I feel more and more unsafe as a woman the *older* I get

I’ll start this off by saying I’m only 21, but I don’t remember having the same strong anxieties around random men approaching me when I was 16, even though I’d already been through sexual assault, harassment etc. I thought about posting this to my cities Reddit page, wondering if it was a local thing, however when I think about recent places I’ve travelled, New York, London, Paris, I’ve felt the same. Today I’ve had 2 minor incidents, 5:30am outside my work and a drunk man sees me looking me up and down and runs towards me, I stay still, we stare at each other for a second and he walks away mumbling. Tonight, 9:30pm waiting on a bus and a group of boys scrapping each other, each one coming up to me periodically to stand next to me and eventually just ask how I am. It was nothing, but these incidents feel more and more frequent and more and more unsettling. When I am badly catcalled, I do tend to talk back, throw a finger, or if someone’s trying to scare me, like pretending to run a bike into me while speeding onto the pavement, I’ll just stand my ground, but these incidents linger far more than I feel they used to, or maybe I just realise the potential dangers more. I’m wondering if anyone relates, or if this is even a genuine thing a lot of women are experiencing right now in European cities.

Posted Jul 11, 2026, 9:02 PM UTC

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