Sexual harassment is no joke

Yesterday, for the second time in the space of a week, they were discussing sexual harassment on Vanessa Feltz's morning phone-in show. The occasion yesterday was the report that a driving instructor had been convicted of sexual assault after, among other things, making inappropriate remarks about his 17-year-old client's breasts. The earlier occasion was that a man who continually groped female passengers' backsides on trains in London had his ban on entering trains or stations in London lifted on appeal because a judge decided that "the risk here of sexual harm was less than serious" and that it could not be proved that it left lasting damage. The man in question has a history of sexual offences going back nearly 30 years.

I feel strongly about this topic, because I have my own experiences of sexual harassment going back to when I was 12 and 13 and in my first year at boarding school. There were four boys at that school, in the form above mine and the one above that, who persistently groped my backside and also made various inappropriate suggestions. I later heard that one of these, Karl Kennell (if I've spelt it right), was locked up for sexually abusing little girls, which just goes to show that such people often are not choosy. Two of the pests who were in the form two years above me were buddies with two of the school's worst bullies, and I remember not being as assertive in response to the less physical aspects of the harassment as I might otherwise have been because I feared that those involved would simply get physically aggressive with me. I don't remember when it stopped, but obviously my reaching puberty had a lot to do with it. For girls, of course, it does not stop there.

I'm also well aware that driving instructors can be pretty creepy, and it provides an ideal environment for this sort of behaviour because the instructor and client are usually alone together in the car. (The instructor in Ipswich told the woman to drive out into the country.) My first instructor, back in the mid 90s, was a guy called Jack, who ran a one-man driving school out of Addiscombe, near Croydon, and could not keep his opinions about passing females to himself: "oh, there's a nice bit of stuff", "look at that strange female". This continued until we pulled up outside my house, he took one look at my 15-year-old sister and called her a "nice bit of crumpet" and I told him that she was not a bit of crumpet, but my sister. Like the man recently convicted in Ipswich, this guy was well into his fifties and married. (When I told my English teacher about this, she told me of an incident from her youth where she almost missed a bus, but she ran up to it and the driver waited for her; she thanked him profusely and he replied, "worth it to see 'em wobble, love".)

It's tempting to advise women to cover themselves up if they want to avoid this sort of treatment, but I've never been in a position to test out my own advice, and from speaking to women (and Muslim women at that) who have spent time in the Middle East, particularly Saudi Arabia, I know that such harassment is certainly a problem there as well, even for women who wear hijab. In fact, some women who do not cover their faces in the West do so over there, and they tell me that light-skinned women are a particular draw for the region's pests. Reading the women's stories on the anti-street harassment site, it seems that "provocative" female dress really isn't what causes this; it's the men's attitudes which are to blame (and their reading matter too). However, in a previous discussion on hijab (prompted by the story of the juror who listened to her iPod under hers) on Feltz's show, the idea that women wearing hijab was necessary to avoid rousing male urges was rubbished by Feltz and by Robert Elms as insulting to men, as if men couldn't control themselves; the problem is that although men can, many of them simply don't. Somewhere along the line, they have got it into their heads that they don't have to.

It's disturbing that people will not take this problem seriously, or think that this sort of behaviour is a compliment. Of course, as a man I can understand a man appreciating a beautiful woman, but there is a big difference between appreciating and touching in an intimate place – and I think many of the harassers know this. Sexual harassment is invasive and intimidating, and it is meant to be. It is bullying, and bullies are cowards, which is why men like this don't pick on women who are in a position to fight back – i.e. well-built themselves or accompanied by someone who is – and why they employ lame subterfuges and then play sweet and innocent or accuse their victims of being unable to take a joke, and this kind of talk is often heard in discussions of the subject. But it's not a joke to those who suffer it. Happily, this driving instructor is no longer in business and has lost his home and partner and is in serious debt, which one hopes will serve as a warning to others who do not think it their duty to keep their hands to themselves.