evidence. I just had my word and they overturned it. It was horrible. But this definitely made me more wise as a person, so I submitted a grievance regarding a few things I wasn’t made aware of and to basically go in with evidence and my witnesses because this put me under a huge amount of stress for about 4 weeks when I had to work with him again (I requested to not work the same shifts as him). Thankfully, with my grievance, the decision again was made to dismiss him. I’ll never forget how badly the company I worked for then handled it though.

Sorry I didn’t mean to go this deep but I guess this post and the recent death has made me think of these particular times.

I'm 28 and have not experienced male harassment or even come close to. There's obviously a lot of women out there who have been, but I think the numbers are exaggerated and are still small compared to those who have not been.

Well my 3yer old had a little boy ask to see her privates at school just before lockdown. Discovered he'd done it to several girls and some boys. Kicked up quite a fuss with words like 'lawyers" dropped in, and calling the other mums, before they realised I meant it to stop.

So the very idea that a 30yr old has never 🙊🙉🙈 it either to self or others is fantastical to me. Either - as other's suggest - they actually don't know its happened to them... or she is a he.

I've received unwanted male attention - as young as 12 from strangers, as young as 5 from a male relative. I've been followed until women's toilets, groped in public, flashed at, masturabated at (was with 2 other friends at the time), followed in a car when I was on foot, rubbed up against. I was on a staff night out summer 2019 dancing in a large group of colleagues and a random bloke stuck his hand down the back of my jeans and into my knickers, as quick as a flash. Our whole group was asked to leave the premises when things kicked off.

Thankfully, my male
Colleagues were equally as outraged as my female, so yes, we know NAMALT. But too many are.

I'm not particularly attractive btw - average looking, but that's not really what this is about, is it?

I've been harassed, groped, pressured, frightened, followed, assaulted and made to feel afraid

@PickleC

I think it is so normalised in society that its only if you turn the sexes of the victim and perpetrator around that you really see how crazily disturbing this all is. How mad it is that this is how we live. Can I imagine middle aged women regularly targetting an all boys school to flash them, or cornering a schoolboy in a park or library or touching up a boy on a school trip? Absolutely not, but that happened to us at school. Can I imagine a woman clearly masturbating next to a man on a tram - no, but that happened to me. Yelling out of cars, commenting walking past, trying to grab them cycling by, scaring men into altering behaviour. No. Its inconceivable. But that is routine for women.

Even the fact I feel lucky never to have been sexually assaulted .... what man ever has to think 'well I just feel lucky no woman has attacked me'. The act doesn't have to have taken place to put inhibitions on your life, its that it could and is so prevalent that changes how you live and your risk evaluation

This is such a good post.

Well my 3yer old had a little boy ask to see her privates at school just before lockdown. Discovered he'd done it to several girls and some boys.

Wow. Safeguarding red flags there. I hope the little boy's home environment is being investigated as asking those types of questions at that age is beyond concerning.

My first experience of it was in infants school (boys taking every opportunity to lift up girls' skirts or pull their knickers down) and it continued throughout primary school.
Secondary school was a huge relief, as it was an all-girls school, but outside of school it was rife - groups of boys (and, I might add, men) catcalling as I walked by on the pavement, boys groping at the scout and guides disco etc.
I was waiting for a bus shortly after I got my first job (age 18) and a bloke wouldn't leave me alone, slobbering over me "give us a kiss love" you know the sort of thing.
At 17 I was groped by a doctor and asked to strip off to my bra and knickers to stand up and take an eye test! I thought it odd but trusted them. I only twigged afterwards (about 5 years afterwards!) that it had been inappropriate.
In my early 20s the local vicar made a pass at me and gave a big, slobbery kiss full on, with tongue - I'd been to see him because I was recently bereaved and very vulnerable. I was horrified, apologised to him, thought I must have been sending out the wrong signals etc. Again, it was only later on that I realised what had actually happened.

Plenty more occurrences since then, but I won't bore you with the details. I'm very fortunate that I have never been violently attacked, only harassed, groped, etc. But, from my point of view and experience, there are too many males who view females as game.

Isn't it awful that we have to be grateful we've only been harrassed and groped and not violently attacked.
Says it all really....

Just... horrific

Yeah, I'm afraid I'm another one who has experienced it from very early on right up to now, varying from being told to 'get your tits out' by builders when I was 14, in my school uniform and flat chested, just trying to walk home from school (we didn'thave a car), to more sinister events in my late teens and 20s. All of my female friends that I'm close enough to have those conversations with have experienced this horrific stuff too. I'm nearly 40 and have developed a bit of a 'f* off' scowl for when I need to walk anywhere at night now.
It's horrible to hear more and more about this but it's so wrong that it has taken a murder to bring this to the media/ government's attention.

Very little. Saw a flasher in the park once lying naked on the grass in my early teens; in my late teens a guy on a nightbus put his hand on my thigh, I was annoyed, told him to stop and moved downstairs. When guys chatted me up (admittedly not common) and I turned them down, none of them turned nasty on me. I went around late and night and seldom felt scared or threated - but I know I was lucky.

I have a theory that, spending my teens and my 20s with cropped hair, generally dressed in a weird indie kid/grungy style, and being small and flat chested, I fortunately seldom registered on the 'woman' radar of grabby, harrass-y men.

I am 56 years old.
I have 2 stories
My sister has 4 stories
My mum had 3 stories
My mum in law had 1 story
My eldest sister has 1 story
My step daughter has 1 story
My grandaughter has 1 story
Not even mentioned friends ...........