Choosing to Be the Change: Amy Watson, Founder of Hassl on Tackling Harassment at Its Root

Over 70% of women in the UK report experiencing sexual harassment in public spaces. Globally, it's higher than that. And yet the message to women remains the same — be careful, stay safe, it's your responsibility.

Today's guest is done with that narrative.

Amy Watson is the founder of Hassl, a social impact organisation launched just over a year ago that is tackling harassment at its root. It's shifting the focus away from what women should do to stay safe, and onto the culture and systems that make them unsafe in the first place.

This is a conversation about the invisible mental, emotional, and financial load women carry just to move through the world. About what it takes to bring men meaningfully into the conversation without pushing them away. About bystander culture, the manosphere, tech-enabled harassment, and why progress over perfection might be the most radical thing we can choose right now.

Amy is doing something rare — building a movement that is angry enough to matter and strategic enough to actually work.

In this episode:

→The mental load women carry every day that most men don't even know exists 

→Why Hassl is focused on prevention rather than aftermath, and why that distinction matters 

→How Amy is bringing men into the conversation without shaming them out of it →The drink driving analogy that perfectly captures the culture shift we need  

→What bystander intervention actually looks like, and why showing up at all is enough 

→The contradiction campaign that went viral, and why it resonated so deeply 

 →Progress over perfection as a philosophy for change

Connect with Amy and Join the Movement!

Website: https://hassl.uk/

Buy Hassl Merch! https://hassl.uk/collections/shop-all

Follow Hassl on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hasslofficial/

Discover Workplace Training Programs: https://hassl.uk/products/remote-hassl-training-available-globally

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Free Resources and More: https://stan.store/eimearzone

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Transcript

EIMEAR: Welcome to Girl, Choose Yourself, where we're trading self-doubt for self-trust, and settling for soaring. I'm Eimear Zone, your host. And together we're building the confidence to create lives so deliciously bold that they scare us a little — but in the best possible way. Because lives are too precious to stay cozy in our comfort zones. It's time to choose ourselves for lives that are fabulous and soulfully fulfilling. So let's go.

Welcome back to the podcast. I want to talk first about a very familiar experience for many of our listeners. I remember the very first time I felt unsafe in a public space. I wasn't even ten years old when a man began a conversation with me, and I just remember freezing and having this feeling — I'm not safe. And understanding in that moment that navigating the world as a girl was going to be quite different.

Something was taken from me that day. And that story isn't rare. In the UK, over 70% of women report sexual harassment in public spaces. Globally it's higher — over 80%. Many girls say their first experience happens before they've even gone through puberty. And yet the message to women is often the same: be careful, it's your responsibility, stay safe.

Today's guest is Amy Watson, and she is very much challenging that narrative. She is the founder of Hassl, a powerful social impact organisation that is tackling harassment at its very root — getting away from the narrative we're all exhausted by, that it's our responsibility to keep ourselves safe, rather than changing the systems and the culture that make us feel unsafe in the first place. Thank you so much for being with us today, Amy. Welcome to Girl, Choose Yourself.

AMY: Thank you for having me.

EIMEAR: Amy and I just realised we're both wearing the same t-shirt today, which says "It Stops With Us" — which is one of the reasons I was really drawn to the work of Hassl. I found Amy online and was immediately like, oh my God, this is amazing. More people need to know about this.

So tell me about your decision, Amy — to say, I'm done. I'm sick of "keep yourself safe", "carry your pepper spray", "don't walk alone at night." What was that moment like for you?

AMY: I've always believed that any social issue should be solved by looking at prevention, looking at root causes — rather than putting the blame on the victim or target, rather than focusing on prevention measures. And like you've just shared, I've had experiences from being so young — literally in school uniform. It happened time and time again over a lifetime. And as you say, it's not that that's unique — most women, if not all women, can relate to that. Having a catalogue of experiences from being teens all the way through their lives.

For me it became more prominent when I moved to London — a big city, densely populated, using public transport more. I was at so many different events, whether work-related or social, and you'd so quickly get onto that topic. Whether it was from a place of frustration, or even just, "someone followed me here" and you're laughing about it. Because that's the world we've been conditioned to live in and normalise — this is just what happens to women, it's a fact of life.

Up to when I started Hassl, there were a number of incidents that happened in public spaces — the middle of the day, crowded areas. I was doing everything people say to stay safe. And that was where it really hit home that it has nothing to do with what you do, and everything to do with the people who choose to commit that harm.

The final straw for me was my friend — who was also a colleague at the time. She had an experience where she did everything right, by the rule book, and had evidence. All the things people say you need before you can go to the police. And they didn't want to know. Hearing her so upset and so frustrated — she's a really confident woman — but when it happens to people you care about, that's where the real anger sets in.

It was the accumulation of so many different stories. But that was my last straw — the fact that she had evidence, she reported it straight away, she did all the things they say. And they still said, "What's the point?" If that happens to a confident woman who did everything right, had no alcohol in her system, none of the things they say caused it — and they still didn't want to know — what hope do younger girls have who were too scared to record it or didn't have evidence?

I like to think the UK is relatively progressed compared to a lot of other countries. And if that's the situation here, it's definitely worse in many other places. That was my final tipping point.

EIMEAR: This ridiculous conditioning we have around keeping ourselves safe. This is our first time talking, so you may not know I lived in the UK for 17 years and worked in law — with a particular interest in discrimination law — seeing the very difficult hurdles for women to cross to make their case. Even when you're doing everything right. I have some statistics here — only 1% of rapes result in felony convictions. That's from Soraya Chemaly's All We Want Is Everything. That is alarming. You can be bringing your case and thinking this legal system that is built to support and protect me — and it won't.

There's a different responsibility that women have faced, and we've internalised it. And I think your friend's experience, that last straw moment — it erodes women's confidence in so many areas. Because they're carrying this emotional load: keep myself safe, don't upset him, be likable, behave as expected, and all the time scanning for the threat. My feeling is that it's absorbed into us, and it leads to so many brilliant, fabulous women shrinking — because the risk-reward calculation just feels too hard to navigate. What are your thoughts on that?

AMY: That was one of the big things for me when I started Hassl. There are obviously a lot of amazing organisations out there, and a lot of the time they focus on the aftermath — dealing with it after, the healing, the post-trauma work. I didn't feel there were many focused on prevention, especially in a way that invited men to be part of it. And the mental load piece is something I never felt was well spoken about.

We're better now at talking about trauma and raising awareness that incidents happen — domestic violence adverts, that kind of thing. But this day-to-day mental load that women are conditioned to carry? A lot of women don't even realise they're doing it. When we run sessions, that becomes apparent — we talk about the mental load to raise awareness for men, and men sit there thinking, "I don't do that." But in the process, a lot of women also realise they weren't aware they were doing it, or that men aren't doing it in the same way. That disparity becomes really clear as soon as you have those conversations.

It's one of the activities we have in our free education resources — a mental load checklist. We encourage people to do it, especially with a partner of the opposite gender, where you can sit and tick through it and then compare. It's a lot more powerful than talking about violence as an abstract thing.

And it's not just the mental load — it's the financial load too. The amount of women who spend money, not just on safety products and self-defence classes, but on things like choosing a more expensive taxi because they don't feel safe on public transport at night. There are just so many micro-decisions. Financial load, mental load, energy load. We're doing so much of it subconsciously.

And we also pass it on — not with bad intentions, but telling younger women "do this to stay safe", "don't wear that." It comes from a good place because you think you're helping. We did a campaign recently on the contradictions that are taught to women, and for every rule there's an opposite rule. Be polite so you don't trigger them — but then, no, don't be polite because you're giving him the wrong signal. We can't win.

I'm not anti safety advice in the sense that there are things everyone does — lock your door so people don't rob you. There's a level of personal safety that applies to everyone. But it's the disproportionate impact on women. A lot of the time we'll get men in the comments saying "I do this to keep myself safe too" — but men can avoid high crime areas because that's typically where violence towards men happens. For women, it doesn't matter. It can be the middle of the day, the most crowded space. It's not down dark alleys. It's also in your home — the most dangerous place for a woman is her own home. So all this stay safe advice is contradictory, and it doesn't actually keep us any safer.

There's no evidence that what you're wearing makes any difference. Women are harassed and assaulted in every possible form of clothing. It's about debunking a lot of this, and making sure we don't keep passing it on — even from a good place.

EIMEAR: I have an 18-year-old daughter who just turned 18, and that's very much in my mind too. We want to keep our young people safe, and at the same time structural, systemic change needs to come. That's really the powerful work you're focused on. I'd love you to share with our listeners what that actually looks like, because I've been on the website, bought some of the merch, and I'm looking at the incredible training that's really looking to invite men into this conversation — to raise awareness, bring education, change the thinking and the structures. So tell people what you're actually offering.

AMY: We've essentially been working through a five-stage plan. We've now launched everything through stage three.

Stage one was the social content — creating stuff that was really relatable, especially for women, to prove there was a need and a demand. It's a great way to reach people across the world, and it's free from a startup perspective. I also started a survey early on — collecting not just experiences but opinions on what people actually want to see, what initiatives need to exist to actually build a safer world. It was really important to get opinions from as many different backgrounds and experiences as possible. I wanted this to work on a global scale, across different cultural contexts. We now have about 9,000 surveys, and I literally read them every day to stay close to what's going on.

Stage two was launching some of our funding streams. One was the merch — I purposely designed it to be unisex and neutral, so that men as much as women could support it. It wasn't your typical loud, bold feminist safety branding — and I'm all for that — but the whole point of Hassl wasn't that women pay for more stuff. If anything, men should be funding women's safety, because women have paid for so many things for so long. So the merch was deliberately neutral. I wanted people to feel they could wear it with anything, and I also wanted it subtle enough that if you see it and you know, you know — but you're not going to get harassed for wearing it.

Our sweatshirts have a little message on the sleeve — things you wish you could say in the moment but can't. "Not here to talk to you." "Literally not interested." Things like that. They've been great conversation starters, which was the whole point.

We also launched our workplace training. We offer it in person in the UK and remotely across the world. It's very human-focused — not HR policy, not legal stuff. It's very much about getting people to actually care. Especially men. If we can do it in the workplace, we're not forcing it on them, but we are in there and we can open that conversation. It's about how does everyone do better — meeting people where they are and moving them up the scale. It's not a men versus women thing, it's everyone versus perpetrators. It's an interactive half-day session, and they've been really well received.

Stage three, which we've just finished launching, was a combination of awareness campaigns and our global advocate programme. The campaigns highlight social conditioning and the need for men to do better — not just "men don't assault women" or "women stay safe." We've launched four campaigns that cost us next to nothing to make, and we have about 10 million views on our platforms completely organically, plus several million more on other people's platforms who've shared them.

We now also have over 3,000 people who've signed up to advocate for Hassl in more than 120 countries. I run two to three meetings a week for different groups, gather insights, work on projects. There are about 50 tasks in one section alone — so there are so many different things people can do, with no time commitment required. You don't have to physically go anywhere, which is really important for accessibility.

And the final piece of stage three is our free education resources — a library of resources, activities, courses, and conversation prompts, primarily designed for men to help them better understand women's lived experiences, how they can actually help and not get it wrong, how not to speak for women. Trying to unpick a lot of the myths in a way that's hopefully a bit more engaging. The feedback so far has been really great.

Right now we're optimising everything before launching stage four. We have a lot of partnerships in the works, and long-term I want Hassl to be funded entirely or majority by the B2B side — working with different companies and public services. We're working with people who want to be pioneers within their industries, especially male-dominated ones. Stage four includes school programmes. And stage five is reporting tech — working on technology that can break down as many barriers to reporting as possible. Trying to make the experience less harrowing than it currently is.

Oh, and I'm also writing a book.

EIMEAR: Of course you are. Because you're not busy enough.

AMY: In my free time. It's all about meeting people where they are — especially men — coming from a place of empathy and grace, and taking people on that journey of why this matters and how they can get involved.

EIMEAR: It's so inclusive. I've been going through the online resources and the questionnaires, and what strikes me is how important the ones focused on getting men involved are — helping men know how to start conversations and be strong allies. There was a lot of news recently in the US after the men's ice hockey team were recorded laughing at the idea of having to invite the women's ice hockey team to the White House. That was one of those moments where men who thought they were "the good guys" were called out. And then they tried to put a bandaid on it by posting pictures with their daughters or naming a favourite female athlete — but there was no apology, no recognition that harm is caused just by not thinking. Your thoughts on how you reach men without shaming them out of the conversation?

AMY: A lot of the time people stumble upon what we're doing on social media and say, "You're not just going to educate bad men into changing." And I think — that's not the strategy. It's a lot more complicated than that.

When I first started the socials, the content was aimed at women on purpose, because I knew women would be the first to verify that this was needed and that they were sick of it being on women to fix. And I knew it would grow much quicker going to women first. That was always the plan. And then over time we're shifting the content to be more focused around men — education-focused content. But we're not losing those women in the process, because those women are going to love that we're doing this.

The plan is to work down the scale of men. Right now we're focused on men who get it but don't know how to help without getting it wrong. Over time, we want to reach men who think they're decent people but don't really realise the scale of the problem. Then men who don't do this stuff themselves but laugh along or wouldn't call out a friend. And over time, gradually move further down that scale.

The more men we get on board, the more they become the advocates who bring other men in. Because unfortunately it's easier for men to hear it from other men. We already have a lot of men coming onto our socials and sharing why they joined. The Hassl Men group is one of our most engaged groups across the whole volunteer platform. Some of them have openly admitted they used to be quite misogynistic — and in many ways those are the most important people to have, because they understand what changed their perspective and can help us reach men further down the scale.

There will probably always be a certain minority that do bad things until we solve all the other social issues in the world. But if we can shift the culture, if we can make it so that it's not socially acceptable — I talk about drink driving a lot. Not that long ago, people drink-drove and most people were just like, whatever. Whereas now, especially in the UK, you wouldn't think twice about reporting a friend for drink driving because it's so clearly irresponsible and dangerous. That's the kind of culture shift we need. We need everyone who's not a perpetrator on the side of calling it out.

And a lot of these people aren't just members of society — they're working within the legal system, law enforcement. They can't carry deep misogynistic thinking and give people a fair shot at justice. The more people we get onto the other side, the more it becomes everyone versus a small group, and it becomes a lot easier to address.

EIMEAR: It's amazing how much you've done and how much energy you've ignited in such a short period of time. And the "everyone against the perpetrators" framing is really important — rather than us against them.

I want to share something. Just in the day-to-day, I had an experience walking into an underground car park after a late movie with my husband. It was pretty much empty, and I started describing to him what I was experiencing — I said, "You are having a different experience of this moment than I am." I said I was looking at the car parked in the dark with an empty beer bottle by the back wheel, wondering if there was someone behind it who'd been drinking and was a threat to me. I was scanning, listening. I told him I would probably not have come here alone.

AMY: We talk about this a lot in our Hassl Men group. I say things like — walking down the street, if there's a car with someone sitting in it, I don't walk right past that door. What if they open it and grab me? Or getting in a lift — even in the middle of the day, if I get in and it's just me and a man or a group of men, even for a second — I know I'm probably okay. But it's that feeling of being in a space you can't get out of. Same on the tube. If you get on a carriage and you're the only woman with a few men, there's just that immediate thought process.

And when we talk about this, men are like — "Yeah, I wouldn't think about that." It really opens their eyes to seeing the world through a different lens. And to recognising, that's unacceptable. That is not acceptable for anyone.

We never want to diminish women's experiences. I'm fully okay with women who say they don't believe men can change — I understand why, because so many women have had horrendous experiences, sometimes from every man they were supposed to trust in their lives. But I believe that if we want to create effective change and stop women from being harmed, we can't push men away. If we do, they'll go further into toxic narratives.

People say to me, "Women shouldn't have to educate men." And I say — I know. Which is why I'm building resources for men to educate themselves. I'm not promoting that women do the teaching. But do I want to be angry about it? Yes, obviously. I'm sick of it. And yet you have to recognise your privilege. I'm a woman, but I'm white, I'm straight, I live in a country without active conflict. And I grew up in a household where we talked about these things from a really young age — I held these values from being very young. Not everyone is brought up in that environment. Some people grow up in deeply misogynistic, racist, homophobic households or communities.

If I just say, "That's it, you're never going to change," I'm not recognising my privilege of having been raised in a space where I understood people who were different from me. Especially straight, white, cis, wealthy men who've never had to experience disadvantage because of something outside their control. I can either get annoyed at them for not understanding that privilege, or I can try to get through to them.

Yeah, one option feels more cathartic. But it doesn't make women safer. And that's what I want — women to be safer. I do believe people can change. We see it — people who grew up in far-right households who broke free and got educated. If we just write people off, we create a path to nowhere. We live in a patriarchal system. Some of the rights women have gained have been gained so recently. People forget that. It doesn't make it okay, but there are two choices — we get angry, which we are within our rights to do — or if we want to create change, we have to have these conversations and try to give people grace.

EIMEAR: And creating that space — non-judgmental, where people feel they can show up and not get it wrong, where they'll be heard. Tell me about the men's calls.

AMY: I'm the only woman who runs the men's calls. The men who join now are mostly already advocates or on their way — but we do get men who join who don't really get it yet. I don't want women sitting on that call and being triggered. But I also want to create a space where men feel they can ask me anything — the most wrong thing they're thinking. I'd rather debunk it than have them keep thinking that way. If you're asking the question, you care enough. There's potential to learn. That's what I can ask for.

EIMEAR: I think that's one of the most powerful things you're doing — creating a container that invites men in, where they won't be judged, where they can get it wrong without someone jumping down their throat. Because that's how we build allyship.

I want to ask about what we're up against more broadly. There's so much that's distressing — the manosphere, misogynistic podcasters. And then in the last few months, the tech piece — particularly the glasses that are being used to film and identify women without consent. Your initial thoughts?

AMY: I've been interested in social issues and politics from a young age, and I've definitely gone through phases where I've had to detach from it all because it's really hard to listen to if you feel it deeply. Hassl is my outlet for that. I don't have to feel helpless. It's a horrible feeling to see awful things happening in the world and feel there's nothing you can do.

We get a lot of hate comments and horrible messages from men. The way I deal with it now is — I just feel sorry for them. I don't get angry about it. It takes time to get there, but recognising that they're unfulfilled and projecting — that's the best they've got to do with their time. For your own sanity, you have to try to see those people as not just awful human beings. A lot of people in the general public who think very differently to me — it's lack of education, lack of critical thinking skills, media manipulation. If you can think, okay, they haven't had the opportunity to learn that I've had, it makes it easier to process.

Progress over perfection. We're sometimes too quick to cancel people. I'm all for holding people at the top accountable — they have all the resources to know what they're doing is completely wrong. But people in the general public who think certain ways because they've been misled — it's about trying to understand what's made them think that way and reaching them through different means.

In terms of the technology — we're constantly adapting because there are new challenges all the time, but a lot of the same principles still apply. With the Meta glasses, for example, if you think someone's filming you and you're in a crowded space, the bystander principles still apply. If you're a bystander, position yourself between the person filming and the person being filmed. Or make sure you speak to the person afterwards. Let them know they were seen. Those principles hold regardless of the technology.

People think bystander intervention means being aggressive — that's the last thing you want to do. You don't want to put yourself or the person being targeted in a worse position. When it's happened to me, the worst thing wasn't the person doing it — it was everyone ignoring it. Knowing that people could see what was happening and no one cared. That's the loneliest feeling. If someone just came over afterwards and said, "Hey, are you okay? I saw what happened" — that can make such a difference.

The bar is so low when it comes to this stuff. We have new challenges constantly and we need new infrastructure. But a lot of things we already have legislation for — it's every barrier between the law and getting there. The narrative from the public, from law enforcement, from everyone who handles these cases. It's all well and good creating new policies, but until we can shift the culture — until it becomes embarrassing, socially unacceptable, until you know you're going to lose friends and be ostracised for doing that stuff — we will just constantly have new challenges.

It's the same thing underneath it all — male entitlement, lack of intervention, women passing on internalised misogyny and victim-blaming other women. All of that needs to change. And if we can change that, that's how we better tackle the new forms it takes. Because there will always be new versions of this. Prevention — raising people better, educating earlier, making it not socially acceptable — that's how we get ahead of it.

EIMEAR: What I'm hearing from you, Amy, is — yes, the landscape has so much challenge. Yes, it's been going on for a long time. Yes, it may feel overwhelming. But there is always something you can do when you have that deep belief that through your actions, you can be somebody who is committed to change.

For anyone listening who's thinking, how can I help — if you're in a company that could benefit from this training, wherever you are in the world, you can bring Hassl in. If you're an HR manager or someone with influence, raise it. It's all available online, and Amy and the team can also come in person if that's possible. That brings real revenue to an organisation that is doing so much of its work for free.

Whether you're in the UK, the US, Ireland, Australia, or New Zealand — go to the website, look at the resources, and buy the merch. Buy it for the men in your life too. It's a brilliant conversation starter.

Amy, I always ask guests at the end — as someone who stepped in and said, "I'm going to do something about this, I'm not going to leave it to the passage of time and nebulous forces to change the world" — what does choosing yourself mean for you?

AMY: I think — it's such an outlet for me, having always cared about these things. There's so much horrendous stuff happening in the world and I felt like I had to channel it somewhere. I knew from as young as I can remember that I always wanted to do social impact work. I had a good job that I loved, but something was missing. I just knew — this is what I need to be doing.

And from a personal perspective, even when it happens to me now, doing this work has made me so much more confident in the fact that it's not okay for people to do that. That it's not my fault. It's really reinforced that in my brain. And I hope that's what it brings to other women too — not about doing better, but just that mental shift. We so often blame ourselves through conditioning.

It's been an outlet, it's been a way to do what I've always wanted to do. And there's no money in the world that could give me the same feeling. When people say, "Why don't you start a business to make money?" I'm like — I genuinely don't care. There's so much horrible stuff happening. I just want to have done something in my life to make it better for even one person. That, I guess, is me choosing me.

EIMEAR: I just want to say thank you. Thank you for choosing to do this work. Thank you for being the spark lighting this fire in times that feel quite dark for all of us. For those of us — I'm 56 years old — who have been walking through this world and navigating this for such a long time, and now parenting through it — seeing what you're doing is genuinely inspiring. I'm deeply grateful for you and for your time today.

What would you like to leave our listeners with?

AMY: Two things. From a Hassl perspective, the free resources online. You can access them, do them with your family, friends, colleagues. They're designed not to make people feel accused, but to shift thinking. And no matter how switched on you think you are, there's something for everyone. If you can take 15 to 20 minutes to do one course, do it. Pass it on, especially to the men in your life. We really want to empower men to make the change so that women don't have to shoulder this burden alone — and eventually, at all.

And then just as a message — progress over perfection. I say it a lot. We're sometimes too quick to write people off. I get it, I have really strong opinions. But if you're holding values of empathy, you have to extend that also to people who sit on the opposite side of the spectrum. Not that you have to like it or think it's okay — but trying to extend a level of empathy, one for your own sanity, and also to create a path for people. Because if you think there's no hope, that's a really scary place to be.

We try to post a lot of positive things. Hassl talks about hard-hitting stuff, but we balance it with hope — messages we get from men, progress we're seeing. We're so early on, but we've hopefully shown that change is possible. So just try not to write things off too quickly. Progress over perfection — we'd rather everyone do a bit better than push them further into toxic thinking.

EIMEAR: I love that. It's very hopeful. It reminds me of Gandhi — be the change you want to see in the world. That's really an invitation to all of us as we walk through a world that is imperfect in this way.

Thank you so much, Amy. It has been a joy. Everyone — go follow Hassl online, go to their website, you'll find all the resources. I've been through a couple of the courses and in 20 minutes it really shifts the way you're thinking. I've been immersed in feminist thinking for a long time and I still learned so much. Really rich, really well thought out. Thank you, Amy. And thank you to everyone listening — we'll see you next time. Take care.

AMY: Thank you so much.

EIMEAR: Thanks so much for tuning into the episode this week. I hope you got a lot out of it, and if you did, please share it with someone you feel would benefit — and leave a review. Always greatly appreciated. Lots of free and paid resources to take things a step further — you can find those in the show notes. And hey, if nobody's told you this yet today — you are amazing, and the world is a far more beautiful place because you're here. Stay bold. Bye.