After nearly three months in the UK and five days in France, I was going to write a post about sexual harrassment. Specifically how, even as I may have complained over the years about the romantic reticence that characterises many of the Australian men I know, at least, I was grateful that Australian women had to put up with less sexual harrassment than women in other countries - even countries ostensibly similar to our own.

Then I read over an old journal entry I wrote on the same issue six years ago, and was sobered.

I’ve reposted my early-twentysomething thoughts for you below - they’re quite visceral - but I think that to some extent, my original point stands. Whether it’s because I’m older, or because the once perpetrators are older and smarter about how they treat women, I’m pretty well left alone most of the time in Australia.

Not so in most other places I’ve visited. In Paris on Tuesday, a man tried to kiss me while I sat in a park looking through the pictures I’d taken on my camera. Last week in London, powerwalking down my street shortly after sunrise in a bid to make a 7:30am train, another man tried to spark up a conversation. In fact, one of the first things I noticed upon moving to London was the dramatically increased frequency with which I was hit on.

Not all of it is as outrageous as the guy in the park in central Paris - I suspect he was drunk. Much of the time, it’s simply strangers trying to spark up conversation on the street. But this isn’t a matter of being friendly or unfriendly; as any woman can attest, people don’t strike up conversations with strangers walking down the street unless they want something from them. On the bus? Perhaps. At a party? Absolutely. But walking down the street? People are generally after something, whether it’s money or sex or something else.

As I say, not all of these interactions are aggressive per se - although in my younger years, when I didn’t shut them down as quickly, when I engaged in polite-but-not-encouraging conversation through gritted teeth, they often ended up that way. It’s not in the league of a comment on your arse or a declaration that the person in question would like to “bang one up you”, as my story from 2004 begins.

But it is, I think - especially in countries where this happens multiple times daily - a form of harrassment. To be constantly approached and encroached upon, to constantly have to say “no, no, no”, to be forced to build up walls which some male readers will probably interpret as rudeness or arrogance, because to not shut the interaction down from the outset would only mean having to do it later. To feel bad each time you shut down an interaction, because that’s not what a “nice” person would do (and like many women, I do like to be nice).

It takes energy, like batting at a mosquito that refuses to go away, and it whittles away at you over time.

Or as I wrote in 2004…

I was introduced to the world of sexual harassment relatively late in life. Shortly after my 17th birthday at an underage dance party at UNSW’s ‘Roundhouse’. I won’t go into the specifics, but suffice to say I spent the majority of the next day crying in my bedroom along to ‘Petals’ by Hole. I’d never understood that song before, but after that event - well, I totally ‘got it’.

It caused problems with my friends at the time, who didn’t understand what had upset me so much and told me to just “get over it”. Mind you, these were the same friends who had berated me the night it had happened for not stopping it before it did. But I was just a clueless little girl with no idea. All I could do was write a letter to my surrogate older sister of the time, Abby, whom I hoped might understand how I felt.

Sexual harassment and objectification have continued to be something of a pet hate over the years that followed. I bring this up because this morning, as I got off the bus outside Central Station to catch a train to work, a man stopped in his tracks to say, “Ring a ding ding, you spunky little thing! I’d like to bang one up you! Yeah, I would, and you’d love it too!” as I walked stony-faced into the station, heels clipping, thinking to myself “If you come anywhere near me I’ll kick you in the balls and report you to the sexual harassment officers at university.”

Inside the station, I thought to myself that the ideal comeback probably would have been, “Not half as much as I’ll love shoving my stiletto down your throat and tearing your esophagus if you so much as come near me.” And how I would have loved to have turned around and actually said it.

Because, of course, it’s not exactly an isolated incident. Last week, at [redacted]’s 21st, I went over to [redacted speech giver] to congratulate him of making a rather moving speech. And the [physically unattractive private school graduate] standing beside him said, “That means she want to fuck you.”

I gave him a withering glance and said, “No, it means I thought his speech was very good and it nearly made me cry.”

[Physically unattractive private school graduate] boy said, “Nah, it means you want to fuck him, you slut.”

Yes, because women are just walking happy meals, wandering around waiting for some kind gentleman to do them good and hard. The mere fact that we exist invites people to comment on our physical appearance.

Take the time when I was innocently walking down the street at university on my way to help my friends campaign, wearing a pair of jeans and a political tshirt, and a couple of guys made comments I don’t particularly feel like repeating here. Or the time when I was walking home from work last year (at about 9pm at night, down a dark alleyway, which was the only way I could get home) and some guys walking behind me started talking loudly about how they loved to fuck girls with certain physical attributes I may or may not have. Or the Sydney Grammar Boys who followed me around at the end of year media party talking about how I wanted to do them. Or [redacted], who announced to his corridor at St Pauls College one night that I wanted him bad. Thankfully, my friend [redacted] had been there to settle the score, doing an expert imitation of something I’d said in our conversation earlier that week: “Tell you sleazy friend that I do not like him and he is not invited to my Christmas party!”

Or, less overt but equally offensively, the time at [redacted]’s 21st when one of the random dudes Sarah and I were talking to told me that I would be “mind numblingly beautiful if only I grew my hair long and curly”. Never mind that I happen to like my hair shoulder length and straight and that I never asked him for his input. Because he is a man, and my job is to look attractive for him. As is the customarily the case (aside from the media cruise, in which I told the Grammar boys to fuck off and leave me alone, and [redacted Pauls boy], whom I slapped in the face when he grabbed my arse) I responded with little more than a withering look. It wasn’t until later that it occurred to me that I should have replied, “Yes, and maybe you’d be attractive too if you had a face and body transplant!”

Now, you might respond that I invite such treatment by making myself look the way I do. I invite people to disrespect me and refer to me as, as [redacted]’s boyfriend does, “your friend who looks like a Barbie Doll”, by wearing make-up, or by straightening my hair, or by wearing clothes which coordinate. But if you did respond like that, you’re probably a man. Because if you’re a woman, you probably realise that the only other option you have is to have men barking at you on the street, calling you a dog, calling you ugly, and once again assuming you must be in need of a good fuck because no one else would ever want to give you one.

It almost makes me feel grateful for the awkward attempts at feminism made by so many good left-wing boys. The overcompensation so many of them attempt, when they ask at committee meetings if the amount of money spent on women’s programmes in comparison to men’s is proportionate to the amount of discrimination women suffer in comparison to men. But left-wing boys still grab your ass and put their hand on your leg if you say hello to them. (Present day Rachel’s note: To be fair, most of them are pretty well behaved these days. Even the Paul’s boys I used to know are well behaved and respectful nowdays.)

All I’m asking for is to be neither a walking happy meal, nor a dog to be derided.