I am fortunate only to have been sexually harassed a couple of times. Once was at high school, when a boy and his friends a couple of years younger than me used to shout compliments that would quickly turn obscene whenever I passed them by. (I distinguish that from the usual high school to-and-fro by virtue of the fact it was my final year at the time.)
The second was later, and about that I won’t digress here. At present, however, I am visited by the unwanted, and likely insincere, favour of some of my new students, whose sense of the adult world of university is rather different from mine. Thus it is that I entered the class today to the exclamation of “hey, beautiful”, from somewhere in those waiting outside the corridor. It’s not the first time something like this has happened from this group.
I don’t like it, but don’t quite know at what point to ask that it desist. Is it a poor selection of register or something less benignly meant? Pointing out I’m old enough to be their mother might suffice, even if it’s not quite true. Either way, it’s a hassle, in the every day sense of that word.
