Were the 1970s the perviest decade?

Joystir I am extremely sorry that you were abused too.

I posted before ready, sorry. My question to men should read- why aren't you owning and talking about YOUR problem? I have spent my entire life since the age of 13 having to do a risk assessment on where and when I'm travelling around this world, because men cannot leave girls and women alone to move around in peace. I do not know a SINGLE adult female who has experienced some form of sexual harassment or abuse. Why do you do it?

The real taboo is men not admitting that they want to or actually do sexually abuse female children and women, usually girls and women they are related to or know very well. I mean to say that sexual abuse is so common that many many men are doing it, or thinking about doing it. Many many men rape. Lots of men pay for sex and do not even care if they are buying it from someone very young who has been coerced into prostitution: nordicmodelnow.org/ So I have a question to all men- why are you talking amongst yourselves about your problem? Why don't you do something about it?

And before you say men and boys are sexually abused too, just let me point out that this is OVERWHELMINGLY as male problem. In a government overview of sexual offending in England, written in 2013. 100% of all reported sexual offences were perpetrated by men.

I've recently been thinking with some sadness about all the post 70s feminist re- reading of 20th century children's books, and all the hand wringing about the genderised roles.

Yes, it was always the girls who were worrying about wet socks or what they were all going to have for tea, bit at least washing clothes and cooking are valuable life skills, which taking selfies and wondering whether you're going to be famous aren't.

Olennas your post made me think of a few singers at the moment who are marketed are purposely made to look and behave like under 16. I can think of four from the top of my head.
There is boundaries now about marketing under 16 but the adults over 18 who look like children are fair game. They are marketed in this way to please those particular type of men who like the younger looking girls and to also sell to the younger market.

Before this thread, I had always thought it was for the younger fans. However, they are all sexualised. Being a little kitten isn't for a 13 year old.

Joy, I'm sorry that happened to you.

Is it really 1 in 4 girls abused as children? I have heard the stat that 1 in 4 women are raped in their lifetimes, that's so sad if it's girls too.

The 70s groupie scene was well known about in the 70s.

Nils Lofgren, who is now Bruce Springsteen's guitarist, but was then a solo artist, released an album called Cry Tough in 1976. It included a song called Jailbait with the line "the law says she's 14, she looks 23". No one was fussed.

oystir59 Thu 01-Dec-16 22:02:20
Why do people think child sexual abuse is a thing of the past?

The point being made is that some older men would have sex, that they considered to be 'consensual', with underage teenagers without worrying about it at all and the girls thought they had consented. Lots of people were brainwashed by the sexual revolution idea that all sex was good too.

I think lots of men have/want to have sex with very young girls. The 'school girl' is still a pornographic meme today.

What was better about the 70s than now, IMO, was that you weren't expected to grow up too fast

That's not entirely true. In some ways some teenagers had to grow up far more quickly.

The school leaving age in Scotland was only raised to 16 in 1973. I was at a large rural comprehensive. I recall people leaving at 15 to start work. I would guess around 5% of each year went to university ( and that is not because it was a deprived area, far from it, just very few people did). If you weren't in that select little group the expectation was you joined the adult world in your teens and just got on with work and earning a living. Girls got pregnant and married at 16,17 and young couples were expected to cope as adults.

I was sexually abused in the seventies by a family member. It wasn't 'acceptable' then, no more so than it is now. Certainly not to me. And yet females, no matter how young are never off limits- not then and not now.

Why do people think child sexual abuse is a thing of the past? I in 4 girls experience child sexual abuse NOW.

I think kids grow up in different ways now compared to in the 70s. They have things like phones at a very young age, and can access online the sort of hard core porn we would have had to go to a specialist shop to procure. But we are much more aware of the sexualisation of children now, and - as said upthread - sex with underage children is no longer deemed acceptable.

No one spoke up against porn
One thing is that what was available to most people was nothing like the porn there is now, and very young children did not see it and get influenced by it.

What was better about the 70s than now, IMO, was that you weren't expected to grow up too fast
I think that's true.

Kennington Mon 28-Nov-16 20:33:07
Young teenage and tween girls are sexualised as much or more than in the 70s.

I think you are absolutely right, but I do the think that now most people know it is absolutely not all right to have sex with an underage girl, but in the '70s it happened much too often and with impunity.

I was 13 and in school uniform in the 1990s and got wolf whistled.

I'd like to think that 16 year olds wouldn't be on Page 3 now, and certainly no marketing campaign like the count down to Sam Fox's 16th birthday when she could finally be shown topless. (Mind you, Charlotte Church was Rear of the Year in the 2000s when she was only jsut 16, so.... )

I was looking up about David Hamilton and came across this.
jezebel.com/what-should-we-say-about-david-bowie-and-lori-maddox-1754533894
Rebecca Solnit wrote this, which is relevant to the OP question.

The dregs of the sexual revolution were what remained, and it was really sort of a counterrevolution (guys arguing that since sex was beautiful and everyone should have lots everything goes and they could go at anyone; young women and girls with no way to say no and no one to help them stay out of harmful dudes’ way). The culture was sort of snickeringly approving of the pursuit of underage girls (and the illegal argument doesn’t carry that much weight; smoking pot is also illegal; it’s about the immorality of power imbalance and rape culture). It was completely normalized. Like child marriage in some times and places. Which doesn’t make it okay, but means that, unlike a man engaged in the pursuit of a minor today, there was virtually no discourse about why this might be wrong. It’s also the context for what’s widely regarded as the anti-sex feminism of the 1980s: those women were finally formulating a post-sexual-revolution ideology of sex as another arena of power and power as liable to be abused; we owe them so much.

I know of quite a people who were 13 in 1970s when much older men 'seduced' them.

I was a teenager in the 1970s and my Dad fought in the war, so it's not impossible.

I do remember that Benny Hill, dirty old men flashing you in the underpass, casual groping and low level sexual intimidation were more or less normalised and you were expected to just ignore it. Women were there to make the dinner or flash their tits for the satisfaction of men. Feminists didn't exist, they were 'women's libbers' and famous for burning their bras. Jim'll Fix It was everyone's favourite TV programme, after Top of the Pops. Sleaze was mainstream.

Having said that I don't remember it being terrifically threatening but then, luckily, I wasn't the victim of any of it. Plus you weren't so exposed to the media as kids are today, so as a child it wasn't as 'in your face' as it is now.

What was better about the 70s than now, IMO, was that you weren't expected to grow up too fast and emulate scantily clad pop stars at the age of 13. It was accepted that you were still a child and would go out to play, not wear make up and take selfies. You weren't expected to conform and become carbon copies of the latest YouTuber. There was more freedom to go your own way.

On balance, I'm glad I grew up then rather than now.

the 70s was crap.
Lass is right, the war/exact age of our parents had nothing to do with it.
I will never forget the attitudes of those times.
If a girl displayed sexualised behaviour she was 'slut' or 'dirty slag' yet girls were also required to be 'good in bed'...

Lass is absolutely right about the peculiar tension in the 70s between the "let it all hang out anything goes" attitudes of the 60s London trendy set and the still essentially totally repressed attitudes of the rest of the country. So, girls being encouraged to become sexualised because that's what you saw when Savile perved over Pan's People on TV (yes, I remember that with a shudder) and yet victim-blamed if you were then preyed on by an older man. I still remember some of the things my school contemporaries got up to (going off to hang around back stage at gigs when they were 13 or so in the hope of "getting off" with band members), and the Les Dawson style bosom hoiks of older women if anything then happened to them.

Lass you would have been under 16 by 75. You are in the age range. I know someone who would have been. You would have been in close contact to grandparents who were too. It's not far removed.

I was 16 in 1975. My parents were 10 when the war ended. I'm really not seeing what the significance of the war is.

There was a culture of not speaking about abuse. Children ,especially girls, who displayed sexual behaviour inconsistent with their age were treated as if they were to blame, rather than such behaviour being as a result of abuse.

Young teenage and tween girls are sexualised as much or more than in the 70s.
Those that don't dress a certain way are considered to be posh or way out or even gender neutral! The pressure to be slim, smooth and tan is horrendous.
We will look back now and be sad about this too.

I'm a 70s baby and my parents were baby boomers - but having said that, they were brought up by people who were brought up by Victorians, which imparts its own particular morality.

I was reading about Jayne Mansfield the other day - I was genuinely surprised that someone was exploiting "wardrobe malfunctions" and similar quite risque activities quite so early

The children of those who fought in the war

well I was a kid in the 70s and both of my parents were way too young for that. My dad was 9 when the war finished and my mum was 12.

Lass you would have been under 16 by 75. You are in the age range. I know someone who would have been. You would have been in close contact to grandparents who were too. It's not far removed.

I don't think porn was the biggest problem but attitude. I doubt porn was as wide spread as it is now nor were sexualised images.

I once saw a clip of Mary WhiteHouse arguing against body building for men and how it will affect men's perception of a perfect body. That is now true.

Lass, yours made me wonder how the current sex positive, Anne Summers, widespread porn and permatan/fake lash culture will appear in 20 years time. I see porn being controlled more. I can't see Anne summers disappearing from our high streets unless people buy less from them. I don't see the sexual nature of their ads changing. It's not very different to a lot of perfume ads.

Capitalism re-packaged female sexual liberation and sold it back to us, in the process sexualising female children
I believe capitalism re-packaged a belief system that has always been there. In media history, women have been sold as sexual objects. Young females or female children have never been immune to such objectification.

Lots of things must have been at play. 1960+ seems to be very chaotic and fast moving with lost of changes in culture and perception of our society as whole accompanied with fear.
-The rise of media and it's social influence on the mass population at the time must have played a huge role. It either normalised pedophilia for some people or it brought a dark part of society to the public.

-The advertiser must have targeted a demand for what was considered ok and acceptable or pushed boundaries to moralised what was not acceptable. I don't think ageism is a new thing either. I would assume that to satisfy this demand they used what was marketable to buyers and that's young children. Young females and children were already used as sexual objects. The media just gave it a different platform.

-It wasn't long ago children were seen and not heard. They have become a commodity and little consumers, opening a whole new market that didn't exist before. Musicians (bands and singers) and movies were marketed at children. To appeal to both the young and old the children became sexualised in the process, I believe. It's a boundary that has been blurred and I believe still continues to this day even though children are considered children and not mini adults. children made to act like adults instead without the adult understanding of the world and it's dangers to them.

It wasn't until 1990 that UN introduced children's rights which the UK signed up to in 1992. I would argue that this might have changed people's attitudes to how children are seen. I also believe that it might have helped in changing people's attitudes. Children have become people with rights and someone you have to listen to when they have a problem. Government implementing laws and providing services that offers protection to children.

I don't think that children weren't being abused before the 70s or it wasn't a culture hidden or not talked about. I just think lost of them probably didn't know what to do or how to approach it. Sometimes I think, that if people don't question what is wrong, lost of people just accepts it as an issues that will never go away and it should be left how it is. The only way people can deal with such matters is teaching ways on how to protect your self rather dealing with the issue or perpetrators. Those who end up in such a horrible situation are victim blamed for not taking precautions and staying safe. This breeds silence, fear and shame, making such acts to thrive. The perpetrators thrive on this because they begin to believe they are either invincible or their act is ok, eccentric, edgy and conventional.

The above is what I assume is the case but I could be wrong. I am making assumptions based on how I see things by putting two and two together making the above.