Men in a van

[alphamummy]

I'm unsure why this bothered me so much, i'm not upset more annoyed that it happened.

Sorry i'll explain, i was walking on main road to playgroup 10am ish, with my 2 children in double buggy. I was dressed in jeans, winter coat and walking boots( not that it should matter at all what i had on). A van drove passed me pipped their horn and the driver shouted out of the window at me " fat split arse" and the bloke in the back also shouted "show us your fanny".

Why would you behave like that? I had my children with me.

I think its the fact that they pipped to get my attention to shout abuse at me.

Some examples from these threads.

Have you ever had a group of men shout at you that they are going to rape you when you are walking to the shops?

Have you ever had a bus driver say they will let you off your fare if you show them your penis when you were 13?

Have you ever had groups of men shout at you from a van that they want to see your cock/fuck you?

Have you ever been sitting on the tube by yourself and realised that the man opposite is happening to you?

Have you ever been followed by men who keep propositioning you and won't go away no matter what they do?

Have you ever been afraid that you are going to be raped?

If any of those things have happened to you then I am very sorry. If all of those things have happened to you then I am very surprised. These things are normal for teenage girls though, they are part of the everyday background to their lives.

Have you ever been sitting on the tube by yourself and realised that the man opposite is happening to you?

masturbating at you not happening don't know what happened there

Oh no, with regards to swearing in front of children, that small boy is now 13 and he tells me off for swearing all the time so I don't need anyone on MN to join in! I am no laydee anyway. I am a very angry woman [roar emoticon]

But seriously, in my experience, ignoring bullies does not work. Yes, there is always the remote possibility that they could jump out of the car and attack you. But I feel (quite strongly) that this is what they WANT you to think. They are getting off on your fear. They KNOW that you are not 'ignoring' them, they KNOW you are too scared to respond. And they like it.

So I suppose one of the reasons I DO react aggressively in situations like this (not always, but often) is that I think about the hundreds of other girls and women who are intimidated and scared by this behaviour, who keep their head down and feel sick with fear for long, long after those idiots have forgotten all about it.

Yes, the solution is for men to stop doing it. But unless they are made aware (on both a micro and macro level) that this behaviour is unacceptable, that won't happen.

This is why I intend to parent my son in a particular way, it is why me and the now-13-year-old still have regular conversations about feminism (and still laugh about the day I 'proved' I was a witch) and it is why I will probably continue to shout 'FUCK OFF' at people who behave in this way. It is an effective way of signalling that I will not accept it. I will concede that others may choose a different signal to use but I don't think that 'head down, try and ignore, feel shit about it for months, hope that the wankers spontaneously realise the errors of their ways' is the right way to go.

I would rather feel angry than ashamed.

That's fine. Everyone can do what they wish of course.

I usually think 'Idiots' and go on with my day and vague state.

What a great post grumpla

I think it's great when someone tells the bastards off. Might make them think twice in future.

I don't think people should have to feel bad if they don't feel up to doing the telling off though IYSWIM.

I really do think they are too idiotic to be worth the ire.

Best post on this thread, IMO, is SardineQueen's 'examples (inc. 'Have you ever had a bus driver say they will let you off your fare if you show them your penis when you were 13?')
Really points up the seriousness of behaviour like this, and the massive gulf between men's experience and women's. I've never had a huge amount of unwanted attention and am now probably 'past it' at 36, but it is always humiliating and often frightening and I agree zero tolerance is the way to go. I didn't realise things like 'get your tits out' were offences. Almost hope I get something obscene shouted at me so I can start putting it into practice!

I was talking about abuse in general and threatening abuse being shouted. Which happens surprisingly more than you think between men. That is why I draw the conclusion that these men are just throwing insults at people that are weaker than them to make themselves feel harder and better and look hard in front of their mates. To assert that they are superior. Obviously they don't realise that shouting abuse at people that are they perceive to be weaker than them doesn't make them look hard it makes them look immature and childish.

The sexual element of it is particularly frightening though, this is what everyone on the thread is complaining about.

Women know that men can rape them and that there is very little they can do about it (conviction rates etc). Women are almost always smaller and weaker than men.

I have been physically threatened by men from time to time ie with violence but no associated sexual aspect (mainly in the pub by pissed blokes) and for me personally it is much less scary than anything with a sexual overtone.

I am sure that men get stuff shouted at them. But not sexual threats and not all the bloody time from the age of about 12.

I got threats of violence from other boys and men in school and after leaving school. This has led to many physical confrontations. I also had a woman tell me that if I had been a bit older she would have slept with me. I am not saying that the threat of rape is not bad but i believe the threat of physical violence is just as scary especially when weapons are involved. You think you could lose your life.

Omg20 if you are assaulted by another man, the likelihood is that you can go to the police adn they will treate you with kindness and sympathy, take your complaint seriously and take serious steps to find the criminal and investigate the crime. No-one will even think of blaming you for what happened and you will not tell yourself that it wasn't assault really and it was all your own fault anyway.

If I'm raped, well, I'm just raped. I won't get justice. There is simply no point whatsoever in me going to the police.

Do you see the difference?

What are you on about herbex lol this has nothing to do with reporting and prosecution of rape. Why even bring it into the convo? Fear of being raped and being violently assaulted are the same they are extremely bad. They are both as intense a fear as each other. None of my comments had anything to do with rape crime statistics or convictions. I hardly think that if you are scared that you might be raped that the first thing that pops into your head will be whether or not you can prosecute.

omg are boys threatened physically by bus drivers when getting on a bus? Will they be threatened physically by 3 different groups of men when pushing their children up the road on a Thursday morning? Will they be assaulted on a crowded bus or tube with no warning and no-one help and not feel able to say anything when they're 12 or 13 - not as an unusual occurrence but as just one of those things that happens?

I know that some people are bullied and otherwise targeted - but I just don't think that the average 13 yo boy is targeted almost every time he leaves the house. Things happen, yes, but they are not as common. I know men and I know boys and I have asked them their experiences. They would see a strange man or group of men threatening them as a very scary but fairly unusual situation. Whereas this is everyday stuff for girls.

No omg fear of being raped and fear of being assaulted are not the same thing.

Do you regularly fear that a man will rape you?

And actually, in the back of your mind, the fact that you know you won't get justice, which means it is easier for the man to do it and therefore more likely, is a factor in the fear. With other violent assault, you know that the potential assailant has an incentive not to assault you - the fact that he might be punished for it. Whereas with rape, there is no such incentive. So although the first thing on your mind is of course not the prosecution and conviction rate, the fact that you are vaguely aware of them, affects your psychological reaction to the threat.

Women know that there is little point in reporting a rape, which adds to the fear. They know there is not much they can do about it if it happens, and they know that men know that too.

Whereas I know and everyone else knows that if someone punches someone in the face or stabs them or gives them a good kicking there is a reasonable chance it will be taken seriously. If someone punched me in the face I wouldn't think twice about calling the police.

Having said that, I have been punched in the face by a random stranger, but that's anotehr story!

Incidentally that reminds me - this talk is as if women and girls don't face the threat of physical violence as well as sexual violence. I have mad drunk men square up to me in the pub and tell me to "take it outside" plenty of times (mainly because I have not been polite in refusing their advances).

I have had, not mad. Although I guess maybe they were a bit mad

My point is these type of people that do this would just as quickly do it to a weaker man or a man on his own. It is more about being "hard" than women hating. My other point is that the threat of physical violence is just as scary as the threat of rape and yes boys/men do get attacked on buses by other men. I only stopped being threatened and intimidated by other men/boys when I got into physical confrontations with them and beat them. Now that I am stronger than I was before I no longer get as many of these men/boys trying to be dominant over me. I have been insulted while my children have been with me. The experience isn't unusual either.

Wouldn't we want ideally to stop all sorts of threatening behaviour on the streets though?

Does my getting upset about what happens for girls and women (of which I am one, and I have my own experiences) and wanting to do something, negatively impact on men campaigning for an end to violence amongst themselves, or other groups like people working against gang related violence?

I think there's room for all of us surely.

Bottom line is, I don't know what it's like to grow up male, and men don't know what it's like to grow up female. I have a litany of casual assaults, things being shouted at me, all sorts of unpleasantness some of it quite serious. It fucks me off that this happens and I want to share my experiences with other women who have been in the same boat and think about what can be done. That doesn't do any harm, surely.

So your basic point is that males receive exactly the same level, frequency, and severity of street harrassment and abuse as females.

And that the threat of violence is as bad as the threat of sexual violence.

We will have to agree to disagree then.

Are you regularly subjected to the threat of rape OMG?

It is the exact same thing herbex we are talking about situations that you have a fear of rape because someone has been abusive towards you not walking about thinking that you could be a victim of crime everyday all day. To answer your question I feel like I have to be ready to fight for my life everyday all day. Where I live you can be murdered just for strolling into the wrong area. I feel like I have to watch my back when I am on a bus hence I don't like going on a bus and avoid it at every opportunity. I constantly look behind me to watch if people are following me. I have been attacked with baseball bats before. I don't even feel safe in my own home because I have been called for when I lived at my mums house and beat by 3 people in my own front garden.

I just don't see it.

I think that if a 13yo boy was sitting quietly on the bus minding his own business and a grown man came up and hit him that something would be done about it. I think that if that happened to a 13yo girl that something would be done about it too. I think that the bus driver would call it in, that the people around would do something.

If a 13yo girl is sitting on teh bus and a grown man comes and sits next to her and puts his hand up her skirt then that's the end of it. She (usually) never tells anyone, it's not reported, nothing is done. And it's depressingly common.

Did I say I was at all subjected to rape fear anytime? All I pointed out is that fear in both both cases would be equal. How can you fear more about rape than losing your life or being put in hospital that you can with fear of rape or vice versa.

I also didn't say that nothing would be done about it if it were to happen all I said was that I don't think that these men that were doing this that it is more of a "being hard" thing and that these type of men would be just as likely to do it to other weaker men or lone men.

Also I didn't report any of the assaults to the police as I didn't feel anything would be done about them. I reported one assault to the police and that was when a teacher used unresonable force to get me out of a classroom and left big bruises on my arms and nothing was done. He got interviewed and the case was closed.