Sir, – Even more troubling than the letter ("Verbal abuse of women in public") published online on irishtimes.com, about a woman's experience of being verbally abused on the streets of Dublin by young men, is the lack of response in your letters pages to its writer, Jenny Stanley's dreadful experience.
Are we not horrified, appalled and outraged at these experiences which she, and no doubt countless other young women, are forced to endure?
Are we as a society content to allow packs of threatening and abusive men to roam our streets, their behaviour certainly fuelled by consumption of varying amounts of alcohol, drugs, and pornography, and a reprehensibly atavistic attitude to women as potential prey?
Worrisome is the silence of women but perhaps it is understandable – women often stoically endure in silence and shame.
The silence of men in this is incomprehensible, or is it symptomatic?
Are men equivocal in the face of such behaviour towards women who are after all, their sisters, mothers, daughters, cousins, nieces, aunts and friends?
Good, decent, caring men must step up and speak out. Men fear the ridicule and disapproval of other men, much more than they fear the same reaction from women. This, coupled with legal sanctions and visible policing can begin to make a difference.
We are surely all invested in ensuring women can live and travel without being harassed, intimidated and humiliated by thugs. – Yours, etc,
PATRICIA MULKEEN,
Ballinfull,
Sligo.