Johanna
Tonight I was groped in a pub. I was standing with a friend at a bar when a young drunk man approached me and told me he would like to ‘suck the face off me’. I ignored him. A couple of minutes later he grabbed my breast while his friend grabbed my ass. I told them to stop and leave me alone but they mocked me and kept doing it. I told my friend I had to leave and quickly moved away, one of them made obsence gestures at me while I was moving away. Not that what I was wearing matters but just to paint a picture, I was wearing a pair of ‘girlfriend’ jeans, wedges and a high necked blue and white striped M&S top. A male friend of the guys saw what happened and told my friend and she followed me. He told her that I look really upset and he was sorry for how his friends treated me. I found a quite spot in a different section of the pub and tried to Calm down so I wouldn’t cry. I felt frustrated, humiliated, angry but most of all powerless. I think worse than that is what happened later I told a female friend who is in the police force. she said to forget about it – it is what drunk men do and i was pretty so that kind of attention was expected. I am so angry at her for towing the ‘boys will be boys line’ for dismissing my feelings of powerlessness and vulnerability, for telling me to accept my looks means I should expect to be touch inappropriately and forget about it, for trying to make me feel like I am over reacting because two assholes felt entitled to grab my breast and ass for no other reason than they could most of all I am disappointed that she didn’t support me as a woman and her friend. What hope do we have in our quest to be treated as equals if women in the police force minimise groping as something drunk guys do rather than what it is which is sexual assault. Thank you for the forum to allow me rant I just needed someone to hear me say that gropping is sexual assault and that I was sexually harassed assaulted tonight and that is not ok.