They certainly have.
I remember my first work placement in England. I used to have to pluck up my courage to walk into the typing pool when I had to take a report down for typing. I was a painfully shy young man and the harder I tried not to blush at the ladies’ comments and innuendo, the more I blushed.
But I did not think of it as violence, more as a necessary part of growing up and learning the art of adult banter. It did not cause me trauma. I knew it was just good natured fun.
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And never forget what Stiletto heels are named after.
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My best mate at school, we were about 14, was small for his age, but when confronted by a tall 16-year-old bully boy, leapt up into the air and punched him squarely on the nose, and then turned and ran away like the blazes. He told me later that his dad had advised him to defend himself that way, and in particular to run away as fast as he could afterwards. And did he run! The bully was later expelled from school.
As far as I was concerned, when someone lunged at me, I found I had the natural ability to grab the lunging fist and pull towards me, sending him flying forwards onto his face. I was never bullied.
Not sure how I could defend myself as a woman against a man. It has to be education of both boys and girls at school to begin with, and other later measures, whatever they may be, to help reduce, inhibit, that sort of violence.
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Of course.
I was answering Cat’s point about the definition of violence, which definition necessarily involves something physical.
Unlike the general UK definition of “domestic violence”, which includes coercve and controlling behaviour, as well as other behaviours.
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Back in the early 60’s… a wolf-whistle was not viewed as anything other than a cheeky lad showing his appreciation of us lasses trotting by…
and we wandered haughtily on… even if we were secretly pleased that our efforts at whatever latest style (hair/clothes) were being appreciated.
We had Bobbies on their Beat… regularly patrolling… they were safer times and we certainly didn’t feel threatened.
It’s clear that times have changed since then… sadly.
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Sadly, it includes threat of violence. Even words, or a whistle can appear threatening. Sometimes, they are intentionally so.
It may be difficult for a man to feel what a woman learns to live with all her life. Not that he perpetrates anything malign but it is important to listen to what women are saying, even without being able to feel it themself.
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I wonder if someone can explain to me why so many women paint their faces, wear lowcut and otherwise provocative clothes, including the aforementioned calf enhancing stiletto heels?
Whatever the reason, it is not as camouflage to encourage men not to see or look at them. Is it?
I don’t disapprove, I enjoy the spectacle, and I can do so without whistling or cat calling, but is it beyond belief that some men find it hard to resist?
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wolf-whistles by young men to young ladies… back in the sixties… in broad daylight in a busythoroughfare… were simply that… no nasty words or obscene gestures…
and, we were not wearing makeup or “revealing” attire… we were just youngsters who’d stuffed the hated school hat in the satchel and had backcombed our hair… …
those simple days are gone forever… but the memories make me smile
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Me too, but I wouldn’t dream of doing it now. 
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At the same time it seems that mental health in the young is becoming more and more fragile despite more and more efforts to give them more protection.
It is a worrying spiral.
Perhaps not “despite” but “because of”? Resilience isn’t something we hear a great deal about: trigger warnings and the idea that perception of a wrong means there was a wrong to right (rather than one to rise above) have replaced it.
But Covid had a separate and terrible effect on the mental health of some children.
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That’s verging quite close to “they’re asking for it” and offering provocation for abuse. The counter is to ask why there’s a perception that a woman’s manner of dress offers carte blanche for men to be both verbally and physically abusive.
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Ummm… in some senses you weren’t far wrong, were you 
Were we tougher then?
I was in a terrible mental state after my Dad when I was 13 and living with my Mum and autistic sister.
I just got on with it, but it affected my exam results.
‘You’ve just got to get on with it’ was always my mother’s advice in any situation - sound, and difficult to argue against.
She was born into a tough environment - her step-parents ran a rooming house cum Prohibition speakeasy in 1920s Detroit. In the early 1930s, her stepfather died and to escape the US Depression, her stepmother took her to Germany. As you might imagine, that didn’t work out well and in the early 1940s she was living in Manchester and walking home from city centre dance halls through the Blitz. Things didn’t get much better for a long time, but that’s enough!
Americans (used to?) rightly refer to that generation as 'the Great Generation nnnnnnnnnnnnnn (cat on keyboard)
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Instead of countering, why not simply answer the question? It was innocently put and can be innocently answered.
This is probably the more relevant part of my response.
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Well I took it as a personal attack on me in that it inferred that that was my opinion. It wasn’t and isn’t but, on the bright side for those here who think I should post less often, it stopped me from posting at all till the next day rather than dive in with a similar knee jerk reaction.
Apologies, it wasn’t intended to be and I should perhaps have said something like “it risks being perceived as…”