Surveys will not keep us girls living in a state of fear
It’s unlikely you’ll be harassed or attacked on a bus repackaged as evidence of the entire male race being menaces of society.
Most women – 93% – feel more vulnerable because of their gender. I’m surprised it wasn’t 100% – we are more vulnerable because we are the physically weaker sex, and because, as we know, men commit the vast majority of violent crime. But only a small percentage. Just as all women aren’t mass hysterics, all men are not sex criminals. It is unhelpful to both sexes to propagate this dangerous myth, destroying trust between them and robbing them of being free to enjoy romance, desire and lust in all its freedom.
The separate survey – which creepily asked girls if they’d ever been catcalled in their school uniforms – also threw up more questions than it answered.
It found one-third of girls had been “sexually harassed” in their school uniforms, a titillating headline if ever there was one.
But how did they define sexual harassment? It can be anything from a wink or a wave to a wolfwhistle and on to something more sinister. It can also be categorised as simply “unwanted attention”, which really takes in a variety. One person’s friendly behaviour is another’s unwanted attention.
We don’t live in a utopia. In a public place, freedom of movement and expression means people can do and say whatever they want, within reason.
OUTRAGED