To think almost every woman in the world has suffered some form of sexual harassment by age 30?

[Fearlesssloth]

I was having a conversation with a friend the other day. She claims never to have experienced any kind of sexual harassment at all. She’s 37, grew up in the UK, has lived a normal life. I just don’t believe her. Never been groped, never had a sexual remark made to or about her, never felt threatened by a man trying to chat her up, not even a wolf whistle apparently! In her words, “it must be because I’m so ugly”! Still, I find it hard to believe any woman could get to 37 and escape any kind of sexual harassment. So I’m wondering, AIBU? Has anyone on here never experienced any kind of sexual harassment? I’m a similar age to my friend, and I’m lucky in that I haven’t experienced anything really serious, but all the smaller things do add up and give me the rage at men and their sense of entitlement. When I was about 13 and in my school uniform, a man started touching himself on the seat on the train next to me, another man showed me his erection through his trousers on another train, lots of wolf whistles and sexual comments shouted at me while in school uniform (which is just so gross 🤮 ) this was early 2000s. Anyone know if this stuff still happens a lot to school girls? When I was 16 a man I was giving directions to on the street randomly groped my boob. Worst part about it though was that I instinctively slapped him (which got rid of him sharpish) and my friends acted like I was the unreasonable one, ‘why was I acting crazy’, I ‘need to chill out’ etc. which reinforced the idea that women just have to put up with this stuff. Other times I’ve been cornered by men, pinned to the wall, forcibly kissed, had my bum grabbed SO many times, I caught a man filming me once while I was getting changed in what I thought was a private area. What women have to put up with gives me the absolute rage. I just hope that it’s at least better now than it used to be. I wouldn’t really know cos I’m married and rarely in the drunken kind of situations anymore that a lot of these situations occurred in. I haven’t been wolf-whistled at or harassed in the street for a really long time, but that may be because I’m late 30s and it’s all the school girls that are having to put up with it…So tell me about all your experiences of sexual harassment over the years. And if you are that rare person, like my friend whose never been harassed, tell me why you think that is

@FloraDora2 I'm so sorry

As to the OP...I think that many women probably brush off sexual harassment and don't consider it such (never mind that men would never do the same thing to another man).

Although surely some women must have escaped even low level sexual harassment. I can't imagine it myself, though.

It seemed so prevalent when I was a teenager in the early 00s, and now it's even worse for my daughter and her friends who are young teenagers, and regularly have boys saying they'll rape them (although small mercies, the boys clearly don't mean it), making other nasty comments, and in a few cases, girls I know of have had deepfake AI porn made, and were so blasé about it that it made me want to cry for them.

Why wasn't she as angry as I was?

Probably because she was socialised to consider male sexual attention as something women were lucky to receive from men - see all the "it's a compliment" or "It's flattering" or the hair pulling in school "means he likes you."

There's even a poster saying she hasn't been sexually harassed and qualifying it with assuring us she isn't ugly.

It's not about looks. It's about sexual dominance. Unfortunately, in our much more sexist recent past, women were told to value themselves by how much men were attracted to them.

Even more unfortunately, there are many men and boys who don't realise things have changed and we don't want their bullshit. Nor their dick pic.

I'd say most would, multiple times. When it comes to lower level stuff like catcalling. Then anything from unwanted touch on the hand to full blown rape sadly are widespread.

I suppose some women might not feel like things like catcalling are directly sexual assault or harassment. Often people from the older generation. My Mum was SA'd by a builder as a 12 year old but she doesn't actually see it as such. Strange as that may seem.

Oh yes, bonkers, crazy, shameful women are always shouting harassment when a man blows his nose. It's an epidemic! In hayfever season it's practically chaos with all the honking and hullabaloo.

🤣🤣

My earliest was walking to school in the early 80s aged 11 and this particular house we had to walk past always had the bloke who lived there wanking at the bedroom window at us.
Vile.
Continued from there really.

Women like you, perhaps, should be ashamed for writing off women as bonkers and crazy for simply no longer putting up with harassment from men.

Those pesky women, eh? Ruining things for men so they can't just do a grope without those whingy bitches complaining about it. Women should go back to important things like making their husbands dinner and not talking about trivial things like how almost all of us have been sexually harassed, normally for the first time as a child.

"hullabaloo"

What a great word

My 27 year old niece said none of these things have happened to her. Her mother on the other hand...

I’ve not really had any experience of what you all mention. I can only think of once where I got groped by an Italian on a French sleeper train when I was Interrailing.

I was skinny with short hair & glasses & braces as a teenager. So that probably helped! Glasses in the 80s weren’t especially cool.

I was averagely attractive in my late teens and 20s & still didn’t get any hassle in clubs or bars or out & about.

So I can see her way of thinking. It’s not been an issue in my teen and adult life either. But I don’t think I would travel to India (or Egypt or anywhere that I might get this happening).

I'd be very surprised if there was any woman who had never experienced behaviour that would be considered harassment by another woman. I think where women say its never happened to them, they probably mean that the male behaviour directed at them didn't feel harassing and they didn't suffer. Which is of course their right, but doesn't change the fact the behaviour occurred and may have felt different to another woman.
Perhaps the question would be better phrased as 'have you never experienced any unsolicited male attention directed towards you.' That way you get a sense of the prevelence of the behaviour itself, rather than see it through the filter of individual women's views on how unwelcome it was.

At school I was groped and touched inappropriately repeatedly by the same boy during lessons despite batting his hands off. I was told it was me being disruptive when I told him to stop it loudly.

As an adult I have been upskirted while on a night out, faced unwanted touching and contact on nights out.
During a sexual encounter with someone he started choking me and I had to fight him to get him to stop it. He also hurt me during the sex to the point of me being quite bruised.

These incidents are all in addition to the general catcalling, wolf whistling and unwanted attention.

I agree with you OP, I think most women have had multiple harassment or assault experiences.

I don’t believe there are woman who haven’t experienced this because it started when I was in the last year of primary school in my school uniform. At 13 a vicar drove me home and whispered to me with a look in his eye that my body could drive a man to rape. Men have said revolting things to me when I was heavily pregnant. It still happens even though I am an overweight menopausal old hag.

It has nothing to do with how attractive you are or perceived to be. I agree with others that there are woman who brush this stuff away to lightly or believe it to be a compliment.

I think low level sexual harassment has become so normalised that it's just accepted.
I also think women consciously or unconsciously do change their behaviour to avoid incidents where sexual harassment might happen.

I can see that both of these things might be true for your friend.

A really basic low level example that springs to mind is that most secondary school girls will wear shorts under their skirts because they know some of the boys will try to look up them.

An example of changing your behaviour is not to go out at night, or to take a different route home, or to avoid a pub where you see there is a group of raucous men.

Yep my own brother, my FIL plenty of unwanted harassment on the streets. More aghast given how common it is that women still rush to NAMALT it is so hard to defend.

I have a theory that all male driving instructors are pervs! The amount of women I know that have been propositioned or even assaulted by their driving instructors as teenagers is insane, myself included. When I was 17, at the end of my course of driving lessons before I’d taken my test, my driving instructor said “how about a farewell kiss” and lent over to try and kiss me..i opened the door and literally ran away! But then I tried to justify it in my head and started thinking I’d overreacted, ‘he was just being nice’, ‘I owe him in some way’, ‘it could’ve been worse’, ‘maybe he was just going for my cheek’, ‘I should’ve just let him, maybe I was rude’. Fuck that, even if it was just the cheek it still would have been massively inappropriate but I can only understand that as a fully grown woman. And that’s the problem- young women & girls need to understand that relatively minor incidents like this are never ok and that’s why this kind of behaviour needs to be nipped in the bud, otherwise it results in women questioning themselves, blaming themselves, and prioritising ‘being polite’. I have 3 other friends whose driving instructors were inappropriate with them, and I’ve heard stories of more women it’s happened to too. When my dd learns to drive I’m gonna make damn sure she has a female driving instructor!

Shame it was the 80s and not now, nowadays people would probably film him and put it online to shame him, that’s what I’d do!

I don't think attractiveness is a factor either.
Men sexually harass women because they can. So any woman will do.

I actually sometimes think that if I'd actually said "alright then" to any of the many men who have suggested over the years that I might like to give them a blow job as I walked along minding my own business, that an awful lot of them would actually not have wanted to go through with it. The point was to embarrass and to show their superiority. They had no interest in me as an actual person.

To be fair, my driving instructor was male and not in the least bit pervy. And dd's instructor was also a man, recommended to her by a number of her female friends - don't think he ever did anything untoward.

A woman my age (64) most probably has experienced sexual abuse. In my youth it wasn't thought of as SA, it was quite usual to be pinched or grabbed or subjected to a mouthful of filth. I can think of lots of incidents where I was groped, including in the middle of Marks and Spencer, at football matches several times, on the bus and train. A family friend who ran a pub said one of the regulars used to try to lift up her top to see her bra. It was rife in the 60s and 70s.

Men sexually harass women because they can

Absolutely, power, dominance, control, looking for a dopamine hit.

Sexual harassment isn't just supposed sexual compliments, it is also harassment on the grounds of your sex. Abuse about your appearance can also be sexual harassment. Yelling "You ugly bitch" at women for example.

Too many times to list them all but started at 12 - flashed at once, much older guy put his hand on my knee! All the other people in the train carriage looked out the window. I hit him with my umbrella.

Hand up my skirt. Boobs grabbed - both day time wearing boring clothes.

Wanked at late at night walking down street. More flashers etc. etc.

Im not remotely attractive but I do have big boobs so that might be part of it. I think some men think that the accident of genetics means you’re more up for it.

Several much older married guys at work coming onto me and touching me inappropriately.

Maybe the creepiest was the guy that came up to me in the park and whispered in my ear he’d been loving looking up my skirt for the last hour.

I know someone who’s much prettier than me blonde and slimmer - she says it’s never happened to her. Maybe they think she’s more untouchable but the uglier women are more desperate??? Or I look more sexual because of the boobs? Or maybe she is better at giving keep off vibes?

IDK but it’s one of the best things about being older - strangers no longer do it although some acquaintances still try their luck occasionally.

I wonder if they know how much we despise them.

To the poster that said “<women> should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves” ?!? Are you mentally unwell?!