Media Predators - I’m so bloody angry!

Most of us of a similar age have a similar list sadly

I hear you.

Yep.
I am 55.
Compiled mine around #metoo
At the time I had been busy on threads on here, compiling numbers and M.O of Harvey Weinstein ( Pervy Wankstain) as testimonies came in (press never did thank us but our spreadsheet on here was replicated).
I was harassed and/or sexually assaulted 22 times between the ages of 15-25 between 1986-1996.
Some like many of us had (drunk lech pinching your bum) to having boobs grabbed (9 months he'd get now 😡) to a "bad date" where a guy would get his knob out to an ex having sex with me while I was asleep. And the other eighteen incidents from sexual harassment at work to literally running for my life from a station platform 🙄
It was another time.
I rationalised it as it could have been worse.
That I was "lucky" 👀
21/22 assailants/perps were men.
Why I always gave the caveat NAMBMM - not all men but mostly men....

Oh and at 15, one was a GP doing a particularly thorough breast check (I was going on the pill without my mum knowing) and another was a sleazy "uncle" figure (no actual relation but one of those random you were encouraged to call uncle, who then perved on you).
😬

I was groomed & assulted as a 13 year old child in the 90s, then assulted a further two times while out with friends in my late teens.

I then put a lot of weight on (trauma) and had zero unwanted attention during my obese chapter of life, which says something.

I lost the weight, but was 'lightly' assulted again on holiday with my husband years later. This is with me being highly vigilant.

I can think of probably a dozen other 'minor' events with unwanted/uninvited attention/catcalls/'accidental' touches on tubes etc

It's unfair but I see every man apart from my husband as a potential threat.

Sorry to hear everyone’s experiences. I have similar. I think most of us do 😟
Sadly it’s not just the media sector (though I do think there is a particular problem there with seemingly ‘untouchable’ talent 😡)

I don’t know what to think about reflecting on the 1980/1990’s, I don’t quite understand the reasons, the culture or my own reactions.

I look back on various experiences.

A 25 year old male teacher who acted on the school girl crush I had on him. I tried to prevent him kissing me, although at the time I ‘adored’ him.

A female teacher too scared to admit she was lesbian and lived with another woman, having to cover as ‘housemates’. I remember her saying ‘I can’t win, if I live with a woman, I’m accused of being a lesbian, if I live with a man, I’m a tart’.

A neighbour and married local policeman who started visiting as a family friend, invited me on an ‘undercover job’ and led me into an affair. I was 20, he was 35. He told me he had watched me for years in my ‘little white skirt and pants’ as I walked ahead of him sometimes.

A party (my friend’s mum’s house party) where a local journalist thought it fine to sleep between me and my friend, trying to touch and kiss each of us in turn. We were 14. My friend’s mum also thought this was fine.

My male GP, who, at a post natal check, carried out an internal examination, then laughed and said ‘I didn’t need to do that, you had your baby by CS’.

My policeman ex DH who assaulted me on numerous occasions, his ‘other woman’ defending him, the police not believing me, the OW saying she had been there and nothing had happened. (She wasn’t there).

My mum accepting my dad’s numerous affairs.

My mum treating me as a second class citizen, I’m never good enough, always spoken down to or over. Tells people my partner was my boss. I couldn’t be a senior professional without him, like I’d slept my way to the top.

Confusing, my acceptance at the time and now. Never a word to report anyone, in fact covering for them.

I can't believe how many people are defending him and saying he is the victim. Absolutely horrendous that this is so widespread in the UK

This is slightly off at a tangent, but I was thinking of exam results days when the media focus on the pretty girls in news footage and in newspapers. Probably happens a bit less these days tbf.

I hear you too. I worked briefly in a university, where a senior professional services lead was known to employ one very young local dance teacher after another into his office and yes, groom them. His wife was at home with cancer.

I walked past a woman shaking and in tears in a corridor twice before I went to HR. I have never forgotten the aggression with which they went after me for highlighting what was an open secret, nor that it was the female HR director who understood better than anyone what he had done who protected him.

It's not just something that happened in the 1990s and 2000s, these men have always been around. Society is going through a huge change in bringing all this to light. MeToo started a lot of it.

You are so right OP and your anger is righteous and justified. I feel the same and have lately been thinking that it would be good to channel these emotions into activism for change.

My experiences of creepy, predatory men happened within worlds other than media, yet the sum of criminal sexual behaviour to which they have subjected me (and people around me) adds up to the same hideously extensive, upsetting and infuriating litany as yours.

I am certain that my lived experience is not unusual. In fact your post and many others confirm it.

I know there are many morally good men in the world.but I do believe that many more are privately aware that their conduct with regards to women completely ignores any lack of consent, and is in fact indifferent to the whole question of consent.

I can't help but think that the glacial pace of societal change regarding attitude toward, and prosecution of sex crimes is hugely informed by this secret self-knowledge of millions of men who remain determined to assert their entitlement and escape accountability.

YANBU, but I don’t think it’s specific to the media. It’s just men.

I’m not and have never been a particularly attractive woman, and I’ve been in a long term relationship since I was 17, but I’ve still got a long list of inappropriate comments, unwanted touching, men not wanting to take no for an answer.

Many men see and treat many women as less than human. We are not men and therefore not ‘proper’ but somehow in error. The contempt is breathtaking once you start to see it.