To feel like men are ruining my big move the city

[Chestnut134]

Last year, I broke up with my ex of a decade and off the back of this I decided to move to the nearest big city and rent myself a city centre apartment. I found a place that was slap bang in the city centre, was really excited to live the city life for a bit whilst selling up the house I co-owned with my ex and plan out my next steps. I’m in my early 30s and since uni I’ve been grafting at my career and never really did the city living thing.

The thing I’ve been most shocked about it the amount of harassment by men on an almost daily basis I’ve encountered. A few examples:

• in the local Tesco express in the middle of the day and a man refusing to let me walk down an isle unless I gave him my phone number. When I said no he persisted.
• walking home from a local event in the evening and men shouting at me from across the road commenting on what I’m wearing in a suggestive way and laughing
• man standing unnecessarily close on public transport
• two men shouting out of a car window something I couldn’t quite hear as I left the gym one morning

These are just a few examples. No they’re no life alternating and can be ignored but honestly it just grates on me that I can’t seem to go about my daily business without some bloke commenting or just making it a bit more difficult. I walked home from a local bar at 1am the other night (a 10 min walk) and was approached 4 separate times. It just feels ridiculous and I feel like I was so naive moving to the city and expecting to be able to move around freely with no interference. For context, I went to uni in this same city and I do not remember it being like this then.

So AIBU? Do these things seem to be getting worse?

It sucks. There really should be effective laws against the low level but constant harassment that seem so prevalent in cities and big towns. It’s not taken seriously at all.

But city living is worth it (IMO) and you need to develop a few comebacks/thicker skin/etc. and ignore it as much as possible.

I don't know if they are getting worse, but I know it is shit. It is limiting, it is tiring, it is unsettling, it is sometimes properly frightening.

It is shit women still have to worry like this.

Yes it happens all the time and it's shit. I make sure I am home by dark and don't go on public transport alone. I was hassled picking up a takeaway at 7pm on Thursday in the car though. It's so unremarkable I isn't even mention it to my oh.

Agree with you, it’s shit op.

I quite like my own company, and love exploring London but it’s a daily occurrence that men feel entitled to make comments to a lone female.

Its annoying when it’s actually also started to affect how I go about my life, choosing to walk to a further tube to avoid certain areas, or actively just thinking ‘can’t be arsed to go out today, I’ll get something delivered.’

YANBU.I really feel for you. These types of men make me sick and as you've seen they're very far from unusual.

exhausting is definitely the word. It’s unremarkable but irritating. And it’s so annoying that women can’t just exist in spaces.

I’m in my 20s and live in the city and although I have experienced comments like that, it’s definitely less frequently than you have in a short time. So overall it doesn’t impact me but I would say there’s certain routes I don’t take, certain outfits I don’t wear, if I’m walking around by myself which likely is a subconscious coping mechanism of mine

It’s also nonsensical who these types of men target with their comments too. Sometimes I think some men just target those who they assume would be easy targets above anything else. There’s a road I walk down by myself at all times and I have never experienced issues alone - then once my friend and I walked down it at around 9pm and this group of men followed us in a car shouting things and were purposely not moving at a green light to match our walking pace. We ended up taking a different route.

Oh my good how depressing! I moved out of the big city 16 years ago and I’ve got middle aged and invisible since then so I’d kind of forgotten this stuff happens but I went for a walk round the small town I work in now with a younger attractive colleague recently one lunch time and the constant ogling/nudging/comments etc was so oppressive. I can’t believe women still have to put up with this shit and now we can’t even hide in the women’s toilets for a bit of reprieve because they can say the magic ‘I identify as’ words and be in there too. FFS!

@FatFilledTrottyPuss when I was at a local eating place recently I noticed that the toilets were marked as “men’s” and then “women, accessible and non binary” - there are no women’s spaces anymore

It’s probably no consolidation but when you get to a certain age the attention stops.
I hated it so much when I was young; I used to call it ocular rape.
Its heaven when it stops. These days I feel so invisible I should take up a new career as a shop lifter.