__________________________________________________________________________Phew, what a load of comments! I really appreciate everyone's contributions to this, and am very glad to say that it's all been respectful and mutually supportive and especially the comments by men have been thoughtful and humble and generally something to be grateful for. Also thanks to the people who have been linking to this. However, I am going away for a couple of weeks to a place where I only have intermittent internet access, and won't be able to keep on top of the comments here or respond to every one until the end of the month, so please don't feel neglected. Also, (in)appropriately enough, I was harassedthis morning walking along the canal near my house - a man concealed by the trees in the park which borders the towpath shouted down at me, 'Mmm, nice big tits'. Wanker - and also extra creepy because I couldn't see him, and he knew it. Urgh. So, unfortunately, this topic is still pretty current in my mind..._________________________________________________________________________A couple of things have set me thinking today. Some of the thoughts may be triggering for reference to sexual assault and street harassment. Most of the post is behind a cut because of the lengthiness of the pondering.linked, on Dreamwidth, to this extraordinary post bywhich discusses sexual violence and the debates around it. Specifically,takes on the issue of men who come into discussions about rape and other forms of violence against women and derail the whole conversation by loudly claiming, aghast, that it is deeply offensive to brand all men as potential rapists, and they would never dream of coercing a woman, sexually or otherwise, and they are very hurt by the fact that there is a discussion going on about the ways in which men mistreat women which is not taking into the account that they personally, and men like them, have never lifted a finger against a woman and never intend to and furthermore, if they saw it happening they would definitely intervene. And to them,asks, straight-up - so where are you? How come we never hear about the men who intervene when girls are drunk out of control at a party and need the sleazy guy pulled off them? Have you ever actually taken a male friend aside and told them that their jokes about rape and sexist remarks are really not cool, and are making people visibly uncomfortable? Do you believe your female friend when she tells you that she was assaulted, sleazed on or spoken to inappropriately by someone? The 1100+ comments to that entry do give some heartening examples of this, with many personal stories of people being helped as well as being in situations where they were disbelieved or undermined, with bad consequences.Now, the particular response whichis trying to get beyond - but how dare you tar me with this brush! I simply wouldn't dream - we are not all the same, you know - is not just classic derailing , I think it reflects a chronic problem when it comes to members of a dominant group understanding the perspective of a group which is in any way oppressed, which is the discrepancy of lived experience coupled with a default silence around uncomfortable topics. I think if you are a non-sexist man (or a man who believes himself not to be sexist), or a non-racist white person, it is easy to assume that most men, or white people, or straight people or whatever are similarly unprejudiced, and consequently it is hard to believe the accounts of people who do experience discrimination, violence and harrassment regularly, and to understand the kind of fear it engenders.I have experienced sexual assault as a child and as an adult, and it was unpleasant and traumatic and affected me badly. But the incidence of it was rare enough that I do not particularly fear it, and the patterns of my life are not arranged so as to minimise the risk of sexual assault as distinct from any other kind of violence - being mugged, say. What I _do_ experience rather often is street harassment and unwanted attention. And every time I tell a straight male friend or partner about it, they are surprised. It seems odd to them that one person should find it normal to shout crude and personal things at another in the street because one of them is male and the other is female. I have yet to tell a woman friend that I was harrassed in the street and see her react with shock. It is an utterly normal part of life for most women, and no less unpleasant for that.I was 13 the first time a man called me a whore: it was the same night I wore high heels for the first time, to my uncle's wedding. After the reception, a group of five or six women, including young sore-footed me, was walking back to our hotel rather tipsily. It was a rough-ish neighbourhood in West Vancouver. A one-armed man, well into his cups, asked us for a drink on our way past (my female relatives were holding a bottle of wine). When they said no, he shouted, 'Whores!' at us over his shoulder. Nobody paid him any notice.The most recent time someone shouted obscenities at me in public was Sunday, three days ago, walking to the bus station in Cambridge in the balmy early evening. A group of street drinkers were gathered round a bench on Christ's Pieces. One of them, a young woman, shouted 'Oy!' and asked me if I had any Rizlas. I said no and carried on walking, and one of her companions shouted, rusty with drink, 'How about a suck of the old cock, then?' 'Fuck you' I said over my shoulder. 'I wouldn't mind...' he said, tailing off into a remark mostly for the good of his audience, I think. 'Now there's a side of the town I don't see' said the man I had been visiting, when I told him by text.In the last few months I have been approached, appraised, offered chips by an insistent stranger who stood around the pedestrian crossing while I waited for the light to turn, repeatedly telling me he thought I was beautiful despite me repeatedly telling him to leave me alone, been subject to abortive chat-up attempts, been told that I'm fat by a group of teenagers, and most entertainingly been stopped by a teenage boy hanging out at the bus stop with his friends. 'Excuse me, do you smoke marijuana?' he asked, earnestly. 'No' I lied. 'Cos I really think you should' he said, to an eruption of giggles from his friends. I laughed and he continued, 'Yeah, with a big belly like that you should, you know'. Not so witty.This evening I walked most of the way home from college, from New Cross to Greenwich, through the foot tunnel, up into Mudchute Park, into Asda and then along the docks to Canary Wharf. I just want to lay out, for the benefit of male readers, all the moments at which I was wary of being harrassed, simply for being in the wrong place, and ask you to compare this to your own experience of walking around the place where you live.I was nervous in Greenwich when walking alongside a line of cars idling at a traffic light, their windows down in the heat: men sometimes cat-call or shout or just let their eyes trail over you leeringly as you go past a line of cars like that. I was nervous and defensive in the park when a man I'd never seen before called out to me. 'Y'alright? How you doing?' 'Yeah, fine'. 'Finished work for the day?' 'Yeah', I said in a cold kind of I-have-no-reason-to-talk-to-you way, kept walking. I was nervous when I climbed up from the sports fields into the walkway that goes through the bushes, because the first time I came along that way there was a guy on the path with his cock in his hands. He had just been taking a piss, but he hadn't bothered to leave the trail, and I had told him off for not going further into the bushes and then laughed most of the way home. I was more entertained than perturbed at the time, but ever since, every time I go round that corner I've been half-expecting to run into some bicycle-helmeted suit with his tallywhacker out. (It's not, as I was saying to my flatmate, than I'm disappointed if I don't see a naked penis every time I go through Mudchute Park, but after that incident some part of me expects it). Someone threatened my friend with a knife in this park once, too, so I was conscious of that, but all I saw today was a dachshund and a teenage girl with her mother walking a big yellow ferret on a lead.I was nervous leaving Asda with my groceries and walking past a neighbourhood pub where ten or twelve men were noisily getting drunk outside. One braces oneself for shouts or jeers when walking past a large group of drunk men: it's involuntary, but definite. Once I reached Canary Wharf I decided to take the bus rather than walk up through the Poplar estates to my house. (I was quite tired, but it would have been legitimate to make that decision on the basis of safety, since it was 9.30 by this time).That is four times over the course of the walk home that I felt anxious or wary because of the possibility of being harrassed, and I would say that is about average. Most days I wouldn't even consciously notice it: it's just part of the fabric of a female-led life. There are many more factors that would put me in more danger of harrasment or violence, and I'm lucky in almost all respects. I am white, and I am cisgendered: I am unremarkable-looking, and my partners are men, meaning that I'm not targeted for homophobic abuse even though I identify as queer. I am able-bodied, which reduces the chances of me being assaulted by a great deal compared to a disabled person. I am confident and loud and aware of my boundaries and good at saying 'leave me alone' and 'fuck you' and 'no' like I mean it. And I still get harrassed all the bloody time. I'm not the only one. I suppose the point of this long, long post is to do what I always try to do - tell a story. Today it's the story of what it's like to live with the constant possibility of having your appearance or person commented on, loudly, by strangers, and of being on your guard many times a day. It is not about my fear of being raped, because that doesn't figure in my life as much as in those of some of the commentators at the linked post. It is about men feeling that they have a right to talk and shout to me about what they want to do and what they think of my body. It is about trying to get through to the men who don't do this quite how common it is and how it affects the lives of most women. I'd be very interested to hear other perspectives on this from people of all genders who get hassled in the street (or don't): how often it happens, whether you are indifferent to it or find it upsetting/annoying/enraging/scary/amusing, what you think influences it... I've written this post assuming, based on conversations, that straight and straight-presenting men don't get harrassed as much as women: I would be interested to hear if any men have, in fact, come the wrong side of a group of rambunctious female construction workers (in real life: dreams don't count). I don't, however, have much patience for anyone who comments only to say, 'I really think you are being unfair to men who don't harass women in the street. This sort of reverse sexism is very offensive and is OPPRESSING ME'.