Will the world ever be safer for girls and women?

[CactusSammy]

I haven't posted before, but I absolutely despair at the state of men, and worry for the future of girls and women.

Maybe I'm overreacting, but I'm so sick of the way men behave towards us, without any concept of the distress their actions cause. My teenage daughter has just started college, and gets the train there. The college have called me today, saying that she is very upset as she saw two men filming her at the train station.

For context, she was wearing jeans, trainers, and a non revealing top (not that it would make it ok, whatever she was wearing). The men were approx mid 20s.

I thought men my age were bad, but it seems the young ones aren't any better. I know it's not all men, but it really takes the piss when a young girl can't even go to college without being harassed, and made to feel scared, vulnerable, and intimidated.

I know its just some twats at the train station, but its really upsetting for a young girl. When she was 14 I let her walk to the corner shop five minutes away with her friend, and on the way back two grown men in a van shouted 'show us your tits' at them. What the hell is wrong with men?

Is the world ever going to be safer for women and girls? Sadly, as long as there are men around, I really don't think so.

I'm outta here. Again, thanks for making my point for me.

Red Hot Chilli (bag)Pipers, not peppers. They reported being sexually assaulted at most gigs, hands up kilts, etc and not by men.

Either way, I'm off to the corner to see what I can learn from this.

It's fine to discuss that. However, if any female poster here is a gropist, I doubt she's going to be concerned and introspective enough to do the self improvement you suggest. Abusers don't tend to do that as a rule. That's the problem. They feel entitled to do the things they do and don't feel remorse for it.
I hope you popped the gropist a good one right in the face.
A female gropist is not nearly as dangerous as a male one though. She's unlikely to take it further and rape you. Not that being groped isn't awful, but rape is objectively a lot worse and a rapist is much more likely to seriously injure and even kill you than some drunken woman who grabs your ass in a pub. So the problem of male abuse is more serious for that reason.

A strip show, was it? Women can be absolutely awful to male strippers. There tends to be touching in those male strip shows. Some of them, like Magic Mike, are really soft core sex shows. They invite some of the women up on stage and simulate sex acts with them. Gross.

Only on MN would someone bring up obscure bagpipers to defend men when women are literally being chopped into bits the world over! Fuck me.

Bye then. 🙄

@XChrome

I should resist the urge...

Thank you for your kind words. Like many, I've had men tell me in brutal detail the things that they wanted to do to me. I knew some were more than capable of it. I've experienced the sexual looks, from both men and women. It wasn't pleasant. However, with the men it wasn't followed up on. I guess I was lucky.

In my experience, it's been the women who have been worse. The power plays, the emotional abuse, and the sadistic abuse designed to destroy. And it continues right here.

However, let's get back to the awful story that started this thread. Can we all think about the young lass hurt by men's actions? How many of the all men are... have offered feelings of sympathy to the OP and her daughter?

I'm all for teaching boys not to sexualise girls, but I also know that's a two way street. I think it's every parent's responsibility to so teach. I think both men and women need to call out inappropriate behaviour, by both men and women. I think meaningful education will do more to prevent abuse than harsh criminal justice will help after the fact.

But I know nothing.

I don't think women will be safer until men (and children) are banned from using the internet.

I'm not joking. They simply can't be trusted to use it sensibly.

@DissedOff

I'm not sure what you're referring to. If you're referring to topless 16 year olds on page 3, you're making a good point. It wasn't until a law was introduced to prevent it in 2003, that it stopped.

People think that these changes happened as society changed but that isn't true, these changes happened because laws were introduced to stop the behaviour.

As far as 13 year old sex workers are concerned, you're showing your age because the age of consent has been 16 since 1885.

Regarding your other points on women sexual assaulting and harassing men, it would be great if you could back up your assertions with data.

To offer a sense of perspective, the world is not perfect, or even often good in many parts - however - in the west, women's power, safety, autonomy and agency is literally infinitely better than it was only 100 years ago. thats 4 generations.

The world has entirely changed and so much for the better.

If you zoom out a little, and not really very far, the span of a single long human life you'll see that there have been staggering, irreversible changes to the place of women

Extend this trend forward, look at the future, you will feel much better.

I was surprised too, she has only been there a couple of weeks. Her secondary school would never have bothered.

When she got home she told me that she was really upset when she got to college, and mentioned to her history teacher what had happened. He told her to go to safeguarding, and that's who called me.

She struggles with confidence, and was worried to mention it. I'm glad that she felt able to tell someone, and that he took it seriously.

@Zahariel none of the changes are irreversible and the changes most certainly are not global. There are still millions of women worldwide subject to the same or very much worse restrictions that women in the UK dealt with 100 years ago. If you zoom out, you'll see that not much has changed for those millions of women.

Yes. And? Things are still better for the vast majority? The direction of travel is very very very good. For 3.5 billion years it’s been crap. Now it’s getting g incredibly good?

No, I think you're vastly more optimistic and hopeful than I am. There of course have been some positive changes for some women, in some countries. Far too many have seen very little positive change, and some are in appalling situations that look to be extremely entrenched. Male violence is still extreme, for a start.

“Some”

some changes? What world do you live in? If you don’t have a good grasp of history, this is going to be difficult for you. Women could not vote, own property, have a career, get divorced, say their husband raped them, have an education.

that’s in Britain.

within living memory

there have not been some improvements its literally infinitely better now

"Literally infinitely" err, no. What you have listed (mostly) are the improvements that I'm talking about. You don't need to teach your grandmother to suck eggs. Some improvement in some countries, not irreversible either. History clearly teaches us that progress can be very fragile and that women's rights and safety can very quickly disappear in times of difficulties.

We in most Western countries are very lucky compared to our grandmothers, yes. But we fought for it, and it isn’t over (rape convictions or lack of, domestic violence, coercive control, stalking, internet abuse and intimidation, porn, grooming… the list goes on).
Elsewhere, it can disappear in an instant. Look at Iran and Afghanistan, both of which were relatively liberal within living memory. Now they’re respectively beating teenage girls unconscious in public for not wearing a veil and confining women to virtual house arrest. And if you look at the US, there seems to be an entire legal project to restrict women’s rights.
I think men are wired differently. Some want to overpower and rape and murder, because they can. They are bad people, obviously. But many men have some sort of envy, anger and aggression towards women - for our sexuality, for being able to create life, for being mother figures - that creeps into many areas of life, and once you see it it’s hard unsee it. Even the nice ones don’t always credit women with a full interior life and value as a human being (looking at you trendy liberal men silent on the trans lobby). I think a minority of them see women as full humans and would fight with us side by side.
Sometimes I wonder what the world would look like if it weren’t like this. It’s hard to find a truly equal society.

The Red Hot Chilli Pipers are not obscure, and they're certainly not a strip show! What on earth gave you that idea?

rhcp.scot/

I don’t know what planet you live on. But it’s not this one.

No worries, I can see that plenty of other posters are of the same opinion as me, so we'll just have to disagree on this one.

I agree with all of this. I do think there is a backlash going on right now in particular, which threatens to reverse the gains we have made. Trumpism and other far right movements are a danger to women. It appalls me to see that some GC people have been defending Trump because of the the trans issue, as if a man who brags about sexual assaults cares about safeguarding women. It would be laughable if it wasn't so depressing.
I also don't think so-called progressive men are less misogynistic than regressive right wing men, just as you say. They're just less blatant about it.

I didn't say they were obscure, they're just unknown to me. I thought they might be a strip show because of the description that other poster gave of the way women behaved towards them, since that happens at strip shows.
Why are you getting testy because I haven't heard of them?

We are safer now than we were before in the U.K.
Globally, women’s rights are as far along as ever- although while some countries progress others regress so it’s not linear and ground gained can be later lost.

I think no one will ever be safe. No man, woman or child. Sadly, I think there will always be violent crime and sex crimes.

No I work in the criminal field and honestly the amount of awful men is sickening. And from all ages / races / backgrounds. And so many horrible stories in the media. A 15 year old who raoed an unknown 16 yo girl at knifepoint and a 17 yo who stalked and stabbed his 15 yo ex girlfriend to death xx

Horribly depressing but no I don't think it's going to change. As soon as one thing gets better, other things get worse.
I wonder whether there may have been a 'sweet spot' when laws were already in place to help female equality, but males hadn't found new ways of oppressing females (eg gender ideology) and the Internet, and therefore Internet porn, wasn't so ubiquitous.
I do feel that over the past 10 or 15 years, male privilege and violence has become a lot more insidious so that now, we don't only have to deal with openly sexist, dangerous, woman-hating males, but also with 'I'm far more oppressed than you, and terribly progressive and must have my way as otherwise I'll kill myself' males.
Sorry that's a depressing answer.

So glad the History teacher took it seriously, it would have been a terrible message to her if they hadn;t.
I hope she is ok.