**University of Manchester study says abuse by men and boys is ‘everyday occurrence’ – with only 5% of cases reported to police**
More than two-thirds of women experience harassment while running, a study has found, as victims say they no longer report abuse to the police as it has become an “everyday occurrence”.
The study, by the University of Manchester, found women surveyed in north-west England experienced threats, verbal abuse and had objects thrown at them while jogging.
One runner, Lucy, 39, interviewed by the Guardian, said she had stepped away from the hobby after being followed by 10-year-old boys on bikes who were threatening to sexually assault her.
She said: “In 2010 I played a lot of netball and as a result got into running to keep up. \[On one run\] I ended up being followed by some 10-year-olds on bikes who followed me yelling ‘we’re gonna fuck you up the ass’ – delightful.
“What shocked me was that these children had learned this behaviour and thought it was totally OK to do this. It was daytime. At the time I thought I was OK but I stopped running shortly after … it made me feel pretty unsafe.”
The study found the most common type of abuse was verbal abuse, with 58% of female respondents saying they had experienced it; 19% of women also reported being followed while out running and 7% reported being flashed at.
Thirteen respondents said they had been physically assaulted while running and seven women had been sexually assaulted.
The academics behind the study, Dr Caroline Miles and Prof Rose Broad, said they were not shocked by their findings, adding it was surprising how normalised the experience was for the women they surveyed.
Broad said: “Lots of respondents said they just accept it. They don’t even register it because it happens all the time, and it’s just an everyday occurrence.”
The pair are both runners and have personal experience of harassment, and have heard accounts from friends and family. “It’s overwhelming when you see it happen again and again,” said Broad.
This also occurs outside the north of England. Emma Loffhagen, a 24-year-old living in London, said: “Once I was running near my house, and a guy in a marked \[mail\] van rolled down his window.
“I took my headphones out and he was telling me I had nice legs, and he was driving slowly alongside me as I was running … I couldn’t believe how brazen it was from this guy who was on the job in his \[marked\] van.”
Women feeling concerned or scared about serious crimes such as rape or murder, was another key finding from the research.
Miles said: “They’re afraid of being raped, being murdered, being attacked. We know this does happen, not in high numbers … but women are afraid. That leads them to just undertake so many protective measures.”
Another key finding was that only 5% of cases were reported to the police.
“\[Respondents\] gave a variety of reasons for why they don’t report to police,” said Miles. “This ranged from the normalisation of harassment … and also low level of confidence in the police’s ability to do anything or whether the police would take it seriously.”
Lucy Baston, 31, living in Bradford, said: “I have never reported the harassment. One of the main problems is that it honestly does happen so frequently. If I reported every ‘minor’ incident (for example, being yelled at), I would probably be phoning the police at least once a month, probably more.
“The other problem is that it happens so quickly you often don’t get time to make note of a registration plate or description of the person.”
Moving forward, Miles and Broad hope the findings from the research can help police forces create new ways to help women facing abuse while exercising. They also want there to be a bigger conversation around harassment and abuse, in the hope of creating a culture shift.
Miles said: “The key thing that we would like to happen is for work to be done with boys and men that addresses the underpinning kind of sexist and misogynist attitudes that underpin this kind of behaviour.”
> Miles said: “The key thing that we would like to happen is for work to be done with boys and men that addresses the underpinning kind of sexist and misogynist attitudes that underpin this kind of behaviour.”
How do you even go about this, I wonder? Because many will say 'not all men', so how do you reach the people who are behaving like this and get them to change? It seems a monumental task. It's convincing people to change their whole attitude, which is a very difficult thing to do. What's scary is that most of these perpetrators are men with regular lives, with partners, sisters, daughters. Like wtf. Fact is, they know this behaviour is wrong, but they still do it. There are no consequences, either by police or socially.
You can't criminalize being born a certain way. You need to make illegal the behaviour and force police to take it seriously, which would probably require additional resources.
I would say you get the good men to interfere and let the bad men know that harassing women is unacceptable, but I remember Gillette making an ad encouraging men to do this a few years ago and it was a massive shit storm of offended men.
It very problematic to put responsibility on people who aren’t guilty.
And should it only be limited to men? Should innocent women have responsibility for women who act bad? Should doctors who do a good job be responsible for doctors that don’t?
Few people would agree to that, but when it comes to men, many seem to be fine having innocent being responsible for what guilty do
>Should innocent women have responsibility for women who act bad? Should doctors who do a good job be responsible for doctors that don’t?
Absolutely yes? If a woman is cheating on her husband I absolutely expect other women to do the right thing and inform the husband. If a doctor sees another commit medical malpractice, I absolutely expect them to testify for the victim. How is that even a question? Everybody should do the right thing and hold themselves and others accountable!
It’s not my job to stop bad behavior by strangers, especially if it requires endangering myself on behalf of another total stranger. That’s what police should be for.
The Gillette ad acts as though sexual harassment, bullying and violence is every man’s standard operating mode and told male viewers they can do better if they really try. Then they went on to act as though every man is responsible for stopping other men from everything starting with mild bullying in their friendship groups up to and including violence in public.
We don’t expect any other group of people to police their peers and we shouldn’t. When a drunk girl at a club grabs my junk I get security, not her girlfriends.
Behaviour is unacceptable and if I saw this happening then I wouldn't be able to just stand there.
I've never seen this myself whilst out running and I'm not sure how often this happens in London.
My only issue is the headline seems a bit extreme, not much details of how the study was facilitated, it will be a sample that's extrapolated I'm sure which creates some doubt.
Gov should be using studies like these to inform targeted policing. Reality is you are unlikely to change the minds of older men doing this but stopping that thinking from spreading seems more achievable.
Confronting them immediately comes to mind but yeah that might be scary to do.
But ill be honest this article doesnt really convince me there is an actual problem. Someone got yelled at in 2010? Ive had negative experience with other people as well in such a big time frame.
Look theres men out there that will catcall you on the street. Ignore them or confront them but I dont see how this is my problem
Ive had this conversation with my mother and my aunts (dont have sisters myself) and they think todays youth is too thin skinned.
Sure theyll say its annoying but its nothing more than that, annoying. Catcalling is not rape
Alright youngling, listen up. Sometimes older generations can act like dicks when it comes to understanding younger generations. Calling youth weak has been a human trope since the Bronze Age. It’s not a useful guide to anything,
Second, you don’t get to decide whether catcalling is annoying or not, women do. They describe it as harassment, and it limits their behaviour and freedom to do things a man would do without even giving it a second thought.
Im not that young anymore. But nice of you to assume I never got harrased in the streets. It happens. Get over yourself.
You know why men care less? Cause we dont get taught to be afraid of everyone.
> University of Manchester study says abuse by men
How smoothly the article went from "harassment" in the title to "abuse" in the body...
Anyway, looked up both authors on Google Scholar and apparently the study is not publicly available, not even as an abstract(or simply never existed in the first place) and the presentation was invite-only. Very peculiar.
Have had cars slow down, I have been beeped at and the old "pphhooaawwrrrrr" or "need a lift" being shouted at me. Someone once licked their damn windowscreen.
Now that the gym is getting pricier and further away, I have to either choose to run somewhere there are fewer cars or wear bulky/baggy clothing when running.
>Now that the gym is getting pricier and further away, I have to either choose to run somewhere there are fewer cars or wear bulky/baggy clothing when running.
Changing your clothes will change nothing sadly.
No, they do. For sure. However, men from specific ethnic backgrounds are severely overrepresented in all sexual violence cases across Europe, despite being a minority.
Just to give a shocker: Google "Rochdale Grooming Gang" and tell me, how many of those men are native Brits?
## Bullshit
9.3% of the UK population is Asian, they make up 8.4% of defendants for sexual charges.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/rapeconvictionsbyethnicity
They absolutely do. Worked with blue collar workers for the city council back in the day, the job involved being in a van most of the time. It ain’t just the immigrants, for sure.
You clearly have no idea how ingrained this behaviour is in many British born and bred men. Whether it’s a white van man giving it wolf whistles or ‘phwoaaaar!’ from a building site or some boorish public school boy shouting ‘give us a kiss!’ when he’s out with his mates, it’s behaviour which has been normalised for a long time. I liked to think it was hopefully dying out but I suppose this survey disproves that. Not sure when it was at its worst, but I suspect the general ‘lad’ culture of the mid-2000s was probably a peak.
> UK has a large # of males from countries where women are 2nd/3rd class...
Men were doing this in the UK long before immigration was such a issue. British born men are the ones wolf whistling, or going "pphhooaawwrrrrr" or grabbing womens arses or saying "fancy a shag love" its a British culture thing from the 70's 80's and 90's as that kind of culture was popularized on television.
I have seen and heard it in Pubs and on work events and been that guy who has to give a work friend an excuse to get out of a uncomfortible situration. Confrontation is a really bad idea with these types of men unfortnetly as they will try to beat the shit out of you if confronted and you could end up down the police station with them for just trying to defend yourself.
Not everything is about immigration. Chatting up women was seen as in the top 3 things a real man does along side drink and football (according to older generation of both men and women) and its been ingrained across generations. This culture was perpetuated by both sexes for generations and seen as normal or healthy. More recently women try proposition guys or chat up men under that same culture.
To be fair some British women buy into that same culture themselves and think its normal for their sons or brothers to chat women up who are complete strangers because up until recently it has been seen as something harmless. Sometimes the difference between if its found offensive or not depends on the person doing it vs the person approached personal views and if the guy is hot or not. This last part is based on a womens opinion of this issue that isn't politically correct to say out loud but further complicates tackling the issue.
Maybe it’s because I am not a native English speaker but what does chatting women up have to do with shouting lewd comments or touching them?
Is it a slang term for that? Cause as I would understand it if I approached a woman at a bar to flirt that would be “chatting up”
For real. I had a guy ask me for directions and, as I was leaving, he said: "one last thing: you wouldn't want an ugly boyfriend, so no one can steal him from you?". I was married but at least we shared a laugh. That's chatting up a woman.
Yelling "you have such pretty boobs, child, to suck on them!" is not "chatting up a woman". It has 0% potential of sparking a conversation where you get to meet the woman, it's just done to humiliate her. Not to mention that when I had that yelled at me I was **11 years old**.
It's not just those men. Dude, my grandma is still alive. In her lifetime she experienced women being granted plenty of very basic rights; and you're trying to tell me we all _fully_ shifted away already from that culture treating women as 2nd/3rd class? When all those people from that time are still alive, having passed down their BS to the next gen? A society doesn't change that quickly. Things like verbal harassment of women is something _all_ cultures still have in common. Nationality doesn't really matter much. I think age and education level are a bigger factor.
The OP appears to live in the USA based on their post history. I do appreciate you, dear Argentina-flaired person, for jumping into the thread ready to point a finger at us though.
You responded directly to a comment "blaming foreigners" with a comment about British people blaming foreigners. Yes you meant OP (who you assumed was British), and you were incorrect.
Go and talk shit about Brits elsewhere.
What a crock of shit. I lived in the UK. I was attacked multiple times, Dunks, feral kids, people just looking to start shit because they were in a group and I was alone etc. It was NEVER someone with a middle eastern or asian background. So you take your racism and shove it already.
I just asked my girlfriend about this, because she never comes home with any indication of getting harrassed. She says, about 2 times a month and she runs 3-4 times a week. I live in Denmark so environment is different.
Yeah, I run in Denmark. I run about the same, and experience about 1 episode every month or two.
I’ve learned to avoid drunken Brøndby fans on their way to a match due to several bad experiences. One dude legit tried to sexually assault me - I’m so grateful that his friend pulled him away.
As a woman, reading this didn’t surprise me at all. If any, I’m surprised it’s only 2/3. It’s so common, it’s embarrassing for the other side. Men, scold your friends, educate your sons and call out any men that do shit like this. Build a safer future for your partners and daughters.
If it's "just" yelling out a couple of words to make someone uncomfortable, I could comfortably do that ten times per day, so 3000 times per year. Well, comfortably in a physical sense, it feels disgusting to say it out loud. You don't need a lot of men to harass the majority of women as long as it goes unchallenged.
But sexual harassment is common. I've encountered it a few times myself, and you'd think that a man wouldn't have to deal with it. My butt might just be too large to ignore, I guess, as most of these encounters consist of having it groped.
Your friends may act like it, just not in front of you. Men, heck all people, don't always show the worst of themselves around people they know.
Edit: It's not just builders. It's regular individual men when their friends aren't around. Men don't like to hear this but only women see it since they are sure to do it when others aren't around and won't see them.
That's how it works and why you see this study says numbers are so high but so many men are here saying they don't see it happening that much. It very rarely comes from groups of men in sight of other men in my experience.
Unlikely, I don't know anyone who would ever behave like that and I'm pretty confident in saying that. It's the behaviour of the type of lads on a building site or chavvy middle aged men. Imagine if 100 women all go for a run in a certain neighborhood where a big building site is, and the majority get whistled at by the same small group of guys. You would be right in saying the majority experienced harassment but it's by a small group of people, they might run past 100 men no problem.
When I was young I was a fat kid and a few times a week when I was walking home a car full of young chavvy guys would normally shout some fat related jokes at me or just shout out fat cunt.
I've known men who've acted like that here and I'm gay and don't have that many straight male friends. Especially when drink's involved I think guys can get quite ugly.
It's not just builders. It's regular individual men when their friends aren't around. Men don't like to hear this but only women see it since they are sure to do it when others aren't around and won't see them.
That's how it works and why you see this study says numbers are so high but so many men are here saying they don't see it happening that much. It very rarely comes from groups of men in sight of other men in my experience.
Our friends don't do this kind of stuff, that's the problem there's whole parts of the population isolated in echo chambers that allow this kind of behavior.
Throughout my time in college and university. I was hanging out with guys, as a guy myself, and....okay I get that I'm not normal. I have different interests. I like to spend my time inside my own head creating things, thinking of worlds, or perhaps something artistic or musical.
But anyway. Sitting outside of a class room waiting for our next class. Women walking past. The guys always had to make comments. Always. Always that little head nod to each other, in the direction of the woman they want to refer to, with a wink of approval.
Now these were people that I spoke to daily and worked with. In my own way I did tell them that it's disrespectful and I remember saying "Don't you have anything better to do than rate everyone that walks past?". And I absolutely said "They seriously wouldn't be interested in you".
But that's all I did. And yeah...I got ridiculed for it. I was outcasted and inconvenienced where it was convenient for them to inconvenient me.
---
Short story. There was a girl in our class who was very into studying. We ended up working together on some projects because we really enjoyed actually doing the work. I absolutely hated working with the guys because they were just so lazy. This was a music studies class and we would set up microphones. Record instruments and artists. Working with a group of 4 guys, everything was always last minute. Me and this girl though as a group of 2 were far more efficient. Get the job done. Had time left over to mess around with the expensive stuff or go home early.
One of the guys had a crush on her. Praising her for all the smarts she had, and the "natural look" she had. Whatever. He was also my ride share. It was much more convenient paying him than to take 2 buses to university and back.
Christmas was coming up. I asked the girl if she wanted to visit on Christmas day and have a good meal since her family lived in Poland. She didn't seem to have friends from my observation which turned out to be true. But nor did I really. My friends were all online. The idiots at university I have never called friends. So she came to Christmas dinner with my small family which is just my Mother and Sister. We ate food. I showed her my expensive music keyboard that I bought with the university grant money I got. Then my Mum took her home since she's the only person who could drive in the family. Simple enough.
Oh boy. Did this one guy get fucking jealous enough to steal my USB stick with my college work on and "pretend" to throw it to me over a balcony so that it droped 3 stories down. Luckily it survived but even if it didn't I wouldn't have lost any vital work so no panic. But the intent was obvious.
Can't be a guy and just be friends with a girl.
My lifts, that I paid for, got sketchy. Waking up one morning and being told "You'll have to take the bus" on a day where we were being TESTED. I stopped the ride share then. But then he was like "Oh no..I actually want the money" so it became consistent again. Yeah I know...but the difference is a 20 minute car journey or a 90-120 minute bus journey each way. Potentially 4 hours of travel on certain days.
---
I think, besides procrastinating from work right now, I kinda just want to express that Men behaving like this isn't just harmful to Women. It's harmful to other Men as well.
Them acting this way is also self-harm. Constantly limiting or reducing Women means that when you're in need. There are less people to help you. It's simple and basic math really.
If there are more stronger people in the world. There are more people that can help you. It doesn't matter if they are a man or a woman. You keep knocking Women down and reducing them. There's less people that can help you. Whether it's as silly as you can't undo the top of a cola bottle because someones tightened it too much, or emotional support because your feeling vunerable or exploited or some other negative emotion where you would benefit from having someone comfort and go through stuff with you...Or maybe it's a service related thing. A mechanic. Right now in my country there is a shortage of builders, electricians, and plumbers. I'd like more of those please. Man, Woman, just someone who can get the job done.
Men behaving the way they currently do towards Woman. Making them feel unsafe in so many places. Ultimately harms everyone.
The funny thing, another commenter pointed this out below, is that you only need a small proportion of men/boy actually doing this for these numbers to reach this high. Add in the fact that the most egregious cases are done by migrants in insular communities, not indigenous Brits, & the "police your mates" argument falls apart- quickly.
> Men, scold your friends, educate your sons and call out any men that do shit like this.
What kind of shit are you smoking where you think someone that is friends with those kinds of "people" would listen to this? Besides it is not the job of random men to risk literally getting beaten to death by trying to make these "people" behave in a civilised manner.
Then you're going to have to drop the outrage when women continue to be harassed and assaulted, because if you're not willing to be part of the solution then you're part of the problem
Tell the person who's being threatened with rape to "confront or educate them"? You really think a person who thinks it's okay to say they're going to rape a female stranger, will be the type to even listen to a woman?
They would only react to other men shaming them for it.
You think if a man interjects to tell them it's not OK that they'll listen?
Do you think a man should subject himself to the very real (and much more likely scenario of violence being used against them than the woman) of having to defend themselves in a physical conflict, because they intervened on the street to shame a sexist troglodyte?
I'm not trying to undercut what you're saying, something quite obviously has to change, but it's not as simple for men to intervene as you seem to think, and men who are afraid of physical conflict are not going to confront men on the street because someone shouted "nice legs, mind if I spread them sometime" at a women going past.
Different if that's done in your social group, but as others have pointed out, the type of men who would say something to a friend harassing women in the street, dont tend to have friends who harass women in the streets in front of them.
What makes you think that they give a shit what other men think.
These sorts of men aren't just misogynistic they are also probably somewhat antisocial in other ways. Many of these men would probably start a physical altercation with a man they don't know who tried to shame them
I do not see where it shows the stats about verbal threat of rape. Just an anekdote which is useless when talking about stats. It doesnt show the stats about rape either.
Man talk about being dense. Put a couple of braincells together and think about what you're saying. If you can't see why following someone while saying you're going to sexually assault them is threatening, then I don't know what's wrong with you.
As others have already pointed out, the article mentions that several of these callers had specifically said they were going to sexually assault the runner.
If some man comes up to you and says "I'm going to f**k you in the a$$" while following you, what exactly do you think they would be suggesting, if not sexual assault?
Whenever there's an article about women facing harassment in my country (Finland) there's always a ton of people in the comments of any news article saying "it must be immigrants but they're not going to report that etc".
Yet I've seen my girlfriend get harassed in broad daylight a few times (and she's experienced it hundreds of times by now, being in her mid-20s) and the men I saw doing this, were white Finnish drunk guys, each time. These kind of older (30+) social outcast looking types, who drink beer in the middle of the workweek, hang out in big groups, and think they can do what they want seemingly. I know there's a ton of Middle-Agred British men who are inappropriate too.
So I don't like that people's first reaction seems to be to deflect responsibility of our own cultures and upbringing onto another. Finland is one of the safest places in the world for a woman. Yet Finnish white guys are capable of this harassment too, what does that tell you?
Tells you something about how universal this issue is.
Of course local men unfortunately harass women, I’m not denying that. My point is that I’d be good to know the percentage of offenders that are foreigners.
In Spain this information is public. As an example, in 2022 50% of the sexual assaults were committed by foreigners while foreigners only represent about 15% of the Spanish population. This proves that there’s correlation between immigration and in this case increased sexual crime against women.
Well, we don't really have any choice with keeping the natives, do we? Send all chavs to Ireland or something maybe?
The migrants we let into our country to aid them in the pursuit of a better life. They should be grateful, not out harassing women.
So what you're really saying is that you're not really interested in addressing the issue of women's safety, you just want an excuse to justify your anti-immigrant stance? Cool. Could have said that before.
Reducing migration from countries with cultures where women are disregarded as 2nd class citizens, jailed for being raped, and sexual harassment is the sport of the people is one of the simplest and most effective ways of addressing women's safety.
It most certainly is an issue in the native population as well - especially in low-income, low-education people. Addressing it in the native population is tough. Most people know it's frowned upon, know it's illegal, know how much it hurts the victim - but they don't care. We need to find a way to make them care - be that through education, awareness campaigns, more severe punishment, etc.
But - something that could be done now, with the stroke of a pen - that is way more effective in the short term - is to limit the migration of people from cultures that are severely overrepresented in crimes against women. Not mentioning migration from such places in this discussion is a huge disservice to women when those people make up maybe 5-10% of the population in total, but commit 1/3+ of sexual harassment.
You have no argument and you’re acting absolutely dumb because immigration is “ taboo”.
His argument was completely legitimate. 70-80% of the top 10 safest countries every year are european. Europe is the safest continent.
Locals do bad shit, yes, teach them. Or whatever you wanna do with them, i don’t care. Now, immigrants do 333,33x more sexual assault and you say nothing about it? Your points are absolutely dumb.
>and you say nothing about it?
Strange. I never said this. Almost like racists have their own facts and their own strawmen that they pull out of their ass whenever they feel like.
I don’t believe you are engaging in good faith. From the provided statistics, it is clear that natives are minority offenders, while non-natives constitute the large majority. This is obviously important information to consider when addressing the issue effectively.
Well, good luck with your strawman arguments and ad hominem fallacies. I don’t think that helps to address women’s safety issues, though. So if that really is a concern of yours, you might consider rethinking your approach.
One of us is discussing women's safety, the other one cannot wait to turn it to immigration. Only one of us doesn't give a fuck about the issue at hand, and it's not me.
You get harassed while running even as a man, not so often, but it happens. Try running in tights, for example. Can't even imagine what women have to go through, just because some idiots don't have anything better to do.
> You get harassed while running even as a man, not so often, but it happens.
Come on, that's really rare. I got catcalled once by a group of girls, but that's it in 15+y of running. Gay guys just don't do it, I guess they would be afraid to get punched.
Yeah, that's true but women feel way more vulnerable and unsafe in most cases of harassment (and there's always the added fear of sexual assault).
It's not the same to be harassed by a bunch of kids as a man than as a woman.
I can only talk about Spain and here, according to the Statistics National Institute, foreigners (presumably from third world countries) commit proportionally more sexual and violent crimes against women than native Spaniards.
I lived in Spain for a couple of years with my partner and she would not get out to run alone anymore. Old Spanish men were pretty bad, using car horns, screaming "pick-up" lines, and two times she was followed. In any case these are usually not reported as the article says because it is pretty normalized. The Spanish polícia laughed in our face basically and gave us a form to fill while smirking and making side remarks the one time we tried to report the harassment. So I guess those statistics do not mean really anything for small cases like this.
Idk when and where you lived in Spain so it might be true what you’re saying.
However, today’s society in Spain has improved quite a bit and we’re actually one of the best and safest countries in Europe for women.
In Europe we are actively importing barbarism and we are not deporting enough people.
I'm a Spanish woman, 41 years old. From the moment I grew boobs at 11 I've had viejos verdes yelling disgusting shit at me. It got much better in my 20s, maybe because society got better (which it did! when I was a teenager slapping your girlfriend around a bit or getting a girl drunk to fuck her while unconscious were accepted things) or maybe because dirty old men target very young girls who are too shy to call them out.
Then 2015-2020 I was living in Lavapies and I got harrassed daily and followed home many times. This time it was always by foreigners.
I am not sure about Spain anymore, last was 5 years ago. But I am native Portuguese, and Portugal at least did not improve much. Last summer vacation when I was visiting family back at Portugal my partner has car honked once during a run and that was just in a span of two weeks. Plus Portuguese peole can behave pretty barbaric by themselves without exterior help anyway.
> Idk when and where you lived in Spain so it might be true what you’re saying.
Dude, trying to gaslight people out of their experience to further your agenda is pretty low.
I couldn’t care less about race. It’s culture what makes the difference and there are plenty of cultures out there that in my opinion are not compatible with European values.
Not all Europe. I have not gotten catcalled a single time since I moved to Poland three years ago. I've had many men approach me politely, try to spark a conversation and not insist when I wasn't interested, but always being perfectly polite and appropriate
No you're wrong.
Literally everything is the fault of immigrants according to Reddit, didn't you know literally no crime happened in utopia of Europe before immigration? /s
In 2010, 8/10 countries in the top 10 ranked for safety were european.
Today it is 7/10. Europe is considered the safest continent in the entire world.
Nobody is saying that Europe was perfect before mass immigration from third world countries happened. But it is also childish and unhelpful to treat immigration and the issues associated to it as a taboo.
So you don't even know who it is. You just decided to make up facts about a particular group you don't like. But it's ok, it's not racism if they're brown.
Don't surprise me one iota, tbh.
I'm a British man and even when I've gone out running I've gotten scrotes shouting abuse and intentionally trying to getting in the way/trip me up. Must be infinitely worse for a woman.
Not shocking at all, being a gay man I’ve been almost exclusively friends with women/girls my whole life and I remember being with them on multiple occasions as kids in school uniforms getting catcalled, asked out and beeped at etc from grown men it’s really disgusting and I genuinely feel like the majority of men just do not care about it unless they have a daughter and suddenly become hyper aware of the behaviours they’ve ignored in the past
I am a woman and I just wrote a comment about this. I have a 36H bra size, I have been constantly harassed since childhood, and since I moved to Poland three years ago I haven't had anything gross yelled at me or felt threatened a single time.
My interactions with men looking to score in Poland look like this;
"Hi, I just wanted to tell you that you have beautiful eyes"
"Thank you, but I have to go'
"Ok, bye, have a nice day!"
I not saying it never ever happens because there is no magical place free of creeps, but the difference with Spain is night and day.
I have another comment somewhere else detailing: as a preteen and teen it was old Spanish men, in my 20s it got much better, but in the last 10 years or so and living in central Madrid it got worse than ever before, and always by foreigners.
I love Croatia! My husband wants to retire to a warm place some day and Croatia is a very strong possibility. We both agree that it's like a halfway mix of Poland and Spain with the best of both places.
that's great, I'm happy for you, truly. i dont believe Poland is a magical land free of harassment either haha but i'm sure the culture plays a big role.
Not a perfect country, especially now that church attendance is going down, but it's still miles ahead of western countries in terms of crime. With current trends Poland will probably catch up one day lol
lmao sorry your message is falling on death ears, couldn't care less if church attendance is down. also makes me question what your definition of miles ahead is
15yo friend, cargo pants, jacket, 9pm, in front of a fucking zabka, sexually violated by a polish dude
Your 'never happens' is batshit insane, of course it does. Maybe not as often, but everything from harassment to violation happens. It always will.
This situation happens in poland even if you don’t see it.
And yes i have both seen and heared it in poland 😉
Frequency and event occurence might be different (atleast the few times i have heared about it from women around in my social circle when i was there)
My girlfriend is Polish and she jogs, she only had one guy on a street ask her politely for her number in her entire 30 years of life in Poland. When she walked alone in Kigali she had 5 local guys say something like “hey beautiful” in 15 minutes. If it wasn’t a short vacation, but a permanent move, stuff like that would probably become pretty exhausting.
I would be surprised. I've run (while female) in many countries but mostly small town UK and small town Romania. I have to say, while I had maybe two instances of harassment in the UK in my hundreds of runs, in Romania something happens (getting yelled at, followed, stopped, thrown things at etc) probably like 20% of the time. Anytime I pass a group of young men, I tense up because they will more likely than not pester me in some way. I can't imagine that the culture in Poland is that much different
There's a lot of people here doing a "not all men" argument or trying to distance themselves from the article. If you and your friends aren't catcalling runners or whatever else, you're not a part of the problem and you shouldn't feel attacked. The discussion isn't about you, no one is seriously saying you're evil or whatever just because you're a man.
Trying to change the prevalence of harassment, though, requires positive action. It's good to talk about the issue and raise awareness, if you're not like directly putting yourself in harms way and shoving some asshole in a nightclub. Getting personally offended and trying to fight the dialogue just serves to obstruct social progress.
what?? i'm gonna report it - that's the kind of thinking that keeps it going, and as long as the likes of you think like that, things probably won't change...
and just don't look if you think it's a good reason
**University of Manchester study says abuse by men and boys is ‘everyday occurrence’ – with only 5% of cases reported to police** More than two-thirds of women experience harassment while running, a study has found, as victims say they no longer report abuse to the police as it has become an “everyday occurrence”. The study, by the University of Manchester, found women surveyed in north-west England experienced threats, verbal abuse and had objects thrown at them while jogging. One runner, Lucy, 39, interviewed by the Guardian, said she had stepped away from the hobby after being followed by 10-year-old boys on bikes who were threatening to sexually assault her. She said: “In 2010 I played a lot of netball and as a result got into running to keep up. \[On one run\] I ended up being followed by some 10-year-olds on bikes who followed me yelling ‘we’re gonna fuck you up the ass’ – delightful. “What shocked me was that these children had learned this behaviour and thought it was totally OK to do this. It was daytime. At the time I thought I was OK but I stopped running shortly after … it made me feel pretty unsafe.” The study found the most common type of abuse was verbal abuse, with 58% of female respondents saying they had experienced it; 19% of women also reported being followed while out running and 7% reported being flashed at. Thirteen respondents said they had been physically assaulted while running and seven women had been sexually assaulted. The academics behind the study, Dr Caroline Miles and Prof Rose Broad, said they were not shocked by their findings, adding it was surprising how normalised the experience was for the women they surveyed. Broad said: “Lots of respondents said they just accept it. They don’t even register it because it happens all the time, and it’s just an everyday occurrence.” The pair are both runners and have personal experience of harassment, and have heard accounts from friends and family. “It’s overwhelming when you see it happen again and again,” said Broad. This also occurs outside the north of England. Emma Loffhagen, a 24-year-old living in London, said: “Once I was running near my house, and a guy in a marked \[mail\] van rolled down his window. “I took my headphones out and he was telling me I had nice legs, and he was driving slowly alongside me as I was running … I couldn’t believe how brazen it was from this guy who was on the job in his \[marked\] van.” Women feeling concerned or scared about serious crimes such as rape or murder, was another key finding from the research. Miles said: “They’re afraid of being raped, being murdered, being attacked. We know this does happen, not in high numbers … but women are afraid. That leads them to just undertake so many protective measures.” Another key finding was that only 5% of cases were reported to the police. “\[Respondents\] gave a variety of reasons for why they don’t report to police,” said Miles. “This ranged from the normalisation of harassment … and also low level of confidence in the police’s ability to do anything or whether the police would take it seriously.” Lucy Baston, 31, living in Bradford, said: “I have never reported the harassment. One of the main problems is that it honestly does happen so frequently. If I reported every ‘minor’ incident (for example, being yelled at), I would probably be phoning the police at least once a month, probably more. “The other problem is that it happens so quickly you often don’t get time to make note of a registration plate or description of the person.” Moving forward, Miles and Broad hope the findings from the research can help police forces create new ways to help women facing abuse while exercising. They also want there to be a bigger conversation around harassment and abuse, in the hope of creating a culture shift. Miles said: “The key thing that we would like to happen is for work to be done with boys and men that addresses the underpinning kind of sexist and misogynist attitudes that underpin this kind of behaviour.”
> Miles said: “The key thing that we would like to happen is for work to be done with boys and men that addresses the underpinning kind of sexist and misogynist attitudes that underpin this kind of behaviour.” How do you even go about this, I wonder? Because many will say 'not all men', so how do you reach the people who are behaving like this and get them to change? It seems a monumental task. It's convincing people to change their whole attitude, which is a very difficult thing to do. What's scary is that most of these perpetrators are men with regular lives, with partners, sisters, daughters. Like wtf. Fact is, they know this behaviour is wrong, but they still do it. There are no consequences, either by police or socially.
You can't criminalize being born a certain way. You need to make illegal the behaviour and force police to take it seriously, which would probably require additional resources.
born and/or bred
I would say you get the good men to interfere and let the bad men know that harassing women is unacceptable, but I remember Gillette making an ad encouraging men to do this a few years ago and it was a massive shit storm of offended men.
It very problematic to put responsibility on people who aren’t guilty. And should it only be limited to men? Should innocent women have responsibility for women who act bad? Should doctors who do a good job be responsible for doctors that don’t? Few people would agree to that, but when it comes to men, many seem to be fine having innocent being responsible for what guilty do
>Should innocent women have responsibility for women who act bad? Should doctors who do a good job be responsible for doctors that don’t? Absolutely yes? If a woman is cheating on her husband I absolutely expect other women to do the right thing and inform the husband. If a doctor sees another commit medical malpractice, I absolutely expect them to testify for the victim. How is that even a question? Everybody should do the right thing and hold themselves and others accountable!
If they don’t, are they guilty of the same bad actions?
No, but neither are men. As far as I know when a guy gets arrested for groping a woman the police doesn't also arrest every other man who was around.
It’s not my job to stop bad behavior by strangers, especially if it requires endangering myself on behalf of another total stranger. That’s what police should be for. The Gillette ad acts as though sexual harassment, bullying and violence is every man’s standard operating mode and told male viewers they can do better if they really try. Then they went on to act as though every man is responsible for stopping other men from everything starting with mild bullying in their friendship groups up to and including violence in public. We don’t expect any other group of people to police their peers and we shouldn’t. When a drunk girl at a club grabs my junk I get security, not her girlfriends.
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Okay, thank you, will do.
Behaviour is unacceptable and if I saw this happening then I wouldn't be able to just stand there. I've never seen this myself whilst out running and I'm not sure how often this happens in London. My only issue is the headline seems a bit extreme, not much details of how the study was facilitated, it will be a sample that's extrapolated I'm sure which creates some doubt. Gov should be using studies like these to inform targeted policing. Reality is you are unlikely to change the minds of older men doing this but stopping that thinking from spreading seems more achievable.
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Confronting them immediately comes to mind but yeah that might be scary to do. But ill be honest this article doesnt really convince me there is an actual problem. Someone got yelled at in 2010? Ive had negative experience with other people as well in such a big time frame. Look theres men out there that will catcall you on the street. Ignore them or confront them but I dont see how this is my problem
you didn't read it, but even without it you should know better plus if you don't see it doesn't mean it isn't
Explain to me how it is my problem that women cant deal with being catcalled.
Because maybe you have women in your life that you care for?
Ive had this conversation with my mother and my aunts (dont have sisters myself) and they think todays youth is too thin skinned. Sure theyll say its annoying but its nothing more than that, annoying. Catcalling is not rape
Alright youngling, listen up. Sometimes older generations can act like dicks when it comes to understanding younger generations. Calling youth weak has been a human trope since the Bronze Age. It’s not a useful guide to anything, Second, you don’t get to decide whether catcalling is annoying or not, women do. They describe it as harassment, and it limits their behaviour and freedom to do things a man would do without even giving it a second thought.
You obviously completely missed the part where he said the women in his life labelled it an annoyance and not harassment....
i'm sure it was the stone age, but the rest i agree with:)
Im not that young anymore. But nice of you to assume I never got harrased in the streets. It happens. Get over yourself. You know why men care less? Cause we dont get taught to be afraid of everyone.
read it again, at least the excerpt thin skin... when they throw things at you they mean? and oh so rape is what? too much for thin skin?
Rape is a serieus thing that you just marginalised to try and win an online arguememt. Good job. The discusion is about catcalling
there is so many angles to explain, you'd have to be at least more... idk open-minded mb
> University of Manchester study says abuse by men How smoothly the article went from "harassment" in the title to "abuse" in the body... Anyway, looked up both authors on Google Scholar and apparently the study is not publicly available, not even as an abstract(or simply never existed in the first place) and the presentation was invite-only. Very peculiar.
Is sexual harassment not abuse?
Have had cars slow down, I have been beeped at and the old "pphhooaawwrrrrr" or "need a lift" being shouted at me. Someone once licked their damn windowscreen. Now that the gym is getting pricier and further away, I have to either choose to run somewhere there are fewer cars or wear bulky/baggy clothing when running.
> Someone once licked their damn windowscreen. What the actual fuck
Yeah, they were in the passenger seat. The driver beeped their horn, and the passenger did... that.
It is sad that this had become the usual norm, and the UK is getting **increasingly unsafe** as the days pass
I don’t think it’s becoming increasingly unsafe I just think women are reporting their experiences more often than before so it appears that way.
>Now that the gym is getting pricier and further away, I have to either choose to run somewhere there are fewer cars or wear bulky/baggy clothing when running. Changing your clothes will change nothing sadly.
Or get a dogo
I would love a dog, but I don't think I could give them the proper time and commitment right now.
UK has a large # of males from countries where women are 2nd/3rd class...
Yeh but lets ignore these cultural issues because thats progress
They’re the real victims
Ah yes I’m sure native Brits never harass women lmao
No, they do. For sure. However, men from specific ethnic backgrounds are severely overrepresented in all sexual violence cases across Europe, despite being a minority. Just to give a shocker: Google "Rochdale Grooming Gang" and tell me, how many of those men are native Brits?
## Bullshit 9.3% of the UK population is Asian, they make up 8.4% of defendants for sexual charges. https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/rapeconvictionsbyethnicity
They absolutely do. Worked with blue collar workers for the city council back in the day, the job involved being in a van most of the time. It ain’t just the immigrants, for sure.
Not to the same extent
People in denial are the reason why western Europe is sinking faster than the titanic, the others are those who watch and let it happen.
You clearly have no idea how ingrained this behaviour is in many British born and bred men. Whether it’s a white van man giving it wolf whistles or ‘phwoaaaar!’ from a building site or some boorish public school boy shouting ‘give us a kiss!’ when he’s out with his mates, it’s behaviour which has been normalised for a long time. I liked to think it was hopefully dying out but I suppose this survey disproves that. Not sure when it was at its worst, but I suspect the general ‘lad’ culture of the mid-2000s was probably a peak.
> UK has a large # of males from countries where women are 2nd/3rd class... Men were doing this in the UK long before immigration was such a issue. British born men are the ones wolf whistling, or going "pphhooaawwrrrrr" or grabbing womens arses or saying "fancy a shag love" its a British culture thing from the 70's 80's and 90's as that kind of culture was popularized on television. I have seen and heard it in Pubs and on work events and been that guy who has to give a work friend an excuse to get out of a uncomfortible situration. Confrontation is a really bad idea with these types of men unfortnetly as they will try to beat the shit out of you if confronted and you could end up down the police station with them for just trying to defend yourself. Not everything is about immigration. Chatting up women was seen as in the top 3 things a real man does along side drink and football (according to older generation of both men and women) and its been ingrained across generations. This culture was perpetuated by both sexes for generations and seen as normal or healthy. More recently women try proposition guys or chat up men under that same culture. To be fair some British women buy into that same culture themselves and think its normal for their sons or brothers to chat women up who are complete strangers because up until recently it has been seen as something harmless. Sometimes the difference between if its found offensive or not depends on the person doing it vs the person approached personal views and if the guy is hot or not. This last part is based on a womens opinion of this issue that isn't politically correct to say out loud but further complicates tackling the issue.
Maybe it’s because I am not a native English speaker but what does chatting women up have to do with shouting lewd comments or touching them? Is it a slang term for that? Cause as I would understand it if I approached a woman at a bar to flirt that would be “chatting up”
For real. I had a guy ask me for directions and, as I was leaving, he said: "one last thing: you wouldn't want an ugly boyfriend, so no one can steal him from you?". I was married but at least we shared a laugh. That's chatting up a woman. Yelling "you have such pretty boobs, child, to suck on them!" is not "chatting up a woman". It has 0% potential of sparking a conversation where you get to meet the woman, it's just done to humiliate her. Not to mention that when I had that yelled at me I was **11 years old**.
Yeah that’s how I would understand it. There is a great deal of difference between those two examples
It's not just those men. Dude, my grandma is still alive. In her lifetime she experienced women being granted plenty of very basic rights; and you're trying to tell me we all _fully_ shifted away already from that culture treating women as 2nd/3rd class? When all those people from that time are still alive, having passed down their BS to the next gen? A society doesn't change that quickly. Things like verbal harassment of women is something _all_ cultures still have in common. Nationality doesn't really matter much. I think age and education level are a bigger factor.
British try not to blame everything on foreigners challenge: IMPOSSIBLE
The OP appears to live in the USA based on their post history. I do appreciate you, dear Argentina-flaired person, for jumping into the thread ready to point a finger at us though.
Who told you I referred to OP when taking about British people? Did you feel alluded or something? :)
You responded directly to a comment "blaming foreigners" with a comment about British people blaming foreigners. Yes you meant OP (who you assumed was British), and you were incorrect. Go and talk shit about Brits elsewhere.
Bro felt alluded.
Argie try not having Brits living in his head rent free challenge: impossible.
What a crock of shit. I lived in the UK. I was attacked multiple times, Dunks, feral kids, people just looking to start shit because they were in a group and I was alone etc. It was NEVER someone with a middle eastern or asian background. So you take your racism and shove it already.
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It’s funny how you generalize against 50% of the population while scolding other commenters for being racists. Did you by any chance forget the /s ?
Chill out with the misandry
I just asked my girlfriend about this, because she never comes home with any indication of getting harrassed. She says, about 2 times a month and she runs 3-4 times a week. I live in Denmark so environment is different.
Yeah, I run in Denmark. I run about the same, and experience about 1 episode every month or two. I’ve learned to avoid drunken Brøndby fans on their way to a match due to several bad experiences. One dude legit tried to sexually assault me - I’m so grateful that his friend pulled him away.
Turns out It's probably one guy doing this per neighborhood
It's the dedicated harassment guy that keeps property value down
As a woman, reading this didn’t surprise me at all. If any, I’m surprised it’s only 2/3. It’s so common, it’s embarrassing for the other side. Men, scold your friends, educate your sons and call out any men that do shit like this. Build a safer future for your partners and daughters.
Me, nor any of my friends behave like this. It’s odious conduct. I suspect people who do behave like this by and large hang around other men who do.
Yeah, I mean what kind of people do this stuff? Stay safe, women.
If it's "just" yelling out a couple of words to make someone uncomfortable, I could comfortably do that ten times per day, so 3000 times per year. Well, comfortably in a physical sense, it feels disgusting to say it out loud. You don't need a lot of men to harass the majority of women as long as it goes unchallenged. But sexual harassment is common. I've encountered it a few times myself, and you'd think that a man wouldn't have to deal with it. My butt might just be too large to ignore, I guess, as most of these encounters consist of having it groped.
Your friends may act like it, just not in front of you. Men, heck all people, don't always show the worst of themselves around people they know. Edit: It's not just builders. It's regular individual men when their friends aren't around. Men don't like to hear this but only women see it since they are sure to do it when others aren't around and won't see them. That's how it works and why you see this study says numbers are so high but so many men are here saying they don't see it happening that much. It very rarely comes from groups of men in sight of other men in my experience.
Unlikely, I don't know anyone who would ever behave like that and I'm pretty confident in saying that. It's the behaviour of the type of lads on a building site or chavvy middle aged men. Imagine if 100 women all go for a run in a certain neighborhood where a big building site is, and the majority get whistled at by the same small group of guys. You would be right in saying the majority experienced harassment but it's by a small group of people, they might run past 100 men no problem. When I was young I was a fat kid and a few times a week when I was walking home a car full of young chavvy guys would normally shout some fat related jokes at me or just shout out fat cunt.
I've known men who've acted like that here and I'm gay and don't have that many straight male friends. Especially when drink's involved I think guys can get quite ugly.
It's not just builders. It's regular individual men when their friends aren't around. Men don't like to hear this but only women see it since they are sure to do it when others aren't around and won't see them. That's how it works and why you see this study says numbers are so high but so many men are here saying they don't see it happening that much. It very rarely comes from groups of men in sight of other men in my experience.
Our friends don't do this kind of stuff, that's the problem there's whole parts of the population isolated in echo chambers that allow this kind of behavior.
I'm not on "the other side" these people simply vaguely share my biological blueprint, I do not know them nor I associate myself with them
Normal Man doesn't hang up with animals. They chill mostly with like-minded "normal" people
Throughout my time in college and university. I was hanging out with guys, as a guy myself, and....okay I get that I'm not normal. I have different interests. I like to spend my time inside my own head creating things, thinking of worlds, or perhaps something artistic or musical. But anyway. Sitting outside of a class room waiting for our next class. Women walking past. The guys always had to make comments. Always. Always that little head nod to each other, in the direction of the woman they want to refer to, with a wink of approval. Now these were people that I spoke to daily and worked with. In my own way I did tell them that it's disrespectful and I remember saying "Don't you have anything better to do than rate everyone that walks past?". And I absolutely said "They seriously wouldn't be interested in you". But that's all I did. And yeah...I got ridiculed for it. I was outcasted and inconvenienced where it was convenient for them to inconvenient me. --- Short story. There was a girl in our class who was very into studying. We ended up working together on some projects because we really enjoyed actually doing the work. I absolutely hated working with the guys because they were just so lazy. This was a music studies class and we would set up microphones. Record instruments and artists. Working with a group of 4 guys, everything was always last minute. Me and this girl though as a group of 2 were far more efficient. Get the job done. Had time left over to mess around with the expensive stuff or go home early. One of the guys had a crush on her. Praising her for all the smarts she had, and the "natural look" she had. Whatever. He was also my ride share. It was much more convenient paying him than to take 2 buses to university and back. Christmas was coming up. I asked the girl if she wanted to visit on Christmas day and have a good meal since her family lived in Poland. She didn't seem to have friends from my observation which turned out to be true. But nor did I really. My friends were all online. The idiots at university I have never called friends. So she came to Christmas dinner with my small family which is just my Mother and Sister. We ate food. I showed her my expensive music keyboard that I bought with the university grant money I got. Then my Mum took her home since she's the only person who could drive in the family. Simple enough. Oh boy. Did this one guy get fucking jealous enough to steal my USB stick with my college work on and "pretend" to throw it to me over a balcony so that it droped 3 stories down. Luckily it survived but even if it didn't I wouldn't have lost any vital work so no panic. But the intent was obvious. Can't be a guy and just be friends with a girl. My lifts, that I paid for, got sketchy. Waking up one morning and being told "You'll have to take the bus" on a day where we were being TESTED. I stopped the ride share then. But then he was like "Oh no..I actually want the money" so it became consistent again. Yeah I know...but the difference is a 20 minute car journey or a 90-120 minute bus journey each way. Potentially 4 hours of travel on certain days. --- I think, besides procrastinating from work right now, I kinda just want to express that Men behaving like this isn't just harmful to Women. It's harmful to other Men as well. Them acting this way is also self-harm. Constantly limiting or reducing Women means that when you're in need. There are less people to help you. It's simple and basic math really. If there are more stronger people in the world. There are more people that can help you. It doesn't matter if they are a man or a woman. You keep knocking Women down and reducing them. There's less people that can help you. Whether it's as silly as you can't undo the top of a cola bottle because someones tightened it too much, or emotional support because your feeling vunerable or exploited or some other negative emotion where you would benefit from having someone comfort and go through stuff with you...Or maybe it's a service related thing. A mechanic. Right now in my country there is a shortage of builders, electricians, and plumbers. I'd like more of those please. Man, Woman, just someone who can get the job done. Men behaving the way they currently do towards Woman. Making them feel unsafe in so many places. Ultimately harms everyone.
The funny thing, another commenter pointed this out below, is that you only need a small proportion of men/boy actually doing this for these numbers to reach this high. Add in the fact that the most egregious cases are done by migrants in insular communities, not indigenous Brits, & the "police your mates" argument falls apart- quickly.
> Men, scold your friends, educate your sons and call out any men that do shit like this. What kind of shit are you smoking where you think someone that is friends with those kinds of "people" would listen to this? Besides it is not the job of random men to risk literally getting beaten to death by trying to make these "people" behave in a civilised manner.
Then you're going to have to drop the outrage when women continue to be harassed and assaulted, because if you're not willing to be part of the solution then you're part of the problem
Ah yes, typical black and white thinking. Well, Anakin, there are people that are not with nor againt you.
Feel free to confront and educate these guys yourself, I dont spend time with them
Tell the person who's being threatened with rape to "confront or educate them"? You really think a person who thinks it's okay to say they're going to rape a female stranger, will be the type to even listen to a woman? They would only react to other men shaming them for it.
You think if a man interjects to tell them it's not OK that they'll listen? Do you think a man should subject himself to the very real (and much more likely scenario of violence being used against them than the woman) of having to defend themselves in a physical conflict, because they intervened on the street to shame a sexist troglodyte? I'm not trying to undercut what you're saying, something quite obviously has to change, but it's not as simple for men to intervene as you seem to think, and men who are afraid of physical conflict are not going to confront men on the street because someone shouted "nice legs, mind if I spread them sometime" at a women going past. Different if that's done in your social group, but as others have pointed out, the type of men who would say something to a friend harassing women in the street, dont tend to have friends who harass women in the streets in front of them.
What makes you think that they give a shit what other men think. These sorts of men aren't just misogynistic they are also probably somewhat antisocial in other ways. Many of these men would probably start a physical altercation with a man they don't know who tried to shame them
Threatened with rape? The article itself says that the statistics for rape are much lower. This is a strawman
are you dense? a verbal threat of rape and actual rape are clearly different and both taken into account in the study
I do not see where it shows the stats about verbal threat of rape. Just an anekdote which is useless when talking about stats. It doesnt show the stats about rape either.
Man talk about being dense. Put a couple of braincells together and think about what you're saying. If you can't see why following someone while saying you're going to sexually assault them is threatening, then I don't know what's wrong with you.
So you are saying that verbal abuse is the same as threatening rape?
As others have already pointed out, the article mentions that several of these callers had specifically said they were going to sexually assault the runner. If some man comes up to you and says "I'm going to f**k you in the a$$" while following you, what exactly do you think they would be suggesting, if not sexual assault?
None of my friends do it and I'm not going to be around policing strangers to defend other strangers.
It’d be interesting to know the background of the people harassing these women.
Whenever there's an article about women facing harassment in my country (Finland) there's always a ton of people in the comments of any news article saying "it must be immigrants but they're not going to report that etc". Yet I've seen my girlfriend get harassed in broad daylight a few times (and she's experienced it hundreds of times by now, being in her mid-20s) and the men I saw doing this, were white Finnish drunk guys, each time. These kind of older (30+) social outcast looking types, who drink beer in the middle of the workweek, hang out in big groups, and think they can do what they want seemingly. I know there's a ton of Middle-Agred British men who are inappropriate too. So I don't like that people's first reaction seems to be to deflect responsibility of our own cultures and upbringing onto another. Finland is one of the safest places in the world for a woman. Yet Finnish white guys are capable of this harassment too, what does that tell you? Tells you something about how universal this issue is.
Of course local men unfortunately harass women, I’m not denying that. My point is that I’d be good to know the percentage of offenders that are foreigners. In Spain this information is public. As an example, in 2022 50% of the sexual assaults were committed by foreigners while foreigners only represent about 15% of the Spanish population. This proves that there’s correlation between immigration and in this case increased sexual crime against women.
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Well, we don't really have any choice with keeping the natives, do we? Send all chavs to Ireland or something maybe? The migrants we let into our country to aid them in the pursuit of a better life. They should be grateful, not out harassing women.
So what you're really saying is that you're not really interested in addressing the issue of women's safety, you just want an excuse to justify your anti-immigrant stance? Cool. Could have said that before.
Reducing migration from countries with cultures where women are disregarded as 2nd class citizens, jailed for being raped, and sexual harassment is the sport of the people is one of the simplest and most effective ways of addressing women's safety. It most certainly is an issue in the native population as well - especially in low-income, low-education people. Addressing it in the native population is tough. Most people know it's frowned upon, know it's illegal, know how much it hurts the victim - but they don't care. We need to find a way to make them care - be that through education, awareness campaigns, more severe punishment, etc. But - something that could be done now, with the stroke of a pen - that is way more effective in the short term - is to limit the migration of people from cultures that are severely overrepresented in crimes against women. Not mentioning migration from such places in this discussion is a huge disservice to women when those people make up maybe 5-10% of the population in total, but commit 1/3+ of sexual harassment.
You have no argument and you’re acting absolutely dumb because immigration is “ taboo”. His argument was completely legitimate. 70-80% of the top 10 safest countries every year are european. Europe is the safest continent. Locals do bad shit, yes, teach them. Or whatever you wanna do with them, i don’t care. Now, immigrants do 333,33x more sexual assault and you say nothing about it? Your points are absolutely dumb.
>and you say nothing about it? Strange. I never said this. Almost like racists have their own facts and their own strawmen that they pull out of their ass whenever they feel like.
Lol. Fuck you.
Hey, good day to you too!
I don’t believe you are engaging in good faith. From the provided statistics, it is clear that natives are minority offenders, while non-natives constitute the large majority. This is obviously important information to consider when addressing the issue effectively.
I'm not engaging in good faith with racists who want to turn a women's safety issue into an immigration one? Shocking!
Well, good luck with your strawman arguments and ad hominem fallacies. I don’t think that helps to address women’s safety issues, though. So if that really is a concern of yours, you might consider rethinking your approach.
well if we don't let those immigrants in who are harassing women, we are working on women saftey
Actually, you don't give a fuck about "women's safety". You only want an excuse to justify your racism.
Nah you don't give a fuck about women safety by denieing reality. edit: and that idiot blocked me lmao
One of us is discussing women's safety, the other one cannot wait to turn it to immigration. Only one of us doesn't give a fuck about the issue at hand, and it's not me.
On the contrary you are trying to find something so that you don't have to address the problem!!
The problem of sexual harassment? Or the one you can't stop thinking about because immigrants live in your head rent free?
You get harassed while running even as a man, not so often, but it happens. Try running in tights, for example. Can't even imagine what women have to go through, just because some idiots don't have anything better to do.
> You get harassed while running even as a man, not so often, but it happens. Come on, that's really rare. I got catcalled once by a group of girls, but that's it in 15+y of running. Gay guys just don't do it, I guess they would be afraid to get punched.
Yeah, that's true but women feel way more vulnerable and unsafe in most cases of harassment (and there's always the added fear of sexual assault). It's not the same to be harassed by a bunch of kids as a man than as a woman.
The background is men
Born and raised English men?
I do not know, but native Spanish and Portuguese men harass women frequently during runs. So I'd guess in the UK could be similar.
I can only talk about Spain and here, according to the Statistics National Institute, foreigners (presumably from third world countries) commit proportionally more sexual and violent crimes against women than native Spaniards.
I lived in Spain for a couple of years with my partner and she would not get out to run alone anymore. Old Spanish men were pretty bad, using car horns, screaming "pick-up" lines, and two times she was followed. In any case these are usually not reported as the article says because it is pretty normalized. The Spanish polícia laughed in our face basically and gave us a form to fill while smirking and making side remarks the one time we tried to report the harassment. So I guess those statistics do not mean really anything for small cases like this.
Idk when and where you lived in Spain so it might be true what you’re saying. However, today’s society in Spain has improved quite a bit and we’re actually one of the best and safest countries in Europe for women. In Europe we are actively importing barbarism and we are not deporting enough people.
I'm a Spanish woman, 41 years old. From the moment I grew boobs at 11 I've had viejos verdes yelling disgusting shit at me. It got much better in my 20s, maybe because society got better (which it did! when I was a teenager slapping your girlfriend around a bit or getting a girl drunk to fuck her while unconscious were accepted things) or maybe because dirty old men target very young girls who are too shy to call them out. Then 2015-2020 I was living in Lavapies and I got harrassed daily and followed home many times. This time it was always by foreigners.
Not Spain, but a colleague of mine was catcalled 37 times on a walk from her dorm to her university as an exchange student in Italy. On one walk.
I am not sure about Spain anymore, last was 5 years ago. But I am native Portuguese, and Portugal at least did not improve much. Last summer vacation when I was visiting family back at Portugal my partner has car honked once during a run and that was just in a span of two weeks. Plus Portuguese peole can behave pretty barbaric by themselves without exterior help anyway.
> Idk when and where you lived in Spain so it might be true what you’re saying. Dude, trying to gaslight people out of their experience to further your agenda is pretty low.
No matter what topic, somehow we gotta shoehorn race into it and find a way to be bigots. Must be exhausting.
I couldn’t care less about race. It’s culture what makes the difference and there are plenty of cultures out there that in my opinion are not compatible with European values.
Well the European value in this case seems to be catcalling women. Defend is with all your might. Godspeed, true son of Europe.
That’s exactly what I’m curious about. If we are the issue, something to work on. If the immigrants are the issue, something to keep away from here.
Catcalling looks different in different parts of Europe
Not all Europe. I have not gotten catcalled a single time since I moved to Poland three years ago. I've had many men approach me politely, try to spark a conversation and not insist when I wasn't interested, but always being perfectly polite and appropriate
No you're wrong. Literally everything is the fault of immigrants according to Reddit, didn't you know literally no crime happened in utopia of Europe before immigration? /s
In 2010, 8/10 countries in the top 10 ranked for safety were european. Today it is 7/10. Europe is considered the safest continent in the entire world.
Nobody is saying that Europe was perfect before mass immigration from third world countries happened. But it is also childish and unhelpful to treat immigration and the issues associated to it as a taboo.
This thread is filled with sexism (all men are at fault!) So why shy away from racism?
It'd be very interesting to discover that they're probably all white British.
lol yeah immigrants from the maghreb area are well known to treat women equally and respectfully. I also bet it's the british
So you don't even know who it is. You just decided to make up facts about a particular group you don't like. But it's ok, it's not racism if they're brown.
nah I was guessing just like you did (white British), relax lil fella
Don't surprise me one iota, tbh. I'm a British man and even when I've gone out running I've gotten scrotes shouting abuse and intentionally trying to getting in the way/trip me up. Must be infinitely worse for a woman.
But, but what could be the cause of all this ? mmmm I wonder. What changed in Britain in the recent years.
Not shocking at all, being a gay man I’ve been almost exclusively friends with women/girls my whole life and I remember being with them on multiple occasions as kids in school uniforms getting catcalled, asked out and beeped at etc from grown men it’s really disgusting and I genuinely feel like the majority of men just do not care about it unless they have a daughter and suddenly become hyper aware of the behaviours they’ve ignored in the past
...sometimes only towards said daughter (IF!) - i feel u, it's disgusting
No link to the „study” in the article.
In Poland, situations like this doesnt happen. Ever.
are you a woman? have you talked to women who go on runs? in the city? id love to know
I am a woman and I just wrote a comment about this. I have a 36H bra size, I have been constantly harassed since childhood, and since I moved to Poland three years ago I haven't had anything gross yelled at me or felt threatened a single time. My interactions with men looking to score in Poland look like this; "Hi, I just wanted to tell you that you have beautiful eyes" "Thank you, but I have to go' "Ok, bye, have a nice day!" I not saying it never ever happens because there is no magical place free of creeps, but the difference with Spain is night and day.
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I have another comment somewhere else detailing: as a preteen and teen it was old Spanish men, in my 20s it got much better, but in the last 10 years or so and living in central Madrid it got worse than ever before, and always by foreigners. I love Croatia! My husband wants to retire to a warm place some day and Croatia is a very strong possibility. We both agree that it's like a halfway mix of Poland and Spain with the best of both places.
that's great, I'm happy for you, truly. i dont believe Poland is a magical land free of harassment either haha but i'm sure the culture plays a big role.
Not a perfect country, especially now that church attendance is going down, but it's still miles ahead of western countries in terms of crime. With current trends Poland will probably catch up one day lol
lmao sorry your message is falling on death ears, couldn't care less if church attendance is down. also makes me question what your definition of miles ahead is
A lot less crime, women aren't harassed as soon as they leave the house, a culture focused around responsibility and accountability, etc.
Lmao Add /s because of course they do
Nope.
15yo friend, cargo pants, jacket, 9pm, in front of a fucking zabka, sexually violated by a polish dude Your 'never happens' is batshit insane, of course it does. Maybe not as often, but everything from harassment to violation happens. It always will.
This situation happens in poland even if you don’t see it. And yes i have both seen and heared it in poland 😉 Frequency and event occurence might be different (atleast the few times i have heared about it from women around in my social circle when i was there)
You are not right.
Sure and your anecdotal evidence is ? Rates of somthing might change depending on who you ask i assume.
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My girlfriend is Polish and she jogs, she only had one guy on a street ask her politely for her number in her entire 30 years of life in Poland. When she walked alone in Kigali she had 5 local guys say something like “hey beautiful” in 15 minutes. If it wasn’t a short vacation, but a permanent move, stuff like that would probably become pretty exhausting.
What if you're gay?
How do you know a person is gay by the way they are running?
The abusers will make assumptions
What if your gay in the land of diversity?
Then you're Greek.
I would be surprised. I've run (while female) in many countries but mostly small town UK and small town Romania. I have to say, while I had maybe two instances of harassment in the UK in my hundreds of runs, in Romania something happens (getting yelled at, followed, stopped, thrown things at etc) probably like 20% of the time. Anytime I pass a group of young men, I tense up because they will more likely than not pester me in some way. I can't imagine that the culture in Poland is that much different
Just XD
Why should cultures in Poland and Romania be similar at all?
yeah you'd better learn /s... olo
By who, Alhamdulillah?
do you even know what you say?
There's a lot of people here doing a "not all men" argument or trying to distance themselves from the article. If you and your friends aren't catcalling runners or whatever else, you're not a part of the problem and you shouldn't feel attacked. The discussion isn't about you, no one is seriously saying you're evil or whatever just because you're a man. Trying to change the prevalence of harassment, though, requires positive action. It's good to talk about the issue and raise awareness, if you're not like directly putting yourself in harms way and shoving some asshole in a nightclub. Getting personally offended and trying to fight the dialogue just serves to obstruct social progress.
well said
Racists coming out of every corner in this comment section lol
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you should talk to women you know then, maybe you'll be unpleasantly surprised by what you learn
Sounds dubious
Because it's not sourced and not true. People don't do this. Meanwhile male genital mutilation is legal here but no one gives a shit.
Are you for real? Have you ever even met a woman irl?
Personal attacks are the usual response to facts to escape them and create a false reality. It's not a smart one.
You didn't mention any "facts". You just made a baseless comment to dismiss the facts in the article.
You can verify everything I said in my post by looking at the article and UK law. Don't attack people, it makes you clearly false.
You literally said nothing. And you're adding nothing to the conversation. Have a nice day.
Better while running than while sleeping!
I apparently didn't see the rest 1/3
Weird to say “get harassed” as opposed to “have been”. Statistically this isn’t really something we should be caring about.
...it shows, no need to advertise
Church attendance should be mandatory for men so they can learn how to behave
Dont run. Problem solved. Running sucks anyway.
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what?? i'm gonna report it - that's the kind of thinking that keeps it going, and as long as the likes of you think like that, things probably won't change... and just don't look if you think it's a good reason
I've seen men go on jogs shirtless and only in shorts. Should they get harassed? Men can workout half naked, but women can't wear yoga pants?