To actually feel a bit sorry for men who grew up in the 90s/00s?

You said "Whatever their characters, they weren't encouraged to believe that consent should be unequivocally sought and given."

How else are people meant to interpret that?

Absolutely this ✨

I'm really sorry you're going through this. Given he has shown his true colours and painting you as a villain I would kick him out immediately and stop him leaching of you immediately. He has shown his true colours. He has no respect for you, your health your well being.

Get rid immediately. Have a token response paraphrasing what exactly he has done and copy and paste it to anyone who says anything to you. Lastly please spend some of that hard earned insurance money on therapy for yourself. No person should put up with being treated as you have. Please thi k about getting some therapy as to why you have put up with this. You deserve better.

I think this is a very interesting thread topic. I don't know that I feel 'sorry' for them but I definitely acknowledge that they were led down a particular path.

I remember in the early 1980s my older brother complaining how our mother was causing loads of hassle at home with all her new friends and their women's lib BS. We lived in Ireland and things were very different back then.

We all tease him about it now and discuss how unreasonable our father was.

He wasn't a nice husband and I'd never disagree our mother had it hard. However his behaviour then being held to today's standards make no sense. By societal standards he actually treated her ok. And also - men then who had good careers and were attractive absolutely HAD IT MADE imo and what sane but selfish person would be happy to give that up? He had his own company the way he wanted, had a great social life, no money worries and his beautiful and supportive wife took care of all domestic duties. And he thought he deserved this because he had worked hard.

It's the same with the 90s stuff imo. It was humour / banter etc and yes young women absolutely joined in as part of the ladette culture. I remember hearing a young woman on the radio laughing about how she was just back from her girls holiday in Magalluf, the entire group wore 'no fat chicks allowed' t-shirts. The interviewers were suggesting it was chauvinistic and the phones were ringing off the hook shouting that it was a joke. The interviewee herself got very defensive arguing that actually she DIDN'T want fat chicks hanging around.

The other thing I found fascinating here was the concept of rape changed dramatically. Being too drunk to consent was just something embarrassing; having sex with an unattractive person that you didn't remember was something to be slagged about. There was no question of him taking advantage - you were up for it at the time. Myself and friends had many conversations in the intervening years about going along with stuff because the guy was so persistent or whatever. I think a lot of our male peers must have uncomfortable feelings about earlier situations too. One friend of ours often told a funny story about having sex with some woman he vaguely knew who was so hammered she stopped halfway squatted beside the bed urinated then got back into bed. Nobody ever said why the f were you having sex with her in that state?

No I dont get this. ‘Learn how to be men’? They are men, it’s very simple, who teaches women ‘to be women’? If it’s a case of learning not to be arseholes, women are not a subclass of humans or a different species. They know damn well that if they punch us it hurts. Too many men enjoy that - it’s not because they haven’t been taught (and did you mean to say by their mothers, really?).

'Gentle parenting' what are you on about - I think you'll find not treating your child as your adversary, demonstrating emotional intelligence, bellowing at them in supermarkets or treating babies, toddlers, children, teens with complete disdain, with many people wondering around you why you even bothered to have children, is only going to produce a civilised, respectful and emotionally mature adult! Equally, my parents were ahead of their time and I had that kind of nurturing childhood back in the 80's and 90's, I can assure you I am not entitled, I was just grateful for not having a 'refrigerator Mum'!

I was a teenage girl in this era. I do not feel sorry for them. More astounded that we normalised it, glamorised it, stood by and watched it happen, encouraged it even….

I know there’s the argument that gross behaviour has always been gross behaviour but I do think that culturally it was normalised and as a teenager we almost expected it?

I remember getting back from a night out and telling my mum I was appalled when a guy I barely knew shoved my hands into his underwear at a party and she literally laughed it off.

The influences they had are NOTHING compared to the misogyny that young boys are raised on today. Porn from a younger age. Porn that is more violent and degrading. Andrew Tate type role models. Algorithms on social media that relentlessly push content to rationalise and reinforce not just misogynistic feelings but also misogynistic theories. Smaller families so fewer real life male role models. Gentle parenting to encourage entitled attitudes.

The men of the 90s are the good guys in comparison.

It was a very different time

I’m a teen of the 90s/ twenty-something of the 00s so I know exactly the culture you’re talking about, I lived through the other side of it as a young woman.

Undoubtedly it will have influenced them but I don’t feel sorry for them, no.

I do think women didn’t have the vocabulary that there is now, back then, to understand when they were being mistreated but I do not think all men were bad. I don’t personally know any who would have bought Nuts magazine! They were too busy being into music.

The TV and film industry is another matter. I am pretty shocked that there are apparently many male comedians who think sexual assault is fine. The DW and RB accusations are sickening. That stuff was never OK.

That said, it was in the 90s more common for (some - but it was not the norm!) teenagers to date much older men which now seems creepy and wrong.

Yes, and remember, RB, a 90s man, would probably do all that, too. The issue is that they saw that as proof they are progressive so if they said or did something to the contrary, we could all be assured it was just a joke or that we have missed some context that makes it okay.

The 90s era of Nuts/Zoo/'Shagger of the Year' awards wasn't a time of universal cultural norms that didn't really think about how women could say no, it was a cultural value to deliberately override women's consent and deliberately make then feel uncomfortable, without consideration for their experience at all. While there are always some women who go along with this sort of approach to sexuality, especially when they're young and feel powerful in that context, there were lots of women, and a few men, pointing out very loudly that it was fucked up at the time. So no, I don't feel for sorry for them at all.

Not sure I agree. The 90s saw the new man, the man doing housework and childcare much more so than in previous decades where it was unmanly to push a pram.
The lad mags and the lad culture was a bit of a reaction to that, but the general trend was improvement.

You only have to look at the number of posts here from women whose partners are frequenting strip clubs, OnlyFans, who still make sexual jokes etc to see that this was not only a historic problem. This is still going on with men who were barely born in the 90s or 00s, let alone old enough to have been reading Nuts etc. A substantial number of men think that they have a god given right to women, the year they were born in seems to make little difference.

Good men are good men. My DH, brothers, male friends are all 80s babies so teens and young men 90s/00s and they all know how to respect women!
I actually think misogyny is worse now, I’d rather be called “love” and be wolf whistled at by a builder than the outright misogyny young girls face these days

I can categorically state that the behaviour of men towards women, as a broad generality, is far worse now than it was in the 90s.

As a teenager of the late 90s I totally understand what you mean. There was an expectation that boys would try and push for sex and we'd sort of coltishly push back and play hard to get before giving it up. I watch films from my youth like She's All That and it is striking seeing that messaging played back again with fresh- older- eyes. In that film she constantly tells him no and he ignores it and outright ignores every boundary until she falls in love with him. I thought that was sweet as a teen and now it makes me feel rage.

I do feel a bit conflicted when I hear of these older assaults because whilst they are awful they are often not too far from things I experienced and it makes me unsure how to think about some of the behaviour I experienced at parties etc. that I just laughed off or dismissed. I wonder if we all don't have sexual assaults in our past that we never labelled as such.

I’m a millennial male and grew up through the indie sleaze and hedonism of the noughties and into the peak hipster era. I seen a lot of things and partied in many places. It was a great time mostly.

But from a young age, I understood what consent meant and how to behave, as did my friends.

Yes - we absolutely called it out!

He knew their ages. He just didn’t care.

Exactly this.

It's high time this shit was called out and stamped on hard.

I grew up with it and it was horrid, so no, I don't feel sorry for any perpetrators, no.

I honestly don't feel sorry for them. I can't believe that's a genuine question tbh.

It was the 1990s. Not the times of the viking invasions. If someone actually thought consent was optional because a magazine said so, they shouldn't have been allowed out without a chaperone.

Rapists and sexual abusers have not been wronged by society. It's not my fault, Your Honour, Ladmag said it's ok to grab a woman in the club and drag her into the toilets. I didn't know any better. If anything, I am the victim here.

My eyes just rolled so far up they did a full 360 and came up from the bottom.

I agree with you and also the women of our era.

I agree we had no idea how to deal with predators, or even that we had the right to not feel uncomfortable.