Barbara B.

Seasoned expats considering a move back 'home' may sympathize with me. In the throes of the stark realization: we yearn to return after years of a slow grinding realization that our host land is not for us, for so many reasons, and in weighing up the pros and cons in more detail, I am confronted again by a load of the stuff in the cons list that persuaded us to leave the UK in the first place.

I think I have touched on this somewhere else but one of the things that was really overbearing about life in the UK was the harassment girls and women got on the streets. And getting felt up on the tube, or in crowds or crowded venues, unwanted physical stuff. From - "Don't get many of them to the pound!" to "Cheer up love it might never happen". It's like: "Get out of my flipping face you jerks, did I ask you what you think of me???"

From what I remember it went beyond the usual bracing oneself if walking past a building site to having cars hooting and cars full of lads leaning out of windows. Hey, and I'm a dowdy type with a face like a bulldog chewing a brick and certainly don't wear clothes to provoke. (Not that, to be politically correct, it should matter). Comments on body parts, unwanted appraisals of attractiveness abounded. And there were of course insults mean to hurt too.

It was only on leaving that I began to realize how overt it is in the UK, a kind of free-for-all, no real law against it.

In the UK for a few days recently I chuckled to myself that it was still happening (I had a car full of lads shouting something, I put it down to the hat I was wearing), but then I heard a program on Womans hour (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00tnb7s#p00b2f38) about the fact that street harassment is still normal in the UK.

I don't miss unwanted and embarrassing attention in the street that can often be threatening, but probably have to accept that this is not something that has abated in the UK as yet.

My questions to you, if you want to answer them are:

Have you lived in a country where street harassment (ogling, vocal jeering and jibes, unwanted physical attention, harassment, lads in cars, building site baboons etcetera) is not to be expected and felt the relief and liberation?

Have you experienced street harassment in the UK in the past or present? Has it improved or changed in quality or quantity?

and lastly, because I think I might have to accept the way it is because it might be a long way off from changing:

How best to navigate the streets if harassment is likely to crop up? How best to deal with harassment when it happens? How to help our daughters cope with that sort of overt and often bullying behavior?

I sound like some kind of Mary Whitehouse, which I suppose I might be now, but my memory of the street harassment in the UK is that it makes women shrink. My way of coping with it was to avoid eye contact or shuffle past, as shouting back tended to create problems.

dunroving

Well, not being a woman, I can't speak from first-hand experience, but figured as no-one else seems to have responded, I'd dive in.

I don't think the situation is anywhere near as bad here as you portrayed, apart from certain places and times, and I definitely woouldn't describe it as "normal" or "typical". I mean a little sexual innuendo has always been part of Britsh humour, like it or not (I just shrug it off as being relatively cheap humour, personally).

Just this morning the TV coverage of the Great North Run showed Jonathon Edwards interviewing a bunch of blokes running in Speedos and there was an indirect reference to the fact that a cold day oop North was not the best time to be wearing Speedo's in public. Yawn ... well, actually they all took it in good spirit, not one of them protested at the insult to their diminished manhood, so to speak.

I think you get uncultured people in every country, and the idea that a few Brits still say "Phwoarrrrr!!!!" because it popped into their heads and therefore comes out of their mouths because they can't help thinking aloud shouldn't make you concerned about returning to the UK.

Heck, you get plenty of "Phwoarrrr" on British Expats - just visit the TIO forum, for example. Just ignore it - or have a smart comeback ready. Give as good as you get, or treat it with the silence of contempt.

What HAS changed, IMO, is the amount of coverage you get in UK media of topics like this - it sells newspapers, increases listener numbers, etc. Leering, etc., in public isn't nice behaviour but it's one of many antisocial behaviours that get maximum coverage in papers, on telly and on the radio. And the so-called "experts" they interview on these topics are often not experts at all, but people with an agenda that they support with cherry-picked extreme anecdotal examples.

alipally

I've spent most of my life in the UK and can count on one hand the number of times I've received such inappropriate attentions!

Granted I did not live in London, but on the occasions that I have gotten on the Tube for work etc, I've been unscathed! I don't think that I'm an unattractive person either, so that's not the reason.
Personally, I've had more trouble with the weirdos in the local shopping centre here in Australia!

My boys wouldn't dream of shouting such obscenities to a woman. However they are prone to honking their horn at what are described as 'winners' on the street and waving frantically to see if they wave back!

Dunroving has a point about the slightly mucky sense of humour that the British often have, and I, personally, don't have a problem with inuendo.... it's been going on longer than I've been on this earth! Carry on Films, come to mind!

Barbara B.

I want to be wrong about this and I didn't mean to portray the situation very badly. I am spending a lot of time wondering if my previous experiences in the UK are somewhat unusual, since I lived quite a full life and was out and about quite a lot, maybe the odds of me experiencing more come into it? Or maybe it was just freak occurences or maybe it just bothered me more than it would others?

Last time I was in the UK I went out of my way not to draw attention to myself on the street so I was chuckling that the 'car full of lads jeering' still came into it. Sod's law? I am also wondering if it has been the same 'car full of lads' touring the country decade in and decade out, ho-ho.

I suppose I have to get used to the 'Phwooar' thing - is kind of tourettes like behaviour maybe? Not very polite, almost certainly unwanted attention unless one is attention seeking, but not worth getting caught up in? Perhaps people can't help it.

I don't know why I am concerned about it and you are right, I shouldn't let the concern stop me except that I suspect it is something to do with my brain going on overdrive, everything about a move back to the UK right now seems magnified. Hedging my bets is a nightmare.

Thanks for the feedback to my question: very much appreciated!

Barbara B.

I love Carry On films. And I find that brit humor very endearing. It's one of the things drawing me back

On the one hand I love the sauce, but on the other, I don't like the threat of abuse on the streets. I might have lost the ability to judge between banter and crude offensiveness having been without both for so many years. I know that one of the things that makes me a quintessential english woman is that I am principled, outspoken and a bit saucy (cue new thread, 'what makes you a quintessential brit?'). But there are limits to what is just sauce and what is bang out of order.

Err..I think.

Mummy in the foothills

I didn't leave UK till I was an adult and the only time I have encountered heckling there was on a Saturday night out. It seemed all part of the fun and it was expected that we (women) had a good comeback for the lads. Something that shot them down as not good enough for us usually. No one in public ever grabbed or felt me up, they'd have had a fist in the face or crotch from me.
In Spain I did used to get a few whistles or bum pinches and we just ignored them.
It seemed to be a rare problem for us, not something that made me want to leave the country.

ann m

I found travelling around Italy and Greece an overt-liberty-taking nightmare. I think a couple of "phwoarr's" in the UK would have been preferable!!

dunroving

Phnaar, phnaar!!

jmh

I've lived in the UK for 24 years and I have NEVER had anything like that said to me on the streets or any man try to touch me up on public transport. And I'm a 36E bra size No too bad looking either

I imagine if you go where there are lots of drunk young lads out on a Saturday night you might get that sort of thing, but I don't so maybe that's why.

jmh

Yeah the Italian men do get a bit too close for comfort sometimes.

Barbara B.

"I imagine if you go where there are lots of drunk young lads out on a Saturday night you might get that sort of thing, but I don't so maybe that's why."

Most of the hassle I object (and objected to) was in broad daylight, afternoons and nowhere near places of boozing.

Nightlife shinanigans I haven't included as a problem, out of the box stuff to be expected at night near places where people are getting wrecked, I imagine. The way I see it, it would be impossible to do nightlife without getting some sort of attention.

I am beginning to see that my experiences have not been the usual experiences: this is heartening!

Derrygal

I notice you're also very modest

Sally Redux

Don't recognize that at all - a few wolf-whistles when I was MUCH younger and a couple of gropes on the Tube - not bad for a huge city.

dunroving

I got my asphalt on the street once.


BOOM BOOM (get it?)


British innuendo is alive and kicking north of Glasgow.

jmh

I wouldn't have made the point if I said I was dog ugly now would I.