If we're talking about being hit on, then yes: at a bar, no one has the right to not be hit on. If one cannot handle having to fend off unwanted advances in environments where it is appropriate to make your attraction known, then you should stay out of that environment. However, one does have a right to not be harassed. If someone doesn't take no for an answer then they should be handled appropriately.
> at a bar, no one has the right to not be hit on.
Sometimes, people like to go to bars to hang out with their friends or significant others. Believe it or not, entering a bar does not give you the right to run around groping people.
The sexual assault apology in this thread is unbelievable.
I made sure to qualify the context of my comment to make my points as clear as possible. These strawman arguments that inevitably get trotted out get incredibly tired. You're not going to find too many people around here to fall for that argumentation tactic.
Hitting on != groping people and you damn well know it.
The original article was talking about a woman who was groped and assaulted.
To quote the parent:
> It sounds like a lot of this stuff happens at bars during events, not at the events themselves.
No one started talking about specifically being hit on until you brought it up, so either you were talking about what the woman went through and mistakingly called it "hitting on", which is what I assumed, or you're talking about something unrelated to this discussion, which is apparently what happened. Don't get upset when someone tries to bring your unrelated argument back on topic.
Either way, people don't always go to bars with the intent to get some. Assuming everyone is there for that reason is ridiculous.
Rereading the conversation chain I admit to misunderstanding the context of this thread. Reading through a bunch of comments I'm sure context bled between threads in my head (HN's pythonesque block comment structure doesn't help matters). Although I qualified my statements very specifically as I anticipated possibly misreading or missing something along the way.
It's fine. I apologize for coming off so aggressively. I'm just tired of people literally defending sexual assault, and because of that, I end up making all my replies snappy.
I thought the context was established to be hitting on, as one might do in a bar. The problem with framing it as being about "harassment" is that the term is prone to equivocation in these types of discussions. Some would argue that any attention of a sexual nature would be harassment. This is probably true in professional settings, but the grandparent established the context of discussion as a bar setting. This is what I was replying to.
How to handle actual harassment and assault is obvious: you call the fucking cops. I'm not sure why that warrants a discussion at all.
