How would you react if someone felt you up?

Jeremy Irons offered the opinion that feeling someone’s arse was just being friendly. Might he have a point – or not?

Anne Sexton, 30 Aug 2011

I was at the bar when I felt the hand on my arse. This was no ordinary grope. He didn’t playfully slap my cheeks or grab a handful of flesh to give it a squeeze. Instead, despite the barriers presented by my skirt, tights and knickers, he was attempting to insert his finger into my anus.

“If a man puts his hand on a woman’s bottom, any woman worth her salt can deal with it. It’s communication. Can’t we be friendly?”

So, apparently, says Jeremy Irons.

Oh Jeremy, Jeremy! I loved you in Damage and M. Butterfly and even Stealing Beauty. Oh, I swooned when I rented The French Lieutenant’s Woman as a teenager. Oh how saddened I was when I learnt you’d painted your castle pink! But I forgave you. After all, in my youth you had given me much to think about, most of it filthy. However, with this statement, my dear Jeremy appeared to be talking out of the very orifice yer man was trying to invade.

What exactly was this stranger trying to communicate? Was he merely being friendly? I don’t think so. Don’t get me wrong – arse groping, whatever shape or form it takes, can indeed be friendly, but it’s the kind of friendly that works best in a bedroom with two naked people, a candle burning and Sigur Rós playing. It’s all about context.

I’ll give Jeremy this – at times it is more satisfying to “deal with it” without recourse to the law, screams or tears.

Dealing with it was a lesson I had learnt at my father’s knee when I was but a scrappy kid with pigtails and scratches on my arms from climbing trees. Of course he expected me to grow up to be a lady. Ladies are polite; ladies don’t chew gum in public; ladies don’t shout; ladies know how to waltz, set a table and hide their emotions; and ladies never forget to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’.

I had so many lessons in ladylike comportment from my father, well, he was like a one-man finishing school. But when the boys up the road began terrorising my sister and me, my father also taught me that ladies don’t have to run to Daddy for protection, ladies can fight their own battles.

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