No means no.

At least that’s how it’s supposed to be, right?

But what happens if you are sexually harassed at a work event? And when you protest to your colleagues, they just laugh.

It was the early 2010s and I was working at a charity event in a London hotel where we were running an expensive raffle – £50 per ticket, £200 per book.

We were expected to put up with a certain level of behaviour from the charity’s “major donors” or celebrity supporters. In fact, one of the charity’s fundraising managers told me before the event even started, “Drink half a bottle of wine, go out and flirt until they buy raffle tickets.”

As things were getting really going, a drunk man who had bought raffle tickets came up to me.

He slurred a “hello.” I smiled politely and returned the “hello.”

Then he suddenly groped me – maybe because he thought I owed him something for buying so many tickets.

I felt embarrassed, disgusted, and angry all at the same time. I also felt insulted – I would never flirt in such an unattractive, non-consensual way without talking about it first, and I would never flirt with someone as grotesque as him.

I said only five words to him – emphatically: “Not in a million years.”

As I said this, I pushed him away. I didn’t give him a chance to respond and I didn’t tell any of my colleagues – I was too nervous and felt that they had more important things to do that evening.

This seems ridiculous to me now.

He should have hung his head in shame.

For the rest of the evening, I caught him staring at me and lustfully staring at me. It made me feel uncomfortable and uneasy and each time I would walk away from him so as not to make a scene.

Unfortunately, this was not the only time this happened over the years.

In the mid-2010s, I was speaking to a major charity donor when—without warning—his large, chubby hand wrapped around my limb. Clearly drunk, he grabbed it awkwardly and twisted it almost completely inside out.

It hurt. So I immediately pushed him away, but – embarrassed to make a scene at a work event – I did it discreetly. Well, I did it the first time.

About 20 minutes later, he came back with a new drink in his hand. He stumbled over and tried to “whisper” something in my ear while simultaneously diving his greedy, intrusive hand back down to my private parts.

As he touched me and squeezed tightly, I removed his arm from me, turned my head to the side – away from his foul whiskey breath – and then immediately moved away.

“Have you seen that?” I asked a colleague. “It disgusts me.”

She nodded and laughed. “I don’t find it very funny,” I said. She shrugged and smiled.

By the third time, the embarrassment turned into anger. He walked right up to me, groped me aggressively, grabbed and pulled at my private parts, pulled himself into me and tried to kiss me.

It was painful and disgusting at the same time. I was not only disgusted, I was astonished. Did he think that was how to seduce someone? Did he think that this groping excited me?

I pushed him away so hard that his drink spilled all over him. “Damn it, let me go,” I said.

People – including my colleagues and his friends – stared at the commotion; I felt humiliated. They giggled. He made a drunken “ooooh” noise and then, incredibly, walked back towards me.

This time I walked away quickly. I was about to knock him down, but I knew how bad that would look at a professional event.

I told the doorman of the bar, “If that man keeps groping me, I’m going to knock him down. Either you remove him now, or you remove me in 20 minutes.” They told me to calm down. Then they took me – not him – away.

Why didn’t I react so violently the first two times he groped me? I thought I just had to accept it because he was a valuable donor to my work. But that’s where I drew the line.

When I told another colleague, he unfortunately laughed about it – and expected Me too. I was disappointed.

I didn’t even want the charity to do anything. I just wanted to feel safe, to be heard, and maybe for someone to call him a disgusting creep.

Honestly, that was all I needed at that moment: verbal support. No laughter and no eye-rolling, as if to say, “Oh, you gay gays! What are you like?”

Well, I’ll tell you what I’m not like. I’m not like him because all of my sexual interactions are consensual.

And I’ll tell you what I don’t like: When such incidents are laughed at, it only increases my humiliation and shame. Simply brushing it off is one thing. But laughing about someone being groped?

This is even worse. He should be ashamed, not me.

Both men were older and men I would never have encouraged. Both men were persistent and their groping was painful, non-consensual and embarrassing.

A study commissioned by the charity Mankind UK in 2021 found that around half of all men have had an unwanted or non-consensual sexual experience.

This surprised me because I rarely hear stories like mine in the media. I have not shared my own story until now because I did not want to steal the oxygen from the important #MeToo movement that gives women space to talk about their experiences of sexual harassment.

It is also important for me to point out that my experiences are not comparable to the sexual harassment of women by men.

Both are clearly wrong. But they are not the same: Unjust structures have given men power over women, a power that too many men have then abused.

My experience is different. I was unlike these men in many ways: I was at work; they were “high-level donors”; they were older. But we were both gay men and, crucially, I was stronger (it was, um, clear that they didn’t go to the gym as often as I did).

I could have overpowered her. And such incidents are rare for me, but depressingly common for too many women.

We can – and should – talk about non-consensual harassment of gay men without trivialising it.

Gay meeting places themselves can be hypersexual; different etiquette rules apply there – and rightly so. But even there, no means no.

“No” especially means “no” at work, and when your coworkers laugh at your humiliation from being groped, it makes the whole thing even more humiliating.

Organizations should be trained that unwanted groping is never justified – even when it involves a man between men.

We also deserve to feel safe at work.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Contact us by emailing [email protected].

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