The Guardian, as usual, presenting men as if we are all predators.
To avoid sexual harassment I’ve imposed my own curfew, and try to be in bed by 11pm. I can’t believe women have to live like this in 2015
They don’t. The kind of daily harassment that the delicate snowflakes in the Groan complain about just don’t appear to be happening to the women I know. But, then, simply opening a conversation with a woman is deemed to be a sexual advance in Guardian world. And even if it is, how are people supposed to approach someone they like the look of? How is the species supposed to procreate? After all, a woman can always say “no”. If that does not work, then you can complain about harassment.
Any travelling woman who has ever sunk down in her seat and opened her book, only to be tapped on the shoulder and asked “What are you reading, then?” will be surprised that the numbers aren’t higher.
Yup, the bar for sexual predation is set very low. I recall a train journey some years ago when a young woman planted herself in the seat next to me and proceeded to talk continuously for the next hour and a half. She clearly had mental problems, but I just let her talk and responded politely when it seemed appropriate. I did not write an article claiming that I had been harassed – sexually or otherwise. She latched on to me to the extent that she tried to follow me into the gents, when I had to draw a line under the episode. She’d wandered off by the time I came out.
On another occasion I surprised myself by engaging a woman in the next seat in conversation because I noticed that she was wearing a security pass from my wife’s employer. Turned out she was a colleague and we chatted for the rest of the journey. The Guardianista will have me burned alive no doubt for being a creepy harasser.
People like to engage with other people. That is life. Very rarely can it be described as sexual harassment unless you are a radfem, in which case, finding women attractive is tantamount to rape. Unless you are a lesbian, of course.
We’ve all been bothered by persistent guys who pester us relentlessly, believing themselves to be entitled to our company and more.
“We” and “all”? I just love the way these people presume to speak for everyone else. No, my dear, you have been approached by some men and you didn’t like it. This is not an indication of a trend and it is not an indication that all women are subject to sexual harassment on a daily basis. Oh, and anecdote is not evidence.
Well it’s not as if she’s particularly attractive – not to me anyway
Daisy on GIS
Perhaps she feels the need to imagine these encounters with the members of the opposite sex as overtly sexual, since she has actually had no real experience of what most sensible people would reasonably consider sexual harassment…
But then again, I’m probably going to be labeled a ranting misogynist for pointing this out.
Well, yes, she clearly thinks highly of herself.
I think that seeing every social contact with men as a form of ‘predation’ exposes this particular Guardianista’s neuroses to the world. I don’t know whether to feel sorry for her or to burst out laughing.
Neither. This radfem philosophy of assuming that every male is a predator and every approach is harassment is eroding normal human interaction.
No doubt her next column will be about how lonely life feels.
Perhaps if she didn’t look as though she had just climbed out of bed with her previous client…?
Harsh.
“…handbag stuffed full of unread translations of Beowulf.”
Does she imagine that different translations will make it more readable or summat?
“I don’t go out dancing any more, even though I adore it – because I know from experience that something bad might happen if I have to get home after midnight and the streets are full of potentially terrifying men who might not take it well if I don’t want to stop and say hello.”
So, she never manages to pull at the dancing, then – there’s a surprise.
Jay
Yes, there seems to be an underlying assumption that she is attractive to men. Like PJH I don’t find her remotely attractive, so she has nothing to worry about from me.
She could, of course,take a taxi home…
LR, you say that people like to engage with others but I’m less sure about that. Definitely I do, most people my age do too, but what about the younger generation? They have been brought up to distrust any stranger, while strangers dare not engage them in conversation without being lablled predators, and as a result the youngsters seem unable and unwilling to engage with anything other than their smartphone.
This is the problem, though, isn’t it? Our natural social instincts are being eroded to the point where they are deemed unnatural and innocent interactions are seen as predatory. And I say this as a social introvert who usually shies away from too much interaction.
If you went to Magaluf in summer, you would not think so.
I persisted with my wife. We have been married now for 35 years. We have children and grandchildren.
Perhaps the author would prefer arranged marriages, or can only women do the persistent chasing?
You are clearly a sex pest and need to be locked away for a long time.
I was definitely a pest as in persistent, sex came later.
Do you want to dance…..No
Can I buy you a drink……no
Meet for coffee……no
Fancy going to the pictures…..no
Museum…no
Show….no
Eventually I got a maybe
Then a qualified yes
Then a firm yes
And the rest as they say is history. Perhaps times have changed but as I recall most girls played hard to get. All part of the mating ritual.
And that’s what the radfems abhor.The mating ritual. Fortunately, they do not speak for the majority of women or the species would die out.
If it were only the radfems who died out, no-one (of any matter) would be concerned.
Still, she’s just another hack of very limited ability, re-hashing inexactitudes and serving them back to the converted thus re-inforcing their neuroses. It’s all bollocks, really.
What happened to the phrase: “Stop it, I like it” ??