To reflect, post Russell Brand etc., on things I put up with from men but now don't know why

Is his nationality relevant, OP? I once had a chef from Birmingham assault me in the restaurant kitchen of a London hotel when I was a teenager. I don’t think his nationality had any relationship to him thinking he was entitled to access to my body.

I feel the same after the judge’s excellent statement. I remember an MD at a successful London company who would humiliate women, grade them after a meeting, enable rape jokes. Ik the company and could probably find his name. Nothing happened to him, he made money.

There are times when it’s unsafe to speak up.

Sometimes that’s physically unsafe to challenge men and others times it’s unsafe in other ways - risking your job for example. It’s fine to say “I wouldn’t stay silent ever” but when I was a single parent in a time when jobs were scarce and my kids needed fed I did stay silent until I had a new job because I couldn’t afford to speak up and risk losing my job.

Whistleblowers are often treated appallingly. People who speak up likewise.

The OP is just remembering everything about her experience. I doubt very much his Italianness is at all relevant and I think she can be excused on this occasion for not even thinking about that.

I'm trying to pick from the many similar experiences I had in the 80s onwards - it's like a massive tray of chocolates all with shit centres.

Sorry - that analogy is too vivid!

I will add I agree with pp the power structures made it hard. It’s why it prospered. I don’t blame myself or other women, but the men doing it.

He wasn’t Italian.

Society is (slowly) changing, thank goodness - but 'back in the day' that was how it was. It's wrong, but they were different times. It's normal to look back, with the wisdom of older shoulders, & think we somehow failed our younger selves by accepting things we would not contemplate accepting now.

So many situations in work. Being asked at interview if I was planning to get pregnant was the most obvious but actually everywhere I worked with men there was an undercurrent of sexual predation towards female staff. Un-requested shoulder massages at my desk. Male managers would regularly comment on what I wore (I was always suited unlike a lot of staff these days), ask about inappropriate things like my love life in front of the whole office, discuss women they had slept with recently or worse their wives! One memorable Christmas party involved the managers trying to get the admin staff to dance on the tables to The Thong Song so they could look up their skirts after they did loads of coke and getting very angry when they all refused. Constant suggestions that if women said no they were frigid bitches. Some of the worst were in legal firms, which is why the Barrister comments were not at all surprising to me. I would recommend reading, listening or watching Prima Facie.

I think a lot of it was to do with your age OP. On my 18th birthday (a long time ago!) , my boss handed me £20 and then reached over and felt my breast. I was so shocked and humiliated that I said and did nothing. I desperately needed the job, and there was nobody to tell as he owned the small business. I found another job as soon as I could, but I still regret not doing anything about it. Interestingly another girl who worked with me had enormous breasts and was stunningly beautiful. She really wanted him to do something as she said she'd rake her nails down his face so he had something to explain to his wife. He must have known as he never touched her.

After a lifetime of putting up with exactly what you describe OP I'm now in my sixties. I am utterly finished with men. It's true to say they pretty much sicken me now. Men in groups, men chanting at sporting events, men in power, men on public transport in their ugly clothes, superior attitude and stupid fucking haircuts almost universally disgust me.

Post menopause, with no fucks left to give and no need for a man in my life the sum total of my experience makes me unsurprised that they do the awful things they do. From teenaged incels to dirty old men who abuse their power I'm done with them. They are a design fault.

Patriarchy.

Thanks.

Even less for @MarcellaGrace to derail the thread on 👍🏻

Yes the constant fake smile you had to do so they wouldn't make snarky comments about the wind changing or "smile love it might never happen".

I love how so many women these days just won't pander to these creatures. Long may it continue! I wish I had been braver but I decided to work in all women firms instead as my escape.

I am retired and there was definitely a lot of 'sexual banter' or innuendo in offices in the past, that would not be acceptable now.
The obvious one was the 'male' calander in a certain male dominated office (ie scantily clad females).
However, gradually over the years, the kind of sexual harrasment has become less acceptable.
However, what really surprised was not that at all, it was how 'catty' both men and women could be about their colleagues (again both male and female) behind their backs, especially unrelated to work remarks, such as 'X' having a face like a horse, etc

FairyInTheMossGarden is right.
I am in my 70s.
It has never been any different, in any decade, right from when I was in my school uniform and being cat called, groped, followed and propositioned by men.
It might take slightly different forms, due to legislation and social changes but the undercurrents are same old, same old.

I agree OP. I'm 59 and I lost count of the number of times I was groped in my younger years - from random men in the street to an eminent hospital consultant when I was a junior doctor. Back in those days young women seemed to be viewed like cute puppies/kittens - men could just touch us if they felt like it. If we dared to complain we were frigid, no fun, boring, troublesome etc.

I hope things are different now, but I find it quite shocking that Russell Brand's behaviour was tolerated as recently as the early 2000s.

It's because they and you understood that if you did speak up it was very likely that nothing would have been done about it. It was endemic. Please don't blame yourself.

This kind of shit really doesn’t help. It actually sums up attitudes towards women discussing sexual assaults generally.

The Op posts about a horrid experience and the first reaction is to be persnickety about her description of it.

And yet some people still wonder why women don’t speak out - one reason is that it’s too fucking exhausting to ensure you explain yourself and what happened in a way that doesn’t leave room for needless nitpicking like this.

I'm in my early 60s. During my early working life, including a spell temping, I was groped, grabbed, sexually propositioned - it was horrifyingly 'normal' then. I never said anything because I needed my job to keep a roof over my head and food on the table.

When I was temping my agency rang me one day to invite me to some sort of discussion group with other temps and someone I believe was a journalist, but I can't really remember who she was (it was over 40 years ago). I wasn't told what it was about, but there were about 20 of us there, and the journalist listed a lot of behaviours (groping, grabbing, sexual assault, basically) and asked if we'd ever experienced anything like that. All of us had, multiple times.

I'm so glad to see tha many young women are no longer afraid to speak out.

some things were just accepted op, so it wasn't that you did or didn't do something wrong by not speaking up, it's that women just didn't. it was life. and it still wasn't acceptable but we were taught to tolerate it cos "men".

there were so many microaftessions that the other stuff just fell into "just society".

I remember applying for a Saturday job in a butchers at 16, and my Dad banning me cos he knew what butchers were like!! He wasn't about to challenge it, just to keep his daughter away from it. the irony of that when I learnt what kind of man he really was. the manager who only hired girls under 18ish, the job interview was essentially a look up and down, being told to wear makeup so I'd look more attractive (for a low end shoe shop in the Midlands). Nothing abusive but that very thin edge of erosion on which the bum slaps and the dirty talk is built in, and the groping and SA is fed off.

Eurgh. It was only about about 15 years ago that a female friend and I went to deliver a talk at a local golf club. We were both in our twenties. It was all men wearing their stupid club blazers and ties. As the Chairman did his welcoming address he said "Gentlemen, you may take your jackets off". Then he turned to us and said "And ladies, you may take your tops off!" which was met with rapturous guffaws from the whole room. So grim.