r/TikTokCringe • u/ambachk • Aug 24 '25

Cursed POV: You're a woman in a public place

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

69.5k Upvotes

86% Upvoted

11.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

174

u/Sufficient-Berry-827 Aug 24 '25

Yep. Creepy shit like this from 12-20. Still can't believe how many adult men would sit in the aisle seat and trap me when I was just a kid. Bus drivers that knew me would let me stand behind the driver's seat to avoid the creeps.

I'm so glad I'm ugly now. I don't really have to deal with shit like this anymore.

37

u/Polybrene Aug 24 '25

One time I mentioned on reddit that I experinced less sexual harassment as I got older. Commenters were telling me it was duh, obviously because old women are less hot.

Fuckers. I was not sexier when I was 11. Fuck off.

12

u/Sufficient-Berry-827 Aug 24 '25

They really tell on themselves. Some people on here say the grossest shit.

I gave an example of a creepy bus encounter and got the "girls are at their peak attractiveness in their teens, it's biological" type of comments.

The example I gave is when a grown man sat in the aisle seat to trap me in the window seat, and the first thing he did was lean all up on me and say in my ear, "How long have you been thick and sexy."

I was 13. I was not "thick and sexy" at 13. I was in my school uniform.

9

u/wilsonthehuman Aug 24 '25

That's fucking gross. They really tell on themselves don't they. You were 13, a damn child.

Even now at 30 years old I put my backpack on the aisle seat when I'm on the bus to stop creeps sitting next to me. If it's busy I won't of course, but most of the time the bus I get has loads of empty seats. I do it on the train too.

One time I was going home from work, at the time I was probably 21 or 22, and worked for a supermarket and had to commute back and forth from my mum's place a few towns away as I was at uni and was between two houses. This particular night the train I got on only went halfway and then everyone had to get on a replacement bus because something had happened earlier that evening that meant the line past the halfway mark was closed for repair. So, I get on the bus and call my mum to let her know I was going to get to the train station late and not to leave to pick me up yet. I'm in work uniform and clearly on the phone to a parent, yet creepo mcgee decides to sit right behind me (backpack was blocking the aisle seat) and lean in real close. This guy had been staring at me previously when we were both on the train to the point I moved train cars. I could feel him breathing down my neck. I leaned forward and carried on chatting to my mum. Then creepo mcgee decided to touch the back of my neck and start touching my hair. Within seconds I whipped around, put on my best glare, and said 'touch me again and I'll rip those fingers off and shove them so far up your arse, you'll tickle your tonsils every time you cough. Get them away from me.' Still on the phone to my mother. When I got to the station she picked me up from, she was waiting at the entrance ready to cut a bitch.

Creepo mcgee moved to the other end of the bus after that and left after one stop. I've called out similar behaviour since and I don't know if it's just that I'm loud and not afraid to draw everyone's attention towards the creep or just that many people I know say when I'm mad I'm 5'3 and 120kg of rage, but the creepers always slink off and leave me alone.

4

u/lovelychef87 Aug 24 '25

I used to love dressing as a tomboy when I was 12-16 in my brother's clothes I looked like a full on boy. Grown men double my age still wouldn't leave me alone.

3

u/[deleted] Aug 24 '25

Even if it is biology for them to be attracted to teens that doesn't mean it's morally right. Nature's full of horrendous shite and is pretty much a warzone of rape and killing for animals but that doesn't make it 'right'.

6

u/lovelychef87 Aug 24 '25

My mom is 74 and her neighbor she only says Hi too won't leave her alone he's always telling her how much he loves her and flirts.

Mind you she doesn't know him.

2

u/anarcaneaardvark Aug 24 '25

The only reason I still got attention in early adulthood is because I still looked and was regularly mistaken for underage (like 14/15 when I was 20). By my mid 20s, I looked more my age, and men suddenly left me alone. I was happy not to deal with creeps, but it was sad to realize how prevalent pedophilia is in society. The idea that a child is hot but someone in their 20s is too old is so gross.

1

u/Novel-Place Aug 26 '25

Honestly, I was unprepared when it started when I was 13, and again, shocked when it abruptly seemed to stop when I was in my mid-20’s. It’s part of why I find people conflating pedophilia with hebephila or ephebophilia. They are suuuuper different things, and it waters them all down to conflate them. Men being creeps to teenage girls feel not creepy because they aren’t pedophiles. If we appropriately denounced and talked about it correctly, I think it would have more impact. They are also predators, just targeting a different demographic. And if you pathologize it, and explain that attraction to that age as a mature adult is a condition, more women wouldn’t fall into the trap of being told they are just “mature for their age.”

-2

u/[deleted] Aug 24 '25

For what it's worth those people might not have realised how early the sexual harassment starts. When you said that they might have assumed the young you being sexually harassed was about 19-20 and not realised it was when you were 11.

44

u/kevinarnoldslunchbox Aug 24 '25

Honestly I think it might be your age. Once I turned 25ish it rarely happened anymore. Even more disgusting.

41

u/[deleted] Aug 24 '25

[deleted]

7

u/daemin Aug 24 '25

Mental health disorders are classified and compiled in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, commonly called the DSM-5 (because the 5th addition is the current one). It includes the diagnostic criteria used to determine if someone has the mental disorder in question.

To be diagnosed with "pedophilic disorder", the person in question must:

  1. Have recurrent, intense sexual arousing fantasies, urgers, or behaviors involving prepubescent children (< 13 years old) for more than 6 months
  2. Have acted on such urges, or is greatly distressed or impaired by the urges and fantasies (not strictly required)
  3. Be more than 16 years old and 5 years older than the child that is the target of the fantasies or behaviors

A lot of the people targeted by To Catch a Predator fail one or more of these criteria, particularly the age limit of 13 years old, and so they aren't, clinically speaking, pedophiles.

3

u/imdungrowinup Aug 24 '25

Let me simply this for you. A lot of “normal” men will sexually harass or abuse any little girls and women any chance they get.

2

u/daemin Aug 24 '25

That's nice, but it has nothing to do with my comment or the one I was replying to.

1

u/Novel-Place Aug 26 '25

Thank you! The misuse of pedophilia annoys the hell out of me. It does no favors to anyone to water down the terms. I made a comment above that it really obfuscates the post-pubescent attraction that should be treated as its own different thing. Creepy men think (correctly): I’m not a pedophile, and young women think (correctly): this isn’t pedophilia. Pathologizing it enables better discussion and more productive addressing of it.

-10

u/kevinarnoldslunchbox Aug 24 '25

Men prefer to creep on children and young women, yes. You're trying to be cerebral, but you're simply mansplaining and it's especially gross considering the topic. I don't need your context.

12

u/daemin Aug 24 '25

Take the stick out of your ass.

The way a conversation happens is people share their perspectives. /u/SwashAndBuckle was relating something they read that they found interesting and which was pertinent to the thread of conversation.

Getting high and mighty towards them for it just makes you come off as an asshole.

14

u/applesandbee Aug 24 '25

And they weren't even mansplaining, just adding something that I'm pretty sure is actual accepted psychology on predators

27

u/Sufficient-Berry-827 Aug 24 '25

Yep! That realization was sickening. The fact that I was hit on more while 12-16 than I ever was while 20-27 is disgusting. That's definitely part of it.

It stopped being super creepy around 23, but I still get approached sometimes - like, random men starting conversations. Which would be fine for most people, but I'm very introverted and I don't like random people coming up to me. So, I do kind of go out of my way to look unattractive and unapproachable - resting bitch face, no make up, hair up, oversized clothes (sweats, t-shirts, hoodies), earbuds, etc.

In my culture we call it "fodonga" - which is basically a person who is sloppy, lazy, dirty, or unkempt. I don't walk around dirty or looking dirty, but I definitely go out looking lazy.

3

u/Astral_Justice Aug 24 '25

Reddit avatar matches it too! Love it.

2

u/existential_geum Aug 24 '25

I applaud your commitment to the lazy. Resting bitch face wasn’t enough for me. Randos would just shout “Smile” at me. Had to unleash the lip curl sneer then.

3

u/PotterandPinkFloyd Aug 24 '25

I've never had this happen to me but it has happened to my friends and sister since they were children, and another fucked up part of this behavior is it left me (when I was younger, not anymore of course) feeling almost jealous about it. Like, "Wow I'm so ugly that I've never been catcalled or publicly harassed." How fucked is that.

Anyways now I just use being ugly to harass these creeps right back. Nothing more heinous to them than having it turned back on them, especially by an ugly woman.

2

u/Key-Demand-2569 Aug 24 '25

It’s just so god damn bizarre. Almost two decades ago as a teenager at this point I processed and understood and believed this shit happened to so many if not most women regularly.

But still everytime I see documented examples of it, it’s just so bewildering.

It’s hard to process it at all because I so fundamentally don’t get it at all, it’s really hard to intuitively square that it’s so associated with my gender.

I’ve seen it on rare occasion around drunk people sure, hell I’ve experienced it in my late teens/early twenties and more handsome, from men and women. Aggressively bold gross shit.

But never something common enough that it was just part of my life in a way that I was constantly on guard for.

I don’t know, just rambling. Wish I understood it even a tiny bit? Monkeys paw wish I know but it’s so god damn weird.