I really don't understand why men do this..

[bridie69]

DD called me earlier in tears. She was on a train back to where we live and seems a group of pissed up men got on the same carriage and were being totally abusive and unpleasant to everyone, picking on the women in particular.She was really worried and I told her to get the guard. One of them sat beside her and was breathing beer fumes all over her and asking her to "smile darling". Seems a man intervened and asked him to stop and then became the target of the abuse, all of it alcohol fuelled it seems. I just picked her up. She is quite shaken but I am bloody livid. Didn't exactly sound like they were teenagers too not that that would have been an excuse. Who are these scumbags and what makes them such unpleasant misogynists? Just fuming yet feeling so useless now. DD is 21.

Fucking hell, Elendon, give it a rest

People have a right to be on public transport without being hassled by drunk or mad people, whatever the reason. I say that as a person with a serious MH condition myself.

Well DD is ok today, but will certainly be thinking twice about late train journeys home and where she sits. Of course she shouldn't have to curtail her social life for idiots like this. Was interested reading about the squaddies- it is always men in groups that somehow seem worse, which suggests they are acting out to impress each other not even that interested in whom they harass. I do think there is a serious problem with public drunkenness in this country and the results have a knock on effect on everyone. I have plenty of admittedly 30 year old experience of putting difficult men in their place but there are situations no-one should have to experience and this is one of them.OK women can be fairly irritating in groups when drunk too but are unlikely to make anyone else feel quite as creeped out as this lot did. I just wonder what they hell they told their wives/girlfriends/mothers when they got home? Oh yes, great night upset and intimidated a load of people on the train home?

I agree with everything in that post, OP. I'm glad your DD is OK.

Elendon What the fuck are you on about?

I am a man and i don't do this.......

'Not all men'

I find sexual harrassment from men has been a constant theme throughout my life really. Only when I was in my late twenties/early thirties and was constantly hung about with small children did it abate at all.

I can remember more than one instance of being sexually assaulted on trains as a teenager. Many more of being verbally harassed.

I'm now forty and it's still constant. Drunk men on nights out being a pest. Catcalling and car horn honking when out and about. Inappropriate comments from my physiotherapist.

What makes me feel both and is that I think half the time it just goes over our heads. It's just such a universal and constant female experience that we barely notice the small stuff. It only becomes an issue when we feel physically threatened. We're socially conditioned to accept a lot of it.

I think men do it because it makes them feel powerful and in control. Whatever is going on in their lives, they feel they are at least more important than women, and they like to remind of us this as they don't want us getting ideas above our station.

fishfingersinmysandwiches that sounds as awful as it is sadly plausible. I agree that sexual harassment actually has little to do with sex. The harassers just look for people they can put down and sadly often women are a target. It does shock me how many men don't seem to believe this ever occurs though. I really really think a massive public debate is needed about this issue, we have put up with it for too long.

Thanks for the TEDTALK link, Thumb.

I was wolf whistled at when I was nine months pregnant (normal sized bump, but pregnant walking with head firmly engaged!), with my first child. I did not find it funny or feel attractive because of it. I felt it demeaned me and my child. And yes it was directed towards me, because I stopped and looked around to see if there was anyone else on the London street at that time. There wasn't.

Haven't rtft but something similar happened to me in my early twenties ending in a minor assault from one of the men, I went to the guard who had the whole group removed from the train by the police, they were charged and eventually prosecuted. The train staff and police all took it seriously. This sort of behaviour should not be tolerated.