Just been mildly hit on by some sleazy old man ...

[ButThereAgain]

... which is a ridiculous and stupid thing to happen to a middle-aged woman out walking her dog in the woods, but which gave me this huge dual-carriageway of memory to the sorts of things that used to happen to me (as to almost every young women) when I was very young, when men would seize on my timid politeness as a way of wheedling at me and blaming me for the situations their insistence created.

At the time I was naive and like a million other young women I would blame myself for whatever awkward situation arose. But now, with the perspective of maturity, I can see much more clearly how it works -- how they engineer things so that you start to see their pressuring of you as something you have yourself created.

I'm not talking of anything remotely close to sexual assault -- just a kind of insistent, "flattering" attention. If you are like me, you start off being very polite and kind, and once you realise how pressing and inappropriately demanding they are being, the necessary rudeness (to make them fuck off) seems likes such a reversal that you feel guilty, almost buying in to their perception of you as having somehow "led them on" and then rebuffed them.

And all the "compliments" are structured to try and make you think that your alleged loveliness (I'm not remotely lovely, just an old hag in a muddy waterproof coat) takes agency away from them and makes you yourself to blame.

Even as a mature woman I couldn't bring myself to tell him explicitly to get lost. When I think back to my young self, and to all the current young women, just being polite and suffering the consequences, it makes me furious.

This was just unwelcome pressuring conversation, not assault. Just the ordinary low-level stuff that you forget about when you are old but which is routine when you are a young woman.

Just getting it off my chest, really. I actually do feel guilty about rebuffing this old man so that he doesn't get what he wants from me (namely, I think, the opportunity to talk "flatteringly" to me for ages while he thinks his lecherous thoughts).

The views of the woman being targetted are not all that matters to women in general though. Men are encouraged to encroach on women by telling themselves lots of women love it and the ones that don't are humourless bitches. We know this because they often say it if you don't laugh it off.

And you are completely wrong about the woman. As we!ve said, of your list, the person chatting someone up was not behaving "badly", and that would he true whatever the sex. The guy chatting your wife up on her hen do was an arse for calling her gay when he was turned down, not for the chatting up in the first place (though pretty stupid if it was obvious it was her hen do!)

Biggedy. Do you genuinely believe that no woman would have been offended/upset/embarrassed by the DJ?

Nope. But isn't it possible he spoke to a woman he judged - correctly - would take the joke in the spirit it was meant? Is that so remote?

Still here biggedy? You do realise you can leave and we will carry on talking. Don't you? Or do you think if you call it a day, we all have to stop too?

If you're sticking around, what did you then GF say or do that would enable the DJ to ascertain that she would take that joke in the spirit it was meant (whatever that is)? What sort of conversations had they had before he did it?

Well, I think we were done a while ago when the conversation moved from a query as to what could be done to stop women feeling unsafe around men to the answer that it was up to men to stop it. Round about the point where it began to be suggested that this might require a behavioural change and close examination of attitudes from the person making that query. Right there was a definite movement from enquiry to defensiveness and justification.

A genuine question - after this discussion, what do you think that you will do differently in your day to day life to combat violence against women?

It's possible.

But he was making a split second judgement at a distance with potential come back on a total stranger who had in no way asked for the attention - unlike, say, heckling at a comedy gig.

I am going to put this situation out to a couple of the other discussion boards on MN tomorrow. If the consensus is that the DJ was being a prick and that I was wrong to laugh it off, I will come back and admit I was wrong. Maybe I was.

You aren't getting it Biggedy. The DJ didn't give a toss about your wife's reaction. Otherwise he wouldn't have done it so publicly. He was never 'entitled' to ask her to marry him at all.

He also made sure that she knew and everyone else she was being valued by him for her looks. Nice.

OK Biggedy - you do that. As you were interested in the numbers game before, how many female opinions will you need to overrule your one male one? There have been at least 10 on this thread already, why is that not enough?

And they say that Sharia law is bad enough for requiring the testimony of two women to equal that of one man!

It wasn't your situation to laugh off either Biggedy.

A genuine question - after this discussion, what do you think that you will do differently in your day to day life to combat violence against women?

We have been discussing 'unwelcome low level pressuring conversation, not assault', to quote the OP. How do you make the leap to violence?

If half of respondents question his actions, I need to look at my reaction again.

But the threat of violence is there otherwise women would be much more ready and able to tell these men to fuck off. Really have you read anything we've been writing.

The DJ was wrong. But your wife wasn't offended so your reaction was normal.

Where you are wrong is in assuming that the DJ correctly judged that she wouldn't be offended. Wake up call - he more than likely didn't care one way or another.

Scallops, I took her reaction as a positive one. As someone said, I was there.

Scallops beat to to it.

Oh, so sorry Biggidey. My mistake. Of course you have never said that you are interesting in reducing violence against women. How presumptuous of me to think that you might equate the two. Well, leaving aside the issue of actual violence, which may not trouble you at all, what will you do differently in you day to day life to combat 'unwelcome low level pressuring conversation'?

HALF?

So if the DJ proposed to the most attractive woman in the room every night, if that was his schtick, would it be acceptable for say, 180 of them to be offended/embarrassed/ humiliated as long as 185 thought it was a good joke?

Out of the 3 scenarios the DJ would be the one that would bother me the most by miles. It's only very recently that I would behave in any other way than pretending to be amused/flattered and generally being a good girl. If someone had suggested that he was 'entitled' to do it because I wasn't engaged at the time then I would have been massively pissed off. I'm not a dropped tenner, entitled to be claimed by whoever unless someone else says 'that's mine, mate.'

Being chatted up by someone in a night club is something I would pretty much expect and not be bothered about unless it was overstepping the boundary. Someone being an aggressive arse when they are knocked back is a different kettle of fish from someone who isn't. I've only once had a woman get nasty when I've said I'm not interested whereas men I couldn't count. (For context, I'm bi and probably go to LGBT clubs more than mainstream ones so it's not because women don't hit on me, because they do)

Doctrine, you had a guy comment on your appearance at a station, when he really had no business talking to you. Had you made eye contact, or given any signals that you wanted attention, or his approval? What business is it of his how you looked? The cheeky bastard, it wasn't for his benefit. And you had been drinking. Maybe he was smelling your breath to see if you were intoxicated, so he could...

But he judged your situation in a short time and made a comment you found acceptable. Perfectly okay then.

I'll tell anyone I hear doing it to stop immediately, Thistle.

Not over a microphone, though.

And that is fine Biggedy, you took the lead from your wife. But that wasn't your reaction to the situation it was hers.

I'm not a dropped tenner, entitled to be claimed by whoever unless someone else says 'that's mine, mate.' Well said Daykin

No. The DJ was in full view, and had a job to do that night in public, and was separated by a distance, and did not check her breath, and went back to DJ-ing. Not at a station, in close proximity, able to smell your breath, able to wonder whether he should focus on you more.