Sexual Harassment Awareness Campaigne

What is this blog about?

As off topic as this may seem, it’s a critical topic that our face painters try and raise awareness about in their spare time. Therefore, this blog was made to raise awareness for our readers. We work and specify in sexual harassment in school, read to find out more…

What is sexual harassment?

Sexual harassment takes many different forms, and it may not be as intense as you think. The definition for it is behaviour characterised by the making of unwelcome and inappropriate sexual remarks or physical advances in a workplace or other professional or social situation. So to summarise in a way we explain to younger students, sexual harassment is when your actions make another person feel uncomfortable or dehumanised. The actions may be through words, physical behaviour or online commenting.

What are the statistics for sexual harassment and who does it affect?

It affects any gender, age or sexual orientation. It can make you feel ashamed, uncomfortable and embarrassed. Around 1/4 girls have been subjected to unwanted physical touching while 27% have been a victim of sexual assault.

How do I know if I am a victim/somebody I know?

I had a class where there were two other girls and me with 14 boys in the class. Our teacher (who left soon after I shared my story) was often not in the classroom and had little control over the boys. I joined this class when I was in 14 and half a year onwards we had all become friends with each other. A small group of boys (maybe around 3/4) started to ask us inappropriate questions such as “what size bra do you have” or “would you do so and so with this person” (thinking back the stuff they said was absolutely vile) as time went on they started squeezing our bums, nudging our breasts making ruder comments about our appearances.

The boundaries seemed to be no longer there. I then started dreading coming to the lesson and getting majorly upset if I saw them saying stuff to my other girl classmates. I’m ever so fortunate to have parents who realised my anxiety with this lesson and sat me down and spoke to me because together we realised a small majority of our course students were sexually assaulting the girls in our class and it was not ok.

If you or anybody you know feels uncomfortable when someones around speak to them or let them get help.