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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

AIBU to have just realised that I have been sexual assaulted many times

518 replies

PippiLongBottom · 23/10/2011 22:37

I had extremely large breasts as a young teen. I was a 30DD at 13 and my size 8 hour glass figure was very popular with the boys Hmm.

At 19 I had my breasts reduced on the NHS because my head was fucked.

It is only with many years of hindsight (I am 36) thanks to Mumsnet and a recently developed feminist perspective that I realise that all the 'incidents' that happened to me were sexual assaults/grooming and not my fault.

I have fb'd one of the cuntslprits tonight.

OP posts:
Wooooooooooooooppity · 24/10/2011 14:40

Yeah all the women haters always turn up on threads about rape and sexual assault to try and convince the OP that she's a drama-queen bitch and that everyone supporting her is a man hater.

And another thing - the problem with telling a girl that the bra twanging doesn't matter, is that you're also telling the boy that the bra twanging doesn't matter. In other words, you are reinforcing his belief that he has the right to sexually harass women and girls. Why would you want to do that, unless you believe that sexual harassment of women is a Good Thing?

FanjoForTheMuahahammaries · 24/10/2011 14:40

I had heard the Feminist topic posters got the same sort of grief as the SN posters when on the main boards and I guess this is proving the point.

flippinada · 24/10/2011 14:53

Yep us women are so unreasonable with our unbalanced views Hmm.

swallowedAfly · 24/10/2011 15:05

blimey. just caught up. please tell me there is gin left in that bottle?

RIZZ0 · 24/10/2011 15:07

Wooooooooooooooppity

Thanks for that link. Really good.

xanthum · 24/10/2011 15:13

Haven't trawled through the whole thread and I may be repeating what others have said.

The same thing happened to me when I was 12/13 and onwards. I had a slim figure and large chest. The humiliation started when I was singled out in primary school and made to change for PE apart from the others. It continued in secondary school at 11/12 when the boys would bundle me into a quiet area and grope me and try to undo my shirt. Then there was the bra pinging, the pulling off of my bikini top on the beach (completely unwanted attention). Then there was the being flashed at on the street, unwanted attention from certain members of family and the list goes on.

It is hard to hear someone on here saying "shit happens" because it is so much more than that. I grew up believing that my body was for public consumption and that I had no control over myself or anyone else. This, for me, is the insidiousness of this type of behaviour towards young women and mostly it continues on. It is the normalising of completely inappropriate behaviour that does the damage to young women to the point that we don't even recognise it as such when it happens.

I know that this stuff still has a hold on me now because it shaped who I am in the present. Does this make sense to anyone?

MonstrouslyNarkyPuffin · 24/10/2011 15:17

Absolutely.

It is the normalising of completely inappropriate behaviour that does the damage to young women to the point that we don't even recognise it as such when it happens.

Very well put.

swallowedAfly · 24/10/2011 15:26

total sense.

this thread is having a drip, drip, drip effect upon my memory. so much coming back to me that all fits together.

porcamiseria · 24/10/2011 15:38

please dont bracket me in the "shit happens" category

I was only saying I would see this more as "bullying" than sexual assult, in the school context I mean.

you know what? I kind of take back what I said as this shit does stay with you. I had low self esteem and gave myself waaaay to freely to boys in my early 20s. who knows if the type of bullying I got at school led to this, most probably

I may not see this as a feminist issue per se, but I can see how it can fuck with young girls heads

and NO its not acceptable

and if you want to bracket is as feminist issue, fine by me

and I am osrry if it appeared I downplayed it

xanthum · 24/10/2011 15:47

Porca, I understand what you are saying. I think that, as Swallowed puts it, this thread is allowing some of us to re-think and re-evaluate what happened to us as young women, especially in terms of how we are today. It's so easy to never think beyond what appears on the surface and who knows, for some this may be a good thing and for others, a bad thing.

porcamiseria · 24/10/2011 15:48

it sure does! wierdly the more I think, the more shocked I am

Wooooooooooooooppity · 24/10/2011 16:03

Porca it's not everyone who has the grace to come back to a thread and acknowledge they've had a bit of a re-think, so respect to you for doing so.

StewieGriffinsMom · 24/10/2011 16:24

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

KouklaWhooooo · 24/10/2011 16:38

Pippi I understand your OP totally and hope you can start to come to terms with this now. I am completely aghast at some of the comments on this thread. It was my sister who had her dress unzipped in the pub, and I don't think she sees it as an assault - just something that upset, embarrassed and humiliated her. I do think that such behaviour by men/boys is normalised in society to such an extent that the victims are blamed. My sister was criticised for wearing a strapless dress by one poster on my thread (which I was half expecting tbh) - but this attitude was very swiftly countered I'm pleased to say. It was a formal dress anyway, suitable for a wedding - but as far as I am concerned she could have been wearing a lapdancers costume and it still gives no man any right to touch her.

I'm sorry your mum didn't believe you about the waiter incident - sometimes people are far too bothered about making a fuss I suppose. I've filed that away in the back of my brain as the way not to behave, because, like spiders I have a very beautiful 3yr old girl. I want to raise her to not accept this type of behaviour, and to challenge it. But surely, it's not all about the woman's behaviour, her reaction or her self esteem - it can't be. It has to be the fact that boys and men think its somehow 'ok' to do these things. Boys think this is normal behaviour - that's what needs challenging.

KouklaWhooooo · 24/10/2011 16:47

MNP my answers to your questions would be 1. Yes and 2. No.

I suspect there isn't a woman alive who couldn't answer 'yes' to your first question by your definition. Which is quite shocking. This thread has actually given me cause to recall the various incidents from my teens - and I didn't even have big boobs. Why is it ok for young men to grab young women, or even make lewd comments at her? I went to an all girls school - but I remember the walk home was like running the gauntlet, trying to avoid large groups of teenage boys who would leer and make a grab for various parts of the anatomy. The fact is onefatcat that I suspect all women have had this kind of unwanted male attention at some stage and it has nothing to do with her self esteem.

BupcakesandHaunting · 24/10/2011 20:24

"Guess what.. plenty of women do actually enjoy having fun, dressing up in risque clothes, and having a banter with blokes."

I suppose you're right and I am wrong; some women DO enjoy it.

I think that they should aim higher than dressing to please men. Thick men at that.

woollyideas · 24/10/2011 20:35

I've read almost the whole thread and this has brought back so many memories, from being flashed at as a child (aged about eight), to having someone stick their hand up my skirt as I walked up to the upper deck of a London bus, to having one of my mum's colleagues grope me when I was fourteen and working as a 'Saturday girl' in her office, to having my boss grab me and try to stick his tongue down my throat when I was waitressing in an Italian restaurant...

...To having a businessman expose himself to me on the tube, having a man get into a phone box with me when I was making a call and start rubbing himself against me, to having a sixty year(ish) old man throw a pack of condoms at me and saying 'How about it?' when I was on holiday as a seventeen year old.

Apart from the flasher, which I reported to a teacher who reported it to the police, I kept quiet about all of these incidents at the risk of causing embarrassment to other people (employers, family, etc.) and put it down to 'just one of those things that was part of being a young woman...' God, I wish I could turn back time and report every one of those bastards.

I'm by no means young and some of these things happened several decades ago now, but I remember them all like they were yesterday. OP - YANBU to only just realise that your experiences amounted to sexual assault. It has taken me more than a quarter of a century to understand and acknowledge my experiences for what they were.

Now I have a fifteen year old DD who has told me that one of her male friends 'dry humps' his female friends, particularly if they are tipsy. I've told her this is assault but she thinks I'm overreacting and she won't report it. Neither will any of her friends, although I know one girl has been seriously upset by his behaviour. Their 'acceptance' of his behaviour is shocking. My DD has said "oh that's just what [boy's name] does." I am seriously considering reporting it myself, but where to start? The boy is only fifteen himself and all I know is his first name and which school he goes to.

This is one of the most depressing threads I've ever read on here. The commonplace nature of these assaults makes you want to weep, doesn't it?

By the way, I had a chest like Keira Knightley's in my teens FWIW.

tyler80 · 24/10/2011 20:37

My answers to MNP's questions would be No and N/A

BupcakesandHaunting · 24/10/2011 20:39

Oh and I think my sides have just split from laughing at being called a puritan.

That's one for the bingo.

PosiesOfPoison · 24/10/2011 20:45

Have to say I was a very confident teen and still society wanted me to be beautiful and conform, my first assault was when I was about seven and I was on my bike in a park. The next was at ten, then at 16.....

I am verbally strong, but just as boys are expected to judge us, girls are expected to parade for judgement. Are we vulnerable enough? Demure? Sexy? Available?
And we may think girls who wear Fuck all are doing for themselves, but who are the judges? Whose eyes are they wanting to focus?

sozzledchops · 24/10/2011 20:50

thing is it is sooo common for these types of attention, I'd imagine we've nearly all had to deal with it - it is seen as almost a right of passage or something, unfortunately. It is so prevalent it seems impossible to deal with.

BupcakesandHaunting · 24/10/2011 20:56

My comments about the hen night costumes were more a reflection on taste, tbh. I still think that that girls do it to conform (shivering at a taxi rank at 3am, barely covered up by bits of tatty cloth Hmm) Do you have to dress in this way to have fun? No. Can you do fancy dress without looking horrendously over-exposed? Yes. Girls don't choose these outfits because they look nice or flattering. It makes me sad and disappointed that girls think that that's what fun is about, tbh.

mummymccar · 24/10/2011 20:58

I've tried to read through all of the posts but it brings back a lot of painful memories so apologies if I'm repeating anything.

I was a 32ff most of the way through school and had so many awful incidents. From groping and bra pinging to one boy lifting up my skirt when I challenged him groping me from behind.

My school was awful and encouraged this behaviour by being negligent in tackling it. I reported so many incidents to them and not one got followed up with even a chat.
As a result when I was 15 two boys from school tried to break into the changing room when I was getting changed to go swimming. Managed to put my clothes back on before they got in and obviously didn't go swimming. Instead, they decided to hold me down and grope my breasts. After this they got over excited and wouldn't stop. They tried to rape me. They only reason they didn't was because they were disturbed. Even though it wasn't on school property I reported it to my teachers who wanted to ignore it. It was only on my insistence that it was reported to police. The school told me that if I pressed charges then they couldn't see a way for me to finish my GCSEs at the school. I didn't want to be expelled so I dropped the charges. The boys confessed during this that they hadn't understood that it was wrong.

I'm expecting a little girl now and I'm worried about her going through even 10% of what I did. Schools need to make sure they are educating boys that this is wrong.

PosiesOfPoison · 24/10/2011 21:01

Mummy. [Sad]

BupcakesandHaunting · 24/10/2011 21:03

mummymccarr Angry That is terrible.

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