Was this Sexual Harassment?

There have been several times I’ve experienced behaviour from women that may well have been interpreted in a different light had I been female.

The first one was a work christmas party many years ago. I was stood chatting with my work colleagues at a bar, most of them female and a young lady I worked with and whom I considered a friend reached out and touched my chest out of nowhere.

Nobody said anything, nobody even noticed, it was over in a second and I don’t think she meant anything bad by it but it was humiliating and made me feel uncomfortable. I do remember thinking what the reaction would have been if I stuck my hand out and squeezed her breast the same way she touched me. Why was it acceptable for her to touch me like that?

On another occasion, I was actually in work and one of the female account manager came up to me from behind and put her hands on my shoulders as if she was giving me a shoulder massage. She wanted some work favour from me, so she put on her soft, friendly voice and fluttered her eyelashes. There was absolutely nothing sinister about her behaviour, she was a very tactile person and like this with everyone.

When we’re talking about public sexual harassment we need to be sensible. If somebody does something you do not appreciate, make it clear you don’t appreciate that behaviour. Be clear about it. If they persist in a behaviour despite being told, then that is harassment and should be dealt with accordingly but don’t assume malice from the start, people can’t read your mind.

There was a case in my local area where a teenage man was prosecuted for sexual harassment at university. The young man was autistic and found it difficult to make friends. Autistic people often find the social etiquette very confusing.

His crime was that he touched a girl on the arm and waist trying to get her attention. I’m not saying it’s a good idea to touch a stranger in public on the waist, just as it’s not a good idea to touch a work colleague on the shoulder without their permission but the judge decided that it was not possible that he could have been motivated by anything other than trying to sexually assault the young woman and he was put on the sex offenders register for five years.

He was already disadvantaged by his autism. Now he’s lost his education and will find it very difficult to find employment in the future. Is this really proportionate to something that could have just been handled with a few words?

I understand the girl in question was not malicious, she felt threatened. Her assumption was that he was going to touch her breasts, just like I had my chest touched at that Christmas party.

It’s part of our biology that women are more likely to feel threatened and fear for their safety and men are more likely to feel invincible despite the statistics that show that they are actually very vulnerable and much more likely to be attacked, often, but by no means exclusively, by other males.

There have been times where women’s genuine legitimate fears about their safety have been ignored, and I don’t think that is right but I also think that we need to have more balanced conversations and look at what men experience too.

Sexual harassment is not a one way street. If you’ve ever observed the behaviour of a group of women on a hen party, you’ll know that women are also capable of inappropriate behaviour.

For example, there are Scottish bars where the male staff used to wear kilts but have now switched to trousers as they got fed up of being groped by women that don’t see anything wrong with touching a strangers genitals in public without their consent https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-scotland-33569027.

I’m not making excuses for men that sexually harass women. That behaviour is unacceptable. I’m also not going to excuse women doing the same thing to men or indeed, other women.

There is a grey area and I think we should give people the benefit of doubt in cases that rely on the interpretation of one person against that of another. I disagree that people have a right to feel safe because feelings are not objective.

For the majority of my life I was petrified of heights, or more specifically, I was scared of falling from a height. That’s not to say that we should ignore genuine worries and try to find ways to make women feel safer with free self protection courses, demand better lighting in public areas, attack alarms etc but we can’t base our legal system on subjective fears, we need objective facts.