2023
Aged 39
I went to a pub, purely to watch a band I was interested in. I had not long been at the venue, and sat down with a drink with my friend. A man walked over, in his 60s at a guess. He pulled his pants down and started flashing his genital area at anyone who would look.
My instinct was to look away and laugh/shrug it off in embarrassment even though I found it absolutely repulsive. As a survivor of sexual abuse I find it very upsetting and triggering to see this kind of thing, but I often feel like in pubs we are just expected to accept this kind of behaviour as a bit of drunken banter. I felt like it was my problem for being over-sensitive and for even daring to walk into a pub… but on reflection, it is not me that is the problem here.
Why, as a society are we women being conditioned to feel like we are the problem, and it’s perfectly acceptable for men to behave this way because they’ve had a few drinks or they are just being one of the lads? My friend was very angry about what happened (especially as there were also underage girls present). He reported it to the police, but exactly as I feared – and why I don’t report things of this nature to the police – it was dismissed as ‘drunken high-jinks’
Part 2: Male bystander report on the same incident
A man in his 60s pulled down the front of his trousers and exposed the shaft of his penis and pubis to my friend and also another group containing two girls aged 14 (the man was a friend of the family and knew the girls were 14). The matter was reported to the police but no action was taken, we are pursuing the matter with higher ranking officers at the moment.