To not find this relentless sexual harassment funny in the slightest

[Alysskea]

I have a feeling I'm going to get a roasting for this but I'm feeling pissed off to be quite honest.

Im in a holiday at the moment in a hot country, Europe, and went all inclusive as it saves money in the long run.

For context I am 27, married, gay as the day is long. I've never flirted in my actual life.

So thing is every time I go to the bar to ask for a f-ing glass of water I have to subject myself to at least 5 minutes of sexual harassment. 'Hello sexy, how are you'. 'Why just water, don't you want a sex on the beach?'. Constant jibes, all of them about my body. Countless jokes about getting me drunk (again, I wanted WATER given it's 28 degrees outside).

I'm just so cranky, my head is pounding from dehydration but I have trauma in my past and I literally can't cope with this. How does everyone else manage it, or even think it's funny? Is it just me?

Off topic but I would LOVE to do a swim trek hol x

Some of these experiences are shocking.
I remember being in Turkey as a teenager with my family and had so much disgusting sexual harassment every time my parents back was turned.

Definitely make a note of the staff members names and write a trip advisor review. Be careful about complaining as they may retaliate sadly...

Tunisia was horrific when I went with a friend, a while ago now, also lesbians (though not together). We travelled a bit. We had men sitting down next to us every time we stopped, had stones thrown at us when we stopped to give pens to children, a cockroach thrown into our food, were groped by hotel owners, and in one hotel where we didn't have an en suite there was a gang of men outside our door all evening making it frightening to go to the toilet. My friend wrote to the president of Tunisia when we got back asking him to keep his men under control, but I don't think it seems to have worked. I thought Tunisia was quite progressive too for educating girls.

I went to Turkey once and the harassement was unbelievable. I have never gone back.

Where ever it’s happening it’s horrible

its difficult to feel confident and appear not intimidated when you don’t know a place. I lived and worked in North Africa it took me a while to get used to how to respond but I shouldn’t have had to get to that point. It’s sad because it puts so many people off

the worse harassment for me was in Cuba and India and the least Thailand

Sadly western women travelling alone are seen as being easy as for many cultures it’s inconceivable that women would travel alone regardless it’s no excusing harassment

No, that was me who said that, and I did so with the intention of diverting the speculation that the OP was referring to a Muslim country, as the two countries in Europe that I was referring to are Kosovo and Bosnia Herzegovina, both of which are largely landlocked and do an unlikely destination for a bucket and spade holiday.
And “Moslem” might be offensive to you, but it’s not a pejorative, and in my case it was a typo or possible autocorrect.
And for the record, Cyprus is in Asia.
Sorry to derail OP.

Do it! The Turkish short swim trip is 2-3 1500m swims a day, which is fine, and in beautiful surroundings, loads of Greek/Lycian ruins, amazing food, warm clear seas.

I would love to do another but am going to have to wait until DS is a bit older as I need my annual leave to cover school holidays/childcare at the moment.

Is this from staff or other guests?

Staff... report to management. Tell them they make you feel uncomfortable ,unsafe and you are being sexually harassed .You can't enjoy your holiday and your review will reflect that.

Guests...also inform management, but there's not much they can do. However you have every right to tell them to fuck off or have a few stock phrases to throw at them in a similar vein.

Moslem is offensive, almost as bad as calling black people ‘ne*s, due to its usein colonial times.

Just stop it please.

And I never said which continent Cyprus is in so your comment is unnecessary.

@Palmfrond trying to look clever about Cyprus being in Asia makes you look like a dick who - well, thinks they’re clever! Geographically yes, but culturally and politically Cyprus is much more aligned with Europe.

Urgh I had this in Egypt. Never going there again. Worked hard to buy myself a holiday get there and non stop sexual harassment 🙄. Fuck that.

this is getting a bit tedious, but I mentioned Cyprus because I made the post that @Indicatrice quoted before the OP divulged that the country she was in was Cyprus: hence two countries, neither of which are Cyprus, because Cyprus is in Asia. Hopefully that will be less confusing for you now.

Just to be clear the people who have been harassing me are not Muslim. They’re European. I have been harassed by a hell of a lot more Western European’s than Muslim people. The only demographic I’m mad at right now is men.

Using the (admittedly obsolete) spelling “Moslem” is “almost as bad” as calling someone the n-word??
No. No it isn’t.

OP no more being polite to this man! Cold hard stare & 'just water' repeated. Act frosty and rude. Then you will get left alone. No nervous laughter. No smiles. Go for rude. Because that's exactly what he is doing. Except you are the customer. Who is going to leave a rip roaring awful review on Tripadvisor for your hotel for letting their staff behave like this.

People were sharing their stories of harassment....which happened to be almost exclusively in Muslim countries.

What a funny coincidence, eh?

Just be cold and rude - don't smile, turn away from him when he's being 'funny'. If there's another member of staff there go to them instead. He'll get the message.

Cyprus (as apposed to Northern Cyprus) has been part of European Union since 2004. So not an Asian country. I went there for a holiday with adult DD some years ago and remember we felt intimidated in a large empty restaurant by the male waiters to not leave it, which we wanted to do - we being the only people actually there! It was very strange! I think they just did not want the place to look completely empty! We just sat there for ages!

The amount of Islamophobia on this thread is disgusting. Muslim men are not universally more primitive or savage than European men, and nor are they innately prone to harrassing behaviour. Harrassment happens everywhere to different people. You all sound like civilising colonisers complaining about the barbaric natives. I bet you all pride yourselves on not being racist either.

And you’re not getting harrassed because women are supposedly seen as ‘second class citizens’ in Islam. A lot of the time, you’re getting harrassed because your forefathers spent hundreds of years globally lauding the fact that they were rich and their white-skinned women were beautiful and desirable and objects of high value. Nothing to do with the position of women in Islam. I’m sympathetic to and sorry to hear all experiences of harrassment, but the flattening of these complex dynamics to ‘Muslim country = bad’ is tedious.

As a non-white woman, I had a lovely and comfortable time in Turkey - but was harrassed in Paris and Italy, and am routinely harrassed in the UK. Funny that!

Sorry, OP, that you’re experiencing this. I hope it eases up and you’re able to enjoy what remains of your holiday.

Sorry you're having your holiday spoiled.

I've found just keeping polite and clear can help e.g. "I don't like your comments, please stop harassing me." / "I'm not interested in your opinions" / "I am not interested in talking with you, I am here only to enjoy my drink". Hotel managers can also be more interested than you might think, because they know you'll leave a review. Again, clear and firm "Your bar staff members X and Y have been sexually harassing me with endless comments, please ask them to stop because they are spoiling my holiday."

I had a similar experience some years ago as a women in her thirties. By day two I was fed up. Next time it happened and was in front of a couple of older male colleagues than the young barman I looked him straight in the eye and said very loudly " How would you feel if someone said that to your Grandmother, Mother, Sister, or Aunt? I expect you would be very upset if they were treated so disrepectfully. It worked and as as I walked away I heard the one of the older staff definatly having a go at him.

@DoYouFeelLucky
“And you’re not getting harrassed because women are supposedly seen as ‘second class citizens’ in Islam. A lot of the time, you’re getting harrassed because your forefathers spent hundreds of years globally lauding the fact that they were rich and their white-skinned women were beautiful and desirable and objects of high value. Nothing to do with the position of women in Islam. I’m sympathetic to and sorry to hear all experiences of harrassment, but the flattening of these complex dynamics to ‘Muslim country = bad’ is tedious.”

Sexual harassment as “revenge” for colonialism?? What an odd, and also strangely racist, idea.

And while I agree that there is some reprehensible xenophobia on this thread, it seems fairly clear that it’s not without basis in lived experiences.
Having spent many years living in the Middle East, I know that there are very complex dynamics at play, and I also know that there is a lot of tension between urban cosmopolitanism and provincial traditionalism, and that many young men drawn into the economy of the tourism sector will be from the latter background.
Of those who come from a provincial or rural background, to say that their religion, whatever it might be, does not inform their culture, or is even believed by them to be synonymous with it (correctly or not) I think is to either misunderstand the reality of the situation or even perhaps to make excuses for, or is denial of, their behaviour and the experiences of female tourists.

How is today going OP?

It's not smile & wave- it's cold & rude for you!!

@Indicatrice still waiting for you to apologies for implying I was islamophobic when you incorrectly misquoted me using someone else's words.