If a stranger slaps your bottom, is it bad behaviour or bad manners to complain because they meant it as a compliment? In the battle to end the harassment women face in their everyday lives, the discussion has often centred on how women can do more to protect themselves, rather than stopping those who feel they are entitled to touch, pester and target others.
As parliament debates new laws on public harassment on Wednesday, we can change this – but only if we stop excusing criminal behaviour as clumsy seduction. That means being clear that when it comes to harassing women, it is no defence to argue you didn’t mean any harm – because in 2023, you really should know better.
For women, learning to live is learning to be afraid. If you want the freedom of movement, it comes at a cost. We teach self-defence in schools, the merits of carrying keys in your hands to walk home, to worry about not having such a good time on a night out that you’re unaware of the person standing too close to you, and to worry about who can be trusted if you go to them for help.
Our calculations using ONS data suggest that every day 24,000 women experience public harassment in the UK, with those from minority communities much more likely to be affected. School-age girls report experiencing this harassment every day, and that their peers are slow to learn to stop it. One study in Northern Ireland showed that only 73% of the boys thought it was “never acceptable” to cat-call, wolf-whistle or shout at someone.
If street harassment is widespread, so too is a sense that those charged with tackling it minimise it. The campaign group Our Streets Now states that 76% of pupils don’t feel confident reporting public sexual harassment to a member of staff at school, let alone the police. In November 2021, House of Commons library data showed that more than 2 million crimes against women had gone unrecorded since 2018, and women are much less likely than men to report abuse to the police. With extensive evidence of how those responsible escalate their behaviour – they start following women down the road and flashing them, but rarely stop there – women don’t need to be given rape alarms or better street lighting, but a plan of action.
That’s why we should all welcome the protection from sex-based harassment in a public bill. It echoes the way that hate crime legislation penalises those who target certain groups based on their identity, by using an existing offence used to prosecute harassment – from the Public Order Act 1986 – and applying a harsher sentence to those whose motivation is shown to be about the sex or perceived sex of their victim. It is the first time the statute book will recognise how misogyny drives crimes against women.
Yet, as ever, nothing is straightforward. Public order offences allow the accused to claim a defence that they thought their behaviour was “reasonable”, even if no one else would. This contrasts with other legislation that also covers harassment in English law, and only allows a defendant to claim their behaviour is reasonable if others would agree; that they “ought to know” if their conduct was unacceptable. Without changing this element of the forthcoming public harassment bill to be consistent with how harassment operates elsewhere, this new law – while well-intentioned – risks giving perpetrators the opportunity to claim “she just can’t take a compliment” as an actual defence to a criminal offence.
There is still time to close this legal loophole. With the support of MPs in the coming weeks, we can ensure that all harassment offences deal in the same way with claims of reasonableness by defendants towards their victims. It’s clear the public would agree – according to one survey, one in three people think that sexist abuse should lead to more than a year in prison.
It will take more than a single offence to undo the generations of cultural hardwiring that says men harass women “because they like them”. In an era of Andrew Tate, repeated failed #MeToo prosecutions and the scandal of the police rapist Wayne Couzens, there is so much to address. But it is a start – which is why it matters to get this right. A growing majority of young men and modern culture is increasingly questioning the ethos that “boys will be boys”. The law must too.
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