How do men get away with this?

[leavethingsalone]

My friend's daughter is absolutely stunning (and a lovely modest girl). She's 18. She often gets told by strangers how beautiful she is.

That's all great, but she's recently started going clubbing and has come home upset because of the attention.

Most recently she was dancing and a guy came up behind her and was grinding on her from behind. He wouldn't leave her alone. Luckily her friends saw what was going on and stopped it!

I'm sure this happens to lots of other young women too!

She's (hopefully) off to uni in September and has been looking forward to this, but is now starting to feel unsafe as her parents won't be nearby to look out for her!

When will men realise that this simply isn't appropriate behaviour and that women should feel safe when they are out?

I had this happen to me at the same age. The difference in my situation though is that I was a bit drunk and was finding it hilarious, despite not fancying the bloke doing the grinding. The man was in his mid thirties I’d say.

I was out with a large group of friends - about 12 of us including my best friend and her older sister, her boyfriend and his 4 male friends. One of the men saw what was happening and came to ask if I was ok, and I can remember inanely laughing and grinding back on this guy and telling my would be rescuer I was fine.

Before I knew it, this guy was also fondling my boobs and whispering in my ears, and it was only then that I started to think about how vulnerable I was, and the potentially dangerous situation I was in - maybe I was sobering up. I told him to stop and to leave me alone, but he kept on telling me how much I was loving it, and how much he needs to fuck me. I tried to get away, tried to push him off of me, but he pulled me tighter against him.

Fortunately, all 4 men from our group swooped over and told this guy in no uncertain terms to get off of me and leave me alone, but he wouldn’t let go of me. They grabbed hold of him, and managed to prize him off of me and keep hold of him, and got some of my friends to get the club security to come over - they ejected this guy from the club straightaway.

The usual response is that we need to 'educate men' as if they don't know or realise what they're doing. I don't know the answer to how to stop this, short of chemical castration. So depressing.

"Men should know better" Yes. But they (not all obviously) don't.

We'll all be a long time dead before anything changes, and I have my doubts that it ever will.

The truth is you can't rely on other to look after you or save you. It's shit and its unfair but it's part of being a woman. It shouldn't be this way but it is.

Teaching women to be assertive isnt victim blaming, its just good sense. Because teaching men not to be pigs has proven fruitless

Yep patriarchy again, the gift that never stops giving.
I'm gay, when I used to club at a large gay club with my gay male friend I often intervened to get rid of predatory straight men who were harassing young women , who were mostly straight I think. We did have straight people in our clubs before anyone asks it wasn't a problem.
I quite enjoyed it, I used to grab the guys arm and say something like " leave my girlfriend alone. " The nasty men always backed off, terrified you see of my non gender conforming appearance. Score 1 for looking like a butch lesbian.
I was always aware my 6 foot big male friend was right behind me, in case of trouble .

This happened to me in college and university too. I just stopped clubbing after a few times because of the groping.

Bouncers need to be better trained at spotting inappropriate behaviour and dealing with it quickly.

Your dd is an adult. She has to cope in an adult world and there are ways of dealing with this stuff. She shouldn't have to, but staying in, not being part of society, is no way to live.

She'll learn to dance with friends, to go clubbing with a mixed group, men & women. she learn a death stare and how to drive creeps away with contempt. She'll learn that sharp elbows and spike heels have their uses.

If a guy is pestering she needs to approach the bouncer. Usually (from memory although not sooooo many years ago!) they will give the guy a warning and if it carries on they quite enjoy chucking him out (especially for a pretty girl).

She shouldn’t have to kick him in the shins or otherwise resort to violence.

While she may need to learn to be assertive the reality is that there are almost always people around to stop blokes from being a nuisance to pretty young women.

It happens on the tube a fair bit. The only advantage of wearing heels was to give these men an 'accidental' trip to the toe surgeon

I don't condone violence but when that kind of thing happened to my dd (a guy stroked her bum in a club) she swiftly whacked him round the head with her handbag.

Elbow, or grab a hand and dig nails in and tell them to fuck off. Nails and heels are good. But making a noise is usually helpful because then everyone turns around and stares at them and they usually slink away, once headbutted someone because I genuinely got really scared. I am one of those people who is always polite to people, cheerful and chatty and I am absolutely not violent in any way. I really resent that I had to physically fend off perverts as a young woman. Scares the life out of me for my DD, I don’t want her to experience that.

I’m not good looking, still had to put up with this shit. Fucking men.

That's INSANE!

Some men are horrible. Unfortunately these men are often the ones who visit clubs.

My DD is also moving through the phase of young adulthood, but decided pretty quickly that clubs are not for her. She is tall, has danced since she was three and still teaches dance part time, so raises attention on the dance floor.

She has graduated and had a ball at university, all without clubbing.
It shouldn't have to be like this, in an ideal world women should be able to go where they like and have freedoms, but we don't live in an ideal world.

And although it is horrendous that this happens to women the fact remains that it does.
There have been some good suggestions on this thread, I am sure your DD will find a way to navigate through this

To provide a counterpoint, THREE of my male friends have been beaten up on nights out, and all three attacks were totally unprovoked. I believe each one was by a group. None of them had ever been on a fight before or since, and none of them are aggressive guys at ALL. They all ended up cut and bruised, esp. on their faces. Just saying that men get a bunch of crap too.

Unfortunately this is real life and men are animals

This is a horrible victim-blaming post.

She was sexually assaulted, stop attacking her response. Many women shut down when assaulted, have you really never heard of flight, fight or freeze?

Women criticising other women's response to sexual assault is part of the problem.

Tell her to go to alternative music clubs or student places. The men there are normally much nicer.

Uni clubs can be different, if they're on campus they are restricted to student id holders only which means everyone in there are the same age usually. I think the men who do this tend to be the 30-40 year olds hanging out in clubs waiting for 16 year old girls.

This is why I used to go clubbing in gay clubs. I could let my hair down and have fun without being harassed.

Whenever I went to a straight club (other than Fabric, that was fine), even though I was always with dh, the minute he stepped away (to go get drinks or to the loo) someone was pestering me. Fucking annoying.

I was a dancer too, in the sense that your daughter is, and the reason I used to go clubbing was because I loved dancing so very much. But the harassment did put me off at one point, and I stopped going in my early twenties. Such a pity. I did a lot of dancing at the student union, at the club nights in the big hall there, but there was no harassment. It was all at public clubs after leaving uni.

If people choose to deal with this by avoiding nightclubs, that's a legitimate response.

Women shouldn't be bullying other women about how they choose to respond to the threat of sexual harassment and assault.

There's a good bit of commercial pressure that can be applied by women not taking their business to venues that tolerate this behaviour.

Fuck sake, always one.

I'm not young, far from stunning (dumpy middle age woman) and I had some creep rubbing himself against my bum on a busy tube train. I turned over and it was some young-ish bloke in a suit, really menacing and unpleasant looking - shouted at him and he just stared. Fucking unbelievable! Should have reported it but was very busy and did not want the hassle, bad, I know...

There is always one 🙄
I’m not blaming her BUT ..

I think the better question is "why should she have to know how to handle situations like this?".

Your comment puts the blame on an 18 year old girl for not being sure how to behave when a man essentially assaulted her.