Not really sure why I am writing this, but predatory men

[CormoranStrike]

Not all men of course, but here’s my history - and these are just the ones I remember.

Aged 12 - a man masturbated in front of me as I walked home with friends along a quiet country lane

Aged 15 - doing my paper round in the rain and a man offered me a lift. He did not give off good vibes at all and my spider senses kicked in.

Aged 19 - heavy breathing, sexually explicit phone calls at work.

Aged 30 - colleague kissed me on the back of my neck in the office to say well done about a work thing. I was too stunned to move.

Aged 48 - colleague asks me to go for drinks to discuss a work problem. Then proceeds to blatantly ask for an affair.

I am a very ordinary looking woman. I was a very shy child. I give no indication whatsoever of wanting these approaches.

And yet again my heart sinks hearing of the tragic loss of another young woman who - like us all - deserved better, and has fallen victim to someone (the case is active and I am deliberately not naming names).

Why do some men think we are fair game? What can we do to help change this?

When women are specifically excluded from laws designed to prevent discrimination and inequality then things will get far worse :(

From my personal experiences I was conditioned not to view the unwanted advances I received as harassment. Sexual harassment wasn't acknowledged very much when I was growing up. It was just how men were and women were told they should feel flattered whenever they objected.

If I called someone a pervert and to leave me alone as a teenager I was told it was harmless and any unwanted touch was just meant as a compliment. I was a particularly overweight and ugly child so this made adults disbelieve me even more. I distinctly remember telling my mother about a man groping me at a train station to be met with a questioning stare, surely he was just moving past you and brushed against your bottom by accident...almost as if no man would want to harass a fat girl.

All these experiences made me frame my view of harassment as men just trying to be nice. For a long time I knew I didn't like the way it made me feel but I kept telling myself I should be glad of any attention, no matter how gross.

Men created a world where women are pressured into accepting their harassment calmly and quietly, a good girl doesn't make a fuss. We need to re shape the world, good men need to be shocked when their friends tell them about these type of encounters. Men need to lose their jobs more often for sexual comments in the workplace. Lad culture needs to die.

I'm rambling really. Today's news has saddened me deeply but it's all too familiar.

DD2 has narcolepsy. Some men at the support group she attends were quite shocked when they were writing lists of their fears as a group exercise and she said that being sexually assaulted or raped when she has cataplexy worries her. They were even more shocked when every single other female in the group said the same, and in fact several told stories of being touched or upskirted when they couldn't protect themselves. Normally by someone they knew as well

I'm.sorry but I never buy the "shocked" stuff.

They aren't shocked. They all have sisters , wives, mothers, neices, daughters etc they all have that dodgy mate they have to keep an eye on, who can't be left to chat up a girl too long. They have all heard the women and girls in their lives say things like " come home befire it gets dark" " don't walk that way alone " " let me know you git there safely "

This faux naivety of being shocked when women mention that they don't walk that way after 6 o clock or they carry the keys in in hands , it's nothing nore than a " way in"

Look at me I'm so lovely I didn't eveb know about up skirting, let alone do it. Oh how hard fir you all want a lift home

Its bullshit.

I do not know a woman who has not been treated to a varitey of the behaviour listed on this thread and more besides, I am heading towards 60 now and even recently I was followed home from a shop in a really blatent and scary way. I am a really fiesty woman and have never backed down, at 18 I headbutted my manager when he put his hand down my top (he was in his 50s), I have been cat called, flashed at, followed home, intimidated in a train carriage, assaulted in a swimming pool, suffered dv in a previous marriage and choked by a boyfriend till I passed out

• My dh is one of the 'good guys' but he just does not get it, oh he understands about 'walking home in the dark', we have a dd who he would always collect etc, but he just does not get how making arrangements for safety curtail our lives, how getting home is always a thought we have, how walking to the car in a dark space makes you breath harder and walk faster, how running/walking/cycling for pleasure you have to weigh up the risks of the route taken blah blah

I had a conversation with my dad years ago one summer, where he said something about how it was nice to just wander over to his local, even if he didn't know who'd be there and then have a nice leisurely walk home when the night has cooled down.

I commented on how I wish I'd ever had that option, and (at first) he couldn't understand why I didn't. So I had to talk him through why I couldn't do what he did. How I needed a safe way home, not through the unlit and not overlooked park he walked through. How I needed to not be sat alone, so I wasn't having to fend off creeps. How I needed someone else to know where I was and that I'd got home safe.

He hasn't had to think of that stuff for himself, so he'd just assumed the women in the family just didn't want to do the same as him.

@grassisjeweled I agree with you about porn. They have instant access to it on their phones in their pockets. Some of it has scenarios where men go up to random women in the street who turn out to be gagging for sex. There are VR sex toys they can use with their phones where they can immerse themselves in these scenarios. If must be affecting how they perceive women in reality.

I was assaulted as a child & remember the dawning horror as I went through puberty/became a teenager that it happened all the time. I wanted to join a lesbian separatist commune as I thought that would be the only place I could feel safe. That was in the 80s.

LBC radio are doing a phone-in now about it.

Something that always winds me up is "Sorry mate, didn't realise she was with you" when a man realises you are another man's property so thats the reason why they are finally going to leave you in peace.

Men need to change. All men need to reject this behaviour and the attitudes that lead to it. Discussing how they'd like to rape the women they know (or don't know) for example, needs to be unacceptable.

What a world we live in !
I have been so upset about this case and I just can’t get my head around what happened? And the suspect that’s been arrested it’s so scary .
Sorry to hear about your experiences it’s totally wrong for men to behave in this way .
I just do what I can at all costs to avoid things happening which we shouldn’t have to do !!!
But we live in a world where we can’t dress as we want
We can’t go and get drunk and feel safe
We can’t walk home alone at night
We have lost trust x

I recall when dd first met her dh, he was 17, they were at uni. She had to teach him how to be safety conscious, because as a beautiful young boy he had no idea of the kind of difficulties he could find himself in. She'd been brought up with fear, he hadn't.

I seen men turn a blind eye to blatantly misogynist jokes and 'banter' too many times to have any optimism that men will get on board with addressing the issue. Most don't give a shit. They pay lip service to it when cornered, but they don't speak up when it really matters.

It starts in childhood and adolescence. My dad told me that if came home pregnant he would stamp on my belly and then throw me out, no slags allowed in his house. The same man who got my mother pregnant at 18 after only a few weeks of going out. Also the same man whose contraception advice to my brothers was "remember to practice safe sex lads - don't give her your real name! Hah hah hah!" He can't fathom why DH "allows" me to "get away with" so much, as if DH is my keeper. He views women as inherently deceitful and it was exhausting growing up with it.

I'm really sorry to hear all of your stories. I hope very much that the sad news of yesterday will inspire a genuinely honest and constructive public debate about how we normalise male violence in this country.

The thing that my mum always worried about happening to her daughter - rape - eventually happened to me in daytime. Central Paris, at home, a tradesman forced his way in, and the police told us that the chain of events followed a pattern characteristic of a spate of similar incidents that summer, so this was no exceptional incident. She still tells me at any opportunity not to walk alone late at night, but, if anything, the takeaway for me is that nowhere is safe: it can happen anywhere. The street harassment of women is relentless in Paris. I spent the next few months processing the daily-reinforced idea that #notallmen were like the kind, empathetic men in my family - it was honestly devastating, looking back, like part of my world was crumbling. While I'd always been interested in feminism and had dutifully read the classics as a teen, that was the first time I had really felt the relevance of it to my own life. We need it urgently - and we need people to recognise that, while we can't tell just from looking at someone's face whether they're a good person or not, we should be entitled to have reasonable measures in place which curtail the freedoms of those who are able and most likely to perpetrate rape.

He can't fathom why DH "allows" me to "get away with" so much, as if DH is my keeper

Oh god my dad says this.

We are buying a house. I know more about house stuff than Dh, having owned houses previously to meeting him. Because of covid it was one viewer at a time. Only I have seen the house in person. My husband trusts my judgment. So we've put in an offer.

My dad is aghast at this and it's another thing I've been "let" to do.

In my first marriage I used to travel a lot with my ex without my ex. Even women used to say "oh wow he LETS you do that?"

I've got two little girls. I could fucking weep for them.

@thebabessavedme

I do not know a woman who has not been treated to a varitey of the behaviour listed on this thread and more besides, I am heading towards 60 now and even recently I was followed home from a shop in a really blatent and scary way. I am a really fiesty woman and have never backed down, at 18 I headbutted my manager when he put his hand down my top (he was in his 50s), I have been cat called, flashed at, followed home, intimidated in a train carriage, assaulted in a swimming pool, suffered dv in a previous marriage and choked by a boyfriend till I passed out - My dh is one of the 'good guys' but he just does not get it, oh he understands about 'walking home in the dark', we have a dd who he would always collect etc, but he just does not get how making arrangements for safety curtail our lives, how getting home is always a thought we have, how walking to the car in a dark space makes you breath harder and walk faster, how running/walking/cycling for pleasure you have to weigh up the risks of the route taken blah blah

Agree with every word of this. I'm 56 and was groped by a teacher when in sixth form, flashed at, kerb crawled while in school uniform, followed and aggressively propositioned several times while a student, raped at 17 along with all the usual catcalling and sexist comments. Last week while walking the dog round the village I was propositioned by a van driver and then followed. It never ends and I'm sick of it.

Aged about 10. I answered our home phone and a man asked my name and they said "You're going to get raped tonight."
Aged 19. Visited my then boyfriend in Paris. My boyfriend got drunk and passed out and his friend put his hand up my skirt which upset me

We have lost trust

We never had it in the first place. There has never been a point in history where women could trust men.

@ReceptacleForTheRespectable

We have lost trust

We never had it in the first place. There has never been a point in history where women could trust men.

This.

Something that always winds me up is "Sorry mate, didn't realise she was with you" when a man realises you are another man's property so thats the reason why they are finally going to leave you in peace

A man groped my arse at a concert two years ago....then apologized....to DP

Did anyone else sleep really really badly last night? Woke up feeling wretched. Never had a news story hit me like this. It's making me seriously reassess my obsession with true crime shows.

@Hangingover

Something that always winds me up is "Sorry mate, didn't realise she was with you" when a man realises you are another man's property so thats the reason why they are finally going to leave you in peace

A man groped my arse at a concert two years ago....then apologized....to DP

Did anyone else sleep really really badly last night? Woke up feeling wretched. Never had a news story hit me like this. It's making me seriously reassess my obsession with true crime shows.

I think for me this and the figures published today stating 97% of young women have been sexually harassed and 80% of all women have been sexually assaulted, forces me to wish I had boys. The thought that my girls will go through this and there’s nothing I can do to stop it is heartbreaking. I guess all I can do is raise them as feminists and self worth.

DS got his jaw broken when he was 16 for intervening when a girl had been cornered by three boys in fucking school of all places. Girls aren't even safe in school

Even female staff aren’t. At the first school I worked at I was cornered by a male student who grabbed my arms to stop me moving away and when I tried to told me your like it really’. He was ‘talked to’ by a male member of staff. Another female member of staff had a male student say he wanted to rape her, she was told by the male headteacher ‘boys will be boys, you’re young and attractive’.

At my current school a colleague had a student smack her bum, she was told not to report it by the male head of behaviour.
I was covering for a member of staff teaching a lesson with a completely male year 11 class. 4 of them began asking if it was legal for me to have sex with them, shouting that one was the father of my child (I was pregnant) and a lot of other lewd remarks. The male pastoral manager I reported it to told me they were just being ‘teenage boys’ and there was no follow up for their behaviour. I reported it to the male (again!) headteacher who was slightly more supportive and ensured me I would never have to teach them again. But there was never any actual punishment for their behaviour.

It’s awful. There needs to be a lot of work within schools educating boys about male attitudes towards women and consent, unfortunately a lot of people brush it off as ‘laddish’ behaviour.

One thing I'm glad about is that, in the media I've seen, the pictures of the suspect are pictures of a smiling, normal looking man.

When things like this happen, often the media use dingy, sinister looking mugshots of the suspects / perpetrators, making it look like only an abnormal, weird kind of man would do this. In reality, sexual assault, rape, murder and domestic violence are perpetrated every day by men that the world sees as normal.

Many men laugh along with misogyny because none of their friends could possibly be the kind of men who assault women, because only weird looking men do that.

Juries acquit because the guy in the dock is far too handsome and normal to be a rapist.

Abusive men ae not rare monsters, they are ridiculously common. You probably talk to an abuser every day (through work, or out and about) without realising it. We need to start acknowledging this as a society, rather than perpetuating the myth that abusive men are somehow 'other'.

@Whatwouldscullydo

DD2 has narcolepsy. Some men at the support group she attends were quite shocked when they were writing lists of their fears as a group exercise and she said that being sexually assaulted or raped when she has cataplexy worries her. They were even more shocked when every single other female in the group said the same, and in fact several told stories of being touched or upskirted when they couldn't protect themselves. Normally by someone they knew as well

I'm.sorry but I never buy the "shocked" stuff.

They aren't shocked. They all have sisters , wives, mothers, neices, daughters etc they all have that dodgy mate they have to keep an eye on, who can't be left to chat up a girl too long. They have all heard the women and girls in their lives say things like " come home befire it gets dark" " don't walk that way alone " " let me know you git there safely "

This faux naivety of being shocked when women mention that they don't walk that way after 6 o clock or they carry the keys in in hands , it's nothing nore than a " way in"

Look at me I'm so lovely I didn't eveb know about up skirting, let alone do it. Oh how hard fir you all want a lift home

Its bullshit.

Yes! In order to be shocked they would need to wilfully blind themselves to it. They're not shocked, they just want to emphasise that they're the nice kind of man so that sort of thing would never occur to them.

I think they are shocked.
The “good” men know that women are afraid to walk alone in the dark, of course they do. But I reckon they think it’s because of a 1 in a million chance. I don’t think a lot of men actually do realise how big the threat is. Or, just how frightening 1 in a million is, when the possible 1 is you..

And yes, maybe they know you have to keep an eye on “Gary” because he’s a pest. But hey - he’s still a good bloke. He’d never actually hurt a woman, right? I mean, yeah he’s standing too close and slinging his arm around her after she’s said “no thanks”, but it’s not like he’s a rapist, is it? Well, maybe Gary isn’t (still not accessible behaviour) but you know what? Your other friend Steve, the one who’s saying, “come on Gary - leave her alone mate.” and then so nicely apologising to the woman? Him... maybe he’s a serial date rapist, or rapist, as I like to call them.

I do genuinely believe that many good men are shocked because they have no fucking idea how frequently we are threatened and hurt 😡

On the men being shocked topic... I had a massive row with my husband recently. Well - he didn’t argue back, I mean, I fucking went to down.
I said something about a friend’s arsehole ex husband. And mine gave me a wry smile and said, “you have a lot of friends with arsehole exes.” A little indulgently playful, oh Coco and your hyperbole.

I said - right. And gave him chapter and verse on each arsehole ex. The one who raped my friend. The one who dragged my friend across the floor by the hair whilst their 5yo pleaded daddy, stop... Christ, I don’t need to continue here, you’re women, you know.

And when I finished my litany, I said - right - now you tell me about any of the bad behaviour of your (male) friends’ (female) exes.

He came up with a woman who cheated - but then said, “I’m fairness, he did first.”

I hope I educated him, because he’s my husband and I really looked at him differently that day.

The “good” men know that women are afraid to walk alone in the dark, of course they do. But I reckon they think it’s because of a 1 in a million chance. I don’t think a lot of men actually do realise how big the threat is.

Can you explain why fathers try to intimidate / threaten the young men that take their daughters out on dates? "You'd better not lay a hand on her" etc. It's a common comedy trope, and while the threats may not be explicit, the whole 'stern father' thing is real.

It's because they know full well what men do when they think they can get away with it. And they also know full well that strangers are not the only danger.