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Every woman I've met on couch surfing has been a victim of some kind of sexual harassment or violence due to someone they meet on couchsurfing. Basically they s

Every woman I've met on couch surfing has been a victim of some kind of sexual harassment or violence due to someone they meet on couchsurfing. Basically they stay with a guy and he has expectations and is vocal if not forceful about it. Women would be surprised that I had a bed just for them, didn't expect them to sleep with me, didn't ask them for sex, etc. I hosted for two years living in Berlin. That being said I also had some amazing experiences through couchsurfing.

welly 6y ago
I used to be very involved with couchsurfing in the late 2000s and early 2010s I had a high number of women couchsurfers, which came about from having positive feedback from other female couchsurfers, because like you they had their own bed and I wasn't trying to have sex with them. It started being a concern because I began to think that people looking at my profile would assume that I was just looking to host women which wasn't the case at all. But from speaking to my guests, they said they chose me to host them because of the positive feedback from other female couchsurfers. I do miss couchsurfing, I met some great and interesting people and have been thinking about getting back into it but have concerns about the direction couchsurfing has gone. I now live on a narrowboat on the canals in the UK and I think it'd make an interesting place for couchsurfers to stay.
- dkersten 6y ago
  I hosted a lot of people in summer of 2008. All of my housemates were into couchsurfing too (mixed gender house: two guys and three girls, that probably helped), so there was a period where we always hosted at least one person. One weekend, for a couchsurfing event in my city, we hosted 12 people at once! We eventually stopped hosting because people got busy and priorities changed, but our experience as hosts was very positive and I still attended local couchsurfing meetups for the next year or so. I made many friends and contacts through it. We never received any negative feedback and were in high demand. Aside from that one super busy weekend, where things did get a bit cramped (but people knew in advance that it would be), nobody shared any beds or couches and couchsurfers had rooms separate from the hosts. I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Sharing beds with the host is... creepy (unless the person was given their own bed/couch and they mutually decided they wanted to share a bed, of course). I miss couchsurfing too. I stopped being part of it around the time it got a sense for being a bit commercial. My circle of couchsurfing friends did it for the cultural exchange and at some point it drifted from that to just free accommodation and drinking parties. At least that’s the sense I got.
  - welly 6y ago
    You certainly do hear creepy stories about hosts surprising guests by only having one bed. And more than that. Of course, if everything is mutually agreed then that's fine. I was actually pretty surprised when I was speaking to another couchsurfing host how many women he'd hosted that he'd slept with. Perhaps I'm (or was) naive but it never occurred to me that people would use it for hooking up.
    - dkersten 6y ago
      Yeah. It’s sad really.
wickerman 6y ago
I also know someone, a very handsome dude in his mid 20s who had a bit of a wanderlust for a year after a brief stint in the military, who also got plenty of harassment from dudes he was staying with. As in, two of his hosts in Italy cooked and ate naked with him ("no strings attached"), and one really creepy dude tried to touch him while he was sleeping (in a separate location)... which obviously didn't end well for the host as this dude was fresh out of the military.
hatmatrix 6y ago
Why would they keep signing up to stay with a guy if not being harassed was out of the norm?
- fuj 6y ago
  I see someone with severe mental issues doing this, but now saying all women were surprised to not being forced to sleep with the owner is quite a stretch. Just validates my belief that most "real life stories" posted in the comments section are bs.
- EthanHeilman 6y ago
  I know women who get harassed pretty frequently walking down the street, there would be very few things they could do if they avoided all places they have been harassed more than twice.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
owenversteeg 6y ago
Wow! I've hosted a good bit and that's completely different from my experience. > Women would be surprised that I had a bed just for them It sounds like you were taking a lot of the desperate people on the site that aren't mostly in it for the cultural exchange but to save $5. Because here's the thing - everyone's profile has a section detailing what kind of room/bed the Couchsurfer will get. A "shared bed" is a red flag the size of Russia. That's the other thing: I like to read the CS profiles of the guys accused of being creepy. 95% of the time, it's VERY obvious who they are. Guys will have "sex" in their interests, only have a shared tiny bed, or pictures of them shirtless, or 100% references from young women, etc., etc. That's the beauty of Couchsurfing - if you see a profile that you're not 100% confident in, then just move on; there are fifteen million people. The real problem on Couchsurfing stems from people not reading each others' profiles. People get greedy, see a way to save on hotels, then send out copy-paste message spam that's not unique to your profile. I only host people who send me a message personalized to my profile, and even then that's after a lot of reading their profile, references, etc. I simply ignore the copy-pasted messages - if you don't care who you end up with, then you're not Couchsurfing for the interesting experience, you're doing it to save a few bucks. If you don't read profiles and carefully select, then you're basically rolling the dice. This is the #1 cause of bad Couchsurfing experiences. TL;DR: if you choose a host without reading, Couchsurfing just becomes Omegle IRL. (If you're a woman reading this and want to Couchsurf 100% safely, you can do things like only surf families, other women, places where you'll get your own room, etc etc.)
- kaikai 6y ago
  This comes across as victim-blaming. I'm glad it wasn't your experience, but that doesn't mean that other people weren't doing their homework.
  - owenversteeg 6y ago
    It's very frustrating to spend a lot of actual energy and time on trying to reduce sexual assault on platforms like this - only to get sniped for supposed "victim blaming" by an anonymous person on the internet because I didn't virtue signal hard enough. You want a virtue signal? Here you go: sexual assault is the fault of the assaulter, not the assaulted. Unlike most people passing by this thread, I have actual experience with this topic. I'm close to several women who have Couchsurfed solo, and I have hosted countless young women (men as well, of course.) If a discussion about American gun deaths came up, it would not be victim blaming to explain the context and the source of most of these deaths. My comment had several purposes. One was to explain the most common reason for sexual assault on the platform. Another was to help people getting into Couchsurfing. There will undoubtedly be a number of HN users joining Couchsurfing as part of this thread, and I wanted to pass along valuable safety information to any women among them.

welly 6y ago

I used to be very involved with couchsurfing in the late 2000s and early 2010s I had a high number of women couchsurfers, which came about from having positive feedback from other female couchsurfers, because like you they had their own bed and I wasn't trying to have sex with them. It started being a concern because I began to think that people looking at my profile would assume that I was just looking to host women which wasn't the case at all. But from speaking to my guests, they said they chose me to host them because of the positive feedback from other female couchsurfers. I do miss couchsurfing, I met some great and interesting people and have been thinking about getting back into it but have concerns about the direction couchsurfing has gone. I now live on a narrowboat on the canals in the UK and I think it'd make an interesting place for couchsurfers to stay.

dkersten 6y ago
I hosted a lot of people in summer of 2008. All of my housemates were into couchsurfing too (mixed gender house: two guys and three girls, that probably helped), so there was a period where we always hosted at least one person. One weekend, for a couchsurfing event in my city, we hosted 12 people at once! We eventually stopped hosting because people got busy and priorities changed, but our experience as hosts was very positive and I still attended local couchsurfing meetups for the next year or so. I made many friends and contacts through it. We never received any negative feedback and were in high demand. Aside from that one super busy weekend, where things did get a bit cramped (but people knew in advance that it would be), nobody shared any beds or couches and couchsurfers had rooms separate from the hosts. I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Sharing beds with the host is... creepy (unless the person was given their own bed/couch and they mutually decided they wanted to share a bed, of course). I miss couchsurfing too. I stopped being part of it around the time it got a sense for being a bit commercial. My circle of couchsurfing friends did it for the cultural exchange and at some point it drifted from that to just free accommodation and drinking parties. At least that’s the sense I got.
- welly 6y ago
  You certainly do hear creepy stories about hosts surprising guests by only having one bed. And more than that. Of course, if everything is mutually agreed then that's fine. I was actually pretty surprised when I was speaking to another couchsurfing host how many women he'd hosted that he'd slept with. Perhaps I'm (or was) naive but it never occurred to me that people would use it for hooking up.
  - dkersten 6y ago
    Yeah. It’s sad really.

wickerman 6y ago

I also know someone, a very handsome dude in his mid 20s who had a bit of a wanderlust for a year after a brief stint in the military, who also got plenty of harassment from dudes he was staying with. As in, two of his hosts in Italy cooked and ate naked with him ("no strings attached"), and one really creepy dude tried to touch him while he was sleeping (in a separate location)... which obviously didn't end well for the host as this dude was fresh out of the military.

hatmatrix 6y ago

Why would they keep signing up to stay with a guy if not being harassed was out of the norm?

fuj 6y ago
I see someone with severe mental issues doing this, but now saying all women were surprised to not being forced to sleep with the owner is quite a stretch. Just validates my belief that most "real life stories" posted in the comments section are bs.
EthanHeilman 6y ago
I know women who get harassed pretty frequently walking down the street, there would be very few things they could do if they avoided all places they have been harassed more than twice.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

owenversteeg 6y ago

Wow! I've hosted a good bit and that's completely different from my experience. > Women would be surprised that I had a bed just for them It sounds like you were taking a lot of the desperate people on the site that aren't mostly in it for the cultural exchange but to save $5. Because here's the thing - everyone's profile has a section detailing what kind of room/bed the Couchsurfer will get. A "shared bed" is a red flag the size of Russia. That's the other thing: I like to read the CS profiles of the guys accused of being creepy. 95% of the time, it's VERY obvious who they are. Guys will have "sex" in their interests, only have a shared tiny bed, or pictures of them shirtless, or 100% references from young women, etc., etc. That's the beauty of Couchsurfing - if you see a profile that you're not 100% confident in, then just move on; there are fifteen million people. The real problem on Couchsurfing stems from people not reading each others' profiles. People get greedy, see a way to save on hotels, then send out copy-paste message spam that's not unique to your profile. I only host people who send me a message personalized to my profile, and even then that's after a lot of reading their profile, references, etc. I simply ignore the copy-pasted messages - if you don't care who you end up with, then you're not Couchsurfing for the interesting experience, you're doing it to save a few bucks. If you don't read profiles and carefully select, then you're basically rolling the dice. This is the #1 cause of bad Couchsurfing experiences. TL;DR: if you choose a host without reading, Couchsurfing just becomes Omegle IRL. (If you're a woman reading this and want to Couchsurf 100% safely, you can do things like only surf families, other women, places where you'll get your own room, etc etc.)

kaikai 6y ago
This comes across as victim-blaming. I'm glad it wasn't your experience, but that doesn't mean that other people weren't doing their homework.
- owenversteeg 6y ago
  It's very frustrating to spend a lot of actual energy and time on trying to reduce sexual assault on platforms like this - only to get sniped for supposed "victim blaming" by an anonymous person on the internet because I didn't virtue signal hard enough. You want a virtue signal? Here you go: sexual assault is the fault of the assaulter, not the assaulted. Unlike most people passing by this thread, I have actual experience with this topic. I'm close to several women who have Couchsurfed solo, and I have hosted countless young women (men as well, of course.) If a discussion about American gun deaths came up, it would not be victim blaming to explain the context and the source of most of these deaths. My comment had several purposes. One was to explain the most common reason for sexual assault on the platform. Another was to help people getting into Couchsurfing. There will undoubtedly be a number of HN users joining Couchsurfing as part of this thread, and I wanted to pass along valuable safety information to any women among them.