Mick Hartley

This BBC report is such a depressing read – 'I quit running after being followed home by men'. A young woman in Wales speaks out about the sexual harassment she's had to endure out running:

Ms Browne, 24, from Cardiff, said she was 11 when a man slowed his car down to tell her she "looked sexy".

She had a "sinking feeling" that this would be what the rest of her life would be like.

In 2017 she picked up running because she was at "rock bottom" after a boy sexually assaulted her.

"That really affected me. I took time off school, I lost quite a lot of my hair from stress, and I didn't know what was wrong with me at the time, because I had a form of PTSD," she said.

To improve her mental health, she went on her second ever run on a well-used road in the daytime.

A car full of men in their 20s slowed down to drive alongside her and shouted at her to get in.

"I just remember feeling utterly paralysed and sick," she said.

"There was nowhere I could have gone, it was one road."

Ms Browne was forced to run alongside them which she said was "humiliating".

"That really put me off running," she said. "I just remember going home crying my eyes out."

She said she felt there was "literally nowhere for me to go" where she would be "free from harassment or male violence".

The list of male harassments goes on…and on.

Ms Browne said when women are murdered or sexually assaulted they are portrayed as "isolated incidents" but "they've not just spawned out of nowhere".

"It comes from a larger issue, which is behavioural and structural," she said. "They might be your friend, your brother, your family member."

She said that while "the average day-to-day man does not hold the power to change an entire economic political system, everyday men do have the power to call each other out on their behaviour, reflect, and actually do something about it".

Ms Browne said gender-based violence is an epidemic.

A brave woman.

I think – I hope – that it's better here in London. I see at least as many women running by themselves as men. But of course I don't really know. 

No wonder so many young girls, appalled at the prospect of puberty, get seduced by the siren calls on social media to de-sex themselves.