Mary Harrington's Thread: how old at your first sexual approach by a man?

I remember having experiences as a small child, I'm not sure if this is the same as or different to 'being approached sexually', where's the line between paedophilia and more everyday perving? Men who are attracted to youthful qualities like inexperience, deference, lack of boundaries etc will or won't draw the line at a certain age or stage of development, it's up to them.

There was a member of the extended family who demanded hugs from me in a way that alarmed my mother when I was 8. Around the same age I was left with a young friend in the care of her childminder who insisted on holding her on his lap and even as a kid I knew there was something not right about it, he couldn't hide his eagerness. I answered a pervy phone call as a small child (maybe 6 or 7?), and I definitely sounded like a small child. When I was 11 or 12 I saw a man masturbating in the children's section of the library, which boggled my mind. I had no idea how to process any of this information.

I remember men in cars driving by and beeping the horn at me and my friends when we used to sit in a tree in the front garden. I think my tree climbing days were over by the age of 12ish so before that.

I was 13 when a man chatted me up at a family party and my aunt warned him off saying I was 'jailbait'.

When I was 21 my aunts and stepsister revealed that my father had sexually assaulted them as children over a period of many years. My aunt believed his friends in the police prevented her from getting anywhere when she reported it. I'm still not sure how to quantify the effect of having a close family member who was, for decades, secretly exploitative and abusive, and the psychic odour that permeates everything, it was like an endless series of slow-motion explosions in my personal life. Some of the women he abused went on to have abusive relationships with men as adults. I still wonder today about my friends who came to visit, one of whom became a summer au pair for his youngest daughter, and whether he tried it on with them. It confirmed my suspicion that the police were not able or willing to protect girls or adult women from predatory men, they protect their mates and at best maybe don't leave their daughters alone with them. My family life was blown apart while my father's life carried on largely as normal until he died a few years ago.

Men may express shock at our experiences but they don't grasp that their decency is entirely voluntary, we can't opt in or out of abuse and even the 'hands-off' variety can fuck you up in a kaleidoscope of ways.

this has really hit a nerve with me. the underlying theme for all of the following is "what on earth were my parents thinking".

age 5, dressed up as a Playboy bunny for the local carnival, going round every pub in the village collecting money for charity. hammered blokes leering and making horrific comments. this one's taken up quite a bit of therapy time...

age 7, the bloke over the road started ringing the house in the morning when i was getting dressed for school in front of the fire in the lounge (we had no central heating at that point) telling me he could see what colour knickers i was wearing and being generally pervy.

i was friends with his daughter and knew it was him, he didn't even try to put on a different voice. my mum didn't believe me and he hung up whenever someone else answered / took the phone. the solution, apparently, was just to close the curtains.

age 9, flashed multiple times in the park. consensus seemed to be "ignore him and he'll go away". i stopped playing in the park.

similar age, horrible friend of my parents who always wanted me and my brother to sit on his knee. except it was mainly me, and only me who he jiggled up and down.

i can remember deciding i didn't want to be a girl, or attractive, or visible. and lo, lifelong disordered eating which is only now just about sorted.

the thing that's always amazed me when recalling these incidents is how, even at that age when i knew nothing about men or sex, my gut feeling about the people involved was spot on.

the lack of protection from any adult is the hardest thing to reconcile. i live in hope this has changed a bit since the late 70s!

I should add, luckily my parents were both very aware and protective of me and my sister as children.

My dad was quite clear that he wouldn't have hesitated to react violently to anyone who tried to mess with us. This probably kept the potential groomers away.

My mum was targeted by a paedophile as a young child in the 50s. Her mum called the police, she made a statement and they never saw the man again.

Parents have to absolutely protect their children.

It's terrible that you were blamed for what adult men did.

The first clear incident was when I was 11/12. It properly started ( regular attention from older men) though when I was around 14/15.

I was NOT an early developer, no boobs at all until around 17. You would never have mistaken me for being older.

I find it sad that I consider myself lucky to never have been seriously assaulted or raped.

I definitely developed a smile and say nothing technique very early on as I knew I shouldn't outright reject but also not encourage the attention to go further.

I was 5, it’s my first memory of wearing a dress. It was very short, the fashion in 1974. I was with my pal, a boy in a local park. A man followed us & commented on my legs, we ran away but he found us again, he had his zip open with everything out & grabbed me. My pal hit him with a stick & got a lucky strike.

We didn’t tell anyone as we weren’t meant to be there. I only wore dresses under extreme duress after that, kept my hair short & I was delighted when I was mistaken for a boy.

I was 6. I was being raped and assaulted by a relative on a regular basis and the interest from men since then never really stopped until I was well over the age of 40. Its aggressive and exhausting.

An adult man in his 50s when I was 13, who grabbed me while I was dancing on holiday. My mum saw it and thought it was funny. I spent the rest of the evening hiding in the toilets.

hard to remember! probably 12, but maybe younger.

I was 9 and wearing my primary school uniform (blue checked dress) so it was obvious I was a child even if I was going through puberty.

I was 8, a man employed at my school assaulted me. I was 'lucky' he only kissed me and touched me before a dinnerlady rescued me. The headmaster took over a week to fire him because why did I go with him/maybe I misunderstood/the dinnerlady didn't see everything, what happened before she got there etc.

My older brother had a friend who spent quite a bit of time at our home and started encouraging me to hang out with them. One day he informed me and my parents that although I had once been an annoying little girl I had now become a lovely mature young lady and he wanted to take me out for the day as his girlfriend. He told us that he felt it only right to let my parents know what we were doing, out of respect, and that he would 'treat me like a lady'. He was 20 and I was 14. He clearly expected me to swoon and my parents to love him for being so polite. Thankfully my parents made it clear that this would not be happening (but did not stop him coming round and leering).

As a teenager I had a good friend who used to go to an under 18s night at the a local night club. This was publicised in schools and sold to parents as a safe place (no alcohol was served). In reality most of the girls who went were 13-16. Groups of men aged 17-24 (ish) used to go and chat up the younger girls, including my friend. Friend thought this was exciting and was taken in by them. By the age of 15 she had been 'girlfriend' to at least 4 of them and pregnant twice. This was all hidden from her parents. The night club management did not ever question why older men were at a children's night. When she went for 2 abortions she was given contraception advice but social services were never involved and no one suggested to her that she might be being abused.

Eight. I've had to work through a lot of conflicting feelings - ones I felt then; ones I felt when I was an adult.

I don't know if I could put an exact age on it but certainly around 9 or 10. I developed breasts very early and was definitely a D-cup by the time I left primary school at age 11. Previous to that I remember friends of my father leering and making inappropriate comments while I tried desperately to wear the baggiest clothes possible and sit hunched over with arms folded.

My first real experience of very overt and direct attention was at 13. We were on holiday and my mum had bought me a cropped top to wear. I was skeptical but she really built up my confidence by telling me how good I looked and I should show off my body more. I wore it one day and for about the first time in my life, decided I really liked how I looked and felt confident with my appearance, so I wore it again at night to go out for dinner. Mum and dad would always let my sister and I go for a walk alone in the resort after dinner, to get ice cream, while they had a drink. Walking down the street, I ended up surrounded by older teenage boys and men in their 20s. Several put their hands on my bare midriff, one tried to put his hand under the top. I clearly remember one of them saying he had seen me earlier and had watched me all day. I had been completely oblivious in the daytime and was terrified by the ordeal. My sister managed to get between them and me and got me back to my parents where my mum blamed me for wearing such a thing in the evening, asking what on earth I had expected and that it served me right. I binned the top after that.

My view on this is not that men are shocked by the revelations but that they are shocked to hear that we are and were so affected by these comments and actions. I think they still believe we should be flattered and are only now starting to realise the comments were creepy and damaging.

I think I knew my power at about 14. I hate to say it but I quite enjoyed the attention 🤦🏻‍♀️

Its not shocking. They just like to pretend it is. We are supposed to pretend we don't see/hear them cashing in on the creeps.

As much as they will denounce the creeps to our faces, the rest do still know they are onto a good thing. After all the existence of the creeps means that by merely not acting as a creep they get be seen as the good guys with zero effort at all.

Who would want to lose that?

I feel like we keep these sharing stories, like after #MeToo and after the murder of Sarah Everard. Surely it can't still be shocking to men? Didn't they hear us first time round?

I was sexually assaulted age 10 in a public (but sadly secluded) place by a stranger, told by someone’s dad at at girl guide event that he had noticed my breasts were jiggling while I was dancing age 11, chatted up and offered a drink at a bar age 12 (it was a bar at a hotel as we were at a family party thing, and lost my virginity age 13. Uncoerced I just add- but I think I just assumed this was what I was for… sexual activity.

I was about 10 and was in a park with my Aunt in the daylight she was sitting on a bench l was wandering around looking at statues etc l eventually noticed l was being followed by a man when l looked around all I remember is an erect penis and running back to my Aunt l was distressed but couldn't say why and didn't want to explain How do you it was the first penis I ever saw as I lived with this Aunt and my Grandmother.
A few years later walking to school in my uniform l used to pass a fire station l was always wolf-whistled at eventually I would find alternative routes and to this day I can't stand firemen.

I was regularly kerb-crawled, in my school uniform, from the age of 12 or 13. The first time it happened, I had no idea what was going on - luckily I had an older friend with me, otherwise I might well have stopped to speak to him. After a while it became such a routine event that I stopped even noticing.

Also had a teacher "show an interest" when I was 15 and he must have been 40ish. He didn't do anything physical beyond brush against me or touch my hands, but he was obvious to the point where all my friends noticed and it became a big joke. My mum knew too and found it funny

age 14.