HOW IS A MAN SUPPOSED TO KNOW THAT A WOMAN IS NOT INTERESTED IN HIS ADVANCES?

WILLIAM FREEMAN is a man of 58 who has never even had a parking ticket but on an impulse he kissed a friend in the summer of 2016. She drew away and he immediately apologised. What he did was wrong and silly but it is not as if he kissed her lips or tried to fumble with her clothes or otherwise groped her. Unfortunately for him the lady was one of those wimps who needed counselling and worried about coming across him when she went out. So our hardpressed police force who can’t cope with burglaries, gangs or the drugs menace were called into action and now, more than 18 months later, the case has come to trial.

The judge gave the silly chap a conditional discharge saying “you do not make advances towards women who do not want you to”. Yes, Your Honour, but unless you have made an advance how do you know whether the lady wants you to? It is possible to misread a situation.

Most of us have endured unwanted advances in our time and brushed them off. As long as the man does not persist and as long as the contact is not intimate no harm is done. He is the one who is left embarrassed. Yet the prosecuting counsel in this case said the incident had caused the woman a “great deal of hardship”. Rot, she caused herself that by dwelling on instead of dismissing a fleeting nuisance.

She should have swatted him off like a fly and gone back to business as usual.