Seksuell trakassering

[Adrienne]

Denne diskusjonen fikk meg til å tenke på dette blogginnlegget, skrevet av en fransk kvinne bosatt i Norge. For jeg tror ikke vi her hjemme klarer helt å sette oss inn i hvor ille det kan være i andre land, for det er tross alt ikke fullt så ille her hjemme, selv om dette også oppleves her. Hvis man går opp over f.eks. Karl Johan er risikoen for å bli overfalt av en strømselger mye større enn å få uønskede kommentarer fra fremmede menn.

Opprinnelig lagt inn av Frog in the Fjord

Before living in Norway, and previously in Denmark, I had never really realised how bad it is to be a woman outside of Scandinavia. Of course I was experiencing sexism on a daily basis in France. Whether it was at work (I had a student job in a bakery) where my boss was making comments about how he had the same “éclair au café” in his pants if I was ever interested in seeing it. In the metro, where I had to make sure I wasn’t touching any man around because I had found myself several times with men taking an accidental light touch as an invitation to put their hand on my bum or even between my legs. You can imagine how hard it is to figure out whose hand it was when you are in a Parisian metro totally packed. When going out at night, I had to re-think what to wear depending on whether I would walk home alone later that night. Then I could not wear a skirt or a dress, because I would then be “asking for it”. I thought about all this on a daily basis without realising how much space it was taking, and that it doesn’t have to be this way.

“Men are just like that, they can’t help it” is the common mantra one hears regularly when discussing daily sexism in France. They have “needs” women don’t have (hum). Being attracted to a person walking passed you in the street or a colleague is one thing, but showing it with whistling or kissing sounds, insults, or jokes about your breasts is something quite different. In France this happens even in Parliement where female MPs are regularly harassed. Last year a female MP was hushed because wearing a dress, and another one, this year, had to go through her speech with chicken sounds made by another (male) MP.