Sexual Harassment and the Absolute Lack of Male Allies in the Hospitality Sector

By Claudia Schergna 

‘It was nothing too serious,’ I keep repeating to myself while walking home, watching my back and holding my house keys tightly in my hand. I'm angry and terrified, and I don't know how to handle the two conflicting feelings. The morning comes and I can't move. I never thought I could fear going to my pub job.

What happened the night before is nothing that wouldn’t happen on any other day. He was a middle-aged man with a strong Russian accent. A few pints deep, he started ranting about how he never felt welcome in this country. This is the only thing I’ve ever enjoyed about my job: I’m always on the hunt for stories, angles, opinions. What better place than a pub to gather them? 

Racism. Brexit. Xenophobia. As a writer – and an immigrant – I couldn’t have asked for a better topic. The man said that he was frustrated that he couldn’t understand my colleague’s West Midlands accent. ‘Oh, I struggle too,’ I replied. We laughed. My colleague gave me a strange look. Maybe he was offended. Most likely, he was less naive than I am. He knew what was coming. 

‘She’s beautiful, isn’t she?’ said the man, directing this to my colleague as if I wasn’t worth being talked to directly. The Russian man stared at me with an evil look. He smiled, kept making comments, kept coming closer. My co-worker went on with whatever he was doing with extreme nonchalance.

My facial expression was now a mixture of terror and homicidal anger. But the man didn’t seem bothered by it and kept going: ‘I appreciate your beauty,’ he said in limping English. He eyed me from top to bottom. I felt small and dirty. The Russian man laughed, and my colleague laughed too. That very laugh makes me realise that feeling safer just because a guy I know was there with me was like hoping that a goldfish would have helped against a shark. 

I am alone. 

Luckily, the drunk man has a friend who managed to drag him out after another few attempts to touch me behind the bar. They walked out, taking a right. I froze: right is the way I walk to go home. Thoughts raced through my head. Shall I call a cab? Can I afford it? I breathed in. ‘The worse is gone,’ I told myself. Well, it wasn’t. 

When my colleague opened his mouth, for some reason I felt like he was holding a rope, about to pull me out of that freezing water full of sharks. I don’t even know what I’m expecting him to say. At this point, anything will do. Anything but what he said, which was, with a smile: ‘You could have told him to fuck off.’ Thousands of words, arguments, topics and sentences come to my mind. But I can’t pronounce a single sound.

I shouldn’t have to take this. I should tell my colleague that I know from experience that men who get rejected get violent. I should say that I’m terrified of walking home alone, and I wouldn’t do anything to make the situation worse. Maybe it isn’t his fault he’s so ignorant. Maybe he never had a female figure in his life who took the time to explain to him what it means to be a woman in this society.  

For a brief second, I think it is my fault. I myself never took the time to tell my male best friend what I was going through. When I called him late at night, I always apologised for asking him to pick me up but never explained why I wouldn't feel comfortable making my way alone. 

What I did next is what I’ve been doing my whole life. I blushed, avoided eye contact and swallowed my frustration. I let my colleague go on thinking that he didn’t do anything wrong by not standing up for me, by not calling the Russian man out or telling him to stop. Next time he’s in that situation with a female colleague and a customer, he'll find the scene hilarious again. Another girl will feel like she should have done something different. 

The truth is, though, that women already do too much. It shouldn’t be our job to educate men.

That day I realised that there is no such thing as a male ally. The thing is, I’m ashamed of myself because I still shut up and took it. Because, deep down, I liked the guy I worked with, and I know boys don’t like assertive girls. How anti-feminist of me. No guy is worth that.

That day I realised that it takes more than a few nice words to be a feminist. That day I realised gender inequality is not only about the gender gap or the sexist language. It is about the lack of basic human rights, about massive breaches of our freedom, about not being able to speak our mind, make our own choices or lead a decent, safe life without being made to feel uncomfortable by men – both strangers and ones that we know.