To ask how many women have either been sexually harassed in the street in the teenager or have a daughter who has?

[Carla786]

For context I'm Gen Z. I live in a very quiet neighbourhood & through my teens was never harassed. There's lots of building works in my area often but builders have always been fine & so has everyone else. I've never witnessed anyone else my age being harassed either (nor adult women). Some of my friends are the same, some unfortunately not (most don't live in my area)

However, I know this is not typical. I've read so much on here about people being harassed in school uniform, having daughters harassed etc. How common is this? Surveys show pretty high results too...

Was it always like this? Has it got worse or better? I've read some arguments it was worse in 70s-80s, others that online misogyny & porn has made harassment of teens worse.

I have daughters who are young adults .
As a teen in the nineties I was harassed relentlessly but in many ways what we consider as harassment has changed . It sounds terrible but lots of what we experienced as teens was considered at the time as harmless. It wasn’t , but there we are.
For my daughters , harassment from men is a constant , threatening feature of their lives , but it has changed. It’s not so much the builders on building sites , or young men in clubs , as perhaps it was when we were younger . It’s nearly always deluded and mostly married middle aged men who slide into to their world while they’re working their Saturday jobs , men who make sneaky comments or engineer situations to make little comments when nobody is around.
My daughter had a customer (in his fifties) in retail who shopped and chatted with his wife , before returning minutes later alone , to tell my 14 year old (alone on the counter )that he hadn’t actually forgotten anything, he just wanted to see her breasts one more time. This kind of thing happens ALL THE TIME to my girls. Absolutely sickening. and personally, I do not know a single woman whose life has been unaffected by sexual harassment . For my children it’s a daily threat, but they have been lucky enough to work in places where incidents like these are taken very seriously.
I cannot unfortunately say the same for the police. When my teen was walking alone with friends in a rural area and one of the group was groped by a jogging man who put his hand up her skirt and ran away , an older female police officer came over to take a statement.
At the end the officer gave a parting remark "well…he might have been a man trying his luck and trying to ‘cop a feel’ rather than a persistent offender " Deeply shocking.

A lot as a teenager/young woman.
No daughters.
And yes, I fully agreed with your other OP the other day.

I grew up with a dad as a farm manager and we had a large farm house next to one of the farms though not one he worked at. To get to the school bus stop I had to walk through the farm and I would get cat called and whistled at by some farmers.
It's only as I have gotten older and realised was only year 8 at the time how gross it was as my parents separated when I was in year 9 and we moved.
It happened a lot as I got older with similar things being cat called, propositioned, followed, but luckily I became almost invisible to men in my thirties and am now 40.

Like many here, growing up in the 80s and 90s cat calling/sexualised comments etc were pretty common. I think it happens less now, but I know that my my daughter and most of her friends have had it happen to them at least once, many whilst walking home in school uniform. I think there is actually some hope for the younger generation in that teenage boys and other teenage girls seem more likely than in my day to agree that it's not OK when female friends complain about it. In my day most of my peers would have brushed it off as a bit annoying but no big deal/just something we have to put up with etc or asked if she wore/did something to provoke it. Obviously it may just be that the teenagers I know are more switched on than average (but I volunteer with teens and tend to overhear quite a bit). What I find most depressing is that adults still seem unwilling to challenge this behaviour even when they are in authority. When DD was cat called by middle aged men drinking outside a pub, whilst walking home from school, I went to speak to the landlord who basically told me I was up tight and it would just have been a bit of 'banter'. When a man on my regular commute repeatedly made sexualised comments to me and other women (including teenage girls on their way to school) the staff told me he was probably just lonely and wanted to chat, and since he 'hadn't actually DONE anything' there was nothing they could do. I like to think that perhaps things will get better as the decent boys I know become the men and they and the (now) teenage girls I know make the rules, but I do worry whether at some point they too will just accept it as 'the way things are'. Otherwise why haven't we got further in my lifetime?

I'm finding the OP's questions and responses on this thread very weird

I used to have to walk past two construction sites every day on my way to 6th form college and it was like running the gauntlet. I used to steel myself to go down those roads. Late 90s. Unfortunately, I can also think of plenty of one-offs including flashing and that weird phenomenon whereby men comment negatively on your appearance. A friend and I were once really menacingly followed by a man late at night who kept saying ‘you two really are dogs, aren’t you?’

Disturbingly, I’d say I got much more of this sort of attention at 12 than I did at, say, 28. And much, much less after that. So I’ve always assumed a lot of this is about power and vulnerability.

Too many times to count as a teenager, younger and older woman, sexual harassment, abuse and violence. On the tube, in the street, walking the dog, at work. I’m 60 and I was sexually harrassed twice last summer, once in France and the other time in the UK. My daughter and her friends still experience it frequently.

I too am surprised by any statistics that indicate less than 100% of women. I was regularly harassed in my youth (mostly shyly trying to mind my own business) and occasionally also in middle age.

My daughter is 11 and I have been horrified to notice signs of it towards her. Men starting to stare/leer at her and a lad a couple of years older trying to strike up conversation with her in the street despite her clearly trying to ignore and walk away.

I grew up in Croydon and was a teenager in the 2000's. I was probably semi-regularly catcalled from the ages of 11 to 20 (including a number of times by van drivers while I was in school uniform). It definitely became much rarer once I hit my early 20's.

I hated it, it felt horrible and intimidating.

I know that.

But in these different regional locations I was walking round by myself while being young and female and in some areas I got a lot of harassment and others I didn't.

Looking back when it did happen in low areas random unkown to me men - bus drivers groups of lads out together or collegues on worksites- other students - were more likely to step in for me or other young women.

I don't know if that's selective memory or not or sheer coincidence but I am wondering if there was less harrisment of women out in public because in those areas men in public tolerated it from other men doing it less.

I was in my teens in the 90s. A man grabbed my breasts in woolworths when I was about 13. Quite a few occasions where men would either horn or try to give me a ride when I was in my school uniform.

My DD (20) has been harassed since she was about 12. Similar for me. I was sexually assaulted as a teenager, luckily rescued before anything worse happened.
Sadly it’s always happened . 😕

To give you an idea of what it used to be like for me, I was overwhelmingly relieved when it eventually stopped and I could walk past a gang of workmen or builders without having to suffer lewd remarks, wolf whistles and the like.

90 percent. Guarantee it

Too many times to count. Can't remember them all although I do remember the particularly threatening and vulgar ones and the ones in which they actually laid hands on me. I'm not even pretty and never have been.

I actually like being 50 for the lack of attention. Sadly it’s now all on my 17 year old dd 🙄. She was verbally sexually harassed on the bus aged 15 whilst wearing a manky school tracksuit so hardly a femme fatale.

Another woman twenty something stepped in and the driver threw him off the bus. Think it’s fortunate hand guns are banned here or I might actually shoot some of these men.

Yes, as a teenager and then a twenty something harassment and catcalling were a regular thing. That was back in the late seventies and early eighties. I'm 59 now and it hasn't happened for a good while, but I guess I am older than the demographic that these scumbags are generally aiming at.

All three of my daughters have had the same thing too.

It's a disgrace. Total objectification of women and very intimidating.

I did from when I was 12. The first time I was on holiday at Butlins in Ayr Scotland. I was in the baths these 2 lads looked about a year or 2 older a bit overweight. They asked me to give them a BJ and grabbing my bum saying oh she’s gorgeous. This was the early 90’s when it wasn’t taken as seriously.

I just ignored them I had been sexually abused when I was younger so it was nothing to me compared to that. I was in a public place so felt safe. I saw them the next day in the park I was playing on a swing and had my glasses on. I’m guessing they thought I was older than I was. But they never spoke to me and I left the park when I saw them.

A few years later when I was in secondary school our school was having a lot of building and painting work done. Some of the builders used to perve over some of us wolf whistling etc. In my school wearing shorts skirts wasn’t a thing thank goodness. Most of us wore our skirts knee or calf length and we wore chino shirts same as the lads. Those stiff collar ones were awful.

Also groped in nightclubs before I had dc. I guess after years of sleep deprivation with 2 neuro diverse dc I am less attractive to those looking for a leg over on a night out and I don’t miss it.

I'm 65 and probably had 'ND' tattooed across my head, because as a (really quite alarmingly young) teenager I got remarks made. I was (and am) plain as the proverbial pikestaff, so I think it was men (and sometimes young boys) seeing a woman who didn't quite fit in and would therefore potentially be glad of any male attention.

It didn't work because what I mostly was, was terrified.

I was born early 70's

developed at 14 I looked about 12 and form then it was constant for a few years (me wearing my school uniform, showing i was still a child did not stop the harassment form men) also from boys of a similar age.

it became less intimidating as I got older. I have been sexually assaulted a number of times in public, would never has reported it as it was just men with wondering hands 😡

We do not want to address that many many men are sexually attracted to and feel it is their right to harass children and very young woman. We want to pretend its only awful men that are in the news and we need to address this

Talking to my ds's girlfriends things haven't changed and they are also having to deal with stepped up male aggression too it really saddens me, less acceptable in some ways (work etc) and the aggression increases

I was a teen in the seventies, you couldn’t walk from home to school without being harassed, men shouting from vans, the bus stops, building sites. Groups of lads on the tube. Groping on the tube. I’m grateful that I have become invisible. My daughters both growl at chaps who try it, apparently it really works.

A lot when I was a teenager in the 1980s. Shouted at from cars, building sites, men & lads in the street. It was so tiresome and made me very cautious when out & about, dreading what I might encounter next.

And that was just outside.

As a teenager in the 90s and a young woman in the 00s, many, many times. Men masturbating on public transport, harassing me in the streets, following me home, undoing my bra on the dancefloor, calling me names if I didn't respond , slapping me if I refused a kiss etc...

It sounds absolutely horrible when I write it, because it was.

To the point I'm not confident at all around men and much prefer women's company.

I have a daughter who is only 6. I hope things have changed but it doesn't seem to be the case.

I was sexually assaulted by strange men three times before I reached my teens. After that, I can't start to count the number of unwelcome comments I received in my teens to 30s, like most young women. They didn't bother me much unless very aggressive and right in my face. What I hated was being grabbed or touched, or having men surrounding me or blocking my path -- this may have been exacerbated by memories of my childhood experiences too. I was sooo glad when this all died away in my 40s.

Constantly harassed as a teen (currently early fifties) Sexually assaulted in the street three times. My daughter has also been harassed numerous times and has been flashed at.