Hearing impared person here, please feel free to act as deaf as you wish. And feel free to spread as much sign language as you can!

Selective deafness or a language barrier were my go to tactics to avoid unwanted attention when I still looked like a girl. Saying you're only 14 when I was actually 14 only netted me a stalker for about half a year, so the age card doesn't work. I would recommend that every man goes to some social platform pretending to be a teenage girl for a while just to see and understand the metric f*cktonne of creep young women and girls have to deal with.

She’s definitely not the a*****e. The a******s here are the people harassing her in the first place.

Don't worry about it. Whatever saves your life, don't worry about offending any group, whether they are there or not. Better to have someone offended at you than you being injured, threatened, assaulted or worse. Incidentally, the language that has worked for me is German. I know enough to have a polite conversation with my grandparents when they were alive but because I can make it sound angry, it works. It also helps that I'm 6 feel tall. When all else fails, I act unhinged. Ya know the behavior they use on you? Turns out many of them hate it when you do the same to them, it's fun. Or make a scene about it, sing along to the songs, start a loud story about your pet alligator, eat plants, throw coasters. Do anything to make yourself seem like it's not worth their time or even their own safety. Make them scared. And then curse society and everything else to blame that women need to do this when men don't know how to back off.

at the point when a male doesn't understand the word NO, anything goes. f**k this entire world.

Men are afraid of being laughed at, women are afraid of being killed.

I'm appalled that women have to resort to ANY tactic beyond the word "no." Why is it the responsibility of women to get a man to understand a simple, one-word response? NTA by any stretch! It's time for men to take responsibility for their own actions and stop acting like ogres. You are not taking advantage of a form of communication by simply standing your ground as a woman against a bunch of self-entitled Neanderthals.

I know and have met more than a few deaf people and I do not think a single one would feel this was wrong.

You do what you can to protect yourself. I lower my voice and say Sir I'm off-duty but feel free to call the station on 999. They get the message. I'd like to think it'll make them think twice before harassing someone else. Sadly this won't work for all but I've found it a useful deterrent.

I don't have cats but I will tell him all about my 25 cats and the wedding that I planned for 2 of them. That usually works.

She's definitely NTA, but I can see how she might feel bad about lying. Maybe instead of lying, sign at them, "do you know ASL?". They'll probably assume you're deaf, and you don't have to tell a lie. Although the comment about potentially being snuck up on was a good point. Maybe even better would be to learn a similar phrase in a foreign language that men in that city are unlikely to speak.

If someone attacks you and you pick up a cane to defend yourself, you are not pretending to have a limp.

i luckily dont have people bother me as much as they used to after i got into the alt scene and now wear fake leather and big clunky boots

NTA. I am an activist who supports disabled people. Our country has very high gender based violence. Protect yourself however you can. I generally advise vulneralbe people to get a car. It saves you a LOT of harassment. What I also have done myself in the past when in this situation is switch language to something totally foreign that no-one in our country is likely to know, like Russian. it works well.

I’m Deaf myself. 5’2. And being Native, I looked young for years. So I had plenty of problems with unwanted attention when I was still doing the bar/club thing. So I’m fine with anyone using whatever they need to do to discourage the idiots…I used to have some success with the heel on the foot and a lit cigarette on the hand (the bars/clubs allowed smoking back then).

I'm disabled (not deaf but other). I'd have no issue with other women faking having the same disability as me to keep the creeps away if that would work. Do whatever you need to be safe, girl. All that being said, deafness will not always protect you, because they'll try sneak up on you, thinking you can't hear them. A lot of predators deliberately target disabled women to abuse, taking advantage of whatever vulnerabilities they can find.

I think being as fake as you’ve been should keep most people at bay.

It's incredibly sad that some men don't know how to behave in public, and that they actually think they have some sort of right to talk to women and treat them that way. If you experience that kind of abuse, you do whatever you have to do to get out of the situation as quickly as you can as safely as you can. Nothing you do will make you the a*****e.

...are we seriously digging up 3 year old reddit stories now, BP? ._.

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