CONFRONTING footage has been released of a woman taking off her top and attacking a man in the street who she claims was staring at her.

The video was taken in Ribeirao Preto in south east Brazil and shows a woman pinning a man to the ground and assaulting him as she accuses him of treating her “like a sex object”.

The woman, who was handing out flyers before the incident, became aggressive towards the man as he was allegedly pestering her, shouting that she was sick of being “touched and sexually harassed while doing her job”, according to MetroUK.

The footage shows the man begging the woman to stop while he is being held down. The man can be heard saying he hasn’t done anything and that he is there shopping with his wife.

The woman then appears to pull off her top after saying: “I’m fed up being treated like a sex object. Is it boobs you want?”

She then proceeds to straddle the man, who is still on the ground, and slap him with her hands and bare chest.

It was later revealed that the stunt was staged by a theatre crew called the Confluências group, in an attempt to draw attention to the harassment and unwanted sexual attention that women are often faced with.

“We wanted to expose and address something that happens every day to our sisters and female friends,” the group’s director Fausto Ribeiro said.

“This was meant to challenge people’s perceptions and empower women with the shock tactic of retaliation. We wanted to force men to think more responsibly about their actions and the consequences.”

They posted a video of the stunt online, which quickly racked up over a million views but it was reportedly removed after it was not well received and the group got a lot of backlash.

The footage has since re-emerged, around the same time as the sexual assault allegations in Hollywood were emerging.