Like a lot of women of my age, I find it hard to understand what the fuss is about. When I was young, we would, of course, brush off wolf-whistles and pats on the bottom but to come back from, say, Italy, without any such memories, would leave a girl wondering what was wrong with her.
Raymond Bessone ‘Mr Teasy Weasy’
For myself, a holiday In Turkey when I was in my late teens did more for my confidence than being taken to Mr Teasy Weasy for an expensive hair cut. Turkish men don’t or, anyway, didn’t then, prefer their women to be wafer thin . . . .
Be that as it may, what began with stories of young women confronted by an ugly giant of a man with his flies undone has become a maelstrom of remembered incidents ranging from the truly horrific to the frankly absurd.
The horrific – the rapists, the stalkers, the serial predators, the husbands who beat up their wives – should be locked up. The others should be laughed out of court. Is it not pathetic that some middle-aged roué believes his exalted position as a politician or business magnate gives him the right to fondle anyone who comes within reach?
But how much damage can it really do to a normal young woman to have to brush off or even, temporarily put up with, this kind of unwanted attention and why, oh why, do they sometimes walk willingly into the mangy lion’s den?
How can anyone not regret that these stories, which trivialize a serious issue, fill the newspapers while stories of real atrocities – the Yazidi women among them – are side-lined?
Something has gone horribly wrong with a world in which a cheery equivalent of ‘Hey, good lookin’ evokes anger, and an unwelcome hand on the knee can cause a lasting trauma.
And this touch-me-not epidemic doesn’t stop there. There is my friend – a grandmother, like myself – who gave up a voluntary job at a local primary school because she wasn’t allowed to touch the child she was coaching. She didn’t mind sitting in a corridor with her pupil, but she did mind not being able to give him or her a hug or a pat on the back.
How absurd it has become. But, to end on a more cheerful note, for I dislike the crude behavior of men and resent their superior strength as much as anyone, I did enjoy the recent newspaper story of the burglar who inadvertently woke the lady of the house: a rugby player who gave chase and frightened the life out of him.