Awkward situation at football practise..

[footballmum87]

Usually dh brings dd to football but tonight he was late in so I brought dd while he stays home with the other dc and does dinner and bath.
Getting out the house for an hour at this time feels like a spa break, the training area overlooks the water and it's lovely sitting in the silence. I even managed to get one of the few spots right next to the pitch so I've a perfect view of dd.
So far so good then an elderly gentleman comes over and knocks on the window to say his dgs is training and can he sit in the car with me 😕 I don't recognise him but he says his wife has popped to the shops in the car and left him here. The dc don't need to be supervised at training so he could have went with her. It's also been bloody freezing here all day and he's out with just a sports hoody on with no jacket/gloves etc.
I stuttered and made a pathetic feeble excuse about needing to make a private call and that I wasn't comfortable having anyone in the car
He looked taken aback but went off and now keeps walking past my car.
What would you have done? I feel like a bitch for not wanting some random bloke in the car ruining my hours peace but it seems really mean 😕

This man would only push the boundaries because you are more vulnerable than he is. If you were bigger and capable of overpowering him, he would not beg to sit in your car.

@SomepeopleareTERFSgetoverit

NZ, that apparent utopia of female safety, was where Grace Millane’s life was taken from her.

Well done, OP. He should not have asked you. You went with your gut and said No Thank You.

Read The Gift of Fear if you need further confidence that you were right.

Exactly!

A woman was raped by a man on a subway train last month and other passengers stood by, watched and filmed it. Doesn't matter how busy it is, it happens

Ok, so that's one. How many more?

It is really important people understand risk properly.

Nobody is obliged to let a strange man sit in their car.

Nobody is obliged to 'understand risk properly' (according to the precepts of some random off the internet). We can just say 'No' because we want to sit alone in our car.

What the actual fuck? What kind of a weirdo asks a random person if they can sit in their car?

I wouldn't have let him in either, because I wouldn't want a stranger sitting in my car. I bet he wouldn't have asked a man!

@SomepeopleareTERFSgetoverit

NZ, that apparent utopia of female safety, was where Grace Millane’s life was taken from her.

Well done, OP. He should not have asked you. You went with your gut and said No Thank You.

Read The Gift of Fear if you need further confidence that you were right.

The Gift of Fear. Gavin de Becker.

A life saver of a book, that can be bought for a fiver and can literally save a life.

I lived abroad (mainland Europe)working in finance many years ago.
I was living in a company apartment and got casually friendly with a man in his 60's that spoke excellent English and was very well travelled.
We would chat as I often met him on the way in , past his apartment which was ground floor and was near the foyer.

Anyway one evening he wanted to show me an artefact from his travels and I calmly followed him into his apartment and listened to him tell me something about it.

Suddenly the hair on my neck stood on end and on my arms, hard to describe as it was so sudden and so strong and I was suddenly struck with a dry throat and the most intense urge of pure fear and adrenaline screaming at me to get the fxxk out of there.

Extraordinary.

I remember looking at him like this😳 and backed out to the door mumbling something and was gone.

That is 32 years ago and I can remember it clearly.

I never stopped and spoke again and was moved by the company 2 weeks later.

HR were great.

He never made any move on me at all, but I was struck with impending fear.

Reading the Gift of fear definitely crystallised that I had sensed someone that meant me harm.

I have no doubt of that.

It chills me to remember this.

Channel Bros what was that ring “I owe you nothing nothing nothing at all” often sing in my head when turning down things I don’t want to do to override the female socialisation!

You did exactly the right thing op. And even more so after your update.

@BoredZelda

A woman was raped by a man on a subway train last month and other passengers stood by, watched and filmed it. Doesn't matter how busy it is, it happens

Ok, so that's one. How many more?

It is really important people understand risk properly.

If she doesn't let him in the car then it's zero risk.

@BoredZelda

It is really important people understand risk properly

It’s really important that people stop telling women to ignore their instincts and let random men into their car.

This is basic shit that shouldn’t need explaining.

I'd have let him in without a doubt, but not saying YWU to say no. It's your space to share or not as you please.

Bloody hell, you absolutely did the right thing
Hope you are OK OP

@lljkk

I'd have let him in without a doubt, but not saying YWU to say no. It's your space to share or not as you please.

Would you really have let some random bloke get in your car with you?

Sorry if I’ve missed this upthread . But have any of the “ just be kind “ posters explained why this man didn’t approach any of the cars that contained other men?

The OP stays that there were 4-5 cars parked on the pitch side and many others in a large car park . Are we to assume that NONE of these cars contained male occupants ?

Any man with only decent, honourable intentions would surely approach a man for help. So therefore I conclude that he was not a safe person and the OP made a very wise decision.

I NEVER a stop if I’m alone and random men ask me for help. Because if it’s a busy place there would be men / couples around who they should ask first. And if it’s a quiet place then no decent man with a shed of awareness would approach a woman.

This has saved me from a lot of time wasters or worse.

No doubt someone will come along and tell me how sorry they are for me being so suspicious of half the human race. Well live as woman for 60 years and then come back and judge me.

I think we need to recognise (and most of us here do) that by far the most effective way to address risk is low-level avoidance. And that risk has always been present in life and social norms are there for a reason.

There is a need for constant recalibration of the balance between freedom, risk and social norms, as our lives, circumstances and societies change. But imagining that we live in personal or societal risk-free bubbles, or can cast aside social taboos with impunity, just because we understand statistics better than the next person, is naive.

Risk isn't calculated only by looking at incidents that did happen. Evaluation relies on accounting for all those avoided too.

And I picked up the odd male hitchhiker in my youth. I was fine. Was that sensible? It was not.

@lottiegarbanzo

And I picked up the odd male hitchhiker in my youth. I was fine. Was that sensible? It was not.

No, probably not but you approached them, slightly different senerio with a random man without any children, at a children's sports lesson, knocking on a lone woman's car window asking to sit with her

Yes I suppose. They waved, I stopped, so request / response but not a request solely aimed at me, or women, yes.

But I presume he was a dad from football? OK, the op didn't know him because she doesn't normally go, but he probably didn't know that tbf.

Still odd though @Kikkoman, there must have been men sitting in their car waiting, why not approach them? Or perhaps he had and they said no too
Who knows

@Kikkomam

But I presume he was a dad from football? OK, the op didn't know him because she doesn't normally go, but he probably didn't know that tbf.

A 70yo dad for his kid’s football?

Or a granddad I think the op said.

I often ended up sitting in cars with three or four blokes at football practice!

If he was a 'football dad' he'd probably have known the other football dads, would he not? Better than he'd know 'random woman who doesn't normally come to football'.

If he was a decent human being he'd have chosen a man to ask, regardless.

A thing I don't understand is that there were 4 or 5 cars parked close together in these premier 'pitch-view' spaces. Yet after OP declined strange man's request, he walked around outside her car, rather than asking one of the other drivers / families to let him in.

So are we saying he wasn't a football dad/grandad but a random weirdo?

And yes, I'd have let in a man I knew as a fellow 'football parent' and had talked to before. Say if the weather had turned and he was out in the rain, waiting to be collected at the end. Even if I'd rather have the hour to myself to read, work etc. I'd view that as part of being a fellow football parent and a penalty of having nabbed a prime parking space.