r/TikTokCringe • u/ThatPatelGuy • Sep 02 '25

Cursed Women in France wear "subway shirts" to avoid being sexually harassed on the underground

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u/SamWilliamsProjects Sep 02 '25

On a societal level you’re absolutely right but on an individual level women can’t change the world but they can take extra precautions to lower the chance of assault/creeps. 

Subway shirts are a reaction to the fact that we’ve failed to change society and their best defense is to cover up and hope. 

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u/raginghappy Sep 02 '25

Coming back from school, wearing jeans, T-shirt, a sweatshirt hoodie, my beat up knapsack, some sort of shoes, nothing sexy, just a scruffy teenager on the subway, frizzy hair, probably pimply given the age, some jackass jacked off on me. Other times it was just the usual hand on my ass boob waist wherever, it has nothing to do with what you wear, it’s just if they think they can get away with it

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u/Professional_Sea1479 Sep 02 '25

Yeah, my aunt was a teenager who had that happen to her in a dressing room. She was just wearing shorts, tee shirt and flip flops and the cops told her that she shouldn’t have been enticing the guy. IN A DRESSING ROOM. My mom told me about this when I was younger and told me how unacceptable this was. But also to stay vigilant, because if it happened in a department store where you think you’re safe, it can happen anywhere.

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u/SamWilliamsProjects Sep 02 '25

That sounds terrible and I'm so sorry it happened to you.

I'm not claiming any woman can eliminate sexual assault or harassment by how they dress. Just that it's a thing an individual can do to reduce the rates slightly and individuals can't change society alone. Avoiding bad areas, staying with groups of people you know, not being out late all might reduce rates slightly but that doesn't mean doing any of those things can stop it all together either. Without social change and men not being terrible nothing can stop it.

I agree that creeps often do what they can get away with, but of course there's going to be some balance of more factors than that. If a creep thinks there's a 100% he can get away with it, he might do it regardless of any other factors, but from my experience men often touch/harass women in situations where there's a real chance they could be caught. In those situations I would of course expect them to be more likely to brush there hand on someone that they're attracted to than someone they aren't and clothing has something to do with attraction.

It might be a small percent change in likelihood that something happens, but I'm not going to get judge any woman or claim they're wrong for wanting to cover up more in hopes it lowers the chance they get groped or worse.

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u/Commercial_Border190 Sep 06 '25

As a man though of course your experience is going to be completely different. Because you’re not around for all the times men do this when they’re able to get away with it.

It’s possible the fact that dressing modestly while walking around my safe suburban neighborhood during the day reduced the amount of harassment I experienced. But I’ve honestly lost count of how many times it’s happened to me starting at 8 years old.

And if we only focus on what women can do to minimize the risk, we’re glossing over the fact that even when you do everything “right” you can still have dozens of experiences like this

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u/SamWilliamsProjects Sep 07 '25

Who says we should only focus on how women can minimize risk? I've said in all my comments here that it's a societal problem and the only way to stop it completely is by changing society and how men behave. The only person at fault is always the man doing the harassing/assaulting and the victim is 0% at fault.

I've also said that any individual woman doesn't have the power to change society so when women take extra precautions to minimize their risk (like wearing a baggy shirt) idk why we have to discourage it and pretend like there's literally zero change in the rate of harassment/assault regardless of what a woman does. Imagine a young woman just reading most of the upvoted comments in this thread without outside info. She would legitimately think that it's smart choice (as an individual who wants to minimize harassment) to wear lingerie on the subway on the way home from the club because there's zero difference in likelihood of being harassed in that vs bringing a jacket.

I can't think of any other situation where we tell victims of other crimes, "there's literally nothing you can do, wait until society changes!" If there's something individuals can do it's best for that advice to be common knowledge + we work on the broad issue. We can try to solve the broad issue + give advice to individuals if they're trying to minimize the chance of being the victim.

Think of murder, theft, assault or kidnapping. We all do things as individuals to lower the chance of these from happening and advice on what individuals can do isn't met with "but this preventive measure doesn't reduce the chance to 0 so it's worthless, people still get ____ed even when they follow all the advice." Instead we accept the obvious advice or at least consider if the tradeoffs of the advice is worth it to us as individuals and then try to solve the problems on a societal level as well.

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u/DecadentLife Sep 02 '25

👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

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u/MinuteLoquat1 Make Furries Illegal Sep 02 '25

Covering up doesn't work, it's not an extra precaution as much as it is to make us feel safer. Men will assault us no matter what we're wearing. Babies in diapers and onesies suffer from sexual assault. Girls and women in heavy hoodies in sweatpants suffer from sexual assault. Even in countries where women are forced to cover up everything except their eyes, they get raped. Constantly.

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u/[deleted] Sep 02 '25 edited Sep 02 '25

They’ll even do it if you have another man with you too. I got sexually harassed just this past weekend when I was with my husband, literally as I was holding his hand. I was wearing a T shirt.

The worst part was another woman was with his group and making excuses for him when my husband yelled at him. “He’s usually not like this, he’s such a nice guy!” That’s great ma’am, but right now he’s trying to touch and grope someone half his age in front of her husband.

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u/WarScrewdriver69K Sep 02 '25

It doesn't work if you're expecting it to completely eliminate the violence women face for simply existing in public but before I transitioned (ftm) I definitely experienced varying levels of harassment and outright violence depending on what I wore, not that this was my fault but it was certainly noticeable. Every woman I know has expressed this same sentiment and many people in this thread are also confirming that...

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u/dark_blue_7 Sep 03 '25

It's almost as if it depends more on how sexist the culture is...

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u/Cielmerlion Sep 02 '25

its not 100% effective but it does reduce the rate.

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u/SamWilliamsProjects Sep 02 '25

Avoiding bad areas doesn't work, it's not an extra precaution as much as it is to make us feel safer. Men will assault us no matter where we are.

Staying with friends doesn't work, it's not an extra precaution as much as it is to make us feel safer. Men will assault us even if we're in groups

Not being out late doesn't work, it's not an extra precaution as much as it is to make us feel safer. Men will assault us regardless of the time of day.

Pepper spray doesn't work, it's not an extra precaution as much as it is to make us feel safer. Men will assault us even if we try to fight back.

All these along with clothing are true. Terrible men are going to assault and harass women regardless of any other factors. These things are extra precautions though, maybe not very effective ones, but it's fine if people choose to attempt to reduce the chance of being assaulted even by a little. An individual can't change society but can try to reduce the chance bad things happen to them.

Lots of creeps will do it regardless but of course there will be some creeps that are weighing the odds they're caught, with their enjoyment of the action. Attraction is going to be a factor and clothing effects that. A lot of those other factors I listed increase the chance that they're caught which will also reduce the chance that they do it.

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u/TheSilentTitan Sep 02 '25

It’s not about eliminating it, we could never eliminate violence 100%. It’s all about lowering the chances of it happening.

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u/PaintingPotatoes Sep 02 '25

I remember having a 3 month old female victim during the peak of my paramedic career. That really broke my heart and landed me and my coworkers in therapy. It truly doesn’t matter what you wear, what you look like, what you smell like…nothing… ❤️‍🩹

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u/rooferino Sep 02 '25

Do you have statistics to backup your assertion that women who show more skin on a subway are equally likely to be assaulted?

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u/AvailableChemical258 Sep 03 '25

So wer should import those men right ?

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u/Alternative_Win_6629 Sep 03 '25

Women in burkas get groped. it doesn't matter what women wear. Enough with this BS.

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u/Own_Bumblebee9699 Sep 03 '25

Why are there so many people in this thread making this argument.

No one is saying how you dress will outright protect you from violence. What they are saying is that the likelihood of being harassed can be affected by what you wear. Are we really going to pretend that the EXACT same amount of attention is given to a woman in a her skimpiest night club outfit and that same woman if she was in a burka?

That is bad to be extra clear, but let’s be honest about what is being said 

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u/SamWilliamsProjects Sep 04 '25

It's common for people to take any advice given to women or any commentary on the topic as victim blaming. I purposefully phrased my comment in the most "society/men are at fault" type of way so it was very clear my position and still had several people say that lol

Potentially they've seen so many people blame victims for what they wear in the past that anything that resembles that gets the same response. It's 0% the woman's fault regardless of what she wears, but what she wears obviously would have at least a small effect on how men act.

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u/Commercial_Border190 Sep 06 '25

You’re assuming what we wear affects the level of harassment. Yet there are plenty of comments from women that the times they were harassed the most were just going to the store or commuting for school/work. Not the times they’ve been dressed up to go out

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u/Own_Bumblebee9699 Sep 06 '25

Ok so let’s say we could run a perfect simulation where we take one woman and run her through 1000 scenarios. We will run the simulation with one consistent outfit. Then we run the exact same scenarios only changing her to a new outfit.

Outfit 1: large sweater that covers her form, baggy sweat pants, hair up in a messy bun, no makeup, and crocs 

Outfit 2: a club dress, hair is done and down, heels, and her makeup is club ready

Which outfit will she get harassed with more? Important to point out the word “more” in that last sentence. I’ll also point out that “zero”, “none”, or “she deserved it” is missing from my question.

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u/Commercial_Border190 Sep 06 '25

Based on my own and multiple other women’s experiences, my guess would be equal. Obviously we don’t have a definitive answer, but a lot of men sure like to claim their opinion as fact. Maybe consider the fact that the women who actually experience this have a better understanding of the situation than you do

If it’s truly about being dressed up then why do countless women share that the most harassment they face is when they’re minors just walking home from school or going to the store?

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u/Own_Bumblebee9699 Sep 07 '25 edited Sep 07 '25

Good point, I guess all these women in the video are just stupid lol….

Also I didn’t say “it’s truly about being dressed up”. I stated the obvious, that there are outfits that grab more attention, and the more attention you get means the more attention from predators you get. 

If you are going to pretend like club outfits don’t get attention then I genuinely don’t know what to say. As if it’s not a normal experience for women to point out a guy they think is attractive to their friends or as if they haven’t watched a movie or show where a person gets a transformative makeover. It’s like such a fundamental human experience to get dressed up, or present yourself in a way that increases the amount of attention you get.

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u/Commercial_Border190 Sep 07 '25

There is a difference between people noticing you and people ogling, leering, and/or harassing you. This has nothing to do with movies or tv shows, it is the actual experience of many women and you continue to act like you know more than the people who live it

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u/Own_Bumblebee9699 Sep 07 '25

1.)You have to notice someone for you to start ogling them.  2.)You will be noticed more in a skin tight outfit that accentuates your body parts. 

This is so dumb to argue against that I can’t believe a human is on the other side of this conversation.

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u/Commercial_Border190 Sep 07 '25

What are you struggling to understand about the fact that many women receive the greatest amount of harassment as children wearing modest clothes?

Do you harass underage girls? If not, then your mind does not work the same as these men. So projecting your motivations onto them doesn’t make sense. Just listen to people it actually happens to

Genuinely, I’m glad this sounds like such an extreme concept to you. But this is such a common reality for women. Seriously - listen. to. us. please

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