Published 14:31 24 Jan 2018 GMT

This woman's viral tweet about saying "no" to a stranger offering to buy her a drink is so relatable

Since the issue of sexual harassment and assault is being discussed more openly than ever before - thanks to the numerous scandals coming out of Hollywood - people are becoming more and more aware of the seriousness of the matter, as well as how alarmingly frequent instances of misconduct are. At the end of last year, CBS published an article titled: "In Wake Of Weinstein, Men Wonder If Hugging Women Still OK". The article kind of completely missed the point about what "misconduct" is, and it seemed to trivialise the issue at hand. Which, of course, Twitter didn't take to kindly. [[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/Bad_Episode/status/938489492649992193]] In any case, this question of "what's acceptable and what's not" seems to be a more serious problem than we thought, and a woman who had her own uncomfortable encounter over the weekend is a perfect example. Freelance writer, Amna Saleem, was reading a book at a bar in London while waiting for her dinner companion to arrive when she was approached by a man who wanted to buy her a drink. [[instagramwidget||https://www.instagram.com/p/BdYlyxmBQv-/?taken-by=amnafire]] "Books, like earphones, are usually a great indicator that someone doesn’t want to be disturbed," she wrote in an article about the incident published in Huck Magazine. But that didn't seem to stop the guy from approaching her. While she thought that he was going to comment on the book she was reading (it was Station Eleven, by the way), he came over and insisted she have a drink with him. Amna tweeted what happened next, and it's since gone viral. [[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/AGlasgowGirl/status/954805372115734528]] The man was apparently not going to leave her be, despite the polite declinations she was offering, suggesting that she'd like to read in solitude. A kind stranger at the bar must have noticed the confrontation that was getting increasingly uncomfortable, and swiftly came to the rescue pretending to be Amna's friend. She said she felt her anxiety "dissipate" immediately after she realised what was going on. "The man stood awkwardly for a few seconds before finally leaving, clearly not wanting anyone to witness his behaviour," Amna wrote in her article. "Instead he scarpered at the first sign of interference – confirming that his actions were predatory, and that he knew it." It's another example of people not understanding that no means no, and being persistent in trying to chat/flirt with a person who clearly doesn't want to engage. Amna's tweet caught the attention of thousands of people, many of whom left comments on the situation.

This guy knows how it should have gone down:

[[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/fourxdad/status/955273706787422213]]

And so does this one:

[[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/NickHeathADI/status/955157356819767296]]

This person pointed out that it's usually never "just a drink":

[[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/StevenSankey88/status/955074528165679105]]

These girls had their own suggestions about how they would have handled the situation:

[[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/SariaSayan/status/955052991853326337]] [[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/VelvetSparrow/status/955369781137321985]]

And it turns out that plenty of people had experienced the same kind of situation:

[[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/marissad415/status/955155803475988480]] [[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/AuraInBrooklyn/status/955109112806825985]] [[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/JamielPridgen/status/955093837021614080]] [[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/Gatto_Biscollo/status/955050561530888193]] [[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/AGlasgowGirl/status/955047042660929536]] [[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/bletherskite/status/954852861472632833]] As disheartening as it is to know that these kinds of creepy encounters are all too common, it's nice to see total strangers looking out for one another. More of this please, and less of the creepiness. Go with it if she says yes to the drink, but if she says no – leave it at that and move on.

over 8 years ago

Last week, a man told me he was going to rape me. Queuing at a bar after a girly catch-up dinner, a perfectly innocuous looking middle-aged man approached my friend and I. After hitting on my friend with a cheeky, but ultimately harmless, chat-up line, he turned his attentions to me with one that was even more corny. I rolled my eyes, chuckled, and turned away. Not one to take rejection well, his tone instantly became aggressive. "Fuck it," he snarled. "What I’ll do with you is take you to a woods, fucking chase you through it and fucking rape you." London on a Friday night, it was a busy pub. People stopped and stared. Even his friend looked horrified. Now, anyone who knows me well will tell you I'll be the first to fight my own corner. I've grown up surrounded by some terrifyingly feisty women, so I always kind of imagined that if anything like this happened I'd come out swinging. But I didn't. Instead of getting angry, I froze; I didn’t hit him, I didn’t tell him to go and die in hole. I just took a deep breath, nodded and moved away. And just like that, life carried on. Whether from pure shock, fear or even just having become desensitised to disrespectful comments, I got angry about the incident about 20 minutes later than I should have done. By that time, he was gone. However, I’m not alone in my inaction; a 2015 poll showed that 71 per cent of women report having let sexual harassment - which the Citizens Advice Bureau defines as "unwanted behaviour of a sexual nature that violates your dignity, makes you feel intimidated, degraded or humiliated, or creates a hostile or offensive environment" - go unchallenged. Just 24 hours later, actress Scarlett Archer attracted support when she took to Twitter to share her own experience. [[twitterwidget||[https://twitter.com/ScarlettArcher/status/929489367005106176]] In the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal and ongoing revelations about the conduct of many other public figures, male and female, more people than ever are willing to speak up about their own experiences. With the hashtags #MeToo and #EverydaySexism being used widely across social media to show how widespread this issue is, it is easy to think the tide is turning. Yet the horrifying responses to Archer’s tweet exemplified the very reasons so many women do still say nothing: the disbelief of the victims, the assumption that people were “asking for it” somehow, the blaming of the victims for not doing more. [[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/sweettweet991/status/929810800683945991]] It literally baffles me that the argument about clothing is still being made. But for the record, @Franklythis, when it happened to me, I was wearing a bobble hat, a long coat and more layers than a Russian doll - yeah, it was real sexy. [[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/Franklythis/status/929807564304502784]] [[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/kgwill2012/status/929777378557136897]] It would be only too easy to assume that these kind of opinions were the preserve of online trolls, but a quick look through the internet will show you that when women do speak out it is all too often ill-received. The fact that in the wake of the Weinstein scandal so much of the discussion was focused on the idea that women were somehow responsible for other women’s experiences by not speaking up sooner highlights this. Even prominent public figures, such as British businessman Arron Banks and White House counsellor Kellyanne Conway expressed these kind of attitudes. [[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/Arron_banks/status/918604908009590784]] Your keyboard is one thing, but say that to her face Arron, I dare you. Somehow, I've got a funny feeling he's never been in that position. [[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/FoxNews/status/918650735830667265]] It is this kind of "victim blaming" that is so central to stopping people speaking out about sexual abuse, assault or harassment. It takes guts to speak about something intrusive or distressing that has happened to you, even more so when you don’t know what kind of reaction you’re going to get. It’s easier, emotionally and socially, to say nothing and move on rather than to draw that kind of attention to yourself. Even in the workplace, where sexual harassment is specifically prohibited under the Equality Act 2010, the situation is no better. A September 2017 Opinium poll showed that over half of the women who considered themselves to have been sexually harassed by a colleague did not tell their employer. So here’s a revolutionary idea that I shouldn't have to type: how about we all put the blame at the feet of the person being sexually aggressive, rather than the person having to put up with it? A lack of clarity around sexual harassment in law - the very thing we use to judge “OK” and “not OK” - doesn't help either. In both the UK and the US, there is no specific law against harassing someone in the street, as exists in other countries such as Belgium and Portugal. This is despite the fact that 90 per cent of British women and up to 85 per cent of American women say that by the time they are aged 17, they have experienced some kind of unwanted sexual attention in public. I'm not saying that anyone who wolf whistles or tries to chat someone up at a bus stop should be rounded up and arrested, but by refusing to set, acknowledge and enforce boundaries we refuse to address the issue directly. Although I know that it’s morally abhorrent to threaten to rape someone, the fact that I had to Google whether it is legally a crime to do so (it is) speaks volumes about how accustomed women are to just accepting this kind of thing.

I like to think that if I’d already had a pint in my hand, I would have chucked it over that guy. But the truth is, I probably wouldn’t have; I already had a voice, but in this case, for whatever reason, I didn’t use it. Being surrounded by people doesn’t stop the flight or fight response from kicking in and my refusal to draw attention to myself is probably indicative of having grown up against the backdrop of a society that expects women to just brush this kind of thing off. In a September 2017 poll by Drinkaware, almost 80 per cent of women between 18 and 24 said they considered sexual harassment to be part and parcel of a night out. If that stat doesn't suggest a normalisation of this kind of behaviour, I don't know what does. As much as I hate to admit it, I can also understand that the silence of the other people around me in that bar was, in part, a result of my own inaction. I am sure, in hindsight, that had I kicked up a fuss then any of the people around me would have taken my side. But by being "OK" with it, they felt that they had to be OK with it too. The fact is though, I wasn't OK with it, not at all. So the next time you see someone looking uncomfortable at whatever comment has just been made to them, feel free to step in and speak out, because the chances are, you'll give them the confidence and reassurance to do so too.

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