clubbing

Night out with friends

| 15th February 2020

Ok I’m not sure if this is sexism but it was by far the most scary and humiliating thing I have experienced in my life. I was on a night out with some gal pals to celebrate my friends birthday, and we met a group of lads who were being quite overtly sexual and a bit creepy. We all tried to move away from the group but one of them grabbed my hand and pulled me in to try and kiss me. I had done nothing to provoke this, as I have a boyfriend and I was not interested, and so covered my mouth with my hand just in time before contact was made. The man then laughed at me and told me that he was going to “rape me so I could see what I was missing out on”. He followed me to the toilets that I ran to in an attempt to get away, and waited for me outside the door so I no way of getting away. I eventually told a bar lady who informed a bouncer and as him removed. It was so scary especially as we are only 18 and that was my first proper clubbing experience !!!!

Lucy

| 16th January 2019

I’m sure many women can relate but I find every single time I go clubbing/out to bars, if i’m not already there with a guy or some of my guy friends, I’ll be hit on constantly, groped and be followed around my sleazy guys trying to ‘score’, making it a thoroughly unpleasant experience, when it should be something fun – it’s 2018, i shouldn’t feel like i need a ‘chaperone’ to go out. To make things worse, it’s happened to me twice that i’ve been drinking for a bit, not too much then a guy has bought me a drink (possibly spiked) and i’ve been aware of nothing for a long period of time and then come to in the guy’s bedroom during having sex.. with no memory of getting there. wanting it, fancying the person or consenting. both times the guy wasn’t drunk at all. Both times I left crying, and neither time did the guy think he’d done anything wrong.

K Z Smith

| 23rd November 2018

Hi, I’m 19 and I just moved to University. My first night out ever was last week, my first day, (also my Birthday). Everyone was getting horrendously drunk, and although I was cautiously avoiding the punch, the cider was very strong and I could feel myself getting dizzy, light headed: drunk. On the way to the club, a boy starts to loll around, and does the ‘I’m-far-too-drunk-to-support-my-own-body-weight’ arms hanging over random people’s shoulders kinda thing. So he has his arm across my shoulder and another girl’s and he’s chatting, slurring his words, boasting about his skill at MMA (mixed Martial Arts). And I’m uncomfortable as it is, random man touching me awkwardly kinda vibe. But then takes his arm off the other girl and grips the hand of the arm around my shoulder – which is now around my neck. And he strangles me. He’s talking about his martial arts skills ‘hey look strangle hold lol’ and I can’t breathe. He’s cutting off the blood supply to my brain and I can’t breathe and no one in the group around us is doing anything and I CAN’T BREATHE. He stops and it’s all jokey jokey lmao, look at that he just strangled that random girl. ME. And I understand why he did it, he was trying to exhibit his physical prowess; and he did quite successfully at that. While he strangled me. while I couldn’t breathe. Next day; the other girl whose shoulders his arms were being draped over just shrugs it of ‘he was just drunk he didn’t mean it’ like I should shrug this off like it didn’t matter. And I understand – random shit happens when you’re drunk. But it wasn’t her neck. And it’s been 10 days and I can still feel his hands on MY neck. I don’t care how drunk a person is, they are still THEM. They still possess the same consciousness in the same body, and a man – who by the way lives across the hall from me strangled me and no-one that was there seems to care. Only my friends from back home seem to actually be on my side. I don’t want to report him, but every time I see him I’m really scared. That was assault. And he did it because I’m weaker than him – because I’m a woman. This is not okay. Men need to understand that physical strength is not cool when you use it to harm someone, and they need to realise the connotations of drunk men restraining women. Nothing happened after that – but it’s not like I knew that at the time. While it was happening and I couldn’t breathe it’s not like I knew it was going to end. I can’t believe this actually happened to me.

Jasmine

| 14th May 2016

Myself and a few of my friends went on a night out to our nightclub on our university campus. Whilst I was there I separated from the group of them on the dancefloor to go and get myself some water from the bar. As I got there a guy I had never met before started talking to me, I’m usually friendly back and was polite and said hi to him. This guy offered to get me a drink and I politely refused and explained I was just wanting to get some water but thanked him for the offer. I was then asked by this guy if I would give him a kiss, to which I was very clear and said no, I don’t know you at all there’s no way I’m going to kiss you. He then introduced himself as Ben and asked once again if I would kiss him. I gave him the same response and he seemed to disappear. Next thing I know a bunch of lads from the football team barged over and knocked Ben into me (they didn’t know him so it wasn’t as if it was deliberate), but by this point Ben was very close to me and put his hands on my waist. I tried to move away from his touch but I had nowhere I could go and was already pushing myself quite a bit towards the girl in front of me in an attempt to move away from here. It was very clear from my body language I was not interested in him. However, the more I moved away from him, he would just follow up behind me meaning there was even less space than before. The next thing I knew, Ben had moved his hands up and was squeezing my boobs whilst I was at the bar. I turned around and told him to get his hands off of my boobs and he did. But this didn’t seem to stop him, I then felt his hands trying to lift up my dress and put his hands up my dress. At this point I swore loudly at him a lot and asked him who the hell he thought he was doing something like that, I also grabbed his hands and pushed them away from me- trying to assert some control in the situation to make it clear that I was not interested in him at all. He overpowered me and started moving my hands towards his trousers. I quickly ripped my hands out of his grip and told him he was disgusting for trying to do that. To which his only response was: ‘don’t you want to see what your body has done to me though?’. By this point there was now space for me to get away and I quickly made my escape. My biggest regret is that I didn’t report it. I was in such a state of shock and all I wanted to do was get back to my friends and have a good night and forget about the idiot I just met and so I didn’t report it.