Study: Many Young People Think Compliments, Drink Invites Are Forms Of ‘Sexual Harassment’ [VIDEO]

23 Nov, 2017 by Margaret M.

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A new study has come out showing the very different way that millennials think about dating.

According to a comprehensive new poll published in the Economist, young people all over the world are starting to consider the simple act of asking someone out on a date to be considered harassment.

The survey was given to people living in Britain, France, Germany, Sweden and the United States and shows both males and females of a variety of ages. The questions were simple and asked whether or not the respondents felt that different interactions constituted sexual harassment, ranging from “requesting a sexual favor” down to “asking to go for a drink.”

Between men and women, women were in general more likely to consider every interaction to be a form of sexual harassment, with the most obvious situation being “looking at breasts,” where women were more likely than men, in every country, at every age, to be sexual harassed. There was only one data point where both sexes agreed in equal numbers, where 18 year-old Americans, both male and female, equally considered looking at breasts to be harassment.

As for the generational gap, the difference between the under-25s and the over-60s is clear. There is a clear trend down in almost every situation (with the exceptions of “requesting a sexual favor” and “making sexual jokes”) that older respondents are more likely to be less worried about whether or not an interaction is harassment.

So, what about that most innocent question, whether “asking to go for a drink” is sexual harassment? Almost every respondent in every county over the age of 64 agreed that it wasn’t harassment, but at least 25% of young French women felt that it was. In the United States, men in the 18-30 range were more likely to believe that asking a woman out for a drink would be considered sexual harassment.

This is going to be one heck of a lonely generation if young men are too fearful of being called a sexual harasser if they even dare to ask a female out for a drink. Maybe the results are a little off, because Americans have the lowest drinking age (meaning that a 19 year-old American wouldn’t quite be able to ask a girl out for a drink, unless it was a coffee date, which might skew the results), but it’s still not a fantastic sign.

One journalist, Cathy Young, has been pushing the results on Twitter, saying that we’re “doomed.”

Over 1/3 of American young adults think it's "always/usually" sexual harassment if a man who not a woman's romantic partner compliments her looks.
About 1 in 4 young women say it's always/usually SH if he asks her out for a drink.

Doomed.https://t.co/V4ULCAt7r0

— Cathy Young (@CathyYoung63) November 20, 2017

Furthermore the article cites another recent poll that suggest that 49% of men have been forced to consider whether or not the news of Harvey Weinstein and other Hollywood jerks indicated that they too had been over the lines in terms of interacting with women. But, as the results above show, there is still no one cross-cultural definition of what crosses the line.

Here’s a short video from the right-wing Canadian journalist Lauren Southern, lambasting the modern trend towards empowering women into being unhappy cat ladies.