Men are sharing ways they've experienced sexual harassment from coworkers, friends, and total strangers. It's an eye-opening perspective — one that isn't often discussed.
It all started when Reddit user u/chutiyamadarchod posed a question to the internet: "Men, what kinds of low-grade sexual harassment do you face on a daily basis?
Here are some of the top-voted responses from users:
1. "I worked in bars, and was constantly groped by older women who thought it was funny."
2. "My 'bulge' was a topic of open discussion between some of the women in the office at a previous job. The kicker is that one of the women was our HR and sexual assault/harassment reporter."
3. "My 55-year-old coworker asks me if I think she’s pretty, asks me to take her home, and tells me she 'sprays like a watering can' (yes, really...). I should add that I’m 21, which I think makes it a LOT weirder."
4. "A woman just straight-up grabbed my dick while I was working at a festival. My friend who knew her told me not to make a scene as she was upper management."
5. "When I used to work as a lifeguard on the beach, there was lots of nonconsensual touching. The two that really stick out are: 1) The middle-aged woman who walked up to me like she had a question, then got a hold of my dick through my trunks because she 'wanted to see how big it was,' and 2) The 16-year-old girl who backed me into my stand and shoved a Skittle into my mouth with her tongue."
6. "As a male who used to be extremely overweight, I would always have people (guys and girls) trying to touch my 'man boobs.' It made me self-conscious and uncomfortable, and I voiced that, but people continued to do it. They would grab them or hit them and pretty much everything in between... I guess nobody saw a problem with it, because I was a guy or because it wasn't a traditional form of harassment."
7. "I'm gay, and have been frequently told by women I have worked with over the years that they could 'fix' me. One was a manager. No, there is nothing to 'fix.' And you can fuck right off with that. I don't tell a straight guy he hasn't met the right dick yet — don't tell me I haven't met the right vulva yet."
8. "Not daily, but as a cosplayer who does shirtless characters (Ace, Grimmjow, Bahn) I get groped a lot. Chest and arms mostly. Also my ass gets slapped/squeezed, and crotch grabs are frequent enough to mention, too."
9. "I used to work in a job in the entertainment industry where I wore a kilt a lot of the time. Couldn't believe how many drunken women thought it was perfectly okay to stick their hands up under it and grab a handful of my junk, sometimes pretty aggressively too. I quickly stopped 'freestyling' and wore boxers or compression shorts, and this would lead to the grabbers shouting out, 'This loser is wearing pants!' before mocking me to their pals."
10. "I recently became a father and was working on a hit TV series. A female producer who is best friends with the executive in charge thought it would be funny to grab my stomach and say, 'Working on your dad bod already?' My daughter at that point was one week old. If I grabbed a woman’s stomach and said she was fat or pregnant I would have been fired. Well, I complained to make a point. She recently was promoted and I wasn’t invited back after five seasons."
11. "My family owns a restaurant and I would help out doing the dishes and operating front of house. My mum mainly hired female waitresses for some reason and I overheard things like, 'He’s cute, I wonder what it’s like to ride Asian guys.' And one time, one of the girls finished her shift and I was sweeping, she came up to me and grabbed my balls with a lip bite. I was really uncomfortable as I had a girlfriend at the time."
12. "One day I got a text message from someone I didn't know, asking me to meet for dinner. I had gone to a new haircut place a few days earlier. One of the hairdressers (not the one who cut my hair) had seen me and decided it made sense to look up my phone number from the client records and ask me out. I had no idea who this was. It was so weird. I got several more messages from her before she stopped messaging me. Never went back to that hair place."
13. "As a child I was touched/fondled regularly by a female teacher and elder students. When I complained to the head teacher, she said that I should 'enjoy it' because I'm male."
14. "Got my junk grabbed and pinched once when I was on public transport by an older, homeless-looking woman. Everyone saw what happened and didn't do nothing. I was shocked and didn't know what to do, so I just pretended nothing happened."
15. "It used to be all the time that drunk women or men would run their fingers through my beard and have some sly comment like, 'I wonder if this tickles.'"
16. "Had a female work colleague sit on my lap during my lunch break asking for help. Batting her eyelids. I wonder what would happen if I had sat on her lap."
17. "Not something that happens on a daily basis now, but when I was a nursing student a few years back, it was quite common for older female patients to tell me that it 'was so nice to be touched by a young man again.'"
18. "Older dudes always assume I want to talk about sex. I was in a golf league with my dad’s buddies and they always asked me about my sex life and made jokes that the beer cart girl wanted me. One time one of the guys pulled out his phone and went to his granddaughter’s Facebook and tried to get me to say she was sexy."
19. "The ever-present assumption that the end goal of all my interactions is sex. I can't even be friendly to children without someone assuming it's sexual in some way."
20. "Had a female manager get into my unlocked phone, send my nudes to herself, and then share them with the other female manager. I was 24, and both managers were younger. At the time I honestly didn't know how to feel about it, so I just shrugged it off with bravado because they were both attractive, so what the hell? But now I realize that attractiveness isn't a free pass for invading someone's privacy like that."
21. "Women just touching my hair without asking happens all the time. I have really long hair, but I can't imagine most women would be OK if some guy just started playing with their hair at a bar. If they just ask my permission, I'm usually cool with it."
22. "I was once dressed as a priest at a party and a girl, out of the blue, said 'I want father's holy staff,' while trying to grab my crotch. I quickly moved to avoid it, and she said, 'What are you, gay?' Well, I am, but just because a guy avoids having his dick grabbed doesn't mean he's gay. Maybe he just doesn't want to be touched by you, Tracy."
23. "As someone who is pretty tall at 6'6", whenever I'm at the pub, bar, or a party, I almost always have a woman ask me if I have a big dick. Most of the time I just respond saying, 'My girlfriend is a lucky lady, I guess.'"
You can read the full thread of responses on Reddit.
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.