Harassment: what it is and how to protect yourself.

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Have you experienced harassment in public? Unfortunately, modern society tries to keep silent about it, regardless of whether you are a victim or a witness. As a rule, people want to erase this situation from memory as soon as possible. Nobody wants to remember the unpleasant moments of their life. Everyone knows about this problem, but they are afraid to talk about it. Even if someones have become a victim of harassment, they try to convince themselves that nothing terrible has happened and live on hiding their pain and resentment.

People think that harassment is only a sexual claim. But, psychologists say that these are unwanted touches, verbal bullying, jokes about appearance, and so on. You can face this situation everywhere, for example, subways, entertainment centers, the Internet, and so on.

Harassment is a violation of personal boundaries without the consent of the person. If everything happens by mutual agreement, that’s another story.
Women face harassment in public places much more often than men. Moreover, more than 70% of them do not tell anyone about such cases and go through this situation on their own.

If you have witnessed harassment, you probably did not know what to do to protect the victim of harassment and safely intervene in such a situation.

Few people know that even inappropriate unpleasant remarks, gestures, facial expressions, and jokes are associated with various signs such as race, nationality, age, gender, religion are signs of harassment.

Unwanted touching is the most common form of harassment. They can occur on public transport, on the street, in the workplace.
Unfortunately, teenagers all over the world are victims of harassment all too often. Therefore, parents should learn to speak honestly with their children so that they are not afraid to talk about various unpleasant situations.

The most commonplace for harassment is in the workplace. You may experience sexual harassment, humiliation, and so on. Workplace harassment also includes:

  • obscene jokes;
  • any touching without permission;
  • messages, emails with intimate connotations;
  • sexual comments about appearance.

Any action or word that violates your boundaries and causes emotional or physical discomfort is harassment.

The most difficult moment in this situation is the ability to stop the offender and talk about such actions in public. If people continue to fear publicity, this process will intensify and spread faster.

The main rule is to limit your boundaries, tell about it and protect yourself. You must remember that no one has the right to violate your boundaries.

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